Sandrine's Case (9780802193520)

by Cook, Thomas H.

  I had not once, either before or after this ridiculous affair, been able to answer that question in any way different from the way Sandrine had answered it with regard to her own father’s serial philandering with a series of increasingly unattractive coeds: it doesn’t take much to fill a hollow man.

  “It was nothing, Morty,” I blurted. “That thing with April. It was never love. It was never anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Morty interrupted by way of dismissing any further discussion of April’s complete innocence in regard to my current situation. “The point will be for the jury to think you’re a shit.”

  An opinion Mr. Singleton will no doubt harden into utter ire, I thought.

  “Ruth made us a couple of tuna sandwiches,” Morty said casually as he took a paper bag from his briefcase. “No mayo on mine.” He laughed. “For obvious reasons. But I think she put a little on yours.” He handed me one of the sandwiches. It was wrapped very neatly in tinfoil.

  “Singleton still hasn’t exploded those bombs from the pathologist’s report,” he added. “I thought he might take Dr. Ortins through some of those troubling details, but other than the business of that back injury the state has decided to hold fire.”

  “Singleton’s like some hack mystery writer, isn’t he?” I asked. “He can choose whomever he wants to narrate his story.”

  Morty took a bite from his sandwich.

  “He’ll probably pick Alabrandi to do the heavy lifting,” he said. “He was the lead detective on the case, after all, and besides a cop is always a good choice.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the jury is likely to have heard cop narratives before,” Morty answered. “They read those books you just mentioned. Cop books. Mysteries. Whatever you call them. And in those books, cops are often the ones telling the story, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I told him.

  Morty laughed but it was an edgy laugh. “Just don’t let the jury know you turn up your nose at their reading material, okay, Sam?” He went back to his sandwich, took a large bit, and chewed slowly. “Anyway, my guess is that Alabrandi will be on the stand for a very long time. He’ll probably tell us everything the pathologist didn’t with regard to your wife.”

  After that, we ate more or less silently, then I walked over to one of the long benches and lay down. There were still a few minutes before my trial resumed, and for the past two days I’d been plagued by a lingering weariness, along with a curious indifference to the books and music that had once formed the pillars of my inner life. I hadn’t been able to think as quickly as I once had, either, and yet I’d come to feel that my thinking was growing deeper and more curiously seeded with poignant memories. One thing was certain, things that once mattered no longer did and in their vanishing they’d created more space in my mind. It was strange that by radically confining my life, Sandrine’s death, along with its dire consequences, had in some way expanded my consideration of it.

  “Yeah, good, take a nap,” Morty advised. “You need to look rested.”

  I closed my eyes and, as always, I thought of Sandrine.

  It had been a few weeks after her fateful consultation with Dr. Ortins. She had continued to teach, but the terrible news had been steadily sinking into her, the dreadful facts of her disease. We were sitting in the scriptorium. The first chill of autumn was in the air, and there was a small fire crackling. Sandrine was in the big, overstuffed chair, a checkered blanket over her legs, reading. I was on the sofa, doing the same.

  Suddenly the book slipped from her hand, but rather than reach for it she simply stared at it a moment, then looked at me. “I’ve been thinking of my first published article.”

  It had been written not long after she’d graduated from the Sorbonne, and she hadn’t spoken of it since.

  “The one on Blanche Monnier,” she added softly. “You remember?”

  “Yes.”

  On the morning of May 22, 1901, an anonymous letter had arrived at the police station in Poitiers, a small town in west central France. The letter advised the authorities that a woman was being kept against her will at 21 rue de la Visitation. According to the letter, she had been locked in a room, half starved and living in her own filth, for the past thirty-five years.

  The following afternoon, police arrived at this address and demanded admittance. After some resistance, they entered the house, searched it, and on the top floor found Blanche Monnier. She was fifty-two, and she had been imprisoned in this room, sleeping on a putrid mattress, since the age of eighteen.

  In her article on the case, Sandrine had written with particular reference to Blanche’s mother, the aristocratic Madame Monnier, her determination to prevent her wayward daughter from marrying the penniless suitor with whom Blanche had fallen in love. Sandrine had seen it all from a feminist perspective, of course, Madame Monnier almost as much a victim of patriarchy as the daughter she had imprisoned, an approach that made her article seem terribly dated now, a piece of work that would be remembered, if at all, only by way of a time capsule.

  I didn’t say any of this to Sandrine, of course.

  “Why would you be thinking of Blanche Monnier?” I asked.

  “Actually, I wasn’t thinking of her,” Sandrine answered. “I just happened to remember that André Gide wrote about her case, and that got me to thinking about how he once told someone that the tragedies of life amused him.” Her gaze was quite penetrating. “Not that they moved or tormented him. Not that they broke his heart but simply that they amused him.”

  “What interests you about that?” I asked.

  A smile struggled onto her lips, then withered. “His heartlessness.”

