by Amanda Cross
“Will you be at the arraignment arguing for her bail?”
“I can’t be,” Leo said. “She’s not eligible for legal aid. But I’ve got her a lawyer, a woman I went to law school with. She’s first-rate, she has worked for the DA, she knows what she’s doing, she’s smart, and above all, she’ll understand where your sister’s coming from. She’s already gone to the court to be ready to meet with your sister when she’s brought in from Central Booking to the arraignment. That’s the whole story. Are you okay for now?”
“Will they put her in a cell when she gets here?”
“No. Women aren’t put into pens. She’ll sit on a bench with other women prisoners at the front of the courtroom. She’ll go into a booth there to talk to her lawyer. We’re going over there now; you’ll see the setup.”
“Will she see me?”
“Yes. But you mustn’t try to talk to her or to reach her. Sally, that’s her lawyer, will tell her about what you’ve done so far, including finding me. Ready. Here’s your coat. Let’s go.”
“Don’t you need a coat?” Leo shook his head. Nothing, he thought, would keep a woman from noticing he didn’t wear a coat racing around the courts; no man would ever notice it. It had something to do with female nurturing, Angela would say.
“Do you think you could walk down six flights,” he asked, “because the elevators take forever? Good. We’re off.”
There was a lot happening at the court. Cynthia saw the judge, the DAs, and men in white shirts with guns who Leo said were court officers; they carried the papers between the lawyers and the judge. When Beatrice was brought in front of the judge, holding her hands behind her, Cynthia thought she would weep and never stop. She couldn’t hear what any of them said, except for the DA who spoke loud and clear: “The people are serving statement notice. Defendant said: ‘I didn’t kill her. I loathed her but I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t kill anyone.’ No other notices.”
Cynthia looked with agony at Leo.
“Never mind. Not exactly inculpatory. It’s always better to shut up, but a protest of innocence is not the worst. Listen now; Sally’s asking for bail. The DA asked that she be remanded–sent to jail while awaiting trial. Sally’s answering.”
“With all due respect, your honor, the ADA’s position, while predictable, takes no account of my client’s position in the community. The case is not strong against my client; the major evidence is circumstantial. We have every intention of fighting this case. My client not only has no record, but is a long-honored professor in a well-established and well-known institution of higher education. She has been a member of the community and has lived at the same address for many years. There can be no question of my client’s returning. We ask that bail be set sufficient to insure that return, but not excessive. My client is a woman in her late fifties who is innocent and intends to prove it.” There was more, but Cynthia seemed unable any longer to listen. Leo had said there was little hope for bail at this point. She tried to send thought waves of encouragement and support to Beatrice, but the sight of her back with her hands held together behind her was devastating.
The judge spoke with–Cynthia might have felt under other circumstances–admirable clarity. “The defendant is remanded. Adjourned to AP–17, January sixth, for grand jury action.”
That was that. Beatrice was led away, and Cynthia wept.
“It won’t be too long,” Leo said, trying to find some words of comfort. “The law does not allow anyone to be kept more than one hundred forty-four hours after arrest without an indictment. And now she has a lawyer who knows what she’s doing, and who will, with any luck, get bail for her after her felony arraignment upstairs. You go home and try to be ready to raise it. At least a million; that’s a guess, but probably a good one. Can you get home all right?” Cynthia looked at where Beatrice had been, but she was gone. She saw the booths–like confessionals, she thought–where Beatrice might have talked to her lawyer before Leo had brought her. But Leo hurried her out; he was already late for another hearing in another court.
Later Leo and Sally met for lunch in a Chinese restaurant on Mulberry Street. Sally was not encouraging. “Am I sure she didn’t do it? No, I’m not sure, so what is a jury going to make of her? Talk about reasonable doubt: I’d have less doubt if I saw the cat licking its lips before an empty birdcage. Leo, my love, my treasure, take my advice: start thinking about a plea in this case. She’ll get eight and a third to twenty-five if she’s maxed out on a manslaughter plea, with parole after eight and a third. Otherwise, we’re talking fifteen to life. Think of Jean Harris.”
