Sandrine's Case (9780802193520) Read Free

meant wisdom , the collected fruit of those hard-won truths, all of which inevitably led to what she called “the bottom line,” and by which she meant the irreducible and unavoidable facts of life.
    One thing was certain. Sandrine had loved language the way others love food, and so, understandably, no doubt it had been the loss of that command of language she’d most dreaded in the end, the terrible fact that eventually she would begin to slur, not to mention drool and blubber.
    â€œWe will prove that a miserable charade was concocted by that man,” Mr. Singleton continued. “It was a veil he hoped to conceal a murder.”
    It was a veil behind which he hoped to conceal a murder, I corrected Mr. Singleton in exactly the way Sandrine would doubtless have corrected him.
    â€œThat man,” Mr. Singleton all but shouted.
    That man, of course, was me, Samuel Joseph Madison, husband to the late Sandrine and father to our daughter, Alexandria, who sat behind me that first day, dressed entirely in black, with close-cropped hair, a daughter nowhere near as physically beautiful or intellectually gifted as her mother. Because of that, I’d found myself wondering if Sandrine’s death had removed a competitor from the field. After all, with her dazzling mother dead, Alexandria would never be unfavorably compared to her again, and surely that would bring her a certain, unmistakable relief. There is nothing quite so painful as invidious comparison, after all, and for that reason I’d sometimes wondered if Sandrine’s death might not have been altogether unwelcomed by her only daughter.
    Dark thoughts.
    Such dark thoughts.
    Murder’s bedfellows.
    â€œIt was a crude and cruel act of selfishness that Samuel Madison attempted to disguise as suicide,” Mr. Singleton declared.
    I glanced behind me and noticed that Alexandria’s expression had turned scornful at this latest of Mr. Singleton’s pronouncements. Even so, it was impossible for me to know if she believed Coburn’s lean and hungry prosecutor or whether she’d accepted my version of her mother’s death: that it had been by her own hand and that I’d had nothing to do with it. A few weeks before, I’d dined with my daughter at Le Petit Court, Coburn’s notion of a French bistro, and she’d bluntly asked, “You really had no idea, Dad?”
    â€œThere were hints,” I admitted. “But nothing solid.”
    â€œIt just seems so strange that she would do it, well, out of the blue, the way she did,” Alexandria continued. “You go to your class and you come back and she’s dead. I mean, that she would just suddenly decide that she had . . . that she’d just had enough.”
    I shrugged. “Your mother had a mind of her own.”
    â€œBut that night, if you’d known what she was going to do, what would you have done, Dad?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I answered. “If your mother wanted to die, didn’t she have that right? The Greeks would have given it to her, after all.”
    It was then I’d suddenly glanced left and right, noticed my fellow diners at Le Petit Court, noticed those first stares, heard those first whispers, and sensed that the shock troops of Coburn were gathering against me.
    Even so, I’d boldly proceeded on.
    â€œThis case is made for scandalmongers,” I said.
    Alexandria’s gaze grew darkly still but she said nothing, so different from her mother, as I’d thought at that moment, less able to accuse me of every crime imaginable, save the one I’d actually committed.
    â€œIt’s made to order for the type of people who read those tabloid newspapers,” I added. “First of all, it’s a case involving two college professors, and intellectuals are still the most hated people on earth. To have one accused of murdering the other? It’s red meat for their fangs. Especially a woman like