Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Just before the session began, a reporter hurried in with dramatic news. A coup was taking place in Pakistan, the government of Bhutto was falling. “Good,” snapped Frank Anthony. “We need one here.”

  Mary Ellen Eather caught the eye of every man when she entered the courtroom. The former Australian nurse wore hot pink Bengali pants and a filmy blouse embroidered with mock emeralds and rubies. In her nose a gold pin glittered. She approached the bench gracefully and bowed, making the hands-folded sign of respect to the judge. Six weeks earlier she had swallowed one hundred sleeping pills and was not expected to live. Today she looked like a model, set down in a bizarre showcase to please the whim of a fashion editor.

  The P.P. studied her cautiously, like a man standing before a door that led to an unknown room. The prosecutor well knew that his witness was emotional and unpredictable. She had hinted that she might recant certain portions of her original statement to police. But the P.P. had to use her nonetheless. He picked up his file and prepared to begin. All the participants promptly squeezed around Mary Ellen, at least thirty people pushing ears as close as possible to hear the singsong interchanges. English is the official court language of India. Frank Anthony, who spoke like an Oxford don, was a passionate advocate for retaining the once loathed tongue. But to the Western ear, it often sounds as exotic as the four hundred other dialects spoken in the subcontinent.

  “When did you come to India?” asked the P.P.

  “I came to India on June 5, 1976,” she began.

  The P.P. took her through a series of brief biographical questions, trying to keep her within the boundaries of her original statement. But she kept making little changes despite the prosecutor’s prompting. Finally Mary Ellen snapped, testily, “May I make my statement on my own without having it dictated for me? It is my life that’s at stake here, after all!”

  Frowning, the prosecutor nodded. This kind of response is hardly what a government attorney wants to hear from his co-star witness. He thought briefly about stopping his questioning at this point, but it was too late. Frank Anthony would elicit the changes in Mary Ellen’s story. The P.P. suspected that Charles had influenced her somehow. His arm reached to the far corners of prison, even to solitary.

  She went on to testify that Charles and Marie-Andrée met her on the beach at Karachi, Pakistan. Charles was using the name Alain.

  “And what did Alain say to you?”

  “He said he wanted to purchase a forged passport. This was not surprising to me, as I had come to know that people often did this in the Far East …”

  The P.P. glanced at the judge, who dictated this sentence into the record without a show of expression. It was helpful that the early words out of Mary Ellen’s mouth branded Charles as someone who dealt in forged passports.

  “They were quite presentable people,” continued Mary Ellen, “so I invited them to come to my house to take tea … There I learned Alain was a gem dealer and had a part-time business with leather goods. He said he was on his way to Europe to sell his merchandise. He offered me a job to courier precious stones from one place to another … I said I would consider it, if I was still in Karachi on his return from Europe … In a month, he returned and I accepted his offer of employment, as he would pay me a salary, expenses, give me travel opportunities, and permit me to use my knowledge of stones.”

  The P.P. guided his witness to the point where Charles and his entourage were occupying two rooms at the Ranjit Hotel. In her original statement to police, Mary Ellen said, “Charles instructed us to mix it up with the French boy … and create intimacy with him.” But now, as she began to tell of her encounter with Jean-Luc Solomon, her composure shredded. Her face turned as red as a poppy, then drained of blood to become ashen. She wept, sobbing loudly. Judge Nath was distressed. He leaned to the witness and said, not unkindly, “Please compose yourself, Miss Eather.”

  The prosecutor made a quick decision. He elected to push on before she collapsed altogether. He might not be able to get her back on the stand. “So what did Charles Sobhraj, or Alain as you knew him, tell you to do?”

  Mary Ellen found control and answered brokenly. “There was this Frenchman at the hotel … Charles told us to be nice to him … and make friends.” The P.P. stared at his witness like a man betrayed. This new version of Charles’ orders was not nearly as harmful. To “create intimacy” with a intended victim was one thing, to “make friends” made it sound as if the gang members were Good Samaritans.

