Sandrine's Case

by Thomas H. Cook

“No, she’s not very pretty,” I agreed, then swept past her and moved on into the house, where I’d expected to head directly to bed. In fact, I was halfway down the corridor when Alexandria’s question stopped me.

  “What was it about her, Dad?” she asked.

  I turned to face my daughter. “It wasn’t something about April,” I said. “It was something about me.”

  “And what was that?”

  “My failure, I suppose,” I said.

  Alexandria’s gaze grew oddly tender.

  “A failure so deep I couldn’t admit it, and so I put it on everybody else,” I added.

  On the shock of that recognition, I felt loosen and fly away the last cohering particles of me. “Now you know, Alexandria,” I concluded bluntly. “And so do I.”

  DAY NINE

  Call April Blankenship

  She had taken a seat at the front of the courtroom, and there, just as he had nobly pledged, Clayton sat beside her, dressed in a fine black suit and with a small red rose in his lapel, a gentleman of the old breed, a man Sandrine had once called a chevalier, and whom she incontestably respected.

  They were already seated when I came into the room, but neither of them looked at me as I took my place at the defense table. In response, I made no effort to look at them but simply pretended to busy myself with some papers Morty provided, and which he knew to be nothing more than stage props I was to use whenever I felt overwhelmed or bored. “Just pretend you’re reading something,” he’d told me at the beginning of my trial. “That shouldn’t be hard for you.”

  Yet on this, the ninth day of my trial, I found the charade no longer to my liking, and so I simply straightened the papers and lifted my head and stared directly ahead until her name resounded through the crowded courtroom.

  “Call April Blankenship.”

  I couldn’t help but glance over as she rose shakily from her seat. She looked down at Clayton who reached up and very gently touched her hand, a gesture that reminded me of that dreadful moment in Oscar Wilde’s life when he was being taken to prison. A single friend had found his way into the crowd that had gathered to jeer at the fallen playwright, a friend who, as Wilde went past him, had with a great show of reverence taken off his hat. Oh evil, evil men have spent eternity in paradise, Wilde had later written, for doing less than that. And so, I thought, would Clayton Blankenship.

  On the stand, April looked entirely different from when she’d appeared at my house the night before. She wore a plain blue skirt and white blouse and, in those colors, she seemed to have all the weight and substance of a floating cloud. Her white hands lay in her lap like two dead birds. Well, not quite dead, since both of them were trembling. Her nails were painted pale pink, and she’d pulled her hair back and pinned it primly so that she seemed almost spinsterish. It was hard to imagine her as the “other woman,” and it struck me that, in fact, I had almost no memory of her in that role, so listless had it all been, so passionless and meaningless, along with every other “-less” that can drain the force of an otherwise substantive noun.

  She would be easy pickings for Mr. Singleton, I knew, a thin sheet of paper he could effortlessly tear to ribbons and toss into the wind.

  “All right now, Mrs. Blankenship,” he began, his voice pointedly emphasizing that April was a married woman. “How long have you lived in Coburn?”

  She had lived here for seventeen years.

  “And what sort of work do you do, Mrs. Blankenship?’

  She did not work, by which the jury was to gather that she lived entirely at the expense of the good, hardworking husband she had callously betrayed.

  “How long have you been married, Mrs. Blankenship?”

  “Twelve years.”

  “And you are married to Dr. Clayton Blankenship, a professor of southern history at Coburn College, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you meet Dr. Blankenship?”

  “I worked in one of the department offices at the college.”

  “Which department?”

  “The History Department.”

  Ah, so she was a lowly clerk who’d caught the attention of a lonely old widower, probably by lifting her skirt to an inappropriate height, or by sidling up to him at the water cooler, or by means of some other equally whorish trick.

  I stole a glance to my right and saw that all of this was also going through Clayton Blankenship’s mind, as well, his expression grave, sorrowful, helpless, a classically appointed gentleman who’d first had to confront his wife’s betrayal and now faced her humiliation at the hands of a very ungentlemanly public prosecutor.

  “You don’t have any postgraduate degrees, do you, Mrs. Blankenship?” Singleton asked.

  “No.”

  “Or college degrees at all?”

  “No.”

  “I see. Well, then, just how far did you get in school, Mrs. Blankenship?”

  “I graduated from high school.”

  “High school,” Mr. Singleton repeated in a sotte voce aside designed to reinforce the notion that so learned a man as Clayton Blankenship could not have been interested in poor, uneducated April save for the most obvious and lurid of reasons.

  With that suggestion, Clayton all but shuddered, a moment so pitiful in its Blue Angel pathos that I turned away and focused once again on April.

  She had taken a white handkerchief from one of her pockets and was frantically kneading it in her thin, birdlike fingers.

  “Now, in the course of your work at Coburn College, you met another professor, didn’t you?” Mr. Singleton asked. “A professor in the English Department this time, Dr. Samuel Joseph Madison?”

  April nodded.

  “We need a voiced response, Mrs. Blankenship,” Mr. Singleton instructed sternly. “Nodding won’t do.”

