Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  “I first met Charles in June 1976, in Bombay,” answered Barbara.

  “Who introduced you?”

  “A Belgian.” She did not reveal Hugey Courage’s name, nor did the defense press her on later cross-examination.

  “What did Charles Sobhraj tell you about himself?”

  “He told me he was a big businessman.” Barbara spoke now in the tone of a tape-recorded announcement, like witnesses do when they are hewing carefully to a rehearsed script.

  “What did he ask you to do?”

  “He asked me to accompany him to Japan.”

  “Was Marie-Andrée Leclerc also known as Monique?”

  Barbara nodded cheerfully. “Yes, that was her alias.”

  The P.P. paused, half expecting an objection from Frank Anthony. But none came. Pleased to have slipped a strong word like “alias” into the record, the prosecutor hurried along. He was a competent lawyer, time would tell, but void of color or flair. His questioning was as dry as November leaves.

  “When did you come to Delhi?” he asked.

  “On June 18, 1976. I came with Mary Ellen Eather.”

  “Who paid the fare?”

  “Alain. I knew Charles Sobhraj as Alain.”

  “What were your instructions?”

  “Alain told us to stay in the Lodhi Hotel and to visit the Oberoi and Imperial Hotel jewelry shops and check out ornaments and other valuables.”

  “What for?”

  “He did not tell us the purpose,” answered Barbara. She went on to tell how Hugey Courage disappeared from their midst and fled to Goa, and how Charles and Jean Dhuisme raced off in pursuit of him.

  “What happened when Alain returned to Delhi?”

  “He ordered me to go to the Ranjit Hotel and book two rooms … we got Rooms 125 and 315. Everybody had lunch at the hotel restaurant. After lunch, Alain instructed me and Mary Ellen to ‘have an acquaintance’ with a French tourist we saw sitting in the lobby. His name, later on, came to be known as Jean-Luc Solomon.”

  From a worn and shabby folder, the P.P. promptly withdrew two tiny, postage-stamp-size photographs of the dead tourist and passed them around. Everybody, including Charles and Marie-Andrée, strained to peer at the thin, bearded, intelligent-looking young Frenchman. It was the only moment of the trial when the victim became more than an abstract name tossed about from time to time. Nothing else about him was revealed, neither his work, nor his age, nor his purpose in being in India, nor his dreams. He could have been given a number and referred to by that, for all the form his life and death took in this courtroom.

  “Then what happened?”

  “After some talk, I and Mary Ellen went to the bar of the hotel with Mr. Solomon. Alain and Jean Dhuisme also came. They had a conversation with Mr. Solomon in French which I could not understand. Then Alain suggested we all have dinner. We went to the United Coffee House at seven-thirty.”

  The P.P. nodded contentedly. His witness was under control. She was testifying calmly and forthrightly, sticking resolutely to the story. “What happened at dinner?”

  “Alain suggested we all have chicken curry … Alain took out from his pocket a small plastic bottle and placed it on the table. Solomon inquired about the contents of the bottle. Alain told him it was for stomach problems …”

  “Then what did Alain do?”

  As she prepared to answer, Charles edged closer, close enough for Barbara to feel his breath. Reporters saw him mutter something which she obviously heard. But she did not falter.

  “Alain mixed the contents of the plastic bottle with the curry meant for Solomon,” answered Barbara. Beside her, Charles shook his head in theatrical negation. The judge saw him and frowned, but said nothing.

  “Were you aware of the effects of the contents of this colorless liquid?” asked the P.P.

  Barbara nodded. “I knew that the contents would make a person tired. Or dead.”

  Judge Nath interrupted. He had not heard clearly the witness’s last remark, damning as it was. “Make a person what?” he echoed.

  Barbara shrugged. “Go to sleep,” she said.

  Charles smiled and hurriedly repeated what Barbara said. “She said, ‘Go to sleep …’”

  The judge nodded and dictated the altered statement to his clerk: “I knew that the contents would make a person go to sleep.” Somehow the original words “Or dead …” that had come out of Barbara’s mouth did not make it into the record. It was an important bit of sleight-of-mouth from the defendant, who, of course, had no right whatsoever to butt in.