  Mary Ellen was just getting warmed up. When the P.P. moved her along in testimony to the moment when everyone was having dinner at the United Coffee House, she described the gathering as a pleasant social affair with no hidden undertones of poison and seduction.

  “Just what happened at this dinner?” demanded the prosecutor.

  “Nothing that I know of,” answered Mary Ellen, bringing a scowl to the face of the prosecutor, and a smile of great satisfaction to Charles. More than one spectator in the chamber wondered if they were lovers.

  The P.P. began a comment of reproach, designed to suggest that the girl was changing stories from what she had originally told police, but Mary Ellen throttled him. “This is the truth! After all, I’m being judged.”

  Wisely, the prosecutor did not argue, for the witness’s nerves were stretched as tautly as they could go, and the emotional outbursts were in sharp contrast to the cool and unshakable testimony from Barbara Smith.

  From this point on, Mary Ellen denied four or five other passages from her sworn statement, the most important being that, to her knowledge, Jean-Luc Solomon was not given any drugs. “This is what happened,” she said. “Barbara called me to Room 125 and said Luc had fainted in the bathroom. I found him slumped against the wall beside the toilet, not fully conscious. I asked Barbara if he had taken narcotics or drugs, for he seemed to be showing symptoms. Barbara Smith replied, ‘Not that I know of.’”

  Frank Anthony clapped his hands, as if applauding a beautifully spoken line of dialogue in the theater. “That’s important,” he said. “the witness said, ‘Not that I know of, not that I know of.’” Beside him, Charles glowed in small triumph.

  “I checked the boy,” continued Mary Ellen, surely feeling the prosecutor’s wrath at her elbow. The P.P. was steaming. “I checked his eye pupils, his pulse, his responses, he was making funny noises. I slapped him on the face and cried, ‘Get up’ and ‘Wake up.’ We helped him to bed, put a damp sheet on him, then the two of us left.”

  With that her tale was done. The P.P. hissed at her loud enough for all to hear, “Why are you lying?” And she shot back, “I’m not lying. I was lying … before … Now I am giving this court a true statement.” During a brief recess, the P.P. was heard to say, “She got run over in prison. Somebody threatened her and it’s not hard to imagine who.” He glanced at the back of the room where Charles was once again ensconsed and enthusiastically dictating his memoirs. The P.P. must have felt shortchanged. He made less than a hundred dollars a month. But a man accused of multiple murder was receiving, rumor had it, a $35,000 down payment and a substantial percentage of future royalties. And not only was the prosecutor’s case damaged by the rebellion of Mary Ellen, he was personally embarrassed by having the witness turn on him. The P.P. muttered to his aide that he might well file perjury charges.

  Frank Anthony was ebullient. He told a group of reporters during a recess, “It’s standard for our police to alter statements. It’s shocking and sad—but it’s true. These chaps always pad their cases. They will not leave good enough alone. And thank God they cheat. They enable me to go to the High Court and get clients off every other day by showing how their statements have been doctored … When the police do this to one of our people, a Hindu man or woman, they would never dare to repudiate it. Only a Western woman would have the courage.”

  The old legal lion strolled to Mary Ellen and patted her on the arm in compliment for her “honesty.” Then, on cross-examination, Anthony introduced a new statement f
rom the witness. Further damning to the state’s case, it read, in part: “The police presented me with a statement which was fabricated. I was asked by police to depose this statement in court. I told them I could not make a statement that was false. The police stated that I was under their protection, that I would be granted a pardon, and that I had to state in court what they wanted me to … I was told that if I did not co-operate, I could be held under MISA without having counsel, or going before a magistrate, or having access to my embassy …”

  Next Anthony had but a few gentle questions for Mary Ellen. He did not want to risk another emotional eruption, and he was anxious to have at Barbara Smith.

  “Did Barbara tell you that she was being pressured by the police to become an approver in this case?” he asked, making “approver” sound like Judas Iscariot.