“Jean Harris shot her lover.”
“That’s more excusable than bludgeoning to death a twenty-year-old girl.”
“What happened exactly?”
“According to the DA? The girl was found dead in her dormitory room on a Saturday night. The dormitory was close to empty, and no one saw anything, except some boy on his way out who saw an old lady, and picked Professor B out of a lineup. A hell of a lot of good her corporate lawyer did her there. Professor B says she was home, sister away at some institutional revel. Every one of the girl’s friends has testified that Professor B hated her, though only slightly more than she hated the other girls in her seminar. Something to do with women’s studies, more’s the pity.”
“That’s all the DA’s got?”
“An eyewitness, a lack of other suspects, and Professor B’s prints all over the girl’s notebook. Even Daphne’s friends admit she went rather far in goading the old lady, but that hardly excuses murder. It’s not as though we’re dealing with the battered woman syndrome here. That’s how it is, Leo. We’ll have to plead her out.”
“THANKS FOR AGREEING to a Japanese restaurant,” Leo said. “I know it’s not your thing. I needed some raw fish: brain food. Also you like the martinis here; I think you better have two before I start on my story.”
Kate Fansler sipped from the one she had already ordered and contemplated Leo. He had said he wanted advice; the question was, about what? Kate considered the role of aunt far superior to that of parent, which did not alter the fact that the young made her nervous. This advice, however, turned out not to be about the young.
“It doesn’t sound like a very strong case against her,” Kate said, when Leo had told her the story and consumed several yellowback somethings; he went on to eel.
“It’s not, but it’s the sort of case they’ll win. They’ll bring on all the girl’s friends, and what’s on Beatrice’s side? A devoted sister, and all the stereotypes in the world to tell you she had a fit of frantic jealousy and knocked the girl’s head in.”
“You sound rather involved.”
“I’m always involved; that’s why I’m so good at what I do, and why it’s interesting. I also know how to get uninvolved at five o’clock and go home, unlike high-class lawyers.”
“So Sally’s arguments have a certain cogency.”
“Naturally. That’s the trouble. It’s a little early to tell, but it looks to me like either she cops or, as my clients say, she’ll blow trial and get a life term. As far as I can see it’s a dilemma with only one way out. Find the real killer. Right up your alley, I rather thought.”
Kate, who had decided on only one martini, waved for the waiter and ordered another. “I’ve known you so long,” she said, “that I’m not going to exchange debating points. We can both take it as said. If I wanted to talk with your murderer, would I have to go out to Riker’s Island?”
“No. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Sally will get bail after the indictment, if we have any luck at all with the judge. There’s every reason not to keep the old gal in jail, and Sally can be very persuasive. In which case you can visit her in the apartment they have just mortgaged to get the bail.”
“Leo, I want one thing perfectly clear.…”
“As you said, dear Aunt Kate, we know the debating points. Just talk to the elderly sisters, together, separately, and let me know what you decide. End of discussion, unles
s, of course, you decide they’re innocent and I can help.”
“I thought it was just one of them?”
“It is, but Cynthia’s the one I met first, so I sort of think of them as a pair. I’ve never met Beatrice, just caught sight of her with the other women prisoners at the arraignment. But I have met Cynthia, I’ve heard Angela on Cynthia, and I’m not ready to believe that Cynthia’s sister could have murdered anyone.”
LEO HAD TOLD Kate that for a woman of Professor Beatrice Sterling’s background, experience of the criminal system would be a nightmare; indeed, Beatrice, as she asked Kate to call her, had the look of someone who has seen horrors. They were meeting in the sisters’ apartment after bail had been granted. Cynthia, now that Beatrice was home, was clearly taking the tack that a good dose of normality was what was needed, and she was providing it, with a kind of courageous pretense at cooperation from Beatrice that touched Kate, who allowed a certain amount of desultory chatter to go on while she reviewed the facts in her mind.