  “Please continue,” said the prosecutor, who did not object. Perhaps he had not heard Barbara either.

  “While taking dinner,” she went on, “Alain found out that Solomon intended to take a train that evening out of Delhi. Alain said it was too bad, because if Solomon did not leave Delhi, he could sleep with me.”

  With classic Indian modesty, Judge Nath altered this testimony and dictated it to read instead: “… if Solomon did not leave Delhi, he could stay with me.” Barbara permitted herself a look of humorous disbelief.

  Now the P.P. eased his witness gently to the moment after dinner when she and the soon-to-be-dead French tourist were in Room 125 together—alone. Barbara testified that Alain appeared with more pills in hand.

  “Alain gave one capsule to me and one to Solomon … I did not take mine because I knew it would induce sleep … Solomon was feeling tired, so he lay down on the bed. He was already under the influence of the contents of the plastic bottle …

  At this, Charles glowered and tried to nudge Rupi in the ribs to make an objection. The witness was dropping expert medical testimony into the record, and she was not qualified as an authority on pills. But Rupi did not object, nor did Marie-Andrée’s lawyers, and all Charles could do was squirm uncomfortably and mouth, silently, “Objection.”

  Barbara continued briskly: “Alain said he was leaving, but in fact he remained on the hotel room balcony … After a while, Solomon got up and went to the bathroom for a shower. While he was in the shower, Alain called me to the balcony and gave me some more white tablets, which he instructed me to administer to Solomon.”

  The prosecutor nodded. The dark story was coming across powerfully. The judge was rapt, sometimes shaking his head as he repeated more or less what Barbara was saying and watched the clerk hammer at the old typewriter.

  “Did you administer these tablets?” asked the P.P.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I felt he was already sleepy … Solomon came out of the bathroom and lay down on the bed. Alain came in from the balcony and asked if I had administered the tablets to Solomon. I told him that I had. Alain then gave some more tablets to Solomon and he went to sleep …” Reading between the lines, Solomon was apparently groggy and staggering.

  “And?”

  “Alain opened Solomon’s bag and found two hundred rupees and six hundred dollars in traveler’s checks … Alain then left with Solomon’s bag and said he would return early the next morning.”

  The next morning, Barbara testified, Charles scurried around the hotel rounding up his entourage. He was anxious to be on the road for Agra, where the sixty French tourists were in brief residence. After a hurried breakfast, said Barbara, she returned to Room 125 and was shocked to find that Solomon was gone! She summoned Charles, who appeared quickly. He did not believe that Solomon could have possibly left Room 125. And he was correct. “We found Solomon on the bathroom floor, slumped beside the toilet, semi-conscious,” testified Barbara. “We put him on the bed under the ceiling fan and gave him water to drink and put a damp sheet over him.”

  The prosecutor intruded, as if he had forgotten someone. “Where was Monique?” he asked. The name of Marie-Andrée Leclerc had not yet become part of the tale and the state needed to link her to the death.

  The question roused Frank Anthony like a rock thrown at a sleeping lion.

  “Monique has not been introduced in this tale, not e
ven remotely suggested,” he said, his voice crackling like a whip over the babble in the room.

  Barbara was not afraid of the imperious lawyer. “I believe I saw her in the coffee shop,” she said.

  Anthony frowned and addressed the bench. “I object to this witness saying she ‘believes’ she saw somebody. She’s being coached. They’re trying to get her to say something. I’m sorry.”

  The P.P. got testy, too. “You may be sorry, Mr. Anthony, but I’m not.”

  Anthony drew himself up, haughtily, and gazed at the P.P. as if encountering an arrogant beggar. “Shame,” he said. “Tsk, tsk.” He really said, “Tsk, tsk.”

  The judge separated the scufflers. “Let’s get on. Then what happened?”

  Barbara continued her account. The group—herself, Mary Ellen, Jean Dhuisme, “Monique” and “Alain”—assembled in front of the hotel and prepared to leave in the Citroën for Agra. Alain was the last to arrive.

  “Why?” asked the prosecutor. He was carefully trying to get Marie-Andrée’s name into the story as often as possible.

