Wife On Demand Page 10
“Well—it probably sounds silly. But I don’t like the feel of a ballpoint, it’s just too hard. A felt tip is smoother, more like a paintbrush.”
“You’re an artist, I believe you said.”
“That’s right.”
He smiled. “What do you work in? Oils? Acrylic?”
She made a face. “Oils!”
She could feel herself relaxing with each question and answer, though without understanding that his purpose was to make her relax and let the jury understand her better, sympathize with her as a person.
“Why not acrylic?”
“They don’t feel right on the brush, and they don’t look right on the canvas. Too harsh, in colour and texture.”
“So you have a sensitive touch.”
“I guess so.”
“And you’d know instantly whether you were using a ballpoint or felt tip pen?”
“Yes. Doesn’t everyone?”
“So this letter with the initial in ballpoint is what—one in ten of the number you initialled? One in twenty-five?”
“Not nearly that high.”
He nodded, taking his time, reminding her to take hers.
“Can you remember how it happens that you used a ballpoint on this particular letter from...ah, Winterhawk Associates in Vancouver?”
“I don’t remember specifically. But the date is June 25th, and that wasn’t long after I started in the office. I remember I kept mislaying my own felt tip, people would borrow it and not bring it back, so after a week or so I just bought myself a supply and put them in my desk so I always had another one.”
“So the police must have had quite a search to find this one letter signed in ballpoint.”
“That’s a letter about the Concord House East project, and there must have been at least a dozen in that file received after that one in June.”
“There was a heavy correspondence going back and forth?”
“Yes.”
“And how would those dozen later letters have been initialled?”
“With a black felt tip.”
“So we might almost imagine that the police went on a deliberate search to find a letter initialled by you with blue ballpoint?”
“Your Honour, this witness is hardly competent to comment on police methods,” protested Sondra Holt.
“Sustained.”
“Now, turning to the letter that’s caused so much... excitement. I notice that this one seems to be initialled in blue ballpoint. Do you agree with that perception?”
He was standing beside her, putting the letter in her hand, waiting for her response, treating her like an authority.
“Yes, that’s what it looks like to me.”
“Now, will you tell the jury whether it’s likely that you were using a blue ballpoint in the office on August sixth?”
She looked up. “Very, very unlikely.”
“Is there anything else that’s unusual about this letter?”
“Yes, it’s got my father’s secretary’s date stamp on it, and not mine.”
“How unusual is that? I remember we have already seen a letter with this date stamp on it.”
“Yes, but that one has Lena’s initials, which is what you’d expect. This doesn’t. If this is supposed to be my initials, why is it Lena’s date stamp?”
“Let me sum up. You’re saying that the normal thing is for a letter to bear either Lena Thorpe-Mason’s date stamp and her initials, or your date stamp and your initials, but not a mixture of the two?”
“Yes.”
“In terms of office geography, assuming these were your initials on this letter with Lena’s date stamp, what would it mean?”
“It would mean I was opening mail in my office, and when I got to this letter I got up and went into Lena’s office, took her date stamp, stamped it, took a ballpoint pen from somewhere, initialled it, and then—” Hope shrugged.
“Would that be an unusual occurrence?”
“It’s almost beyond possibility. I can’t think of any reason why I would do a thing like that.”
“Would you remember it if you had done it?”
“Yes, because it would be so unusual. It would have stuck in my mind.”
“And do you in fact have any recollection of performing this complicated ritual?”
“No.”
“Now, Hope, we’ve heard about your interview with the officers of the Serious Crime Squad on October fourth. You did tell them, I believe, that ‘it must be’ your initials on this letter. Was that the first time you were aware of the letter’s existence?”
“Yes.”
“Were you surprised by it?”
“I was just astonished. I couldn’t remember it at all.”
“When you said, ‘it must be,’ did you accept that you had seen the letter and initialled it and then forgotten it entirely?”
“Just in that moment, with the officer pushing it at me, he convinced me.” She looked at the jury. “I just felt very surprised and confused, and that’s why I said that.”
“How many officers were in the room when you were interviewed?”
“Four.”
“Men or women?”
“Men.”
“So you had four big policemen insisting that you had initialled this letter?”
The Crown Prosecutor got halfway to her feet. “If the Court please, I don’t think we’ve heard testimony as to the size of the officers. We’re not even sure they have flat feet,” she said, as if the defence lawyer’s tactics amused her but she really couldn’t allow him to get away with manipulating the jury’s minds.
“Sustained.”
“I understand that you have more experience of architecture than a few weeks as your father’s office manager.”
“Yes, I did a year of architectural college. I was at one time planning to become my father’s partner.”