  “What about it?”

  “I was wondering if there would have been any way back for him,” she answered.

  “Back to what?”

  “Back to feeling something for people,” Sandrine said. “Particularly people who are in trouble or who aren’t very smart.”

  With that, she’d risen, drawn the robe more tightly around her body, then walked out of the scriptorium and into the kitchen, where I’d found her later sitting alone at the little table that looked out onto the backyard.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid, Sam.”

  “Of course, you are,” I said.

  As she continued to look at me, her gaze took on an aspect of terror, and though she’d never said it I realized that it was me she feared, something in me.

  What could she possibly have glimpsed in my eyes that had frightened her so, I wondered now. Was it something that had alerted her to my own dark thoughts so that she’d known at that horrible instant that the first of the state’s perceived motives had been by far the most powerful one, that even then, weeks before her death, I’d been thinking grimly of what was to come, how the house would eventually be converted into a hospital room, everything shoved over to make way for a metal bed, for aluminum stands hung with transparent plastic bags, this house become a place of tubes and drips, the toilet fitted with a raised seat, every available surface covered with medicines, rubber gloves, tissues, cotton balls, plastic drinking bottles sprouting plastic straws, the whole horrid sprawl of invalidism. And not just invalidism, but a horribly protracted death that would stretch into the indefinite future, a death not in one month or two or even three but one that might go on and on, with the whole process of dying getting worse every single day for years and years and years.

  Sunday.

  Tomorrow.

  All day.

  A voice finally broke the silence that had descended upon me in the wake of this chilling recollection. It was Morty’s.

  “Wake up, buddy.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “Yeah, okay,” I muttered.

  Morty’s expression alerted me to the fact th
at he had glimpsed something he didn’t like. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said crisply.

  But I was not, because my mind had returned to an earlier vision, Sandrine seated in the scriptorium, looking oddly like the invalid she was doomed to become, her legs wrapped in a woolen blanket, her eyes fearfully in contemplation of her own frightful future, one I knew I was destined to share. Was that the first time I’d asked myself in dreadful, scheming earnest: Is there a way out of this?

  I looked at Morty and was relieved that he’d seen little or nothing on my face of what was in my mind. Luckily, he’d been too busy lifting his own enormous frame from the chair.

  “Show time,” he said once on his feet, then added, “Jesus, I have got to lose some weight.”

  Call Gerald Wayland

  I had known Gerry Wayland for almost twenty years, though only as the pharmacist who filled our prescriptions. In his friendly manner, he’d dispensed the usual warnings and advisories. Take this before meals; take that after them. This pill is sleep inducing, that one may cause agitation. Either entirely dutiful or absurdly literal, Gerry had even occasionally warned against our operating heavy equipment. But other than this comic observation what did I know of Gerry Wayland, despite the many years I’d “known” him?

  Not much, really.

  I knew that he was married and had two children, both of whom had graduated college and now lived in distant cities. I knew that his wife was bowling ball round and cherubic, wore big hats, had enormous, pendulous breasts, and had once owned a children’s clothing store. In one of the few conversations I’d had with Gerry, he lamented that his wife’s business had been “murdered” by Walmart. This was the only killing I had ever heard him mention, so it struck me as ironic that the wheel of circumstance had brought him here to give testimony concerning a crime he could not possibly have imagined before I was accused of it.

  As Gerry lifted his right hand and swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but, I noticed how nervous he was. Clearly he hadn’t wanted to be here. He’d always seemed a somewhat shy man, and so I suspected that he found the all too public role he had to play in my case faintly distasteful. For that reason, he would no doubt go about it like the guy who straightens the sheet after the actors have left the set of a pornographic movie, that is to say, at arm’s length. Without question he had every reason to consider his testimony of little relevance, though Mr. Singleton had surely given him a clear idea of the piece he had been called to add to the puzzle of my crime. I was sure he would give this evidence quickly and matter of factly, then return to the clean, well-lit pharmacy where substances are less volatile and their side effects both better known and better controlled.

  For the next few minutes Gerry, as had all the witnesses before him, established his professional credentials. He had been a pharmacist for thirty-three years. His degree was from the Mercer University College of Pharmacy. He was certified by the state board and was, of course, duly licensed to dispense drugs within the boundaries of the sovereign state of Georgia.

  “This is a prescription from Dr. Ana Ortins,” Gerry told the court.

  He kept his eyes on a small, square sheet of paper, one of several Mr. Singleton held in his right hand.

  “Now, Mr. Wayland,” Singleton said, “can you tell us the date of that prescription?”

  Gerry did so.

  “And what is it a prescription for?”

  “Demerol.”

  “And for whom is this prescription written?”

  Sandrine, of course.

  “Do you recall who gave you this prescription?”

  Here Gerry’s eyes flashed over to me, then away.

  “Sam Madison,” he said. “Her husband.”

