(1969) The Seven Minutes (59 page)

‘Fell into evil ways?’ The voice was plainly that of a German-accented correspondent. ‘Can you be more specific, Mr Leroux?’

‘She became the mistress of a series of men. Soon she was reduced to little better than a streetwalker,’

‘Did J J Jadway know what his book had done to his family, to his friend’s daughter?’ the same correspondent inquired.

‘Certainly. He discussed it with Cassie - with Miss McGraw. He was filled with remorse. He drank more and more. He brooded. He sank into a deep depression. At last, in February of 1937, in a little house he and his mistress had rented outside Paris - in the village of Vaucresson - he went into the bathroom one night and shot himself through the head. He committed suicide, and he left a note for Miss McGraw. “This is what I must do to expiate my sin in having fostered that monstrous book,” he wrote her.’

‘Did you see this suicide note, Mr Leroux?’ a British-accented voice called out.

‘See it ? No, no, of course not. At the memorial service, Miss McGraw, in her grief, told me of it.’

‘Do you know if this suicide note still exists ?’

‘If Miss McGraw still exists, perhaps the note exists.’

‘I’m from Associated Press, Mr Leroux,’ a new voice chimed in. ‘I have a few more questions about Cassie McGraw, if you don’t mind. You’ve said she represented J J Jadway in the handling of The Seven Minutes ?’

‘She submitted the manuscript on his behalf, negotiated with me for him, served as his literary agent, in fact, and as a go-between in the editing.’

‘And after his death, did you see her more than once?’

‘After Jadway’s death I saw Cassie McGraw twice. At the

services and then several months later, when she came to my office and showed me that she had inherited the ownership of the book, and she wanted to sell me her interest in the book outright for a flat sum. This was because she was through with Paris by then and needed money to return to America with her daughter.’

‘Daughter?’ The television screen showed a close shot of a renowned United Press International columnist, and the surprised reaction on his face. ‘You mean Cassie McGraw had a child?’

‘Jadway’s child. Had I forgotten to speak of her ? Yes, of course. She had a child by him, born two months after his death.’

‘A daughter? Do you know her name?’

‘Judith.’

Barrett’s attention was diverted from the television screen by Zelkin, who was furiously scribbling notes. A new lead. Jadway’s daughters. Elsewhere in the building, he guessed, Duncan or one of his aides would also be hastily writing - that, is presuming the prosecution did not already possess this information. A new hunt, and race, for a promising new witness was in the making.

‘Mr Leroux, did Cassie McGraw come to see you only because she needed money to take her daughter back to America?’ an Italian correspondent inquired.

‘Yes. She offered me her interest in The Seven Minutes for the price of the passage home. From a business point of view, it was senseless for me to buy her interest. The book was no longer selling well. Nevertheless, because I had great affection and great pity for this lovely young girl, I paid her a sum of money for her interest and sent her off.’

‘Did you ever see Cassie McGraw or her daughter Judith again ?’ someone in the room wanted to know.

‘Never.’

‘Or hear from either of them or about them again?’

‘Never a word. Nothing. Only silence in the decades since.’

‘Did you ever hear from Jadway’s family or his friends after his death?’

‘No.’

There were several voices shouting questions simultaneously, and the camera pulled back to reveal not only Leroux but Mrs St Clair beside him.

‘One at a time, please,’ Mrs St Clair called to the press off camera. She pointed to someone. “The gentleman with his hand up. Will you identify yourself, sir ?’

‘Yes. I’m from The New York Times. I have several questions for Mr Leroux.’

The screen displayed a benign Leroux. ‘Ask as many as you wish,’ he said.

‘I’d like to go back to your relationship with Cassie McGraw. In the court, as I recall, the counsel for the defense wondered how many times you had seen Miss McGraw during the entire period

you knew her. The question was stricken at that time. Can you reply to it now?’

‘I am pleased to. How many times I saw her ? I cannot calculate precisely. I first saw her in 1934. I last saw her in 1937, after Jad-way’s death.’

‘Would you say that you saw her more than a dozen times ?’ the man from The New York Times persisted.