Burglary had always been a possibility, but it was considered an unlikely one. The victim’s wallet had not been taken, though the cash, if any, had. Her college ID, credit cards, and a bank card remained. Pictures that had been in the wallet had been vigorously torn apart and scattered over the body. Her college friends, although they knew the most intimate facts of her life, as was usual these days, did not know how much money she usually carried or if anything else was missing from her wallet. She had been bludgeoned with a tennis award–a metal statue of a young woman swinging a racket–that had been heavily weighted at the base. The assailant had worn gloves. What had doomed Beatrice was not so much these facts, not even the identification by the young man (though this was crushing), but the record of deep dislike between the victim and the accused that no one, not even the accused, denied.
Motive is not enough for a conviction, but, as Leo had put it, the grounds for reasonable doubt were also, given the likely testimony of the victim’s friends, slim. Kate put down her teacup and started to speak of what faced them.
“You are our last hope,” Cynthia said, before Kate could begin.
“If that is true,” Kate answered, looking directly into the eyes of first one and then the other, “then you are going to have to put up with my endless questions, and with retelling your story until you think even jail would be preferable. Now, let’s start at the beginning, with a description of this seminar itself. How did you come to teach it? Were these students you had known before? What was the subject? I want every detail you can think of, and then some. Start at the beginning.”
Beatrice took a deep breath, and kept her eyes on her hands, folded in her lap. “I didn’t know these particular students at all,” she said, “and I didn’t particularly want to teach that seminar. For two reasons,” she added, catching Kate’s “Why?” before it was spoken. “It was in women’s studies, which I have never taught. I’m a feminist, but my field is early Christian history, and I have not much expertise about contemporary feminist scholarship. The seminar was for writing honors theses in women’s studies, which meant there were no texts; in addition, the students were all doing subjects in sociology or political science or anthropology, and I know little of these fields beyond their relation to my own rather ancient interests. I had worked hard, and under some unpleasant opposition, to help establish women’s studies at our college, so I had little excuse not to take my turn in directing this seminar; in any case, there was no one else available. There were twelve students, all seniors, and yes, it did occur to me to relate it to the Last Supper, which I mention only because you will then understand what the seminar evoked in me.” A sigh escaped, but Beatrice, with an encouraging pat from Cynthia, continued.
“The young are rude today; anyone who teaches undergraduates can tell you that. They are not so much aggressively rude as inconsiderate, as though no perspective but theirs existed. The odd part of this is that the most radical students, those who talk of little but the poor and the racially oppressed, are, if anything, ruder than the others, courtesy being beneath them. Forgive me if I rant a bit, but you wanted to hear all this.
“The point is, they hated me on sight and I them. Well, that’s an exaggeration. But when I tried to suggest what seemed to me minimal scholarly standards, they sneered. Quite literally, they sneered. I talked this over with the head of women’s studies, and she admitted that they are known to be an unruly bunch, and that they had not wanted me for their seminar, but she couldn’t do anything except cheer me on. They spoke about early feminists, like me, as though we were a bunch of co-opted creeps. Worst of all, they never talked to me or asked me anything; they addressed each other, turning their backs on me. You’re a teacher, so perhaps this will sound less silly to you than to the police. It was the kind of rudeness that is close to rape. Or murder. Oh, don’t think I don’t usually run quite successful classes; I do. Students like me. Of course, my students are self-selected: they’re interested in the subject, which they elect to take. But even when I teach a required history survey, I do well. I’m not as intimate with the students as some of the younger teachers, and I regret that, but I grew up in a different time, and it seems best to be oneself and not pretend to feelings one doesn’t have. Do you agree?”
Kate nodded her agreement.