  “Yes,” answered Mary Ellen.

  “Now,” continued Anthony, changing gears. “You say that during dinner at the United Coffee House, Alain took out a plastic bottle and put it on the table?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it have a label on it?”

  “No.”

  “Was there anything to suggest the plastic bottle contained a drug?”

  “No. It was like an eyedropper.”

  Before he asked the next question, Anthony put on a sour face, as if the approaching subject was offensive to him. “Presumably,” he said, “Barbara Smith slept in Room 125 all night long?”

  Mary Ellen nodded. “Yes.”

  “Only one bed in the room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Presumably Barbara Smith and … what’s his name?” Alas, the great advocate could not remember the name of the dead man. An aide rescued him with a whisper, “Jean-Luc Solomon.”

  “… and Solomon slept in the same bed?”

  Mary Ellen smiled for the first time. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” She looked as if the mud on her skirts was suddenly gone.

  Outside the courtroom, sitting on a bench between two prison matrons, Barbara watched in fascination as an ancient Moslem woman ate a spiced patty. She was in total black, like a raven, and her face was heavily veiled. It had been Barbara’s hope that when the old woman began to eat she would remove her veil and expose her secret features. But no, she broke off tiny pieces and slipped the food up under her veil into her mouth, maintaining her privacy. “How extraordinary,” murmured Barbara. It would be nice, she said, to proceed through life with a mask on the face. Then no one could tell precisely how you felt or looked. “I may become a Moslem in my dotage,” she said. Then her name was called, and she rose.

  “If I get there,” she added. In the next few hours, she faced an ordeal. Anthony’s knives were sharpened.

  Once again wedging a place within the mob that congregated before the judge, Barbara looked impossibly young to be cast as the latest in a long line of conniving women that began with Eve. Her clothes were modest, and mannish—a polished-khaki cotton dress with a few bangles about her neck. She looked vacant, neither here nor there. The courtroom feeling was that Anthony would crush her in ten minutes. During his illustrious career he had devastated men of great power and intellect. Barbara Smith, only twenty, who had wanted to dance on the sands of Goa, would be a footnote at best in his autobiography.

  The famed advocate went directly to what he considered the heart of the matter. Sex.

  “Miss Smith, do you remember saying that Alain told Solomon he could sleep with you, and you agreed?”

  “Yes.” Barbara nodded, almost sweetly.

  “How long had you known Luc Solomon?”

  “I met him only on that day.”

  Anthony’s eyebrows rose like flags at sunrise. “You are in the habit of sleeping with men you meet casually?”

  “No.” She shook her head weakly.

  “Why did you agree to sleep with Luc?”

  “Because Alain asked me to.”

  “I see. Did Alain ask you to sleep with him? With Alain, I mean?”

  Barbara almost gasped. Across her face hurried disgust and a shudder. “No. Of course not.”

  “You slept there the whole night, in Room 125 of the Ranjit Hotel?”

  “Yes.” Judge Nath took a bit of this and a bit of that and dictated into the trial record, “I slept the whole night with Luc in Room 125.” Which was not precisely what Barbara said.

  “Are you conversant with drugs?” said Anthony abruptly. “Are you a peddler of drugs?”

  Barbara gave the first question a half nod, but the second one got a sharp “No.” But the judge interpolated and dictated an answer, again his own: “It is correct to say that I am conversant with drugs, but I am not a peddler.” At this Barbara bit her lip to stop a giggle. Later she would tell a friend that she felt like Alice taking tea with the Mad Hatter.

  “You mentioned this plastic bottle. What kind of a label did it have?”

  “It didn’t have one.”

  Anthony nodded as if pleased that the truth, long buried, was finally emerging. “What made you think it would put somebody to sleep?”