‘Possibly. But not much more. Very little after the book was published. They were not in Paris all the time. They were away for one trip, to Italy, I think. She was trying to change his environment to rehabilitate him. Then, when they returned, they moved to that village outside Paris.’

‘Would you describe your relationship with Cassie McGraw as a close one?’

‘Close one? I am afraid I do not understand.’

‘Let me clarify my question, Mr Leroux. You’ve spoken of Jad-way as being weak, frustrated, commercially minded, unsavory, which can best be interpreted to mean you had only contempt for him. At the same time, you have spoken of Cassie McGraw with affection. You have repeated intimate details of Jadway’s life which Cassie McGraw confided to you. That she would divulge such intimate details to you makes me wonder about your own relationship with her. Was it confined to business? Or was it also social?’

‘It was strictly business.’

Listening, watching, Barrett smiled. The dogged Times reporter, Barrett mused, would have made an excellent trial attorney. The reporter was still engaging Leroux.

‘Yet your conversations with her also elicited her innermost feelings and emotions, did they not?’

‘She had no other person to speak to in a foreign country, to tell of her unhappy love or troubles or problems. Her family and friends were not in Paris. She was a stranger, an alien. She needed someone trustworthy and sympathetic with whom she might - how do you say ? - get things off her chest. Because I was sympathetic, she confided in me, yes, and because I was sorry for her, I listened.’

‘Did you ever go to a cafe with her?’

Leroux smiled thinly. ‘We Frenchmen do our business in cafes. Yes, I suppose we discussed business at Fouquet’s or the Select, which existed in that time. Yes, I think so.’

‘Did you ever entertain Cassie McGraw in the privacy of your apartment?’

Leroux’s eyes twinkled. ‘Certainly, sir, you have heard that the French never invite Americans to their homes or their apartments.’

There was a tittering throughout the press gathering, and Leroux smiled and displayed the same satisfaction as an actor taking a curtain call.

Still the New York inquisitor persisted. ‘Mr Leroux, you haven’t replied to my question. Did you ever entertain Miss McGraw in

your apartment?’

Leroux’s smile disappeared. ‘No, I did not,’ he answered with a flare of anger. ‘If you are saying that I was hostile to Jadway because I was competing with him for Miss McGraw’s affection, it is an unfounded imputation. To keep the record straight, my relationship with Miss McGraw was strictly business, literary business between a publisher and an agent, and no more.’ He blinked into the camera. ‘Any other questions?’

Zelkin snapped off the television set. ‘Frenchy’s a slick one. He isn’t doing us much good in or out of court. Well, we’re due back now. Duncan should be ready with his next witness. I wonder who in the devil it’s going to be?’

The next witness for the People, it turned out, proved to be another visitor from afar and, for Barrett and Zelkin, a complete surprise.

The next witness was an awesome figure wearing the black robes of the Catholic clergy. He reminded Barrett of the bas-relief of a Jesuit martyr carved out of stone adorning one of the caskets among the tombs in St Peter’s, one that had been raised to a vertical position and restored to life. His frosted Savonarola features, the piercing eyes, the high arched nose, the jutting jaw, were an instant rebuke to the frivolous, the licentious, the blasphemous. He moved with the assurance of a messenger of the Almighty. It was evident that he would brook no nonsense, entertain no pettiness. He was on a mission. Our Lord’s work. When he perfunctorily took the oath, you felt that he had invented it.

This next witness was Father Sarfatti, member of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and servant of the Apostolic See of Rome.

Once he was on the witness stand, once District Attorney Duncan had begun to guide him through the early phase of the examination, establishing his background and authority, Barrett and Zelkin undertook a hurried whispered conference.

The appearance of a witness attached to the Vatican had caught them off guard. Zelkin had always complained about the procedure in criminal cases which, unlike civil cases, did not require pretrial knowledge or interrogation of the witnesses. Despite this secrecy, neither Barrett nor Zelkin had expected to be surprised in the Fremont case. The State’s major witnesses - Christian Leroux for one, Jerry Griffith for another - had been widely publicized. The supporting witnesses in a censorship case most often followed a stock pattern. There would be psychiatrists, educators, literary experts, community leaders, and the like. The fact that the District Attorney might draw upon the resources of the Vatican for a specialist on the Index Librorum Expurgatorius was a move that neither Barrett nor Zelkin anticipated.