  “I asked Monique and she said Alain had gone back to Room 125,” answered Barbara. The sweat was pouring down her face and her skin was flushed, as if she had just emerged from a steam bath.

  Frank Anthony jumped off his sidesaddle seat and was angry. “Objection, sir. Objection! I say this with regret, but I must object. This is a deliberate fabrication. This so-called story has already reached the stage where the accused and others are leaving for Agra. Now the public prosecutor is suddenly putting us back in the Ranjit Hotel, trying to get an answer to falsely implicate Miss Leclerc.”

  The judge did not rule on the objection, but dictated it into the record. As he waited, Anthony muttered loudly, “This witness is lying. I will deal with her later.”

  The prosecutor asked Judge Nath for permission to back up in Barbara’s story. Apparently he had forgotten to elicit an important point from his witness.

  “Did you ever see Monique, Miss Leclerc, in Room 315 at the Ranjit Hotel?”

  Barbara nodded vigorously. “Yes. They were sitting on the bed sorting out drugs.”

  At this, Frank Anthony slammed his hand down on the bench with force enough to lift the judge’s papers and he leaned angrily across at the witness. “How many of these lies must we hear? This witness never said anything about Miss Leclerc sitting on a bed sorting out drugs in her first statement to police. She put it in later after they forced her to.”

  Charles and Marie-Andrée, standing next to one another, nodded in unison, cheering on their lawyer. “Lies, lies, lies,” muttered Marie-Andrée, fingering her cross and rubbing it against her cheek, as if attempting to expel evil.

  The judge held up his hands for order and asked Barbara with soft courtesy, “Have you made this particular statement before?”

  “Yes,” answered Barbara matter-of-factly. “I made this statement to police and to the other magistrate.”

  Anthony harrumphed. “Yes, and she adds lies each time.” He thrust out a long finger at the English girl and shook it, like a schoolmaster warning a truant that punishment was due.

  The prosecutor had but a few more items to cover. “Where were you arrested?” he asked the witness.

  “At Wheels,” she answered.

  The judge raised his eyebrows. “What is Wheels?”

  “A discotheque,” explained Barbara. The night she was arrested, she had emerged from the powder room to find plainclothes detectives sitting at her table waiting to bust her.

  Judge Nath did not know what the word “discotheque” meant, nor did his clerk, who looked up from his ancient typewriter in confusion. “Just write down ‘Wheels,’” suggested the judge.

  Frank Anthony cut in sarcastically. “You’d better write down that it is a night club where young people dance. Some high court judge might think it is a garage.”

  The P.P. snapped his fingers and at the doorway to the courtroom, a small stir occurred as a burly, unshaven cop in slacks and a seldom washed sport shirt pushed through the crowd of guards. In his cupped hands, held before him like a priest approaching the altar, could be seen a small white cloth bag, tied at the neck with a red string. When he reached the bench, the policeman opened the little bag with great ceremony and care, while all the lawyers and defendants and even the judge and clerk leaned in with curiosity. Inside the white bag was another, smaller sack, this one green, and when it was opened, the contents were revealed—several pills of bluish, white and yellow hues, some crumbling, some broken in halves.

  These pills, announced the prosecutor, were taken from the witness Barbara Smith at the moment of her arrest and were the ones which Charles Sobhraj had given her to feed to Jean-Luc Solomon.

  “Do you remember the number of tablets taken from you by the police?” asked the prosecutor. Barbara shook her head. “Not the exact number,” she answered.

  Everyone peered at the tablets, their faces so close to the cloth that a sneeze might have blown the state’s case out the window.

  “Some of them were these?” asked the P.P.

  “Yes,” said Barbara with a positive tone. “I recognize them.”

  From his place, Charles Sobhraj snorted derisively. All morning long he had been making grandiose noises of disbelief and the judge either did not hear them or ignored them. But this time, Judge Nath whirled in his chair and dispatched a look of severe impatience. Charles elected to smile, boyishly, innocently.