  “Because Alain told me—just before we went to the coffee shop.” Barbara waited impassively. She did not seem concerned over Anthony’s intrusions. The perspiration on her face was due more to the aftermath of the morning’s rainstorm, and the jumble of lawyers and reporters who pressed around her, than to the heat of cross-examination. If she fainted, she could not possibly fall to the ground. There was no room.

  “Are you a special sort of confidante to Alain?”

  “No.”

  “At the dinner table at the United Coffee Shop, you each had a glass of water, didn’t you?” Barbara nodded. “And Alain is supposed to have said these drops from the plastic bottle were to purify water?”

  Another nod.

  “And you testified he poured these drops on the chicken? What for? To purify the chicken?” Anthony’s voice was rich with sarcasm.

  Barbara squirmed a little. “Well, yes, he did … but nobody else saw him.”

  “What was the size of the table?”

  “For six people.”

  “How big?” Anthony tried to rattle her by demanding details. “Three feet by two feet? As wide as this?” He slapped the bench in front of the judge.

  “I don’t know,” said Barbara. “If you provide me with a ruler, perhaps I could answer. I don’t normally measure a table size in a restaurant. Do you?”

  Anthony scowled, but the judge was laughing. Score one for Barbara.

  “Where was everybody sitting?” demanded Anthony.

  “Alain and Mary Ellen were on one side. Dhuisme, me, and Luc on the other.”

  “Was there one portion of chicken curry?”

  “One big plate. Five portions.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Alain served Solomon’s curry first. Then the rest of us helped ourselves. I saw Alain put in the colorless liquid when he was serving Solomon.”

  Looking dubious, Anthony threw out his hands as if trying to stop a tower of lies from tumbling onto his head. “Just how did he do this? Demonstrate for us! Tell us, come on!” Barbara was happy to answer, but she could not find an opening between Anthony’s machine-gun fire. He shot forth a dozen, each growing in volume and tempo.

  “Come on, Miss Smith. We’re waiting. Show us. Demonstrate for us. Did he do it near his chest, or in front of Luc’s chest, or under the table? Did he take Luc’s chicken curry to the toilet? Didn’t anybody else see this being done? Mary Ellen Eather was sitting right there and she didn’t see anything.”

  Barbara waited patiently. The moment Anthony ran out of breath, she answered, sweetly, “Well, I did. As Alain was putting chicken on Luc’s plate, he poured in the colorless liquid.”

  Putting his hands to his ears, Anthony wisely changed the subject. The girl was not budgeable on the subject of chicken curry.

  “Tell me,” he asked, his voice newly calm and flat. “You became an approver on what date?”

  “I d
on’t remember.” Anthony fished among his papers and located a date. August 3, 1976. Barbara agreed this was correct.

  “When did the police ask you to become an approver?”

  Barbara shook her head negatively. “They did not ask me.” Judge Nath dictated her response a little differently: “I decided to become an approver on my own.”

  Anthony didn’t buy this at all. “Didn’t you complain to Mary Ellen that you were under intense police pressure to become an approver?”

  “No.”

  The girl was uncrackable on this point.

  Frustration was edging into Anthony’s voice. The other lawyers, those representing Charles and Jean Dhuisme, tried to whisper suggestions in Anthony’s ear, but if he heard them he did not show it. He elected to use an old technique favored by defense lawyers the world over—rattle the witness’s memory for small details.

  “Do you have a phenomenal memory?” wondered Anthony.

  “No,” said Barbara. “I’ve got a normal memory.”

  “At what age did you leave school?”

  “Sixteen. But I took some college courses. Finished fifth form. I passed government exams in English, biology, and chemistry.”

  Anthony did not seem to believe this. “Give me the name of the person who signed your certificate,” he demanded.

  “I don’t remember,” answered Barbara. “Why should I?”

  “Give me the address of your last school,” pushed Anthony.

  “Testwood Secondary School, Totton Near Southampton, Hampshire, England.”

  Once again failing, Anthony tried a little meanness: “Tell me, Miss Smith, you deliberately lied on page 164 of this record …”