Yet, instinctively, Barrett had been constantly mindful of one commandment of his profession: A good attorney must always be

ready for the worst.

Fortunately, in reviewing his notes less than a week ago, and while preparing for the worst, Barrett had been reminded that a year after the publication of The Seven Minutes its author had been condemned by the Catholic Church and his book sentenced to inclusion in the Index. Because the Index invoked images of the ancient past, of a harsher, more implacable Church, because its existence and activity were so remote from the lives of the people of Oakwood and Los Angeles and America, Barrett guessed that the District Attorney might refer to it during the trial only in passing. Nevertheless, because Barrett was thorough and because he knew that more criminal cases were won in the preparatory stages than in the trials themselves, he had initiated a superficial research project on the Vatican’s historic censorship apparatus and on the Index itself. Barrett had done some reading, and he had assigned Kimura to interview several theologians. Their results had barely filled a single manila folder.

But now that Duncan had trained a big gun from the Vatican upon the already weakened defense emplacements, Barrett knew that desperate reinforcements were wanted. Even as he tried to listen to Father Sarfatti’s testimony, Barrett was consulting his partner on what must be done. Within a few minutes, they had agreed on countermeasures. Zelkin would telephone Donna at the office and have her send along, by the office messenger, their ‘Jad-way - Catholic Index1 file. Zelkin would also locate Kimura and send him scurrying back to his scholarly theologians for more information that might be of use to the defense. If Barrett’s crossexamination came up shortly, he would make every effort to drag it out until the lunch hour, so that if Kimura phoned in any information they could take advantage of the noon recess to digest it before he resumed crossexamination in the afternoon.

After Zelkin had left the defense table and slipped out of the courtroom for the few moments it would take him to call Donna and Kimura, Barrett had tried to concentrate on the new testimony. It was difficult to be attentive. His power of concentration had been heavily taxed by Leroux’s examination and crossexamination, and it took an effort to follow closely every question and answer being exchanged before him. Yet he trusted his instinct to tune in automatically on what was vital, and then to tune out.

In the fifty-five minutes that followed, there were a half-dozen times when an exchange both relevant and important was caught by Barrett’s antenna and when he tuned in full blast.

The procedure of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in proscribing a book.

Barrett tuned in full blast.

‘Father Sarfatti, so that we may better understand why the Church condemned The Seven Minutes, and to help us in our judgment of the book’s obscenity and in our case against the bookseller

who sold it, can you explain the procedure of the Church in a matter like this?’

‘Certainly, Mr Duncan. Since various Curia offices have been revamped or streamlined in recent years, we must discuss these offices as they existed in 1935, the year that The Seven Minutes was published in Paris. At that time, any objectionable writings fell under the surveillance of the Section for the Censure of Books,’ which was that Curia department directed by the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office. When a bishop or a priest in one of our dioceses in any land found a book that contained a doctrine contrary to the morals and faith of the Church, he submitted it to the Section for the Censure of Books in the Holy See.’

‘Contrary to the morals - ?’

‘Morals and faith, Mr Duncan. I will be specific. Books which treat ex professo those subjects which are lascivious or obscene have always been prohibited. Also, all books which expound either heresies or schisms have been proscribed. In the past, when a suspected book was submitted to the Holy Office, it was turned over to a religious order in Rome whose members spoke and read the language in which the book had been printed. Experts would then examine it and submit their verdict, written in Latin, to the Holy Office. At the same time, a priest representing the Section for the Censure of Books might conduct an investigation into the life of the author of the denounced book and into the circumstances surrounding the book’s creation. The sum of this material would then be presented to a meeting of the counselors of the Holy Office, and the work would be debated, and a vote taken. If the vote was still for condemnation, a report on the book was then turned over to a plenary session of the College of Cardinals. Finally, the Cardinal Prefect passed on the verdict of the College, as well as the previous reports, to the Supreme Pontiff. If the Pope confirmed the findings and recommendations, His Holiness then ordered the book added to the Index of Prohibited Books.”