Vanished

She said that she was very fond of the child, and Malcolm adored him, that it had almost killed him when the boy was kidnapped. She also said that she hardly ever saw Marielle with the child. “She was always in bed with a headache.” She had the same unpleasant, disrespectful tone that the servants had used when talking about Marielle. Not one of them, except Haverford, had spoken of her kindly.

Brigitte left the stand with a great show of legs and a good swing of her behind as she walked past Malcolm, and he looked away and pretended not to notice. And after that, for almost a week, the proceedings got back to normal. More forensic experts were called, more detectives. No fingerprints had been found at the scene, no evidence that could be tied to Charles, only the pajamas and the toy found at his house, and Tom Armour maintained that they could easily have been planted. No one at the Delauney home had seen the boy, and Charles's alibi for the night of the kidnapping was airtight. It was difficult to pin on him, and finally, at the end of the fourth week of the trial, he took the stand, and as he walked to the witness box, there was not a sound in the courtroom.

Charles Delauney looked gaunt and serious as he solemnly took the oath and promised to tell the truth, glanced nervously at the jury. Tom Armour had already walked him through everything, and he had tried to warn him of every possible pitfall.

Tom asked him where he had been for the past eighteen years, while he lived in Europe. He explained that he had lived in France for years, and for the past several years Spain, while he fought against Franco.

“Did you serve in the Great War too, Mr. Delauney?” Tom asked and Charles said he had. He looked very handsome and very pale and suddenly much older than he had when Marielle had seen him in Saint Patrick's. It had been a hellish four months for him, ever since he'd been arrested. And his attorney had just told him his father was fading fast, to add to his problems. “How old were you when you volunteered?”

“I was fifteen.”

Tom nodded approvingly. “And were you wounded in the service of your country?”

“Yes, at Saint-Mihiel. And after that, I came back here to go to school for three years. But I went back to Europe in 1921. I went to Oxford, and Italy for a while, and then I moved to Paris.”

“Is that where you met your wife, the current Mrs. Patterson?”

“That's right.” He glanced at her and in spite of himself he smiled, and she looked so worried. She wasn't sure what she wanted to happen anymore. She wanted justice for him, and her little boy, and she wasn't sure which, if either of them, would get it. “I met her in 1926. She was eighteen, and we were married at the end of that summer.”

“Did you love her, Mr. Delauney?” Tom looked at him as though it were an important question. “Did you love your wife?”

“Yes … I loved her very much …she was so young …she was wonderful …like a bright, beautiful spirit. Everything was new and exciting to her …” His mind drifted for a moment and then he looked at Tom apologetically and spoke very softly. “We were very happy.”

“And you had a baby?”

Charles nodded. “A little boy …Andre …we'd been married for almost a year when he was born. He was very special.” All children were, Marielle thought to herself …Teddy was too …they all were.

“Would you say you were extremely close to the child?”

“Yes.”

“Unusually so?”

“Perhaps. The three of us were together all the time. We traveled quite a bit, and I was writing, and at home. Marielle was wonderful with him. She took care of him entirely herself.”

“With no governess?” Tom interrupted him.

“She didn't want anyone to help her.” Marielle smiled at the memory. Life was so much simpler then, without people like Miss Griffin.

“So the three of you were very close. Extremely so?”

“I suppose you could say so.”

“Would that have made the shock of losing him even more traumatic, do you think?”

“I suppose it must have been. And we were both so young … we just fell apart. I blamed her and she blamed me …and none of it made any difference.”

“She blamed you?”

“Not really … I meant about the baby …but the truth was, Marielle blamed herself and I was so hard on her,” his voice caught, filled with guilt, even now, and he looked her in the eye across the courtroom. “I was wrong. I knew that afterward. But by then, I couldn't reach her …she wouldn't see me. And the doctors thought …they thought it would upset her if I came to visit her at the clinic.”

Tom wanted to take the bull by the horns so there were no secrets from the jury. “Did you hit her the night of your son's death, Mr. Delauney?” He spoke in terrible tones and Charles looked miserable as he nodded.

“I did. I was crazy that night … I had just seen him …and I couldn't believe she had let that happen to him … I wanted to break something …to die … I slapped her hard …” The memory and the sound of it would haunt him forever.

“Did she lose the child as a result of that?”