“So this letter, which might be gibberish to some, would have been easily comprehensible to you?”
“That’s right.”
“What would your response have been had you seen it?”
“I’d have rung all the alarm bells.”
“What in particular would you have noted about this letter?”
“The building was almost complete and the letter is advising modifications to the framing. That’s sort of like saying ‘You’d better put some sugar in’ when the cake’s already in the oven.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“Now, forgive me for casting doubts on your own efficiency, but is it possible that you received and filed this letter and the documents that we are told were attached to it without yourself reading it, and without passing it on to Jude Daniels?”
She sighed. “Well, maybe. But it would be so unusual. The whole thing seems impossible.”
“Have you got any explanation of how something that looks so like your own initial got onto this letter if you never saw it?”
She shrugged. “Unless somebody did it deliberately, I just can’t imagine.”
“Hope, did Jude Daniels attempt to influence you in regard to your testimony in any way?”
“No.”
“Has he said anything at any time about how you should testify in this court?”
“Never.”
“Thank you. No more questions.”
Hope felt the tension building up again as the Crown Prosecutor got to her feet again.
“Do you like your father’s secretary, Ms. Thompson?”
“Yes.”
“Ever gossip with her, joke with her?”
“Yes.”
“Ever go into her office for a little chat during the day?”
“Sometimes.”
“If you were in her office joking, and you happened to need a date stamp for something that had just arrived, would you borrow hers?”
“I don’t think that ever happened.”
“Ms. Thompson, did you read every word of every letter that you opened each day?”
“No, of
course not.”
“Were you always one hundred per cent operational in the morning?”
“No.”
“So is it possible that there might have been a very important letter that you never read fully, but just in an automatic way date-stamped and passed on to Jude Daniels without really being aware of the contents?”
“It’s very unlikely, given that it was attached to a—”
“Just answer the question. Were there times when you passed on important letters without being fully aware of their contents?”
“There may have been.”
“And would you then perhaps not remember having seen such a letter before, but recognize that you had seen it only by the fact of your initials on it?”
“Well, but—”
“Thank you. No more questions.”
“You may step down, Ms. Thompson.”
Hope glanced over the courtroom as she came out of the witness box, at Nicholas Harvey, who was stifling a yawn, and then at Jude in the defendant’s box.
She would never have known it from the lawyer’s demeanour. It was Jude’s face that told her that her testimony had been a major blow to the defence case.
Chapter 8
Then it was the turn of the defence.
Jude made a good impression on the stand. He spoke clearly, concisely, he explained arcane facts to the jury without condescension, and he gave every appearance of integrity.
“Let’s just get this absolutely clear for the jury,” said Nicholas Harvey. “First the factory produced what you would call a typical shape from among the various moulded shapes that the design called for, and that typical shape was tested.”
“That’s right.”
“Who carried out those initial tests?”
“Environmental Glass.”
“And then what?”
“Then when we saw what the general capability of the glass was, I completed the design within those specifications. Then I sent Environmental Glass the final design drawings and they produced the actual profiles of the various shapes required.”
“Those shapes hadn’t been tested yet.”
“No, each of the profiles was to be subjected to all necessary tests before the factory went into full production.”
“I’m going to show you a contract for some glass and I ask you whether this is the contract you entered into in January this year for the glass to be used in the Rose Library.”
They went over the contract with a fine-tooth comb.
“Under this contract, who was obliged to see that those tests were carried out, and pay for them?”
“Environmental Glass Systems.”
“And the prices in this contract were based on estimates made by Environmental Glass taking into account the testing that would be required?”
“Yes, they were.”
“Is it an expensive process?”
“It can be.”
“So if Environmental Glass Systems billed you for expensive tests that they never carried out, they stood to make a substantial financial gain.”
“I suppose so.”
“Did Environmental Glass Systems, to your knowledge, have those tests carried out?”
“To the best of my knowledge and belief, all the necessary tests were completed and the results sent to me before the primary structure was complete.”
“What did Environmental Glass show you that made you believe those tests had been carried out?”
“They sent me a report of test results on every shape of glass to be produced for the design.”
“What date was that?”
“Approximately early June.”
“So while you built the structure that would hold the glass in the Rose Library, it was with the exact knowledge of how much stress each differently-shaped form of that glass would bear.”
“It’s less a question of stress than the amount of what’s called thermal movement. The glass contracts and expands in varying weather conditions. The structure that holds the glass must accommodate that movement.”
“Now, did you have particular reason in this case to be rigorous about the test results?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Would you tell the jury about that?”