  On cross-examination, Frank Anthony tried to score a minor point but he was defeated by Barbara. Waving a list of the belongings seized by police when the girl was arrested, Anthony noted that it contained mention of “some pills” but that the list was not signed by Barbara or notarized. His implication was that the police had substituted a new list of personal effects.

  The judge ordered Barbara to peruse the list and she did so, nodding. “This is a very faint carbon copy,” she said. “My signature doesn’t show, but this is definitely the list I signed.” She thus deftly shot down that defense ploy.

  At the end of the first day, Marie-Andrée begged the prison matrons for a moment alone with her co-counsel, S. N. Chowdhury. He had been overshadowed by the flamboyance of Frank Anthony, but he knew the case as well as anyone in the courtroom. Now he was in the position of a junior surgeon who opens the patient’s chest, then must step aside while the celebrated senior man appears wreathed in glory and dips his hands into the open heart.

  “How did it go for me?” asked Marie-Andrée. “You don’t believe Barbara, do you? She’s lying.”

  “What I believe is not very important,” answered Chowdhury. “What the judge believes will determine your fate.”

  “You must make the judge understand she’s lying,” dictated Marie-Andrée. “I was never in Room 315 sorting out drugs. Don’t think I’m stupid. I’m clever.”

  Chowdhury shook his head slowly, patiently. His client obviously did not recognize the gravity of Barbara Smith’s accusations.

  “No, my dear, you are not clever,” said Chowdhury. “Or else you would not have wrecked your life and so many others.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  On the second day, Frank Anthony swept into the courtroom like a maharaja en route to a great battle, trailing reporters, assistants, and sycophants. He was the kind of man for whom a path cleared automatically. He nodded brusquely at the P.P. and received, in reply, a chilled glance. The two lawyers were more than society’s opposites, they were symbols of the polarity of India. Anthony was the relic of Kipling’s Raj, sleek as a wolfhound, a man accustomed to money and power. His opponent could have been Mahatma Gandhi’s child-homely, untidy, a stubborn village cur. Theirs was a clash of castes, a prince dueling a gnome, the haves vs. the have-nots. Anthony’s every moment in this dreadful courtroom registered on his face as offensive to his manner. Conversely the P.P. was at home, amid the fetid smells of dacoits and murderers. The hostility between the lawyers was evident. It would grow.

  “Why ar
e you in this case, Mr. Anthony?” asked a reporter for a Delhi newspaper.

  “Well, certainly not for the money,” he answered. “Thus far I haven’t earned taxi fare … I rarely do this kind of thing anymore.” He sat down in a cane-backed chair and newsmen squatted beside him, like supplicants before the throne. He went on: “Fights like these are for the younger men. But these accused prisoners have been abused by the state. They were arrested under MISA, which should not have applied to them, and the state did not comply with mandatory procedures. The police have behaved disgracefully. Have you seen the police report? More than one half of it is letters, sheaves of letters, from foreign police and Interpol. What does this have to do with the case at hand? Does it matter if Charles Sobhraj is wanted in Turkey or Timbuktu? The state has tried to make their flimsy case seem more substantial by weighting it down with extraneous foreign matter. Now, if you will excuse me, I must prepare to cross-examine these young women who change their stories and attempt suicide on alternating days.”

  A few feet away the P.P., his turban soaked with sweat and slightly awry on his head, overheard Anthony’s oration. He muttered to his assistant, a thin, gangling fellow with one eye out of control and the air of a mystic, “Mr. Anthony is upset … I should imagine that the families of these unfortunate murder victims do not share his feelings.”

  The prisoners were led into the room and instructed to wait quietly while the judge finished some paper work in his office. Charles was grateful for the delay. He had signed a contract with a Bangkok firm to merchandise his life story in a book or a film or both, and now he was dictating choice anecdotes from his career to an English writer. Marie-Andrée saw what was going on and approached Charles, but he shooed her away. A little hurt, she retreated to a chair and began reading the Bible, looking up from time to time to observe Charles whispering to his biographer. She was probably annoyed that he might reap substantial reward and nothing would go to her. Other reporters hovered near Charles, hoping to embezzle a quote, but he was aware of them and spoke so softly that only his authorized biographer could hear. The scene was insane, but then it fitted right in with the larger event.