Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

“Yes.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Our work in the gorge mainly, the excavations, what they meant.”

“Professional talk, mainly, but not only. Did you never talk about personal matters?”

“Yes, of course, some of the time but not—”

“What sort of personal matters?”

“Our careers, our futures, our likes and dislikes. I talked about Cambridge, he talked about Australia—he is Australian.”

Where was this going?

Hall put his hand over his mouth, looked at her hard for a moment, and then took his hand away again. “Dr. Nelson, did you ever have physical contact with Professor North?”

“Well, hardly at all really, it certainly wasn’t an affair.”

He let a silence go by. “I repeat the question: did you ever have physical contact with Dr. Russell North, yes or no?”

Now it was getting tough. She forced herself to remember that Hall thought Ndekei was guilty.

She looked across the court to Russell. He looked back but she couldn’t read his expression.

“Yes, he kissed the top of my head once, and the fingers of my hand once. But that’s—”

“Thank you. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He gripped his gown with the fingers of his right hand. “Had you been drinking that night?”

“One nip of whiskey between the two of us.”

“You’re sure it was no more than that?”

“Quite sure.”

He nodded again, took off his spectacles, wiped them again. He was, she realized, deliberately drawing this out, slowing down the whole proceedings, to make what had gone on between Russell and her sound more than it was.

He placed his spectacles against his lips for a moment. “But wasn’t your whiskey confiscated at one point? Was that because you were drinking too much?”

She daren’t look at her father.

“Not at all, not at all. That’s a horrible thing to suggest. Dr. Deacon—the director of the dig—doesn’t allow alcohol on her excavations, but I—”

“Disobeyed her instructions by the sound of it.”

Now Sandys was on his feet. “My Lord, Mr. Hall is badgering—”

“Yes, yes, I agree,” growled Tudor. “Mr. Hall, watch your tone, Dr. Nelson is not on trial here.”

Hall half bowed to the judge. “I am obliged, Your Honor.” He paused and transferred his gaze back to Natalie.

Natalie was sweating and upset. She knew what Hall was trying to do—sow doubts about her, her motivation, her inferences , the reason for those inferences. She knew he was just doing his job but she hated him. And in front of her father too.

And Jack.

And now he had made her sound disobedient and therefore dishonest.

But Hall wasn’t finished. “Dr. Nelson, I want you to answer this next question very carefully. Take your time and think about your answer before giving it. Remember your affirmation at the beginning of your testimony, the equal of an oath.”

He paused.

The people in the front row of the public gallery were leaning forward, their heads and their elbows showing against the shiny polish of the dark wood.

Hall rocked from one foot to the other. He put his spectacles back on and looked over the lenses at Natalie. “Apart from Russell North, is there anyone else you have had physical contact with in the Kihara camp?”

She didn’t reply but she colored. And, as before, in Eleanor Deacon’s tent, the night she had slept there, she knew she had colored. This time, however, there was full daylight in the court, there was surely enough light for others—for her father, for Jack, for Christopher, for Eleanor Deacon herself, for the whole court—to see her reaction.

The skin on her throat was damp. She felt a bead of sweat trickle down between her breasts. Would anyone else notice?

She couldn’t look at her father, she couldn’t look at Jack, she couldn’t look at the judge. But she remembered how she’d coped with Richard Sutton Junior, all those weeks ago, when he’d accused her of being inexperienced, and how she’d faced down his father when he had expressed a wish to see the Maasai burial ground.

She looked hard at Hilary Hall, she looked hard, without blinking. Sans clignant , as her mother would have said, without blinking.

“I will put the question more bluntly, Dr. Nelson,” he was now saying, “so there can be no misunderstanding.” He lifted his chin, taunting her. “Apart from Russell North, is there anyone else in the Kihara camp you have had sex with?”

She gasped but tried hard to swallow it. Hall’s questioning made it sound as though she had had sex with Russell North, and even made it sound as though she had had sex with more than one man in the camp. How could Hilary Hall suggest such a—. He had seen her in the deposition room; he knew she was not like that.

Sandys was looking at her and rubbing his cheek with his spectacles. Reminding her that it was all a game to defense counsel. He was telling her to relax.

She couldn’t relax. Her father was here. He had come to support her, to put things right after all the … unpleasantness and misunderstandings. He mustn’t think that while she’d been in Africa she’d changed, grown promiscuous, loose, that her lack of faith had so transformed her that she had become a … a diminished woman.

Another bead of sweat ran down her neck and between her breasts. She fought the urge to wipe it away. She didn’t want anyone in court to know how uncomfortable she was feeling.

Then, carefully not looking at Jack, she took a deep breath.

“No,” she lied.

Another long silence, in which only the scratching of the judge’s pen could be heard.

“I see,” said Hall eventually, letting an equally long silence follow, to emphasize his doubt, a doubt he wanted the court to share. “I see.”

Then his spectacles went on again. “One more question, Dr. Nelson.” He stood up straighter. “I put it to you that you were drinking with Dr. North on the night in question. I put it to you that you saw nothing and that this story you have told was concocted the following day, after you had found what you had found, that Professor Sutton had been murdered. Your fairy tale was invented to cover up the fact that the most likely culprit in this murder was another scientist on the excavation, a rival who was jealous either of Richard Sutton’s success in finding fossils or because you were having an affair—sex—with him. In your small, tightly knit, highly competitive community in Kihara, passions run high. And in this case passions overflowed, tragically.”

Natalie couldn’t look at Hall as he said this. It was so … so far from the truth, it made her out to be so different from what she really was …

Her glance raked around the rest of the courtroom—Tudor, Richard Sutton Senior, Eleanor, her father …

As she looked at her father, her lovely father, now here with her, her mind suddenly cleared, as it had done that night in camp, when she had stood naked in the rain, being reminded of him on the beach in Lincolnshire and, in the darkness, in a flash, had seen her way forward, that she must give evidence.

And there was Eleanor, next to him, sitting upright, concentrating hard, almost glowing with attention. Her chignon looked as French as ever. Natalie straightened her own stance. “You are right about one thing, Mr. Hall.”

That got his attention. That got everyone’s attention. The judge stopped writing and looked over at her.

“Yes, there was—is—plenty of passion in Kihara, but not the kind you are wasting so much energy on. We are having a spectacular season there—we have excavated so many important discoveries that we debate what it all means endlessly. Normally, I live and work in Cambridge, at the university, one of the best universities in the world, a famous center of science.” Now she met Hall’s eye directly. “But I have never known intellectual passion like there is in Kihara, mental hard work, total involvement, complete engagement, utter dedication.” She smiled. “If your questions are anything to go by, being a lawyer doesn’t come close to being a paleontologist.” She shook her head. “So far as those passions are concerned, that determined involvement, you are profoundly mistaken, or have been misled. Richard Sutton was an excellent scientist. So is Russell North. But so far as I am concerned, that’s all. Sex doesn’t come into it.”