He didn’t smile, but nor did he seem forbidding as he turned to the twelve just and true citizens. “The building was partly surrounded by mirrored glass in the walls of two neighbouring buildings. This meant, of course, that the Rose Library would be reflected in them. It also meant that sunlight would be reflected off the mirror at several points during the day, from various directions, and that in addition to direct sunlight, reflected sunlight would hit the Rose Library. That meant the glass had to be tested for thermal movement at substantially higher temperatures than would have been the case if it were surrounded by concrete. I was concerned that the glass should undergo tests that took into account not only the direct but also the reflected heat of the sun.”
He didn’t look her way once. He kept his eyes on the defence lawyer, or on the jury. It was as if Hope didn’t exist. She didn’t know what that meant. All she knew was that she wanted him to look at her, to exchange one glance, something that would tell her...
“Now, you say you saw the test results that this contract obliged Environmental Glass to supply to you early in June?”
“I did.”
“What did the results that you were given at that time show?”
“They showed some variation in the amount of thermal movement between the shapes, but there were no surprises. They all fell within a certain range that could almost have been predicted from the original test.”
“Who produced those test results?”
The results Jude had seen had been on the letterhead of Environmental Glass Systems, but as far as he knew an independent lab had done it all.
“To your knowledge, do Environmental Glass Systems have their own testing laboratory?”
“Yes, they do.”
“But the testing was not to be carried out in their own laboratory?”
“No. It was a new glass developed particularly for the project and I wanted the testing to be independent and extremely rigorous.”
“And as far as you knew, that was what you got—the results of independent and extremely rigorous testing.”
“That was what I believed.”
Nicholas Harvey walked back to his table, pausing to let that sink in.
“What happened to those test results that you saw? I mean, the actual pages of Environmental Glass letterhead that it was all typed up on?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t been able to find it.”
Nicholas Harvey looked interested. “You looked for it and couldn’t find it?”
“I had the entire office staff looking for it from the moment the glass exploded. It should have been in the files. It wasn’t.”
“The police searched your offices, too, I think.”
“Yes, they did.”
“Did they find these test results?”
“They haven’t said so.”
“Is that an unusual occurrence, that such a document should disappear from the files?”
“It’s unprecedented in my experience.”
They went over every detail of the letter and the lab results from DeMarco.
“These are not the results you were shown by Environmental Glass before proceeding with the building?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Were the results similar?”
“Except for the particular results of shape 31AA, the shape that exploded, the original results I saw were, as far as I remember, very similar to these.”
“Now, Hope Thompson was acting as your office manager during July and August.”
“Yes, she was.”
Still he did not glance her way. Yet she knew that he knew she was there. She had been in the same seat every day. His back had been to the body of the crowded courtroom until he took the stand, and he had not glanced her way once
, but still she was sure that he knew where she was.
“...and filed it?”
“Hope sometimes made mistakes. She hadn’t been in the office very long.” The whole courtroom drew one breath, waiting to hear how he would pass the blame. “But she never made an important mistake. She would automatically have passed a letter of such significance—especially if, as the letter says, it was attached to the test figures—to me. She would probably even have drawn my attention to it. She had an instinct for what was important and what was not.”
“But she didn’t pass it to you.”
“No. Therefore this letter never arrived at the Thompson Daniels offices.”
“Yet we’ve heard from the police that it was found in the files.”
“Well, it did not get there through the normal methods,” Jude said dryly.
He had more faith in her than she had in herself. Hope blinked back the burning tears that suddenly pricked her eyes.
“Now, we’ve heard Bill Bridges say that these new results meant that you would have been required to enclose all the pieces of glass shape 31AA in channel frames. Is that the case?”
“No. I would have expanded the silicone glass-to-glass joint on all 31AA pieces by three millimetres.”
“So a channel frame would not have been necessary.”
“It would not have been necessary, but if it had been necessary I would not have ignored safety considerations for the sake of my design.”
Nicholas Harvey made sure the jury got the impact of Jude’s testimony. At last he said, “Let me just recap for the benefit of the jury: you would have been within your rights as architect to halt construction and redesign the building in accordance with these new test results, and Environmental Glass would have been responsible for the huge cost overrun which that entailed.”
“That’s right.”
“Now, Mr. Daniels, your private life has been made an issue here.” Nicholas Harvey paused, looking down at his table, then looked up.
“Are you going to marry Corinne Lamont?”
“No.”
“Is this a recent decision, or a long-standing one?”
“There has never been any question of our marrying at any time.”
Harvey raised an eyebrow. “From your point of view there was never a time, such as Miss Lamont described, when you were both going to think it over?”
“There was a time when Corinne said something like that as a way of avoiding the direct admission that we were splitting up. But we both knew it was over before she took that job on the cruise ship.”