She nodded. ‘Mmm-hmm. Is it working?’
‘Why?’ he said. ‘What possible benefit do you think that’ll gain you? Do you think I’ll defend your father with less enthusiasm?’
‘I don’t know . . . will you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then it’ll be for nothing,’ she said. ‘But that’s all right, too.’
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her legs.
‘Really, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I need a lover now. And I like you. You’re funny, but I like you anyway.’
He stared at her, his anger alternating with desire. Knowing that he could have her alarmed him. He could go to her now, this moment, and it would affect nothing, it would have no resonance with the trial, it would merely be an indulgence. Yet he understood that it was this increasing openness to indulgence that signaled his impending moral shipwreck. To reject her would not be an act of prudishness, but one of salvation.
‘It’ll be good with us,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling for these things.’
His eye followed the line of her thigh to the white seashell curve of her hip; her fingers were long, slender, and he imagined how they might touch him.
‘I have to be going,’ he said.
‘Yes, I think you’d better.’ Her voice was charged with gleeful spite. ‘That was a near thing, wasn’t it? You might have actually enjoyed yourself.’
During the next week Korrogly interviewed many witnessess, among them Henry Sichi, who reported that when Lemos purchased the gemstone, he had been so entranced by it, so absorbed, that Sichi had found it necessary to give him a nudge in order to alert him sufficiently to complete the deal. He spoke to various members of Lemos’ guild, all of whom were willing to testify to the mildness and honesty of his character; they described him as a man obsessed with his work, obsessed to the point of absentmindness, drawing a vastly different picture of the man than had Mirielle. Korrogly had known quite a few men who had presented an exemplary public face and a wholly contradictory one in private; yet there was no doubt that the guildsmen’s testimony would outweigh Mirielle’s . . . in fact, whatever Mirielle said in evidence would, no matter how hostile, benefit Lemos’ case because of its vile context. He sought out experts on Griaule’s history and talked to people who’d had personal experience of Griaule’s influence. The only witness whose testimony ran contrary to the defense was that of an old man, a drunkard who was in the habit of sleeping it off in the dunes south of Ayler Point and on several occasions had seen Lemos hurling stones at a sign post, hurling them over and over again as if practicing for the fatal toss; the old man’s alcoholism would diminish the impact of the testimony, but it was nevertheless of consequence.
When Korrogly related it to Lemos, the gemcutter said, ‘I often walk out past the point of an afternoon, and sometimes I throw stones to relax. It was my only talent as a child, and I suppose I seek refuge in it when the world becomes too much to bear.’
Like every other bit of evidence, this too, Korrogly saw, was open to interpretation; it was conceivable, for instance, that Griaule’s choice of Lemos as an agent had been in part made because of this aptitude for throwing stones, that he had been moved by the dragon to practice in preparation for the violent act. He looked across the table at his client. Jail, it appeared, was turning Lemos gray. His skin, the tenor of his emotions, everything about him was going gray, and Korrogly felt infected by that grayness, felt that the gray was the color of the case, of all its indistinct structures and indefinite truths, and that it was spreading through him and wearing him away. He asked again if he could do anything for Lemos, and again Lemos’ answer was that he wished to see Mirielle.
On a Sunday in late March, Korrogly interviewed an elderly and wealthy woman who had until shortly before the murder been an active member of the Temple of the Dragon. The woman was known only as Kirin, and her past was a shadow; she seemed not to have existed prior to her emergence within the strictures of the temple, and since leaving it, she had lived a secretive life, known to the public only through the letters that she occasionally wrote to the newspaper attacking the cult. He was met at the door by a thick-waisted drab, apparently the woman’s servant, who led him in a room that seemed to have been less decorated than to have sprung from a green and leafy enchantment. It was roofed by a faceted skylight, divided by carved wooden screens, all twined with vines and epiphytes; plants of every variety choked the avenues among the screens, their foliage so luxuriant that sprays of leaves hid the pots in which they were rooted. The sun illuminated a profusion of greens – pale pomona, nile, emerald, viridian, and chartreuse; intricate shadows dappled the hardwood floors. The fronds of sword ferns twitched in the breeze like the feelers of enormous insects.