  Mr. Singleton let this sink in before asking his next question.

  “Have you had occasion, Mr. Wayland, to go back over your files and see exactly how many prescriptions for Demerol you filled with the name of Sandrine Madison written as the patient?”

  Gerry had done this, of course.

  “How many did you find?” Singleton asked.

  “Three. Each with two refills.”

  “Now it’s customary for anyone picking up a prescription to sign for it, isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “And have you had occasion to review your records as to who picked up the prescriptions for Demerol that you filled for this patient?”

  Yes, he had done this.

  “Who signed for them, Mr. Wayland?”

  This time, Gerry’s gaze remained on Mr. Singleton.

  “Sam Madison.”

  “Was there any occasion when Mrs. Madison picked up her own prescriptions?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Singleton smiled mirthlessly, then turned to Morty. “Your witness.”

  Morty rose but did not approach the witness stand. This gesture was meant to show that he didn’t consider Gerry’s testimony of sufficient weight to require him to press his mountainous bearing in upon the witness. His questions carried this purposeful trivialization a few steps further. They were quite similar to the ones he’d earlier asked Dr. Ortins, and in answer after answer Gerry affirmed that there was nothing unusual, or even of note, with regard to the fact that I was always the one who’d picked up and signed for Sandrine’s prescriptions.

  “In fact, isn’t it true, Mr. Wayland, that had you detected anything of a suspicious nature with regard to the filling of these prescriptions you would have been required—by law—to notify authorities of that suspicion?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Gerry answered.

  “Well, did you notify any authority with regard to any matter having to do with Mrs. Madison?”

  “No.”

  “So, in fact, Mr. Wayland, you can say categorically that you had no reason whatsoever to suspect any unlawful activity on the part of Mr. Madison or anyone else with regard to the death of Mrs. Madison, isn’t that true?”

  “Yes, that is true,” Gerry answered.

  It was the answer he had to give because he was an honest man who’d previously sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For this reason he must tell the jury that nothing I did had raised the slightest suspicion in his mind. He declared this in a clear, strong voice, but as he did so his gaze returned to me, and I saw just how great the distance is between what a man must say as a matter of law and what he harbors in his heart.

  It wasn’t until the end of the day, however, long after Gerry had finished his testimony, then been followed by a few other “pointless fact witnesses,” that at last I’d gotten the chance to raise exactly that point with Morty.

  By then court had adjourned for the day, and both Morty and I were standing in the nearly empty courtroom.

  “Gerry Wayland thinks I killed Sandrine,” I told him. “But, of course, so does the whole town.”

  “It’s only what the twelve people on the jury will come to believe that matters now, Sam,” Morty said. He added nothing to this as he gathered up his things, then headed out of the courtroom, I at his side, keeping pace with him until we exited the building, at which time he stopped and said, “Well, good night, Sam.”

  We were standing on the steps of the courthouse, the streets of neat little Coburn busy below us. I could see its shops, the park with its bandstand, the slides and swings and whirligig. Postcard America.

  “I guess I thought I was trapped,” I said softly, a remark that had seeped from me like heating oil from a tiny crack.

  Morty’s eyes whipped over to me. “Trapped?”

  “My life,” I explained. “The way it had turned out. Teaching at Coburn College, living here. It all felt like a vise. It was tightening every day. That’s why I did it, Morty.”

  My lawyer’s eyes narr
owed and everything in him, from the largest muscles in his body to the smallest capillary, tensed. “Did what, Sam?”

  “That thing with April Blankenship,” I answered. “It was that I felt trapped in this little town and so—”

  “Just don’t show any of that to the jury,” Morty interrupted, his voice not at all stern this time but filled with a relief that the “what” I’d just confessed was not the murder of Sandrine. “They live in this town, and most of them, Sam, don’t feel your contempt for it.”

  Contempt seemed a harsh word, but I realized that contempt really was what I’d felt for this little town with its modest liberal arts college.

  As if whispered by the air around me, I heard Sandrine’s voice, repeating one of the many dreadful things she’d said to me on that last night: Failure is a cold bedfellow, isn’t it, Sam?

  Trapped, I repeated in my mind as Morty lingered beside me on the courthouse steps, rifling through his briefcase. But this time, as if on the wings of that word, I suddenly flew back in time to find myself in the bedroom of 237 Crescent Road. Sandrine was reading in bed, the room very much as Officer Hill would later see it, scattered with learned detritus, piles of books and papers beside the bed, peeping out from under desks and chairs, rising in jagged towers from every available surface. We’d lived so much like a couple of scholarly vagabonds that Alexandria had kept her room sparkling clean and well ordered as a gesture of teenage rebellion. It was an erudite chaos I’d worn as a badge of distinction, a proud disorder that had let me feel that I was different from the rest of the faculty. I’d even referred to our colleagues as “the Republicans,” though few had ever voted for anything but the Democratic slate.