“The dead girl–they called each other only by their first names, and hers was Daphne, but I remembered her last name (which the police found suspicious) because it was Potter-Jones, and that sounded to me like something out of a drama from the BBC–she was the rudest of the lot and was writing on prostitutes, or, as they insisted on calling them, sex workers. I should add that all their subjects were enormous, totally unsuitable for undergraduates, and entirely composed of oral history. All history, all previously published research, was lies. They would talk to real sex workers, real homeless women, real victims of botched abortions, that sort of thing. When I suggested some academic research, they positively snorted. Daphne said that being a sex worker was exactly like being a secretary–they were equally humiliating jobs–but at least we might try to see that sex workers got fringe benefits. My only private conversation, if you can call it that–they never, any of them, came to my office hours or consulted me for a minute–was with Daphne. She had been advised at a seminar to pretend to be a sex worker and try to get into a ‘house’ so that she might meet some prostitutes; she had, not surprisingly to me but apparently to her and all the others, found it difficult to get prostitutes to talk to her. I took her aside at the end of the class and told her I thought that might be rather dangerous. She laughed, and said she had told her mother, who thought it was a great idea. I know all this may sound exaggerated or even the wanderings of a demented person, but this is, I promise you, a straightforward rendition of my experience. I have spared you some details, considering them repetitive. No doubt you get the picture. It occurred to me, when I was in Riker’s Island, that perhaps I might now be of some interest to the members of the seminar, except of course that they thought I had murdered their friend, so I failed to interest them even as an accused murderer. Cynthia thought I oughtn’t to mention that, but my view is if, knowing it all, you can’t believe me, I might as well plead to manslaughter as my young but clearly smart lawyer urges.”
Kate did not break for some minutes the silence that fell upon them. She was trying to order her perceptions, to analyze her responses. Could the hate Beatrice felt have driven her to violence? Kate put that thought temporarily on hold. “Tell me about the night of the murder,” she said. “You were here the whole time alone. Is that the whole truth?”
“All of it. The irony is, Cynthia tried to persuade me to go with her to the party, which she thought might be better than most. I almost went, but I had papers to correct, and in the end I stayed home, thereby sacrificing my perfect alibi. Do you think the moral is: Always accept invitations?”
“When did you last see Daphne?”
“I last saw them all the day before, at the me
eting of the seminar. I think they had been told that I would give them a grade, and that attendance would count. The director was probably trying to help me, but that of course only increased their resentment, which increased mine. I don’t want to exaggerate, but at the same time you should know that this was the worst teaching experience I have ever had.”
“Were you shocked when that young man picked you out of the lineup?”
“At the time, yes, shocked and horrified. But soon after it all began to seem like a Kafka novel; I wasn’t guilty, but that didn’t matter. They would arrange it all so that I was condemned. And they had found my fingerprints on Daphne’s notebook; it was like mine, and I had picked it up by mistake at the last seminar. Daphne always sat next to me, I never knew why, but I supposed because from there, as I was at the head of the table, she could most readily turn her back to me and address her comrades. I had opened her notebook before I saw my mistake; I’ve no doubt I left my fingerprints all over it. But that also told against me. You might as well hear the worst. Before I was arrested, I would have told you that I was incapable of bludgeoning anyone to death. Now, I think I am quite capable of it.”
SOME DAYS LATER Kate summoned Leo to dinner, requesting that he bring along Beatrice’s lawyer; they met this time in an Italian restaurant: Kate’s tolerance for watching Leo consume raw fish had its limits. Sally had clearly come prepared for Kate’s admission that any defense would be quixotic, if not fatal.
“I’m not so sure,” Kate told her. “There’s nothing easy about this case. Beatrice’s reaction to this seminar was unquestionably excessive; on the other hand, had murder not occurred, she would probably have forgotten the whole thing by now. No doubt her words would seem extreme to anyone who had not labored long in the academic vineyards. I’ll only mention that when Beatrice took up teaching, she saw respect for the scholar as one of the perks of the job; she has, in addition, risked much and undergone considerable pain as an early feminist. To her, it seems as though all this has become less than nothing. Add that to what may well be a period of personal depression, and you have this reaction. Do we also have murder? I don’t think so, and for three reasons.