  “Yes,” April said weakly.

  “When did you meet Professor Madison?”

  “I don’t know when exactly, it could have been—”

  “I don’t mean for you to come up with a precise date,” Mr. Singleton interrupted. “Let’s put it this way, was there a time when you became involved with Dr. Madison? You know what I mean by ‘involved,’ don’t you, Mrs. Blankenship?”

  “Yes, we became . . . we . . . had . . .”

  “You had an affair, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did this affair begin?”

  For the next few minutes, Singleton took an increasingly agitated April through the dreary steps by which we had finally arrived at the Shady Arms motel in nearby Raylesford, a depressed little town, with its storefront churches and abandoned textile mills, the place least likely to be visited by any of our fellow Coburnites. It was there, April said, now daubing the handkerchief at the corner of her eyes, that we’d found what she called simply “a place to meet,” then, in response to yet another question, given its loaded name in little above a whisper.

  “Shady Arms.”

  “Did you say Shady Arms?” Mr. Singleton asked loudly.

  “Yes.”

  “The Shady Arms is a motel, isn’t it?” Singleton asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Could you speak up, Mrs. Blankenship,” Singleton called to her. “Your words have to be recorded.” He glanced at the jury as if to say, What a pathetic little whore, then returned his smoldering attention to April. “Do you remember the date?”

  “No.”

  “Well, do you remember the name you used when you signed in at the Shady Arms?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please, speak up.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was that name?”

  I felt my body tighten. Surely, surely, I thought, there was no need for this.

  “Rose,” April answered.
/>   “But your name isn’t Rose, is it, Mrs. Blankenship?” Singleton demanded.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Did you choose a false last name too?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was that name?”

  Now April’s hands were twitching birds, frantic, fluttering, as if on their backs, strings tightening around their necks.

  “Loomis.”

  “Rose Loomis!” Mr. Singleton bawled. “That is the name you used to register at the Shady Arms motel on those occasions when you met with the defendant?”

  “Yes.”

  “But your name isn’t Rose Loomis, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, where did you get that name, Mrs. Blankenship?”

  April lowered her head.

  “Mrs. Blankenship?”

  Her head remained down.

  “From a movie,” she said. “It was Marilyn Monroe’s name in a movie.”

  The name had been my idea, and we’d laughed about the choice because the character had been so utterly unlike April. It had been our only laugh.

  “What movie?” Mr. Singleton asked.

  “Niagara.”

  “And in that movie, Rose Loomis is an adulteress, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, she wants to kill her husband, doesn’t she?”

  April began to cry, but through her tears she managed a faint “Yes.”

  “Because her husband is old and weak, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Old and weak and it’s pretty clear in the movie that he’s impotent, correct?”

  April nodded.

  “Please answer the question,” Singleton barked. “The husband in that movie, the husband of Rose Loomis, the Marilyn Monroe character whose name you took when you signed in at the Shady Arms motel, her husband is old and weak and impotent and she has a young lover and she wants her husband dead, isn’t that right, Mrs. Blankenship?”

  “Yes,” April said weakly.

  I looked at Clayton Blankenship, his head still unbowed, but with something broken in his eyes.

  “So this woman, this Rose Loomis, this adulteress whose name you chose to take during your assignations with Professor Madison, this woman wanted her husband dead, isn’t that right? Wanted to be rid of him because she couldn’t stand the sound of his voice, or the look on his face, or the touch of his hands?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Blankenship, during these meetings with Professor Madison, did you discuss killing your husband?” Singleton demanded.

  April’s eyes widened, “No,” she cried. Her eyes flashed to Clayton and filled with a desperate denial combined with a broken plea for forgiveness.

  Mr. Singleton whirled around, marched to the prosecution table, snatched up a manuscript, then strode over and placed it in April’s shaking hands.

  “Do you recognize this story, Mrs. Blankenship?” he asked.

  April nodded faintly.

  “We need a spoken answer, please,” Singleton said irritably.

  “Yes.”

  “It was a story especially written for you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “For your eyes only.”

  “Yes, but it was just a . . . a . . . he called it a parody.”

  “Read the title please,” Mr. Singleton commanded in a voice as flat and hard as a hammer hitting steel.

  April’s gaze fell to the title page. “The Lover’s Plot.”

  And what a splendid literary effort that had been, I thought, as I recalled April beneath my arm, sweetly asking me to write something for her. But what could I have written for April Blankenship, I’d asked myself at the time. Certainly nothing as complicated or ambitious as any of my many failed attempts at “The Pull of the Earth.” Subtlety and nuance would have been no problem for Sandrine, nor would any work dotted with obscure literary or historical references. April had been another case altogether. And so I’d penned a hothouse pulp fiction parody filled with side-of-the-mouth tough talk and imagery that was raw and violent, with character names stolen from noir films, my narrator a cynical Bible salesman named Johnny O’Clock, addicted to barbiturates, particularly Nembutal, because, as he says, “if I overdose on that, at least the morgue will smell like pears.” It had all been like that, my last attempt at fiction, cold and mordant, snide and cruel, every word of it written by a writer whose vision of life could be summed up in a sneer.

