“Not that it mattered,” Mr. Picton finished. “Prendergast was quickly declared sane by a jury. He was sentenced to hang-and he did hang, didn’t he, Detective?”
“There’s more to the story than that,” Marcus answered. “After the conclusion of the first trial, Darrow-whose personal opposition to the death penalty has always been almost fanatical-offered to help Prendergast’s lawyer try to get a new sanity hearing. This second proceeding began on January twentieth of ’94, and it was very revealing, especially for our purposes.” Flipping further through his notes, Marcus took another pull from the flask. “Darrow took the lead in arguing the defense’s case. And his tactics, according to several people who witnessed them, represented a whole new kind of lawyering. From the start, he shifted the focus off of Prendergast, and onto the jury: he told them that the prosecution was asking them to violate their sacred oath to weigh the case on its merits in order to satisfy society’s desire for revenge. Now, word had gotten around that Darrow was an expert at manipulating juries, so this group was at least somewhat ready for him. But it turned out that he knew they’d been prepared, and instead of crying foul he used that fact to his advantage. In his opening remarks he addressed the rumors that he was going to try to bamboozle them with a lot of technicalities and theatrics. He solemnly pledged that he wouldn’t, because if he tried such trickery and failed, he said, the responsibility-and that’s a key ploy in Darrow’s arguments, responsibility-for Prendergast’s death would rest with him. And he refused, he said, in his plainspoken, humble way, to assume such a moral burden. So he promised that he’d be perfectly straightforward in his arguments-and if the jury decided that his honest attempts weren’t good enough, the responsibility for sending a lunatic to his death would rest with them-not him.”
“Clever,” Mr. Picton said, smiling slowly. “Very clever…”
“And complete nonsense, of course,” Marcus added. “I mean, in reality he used every trick he could think of, during the trial. He wept-actually wept-over the dead mayor, and the cruelty of a world that could produce a creature like Prendergast, and he begged the jury to let their humanity prevail. And most importantly, so far as we’re concerned, he went after the prosecution team personally. He turned what was supposed to be the trial of an assassin into an eloquent, sarcastic-the man has wit, there’s no doubting that-and relentless examination of the motives of the state and its men in prosecuting lunatics, even murderous lunatics. Any unlucky soul the prosecutors called as a witness was badgered and tainted with whatever kind of suspicion Darrow could dream up, so that the questioning became about them and their beliefs, not about Prendergast. By arguing constantly in the negative, instead of advocating his client’s cause, he turned the whole trial topsy-turvy.”
I turned to look at the Doctor, who was staring at the floor and pulling at the patch of hair under his lower lip. “But it didn’t work,” he said.
“No, not in the end,” Marcus answered. “The jury withstood the pressure, and upheld the earlier sanity verdict. But the important thing is that he made a close race out of what looked like it was going to be the pure and simple railroading of a lunatic.”
The Doctor sat back and sighed. “Unfortunate methods,” he judged quietly. “But I can’t say that I disapprove of his goal.”
“Maybe not in that case,” Marcus said. “But if I’m right about what he’ll try to do here, you may feel differently, Doctor.”
“Yes,” the Doctor answered with a small smile, “I suspect you’re right, Marcus.”
“I don’t understand,” Lucius said. “What can he try to do here? I mean, he can certainly find forensics experts who’ll argue our findings, and maybe even personal acquaintances of Mrs. Hatch’s who’ll disagree with our interpretation of her motives. But what about Clara? How can he argue with an eyewitness?”
“By attacking the man who’s behind the eyewitness,” Marcus said, still looking to the Doctor. “Or at least, the man he’ll paint as being behind her.”
“Yes,” Mr. Picton said, “I begin to get your point, Detective. And we can’t depend on Clara’s testimony alone to fend off such an attack. Young children-especially if they’re as fragile as Clara-are not the most reliable witnesses. They’re too easy to bully or cajole. That’s why it’s been so important that the Doctor continue working with Clara-so that she can learn to provide detailed explanations of her story that won’t fall to pieces the first time the defense goes after her.”
“The point is,” Marcus continued, “our roles will, in a very strange but potentially damaging way, be reversed in this trial: Darrow will be arguing the negative, knowing that no one wants to believe what we’re saying about Libby Hatch, and it will be up to us to advocate our cause. As you’ve surmised, Doctor, the man’s not going to come in with a lot of pious arguments about the sanctity of womanhood and maternity-he’s going to attack, not defend, and try to get us back en our heels before we know what’s happening. And the logical place to start any attack is at the weak point-which, in the public mind, I’m afraid, is-”
“Me,” the Doctor finished for him.
Refilling his pipe from a pouch in his pocket, Mr. Picton struck a match on his chair as the rest of us pondered that. “So!” he said, firing up his pipe and showing that enthusiasm in the face of trouble what was his best quality. “The question becomes, how do we defend against such a line of attack, and thereby preserve the integrity of Clara’s testimony?” Drawing hard on his pipe, Mr. Picton considered the matter for a moment. “I had hoped, as you know, to keep any discussion of psychological theory to a minimum in this case, Doctor. But if Darrow attacks with it, you must be prepared to strike back. In kind, and with the superior force which you, as an expert, possess!”
The Doctor stood up, pacing slowly in what little free floor space the room offered. “It is not a position with which I am unfamiliar,” he said, rubbing his bad arm. “Though I confess that I hoped taking this case would mean that for once I’d be on the offensive. Perhaps that is destined never to happen.”
“Oh, but it must happen!” Mr. Picton bellowed, gripping his pipe and swinging it through the air. “That’s just what I mean about you ‘striking back.’ I don’t want you to defend yourself from behind an intellectual barricade-I want to see you counterattack, on the open field of ideas, where the jury can see you! Draw blood from this man-first blood, if you can! To back you up, I’ll go over every shred of personal information about Darrow that Marcus has been able to assemble-and I won’t hesitate to use it. We are not going to let this trial get away from us.” Mr. Picton banged a fist on his desk, hard. “Darrow may represent some new breed of lawyer, but dammit all, we’ll match him trick for trick!”
“Señor Doctor?” El Niño, who’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor, got up to approach the Doctor with cautious respect. “This man-he is dangerous to you? You wish El Niño to kill him?”
The statement, coming at the somewhat difficult moment it did, served admirably to break the thickening ice: after staring at the aborigine in amazement for a few seconds, we all began to laugh out loud, and the Doctor put his right arm around his small defender’s shoulders.
“No, El Niño,” he said. “The man is not a danger in that way. He does not intend to injure me-physically.”
“But if he is to interfere with finding baby Ana,” El Niño said, smiling at our laughter without really knowing what it was about, “then we should kill him, yes?”
“I think,” Miss Howard said, getting up and moving over to the Doctor and the aborigine, “that this may be the moment to call a break for dinner. Let’s go, El Niño. On the way home I’ll try to explain to you why killing this man is not the best way to deal with the situation.” As she guided El Niño to the door, Miss Howard cocked her head. “Assuming, of course, that it really isn’t.”