Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

A character witness. He owed Barbara this much. He removed his glasses on purpose when he climbed into the witness box. He didn’t want to see the people. Crowds frightened him. The clerk approached, came into focus, held a Bible in front of him. Owed Barbara this much because she and Craig had become a pair, a couple, a fait accompli through his own unfortunate but well-intentioned suggestion that the four of them should dine together. Neil mumbled the necessary oath, watched the clerk recede, grow blurry, disappear. He remembered that night. Neil, Craig, Barbara, and Paul at a place called Mythos. A forgettable Greek-restaurant-cum-sports-bar in the Flatiron District. Craig ordered shooters: B-52s, Slippery Nipples, and Beam-Me-Up-Scottys. He remembered how the inclinations of Barbara and Craig, one toward the other, had grown like an exotic bloom in the steamy atmosphere of their own covert flirtations; how, in that same dangerous atmosphere, Paul Gatt had been abandoned, or at least sidelined, on the doorstep of his own marriage.

Another figure coalesced in front of him: Anthony Brooks, in his usual pinstripes, the usual bloodless grin on his face.

“Mr. Fuller, can you describe your relationship with Mrs. Gatt?” he said.

He was, after all, a notable artist, a man whose opinion might be worth serious consideration. He cranked out the necessary words. Amicable. Warm. Respectful.

“And the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Gatt?”

At which point Brooks’s esteemed colleague from the district attorney’s office launched a vociferous objection.

Justice Nash called the two lawyers to the bench. The three cooed like a nest full of doves at dawn. Neil slipped on his glasses and peered around the courtroom. Barbara sat in a simple blue dress at the defense table, looking windblown, all her hair tossed in the same direction, her face red, her tawny eyes again gazing at him as if he were a rare specimen. He couldn’t face her. He took off his glasses. Everything grew consolingly blurry. Was she a killer? He couldn’t decide. His sad role in these events gnawed. He was the instigator. The doves stopped cooing at the bench.

“Go ahead, Mr. Fuller,” said Justice Nash. “Answer the question.”

What could he say about the relationship between Paul and Barbara Gatt? He knew how Paul could at times be insufferable. Brilliant but pompous. Generous but conceited. The center of the universe, like his daughter, ready to challenge anybody who threatened the Aristotelian configuration of his own personal cosmos.

“They were good for each other,” he mumbled. “They pooled their strengths. They grew with each other.”

And then the litany. Loving mother, faithful wife, steward of five years’ standing at the local Pentecostal, corporate VP knocking on the glass ceiling, et cetera, et cetera, until Brooks asked a question Neil didn’t expect, a puzzling and nerve-jangling question.

“And she’s had an affair with your brother how long?”

He tried to hide, to shelter, to disappear into the warm fuzzy ball of his own myopia, but he knew he couldn’t. Nor could he fudge the facts, not with Justice Nash staring at him like a kindly old grandfather. He couldn’t understand the tactic, why Brooks should paint a portrait of Barbara as Our Fair American Every-woman only to slash that portrait with the courtroom equivalent of a Turkish thrust.

“I should think a year,” stuttered Neil.

“And considering the nature of what they are to each other, is it not possible your brother might have killed Paul Gatt? Has Craig ever suggested to you or to anybody else that he might have killed Paul Gatt?”

Neil stared. Hadn’t they agreed not to talk about Craig’s strong backhand? Before he could even begin to formulate a response, the esteemed colleague from the district attorney’s office rocketed to the bench. The three conferred again, cooed again, more obstreperously this time, an arcane examination, so far as Neil could interpret, of the difference between a character witness and a hostile witness. The cooing went on for some time. Neil again slipped on his glasses. Glanced at Barbara. She looked happy. How could she be happy? Neil wanted to go home. He perspired, and whenever he perspired he feared people might make remarks about his weight.

“Go ahead, Mr. Fuller,” said Justice Nash. “Answer the question.”

Neil stared straight ahead. He had an odd taste in his mouth, like camphor, only worse. He had a dizzying sensation in the middle of his head. He remembered the marsh, how, at the age of twenty-two, his third year at art college, he had taken Craig, a boy of eleven, already the best sprinter in school, to see the bulrushes, the beaver hutch, and the great blue heron. Now the water in the marsh was low. Disappearing. The beavers had abandoned their hutch. And the great blue heron was gone. That made him sad. The same way Brooks’s question made him sad.

“He told me he killed Paul,” said Neil.