  Good God, I thought, as April’s testimony continued, how far “The Lover’s Plot” had fallen from the actual pull of the earth, from kindness, from the abiding tenderness of things.

  “Now, the word ‘plot,’ it means a secret plan, doesn’t it?” Mr. Singleton asked.

  “Yes,” April answered, then went on to explain. “But it’s like a play on words, Sam said, because it’s like the plan is the plot, yes, but it’s also the plot that they end up digging in the ground. Like, a grave plot . . . and so . . . well . . . like a double meaning thing.”

  Singleton released a weary sign.

  “In this case, we’re only concerned with one meaning for the word ‘plot,’” he said, then retrieved a dictionary from his desk, walked to the witness box, and thrust it toward the witness.

  “Read the third definition of ‘plot,’ Mrs. Blankenship,” Singleton demanded.

  April, her voice already beginning to break, read the definition. “‘A secret plan usually for an evil and unlawful end.’”

  Mr. Singleton snatched the dictionary from April’s shaky grasp and returned the book to his desk. Then he turned back to the witness.

  “Now, in terms of the title of this story, it refers to a plot hatched by two lovers, isn’t that correct?” he asked.

  “Yes,” April answered weakly.

  “The lovers’ ‘evil plan’ is to murder each other’s spouses, correct?” Singleton demanded. “The man’s wife and the woman’s husband, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” April muttered.

  A smile slithered onto Mr. Singleton’s lips. “Did you plan to murder your husband, Mrs. Blankenship?”

  “No,” April answered softly, then lowered her head again, the question doing exactly what Singleton wanted, so that her body suddenly began to tremble. “Oh, Clayton,” she said brokenly. “Clayton, I’m so sorry.”

  As if beneath the weight of her husband’s once illustrious but now besmirched name, April curled forward and hung her head.

  In response, Singleton sprang toward the witness box.

  “Who is the author of this story, Mrs. Blankenship?” Singleton asked sharply. “The author’s name is on the title page. Please read that name.”

  April straightened slightly as her eyes again fell to the page. “Samuel Madison.”

  Singleton’s gaze hardened, and for a moment he seemed, quite literally, to turn to stone. “Now these two lovers are going to kill their spouses, isn’t that so, Mrs. Blankenship?”

  “Yes,” April murmured.

  “What is the motive for these murders?”

  “To get rid of them,” April answered.

  “So that they can be together, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “These murders are first suggested by the male lover, right?” Mr. Singleton asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And this male lover, his wife is an invalid, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s in the bed most of the time, or in a wheelchair, isn’t that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “This wife is ‘in the way.’ Aren’t those the words the man uses to describe her? She’s in the way and she has to be gotten rid of, correct?”

  “Yes.”

 
“Now, Mrs. Blankenship, in what manner does the male lover in ‘The Lover’s Plot’ plan to kill his wife?”

  “He plans to poison her.”

  “And how does he expect to get away with it?”

  “He plans to make it look like a suicide.”

  Mr. Singleton suddenly leaped from behind the lectern and all but hurled himself toward the witness.

  “Mrs. Blankenship, did you and Samuel Madison plot the murder of Sandrine Allegra Madison?” Mr. Singleton demanded.

  “No,” April answered. “No.” She lowered her head again, and again her body began to tremble, but this time more violently.

  “Because she was in the way, isn’t that right?” Singleton cried.

  April pressed her face in the handkerchief as if to hide it from the world. “I never did that. Never.”

  “So it was just a game to you?” Singleton yelped.

  “It was just . . . supposed to be funny.”

  “Funny?” Mr. Singleton bawled. “Funny? Well, it turned out to be anything by funny, didn’t it?”

  “It was just a . . .” She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling as if desperately seeking help from on high. “It was just like . . . we were in a movie.”

  “But it wasn’t a movie, was it?” Singleton said loudly, with a lightning glance toward the jury. “It was real.”

  April’s face now pressed again into the handkerchief, her hand trembling so violently I half expected it to tear away.

  “It was real for Samuel Madison, wasn’t it?” Singleton shouted. “A real lover’s plot.”

  “No!” April cried. “No!”

  She began to sob uncontrollably, each sob followed by a desperate intake of breath, then by something that sounded inhuman, the wail of a wounded animal. “Naaaeoooo!” Her whole body now shook wildly. Her muscles seemed to shear away from her bones, everything buckling, warping, so that she abruptly collapsed into a quivering mound of flesh, her cries now soft and childlike, the whimpering of a stricken infant.

  Mr. Singleton let this go on and on, while he stood pitilessly glaring at her.

  Then, like an executioner charged with the coup de grâce, he said, “Your witness, Mr. Salberg.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Morty breathed. He turned to me. “I’ll make this quick,” he whispered, then rose and walked to the lectern. He paused a moment, as if to let his great weight settle, then said quite gently, “Good morning, Mrs. Blankenship.”