The Other Side of Midnight

23

Five hours before the murder trial of Noelle Page and Larry Douglas was to begin, Room 33 in the Arsakion Courthouse in Athens was overflowing with spectators. The courthouse is an enormous gray building that takes up an entire square block on University Street and Stada. Of the thirty courtrooms in the building, only three rooms are reserved for criminal trials: Rooms 21, 30 and 33. Number 33 had been chosen for this trial because it was the largest. The corridors outside Room 33 were jammed and police in gray uniforms and gray shirts were stationed at the two entrances to control the crowd. The sandwich stand in the corridor was sold out in the first five minutes, and there was a long line in front of the telephone booth.

Georgios Skouri, the Chief of Police, was personally supervising the security arrangements. Newspaper photographers were everywhere and Skouri managed to have his photograph taken with pleasing frequency. Passes to the courtroom were at a premium. For weeks members of the Greek judiciary had been besieged with requests from friends and relatives. Insiders who were able to secure them bartered them in exchange for other favors or sold them to the jackals who were scalping them for as high as five hundred drachmas apiece.

The actual setting of the murder trial was commonplace. Courtroom 33 on the second floor of the courthouse was musty and old, the arena of thousands of legal battles that had taken place over the years. The room was about forty feet wide and three hundred feet long. The seats were divided into three rows, six feet apart, with nine wooden benches to each row.

At the front of the courtroom was a raised dais behind a six-foot polished mahogany partition with high-backed leather chairs for the three presiding judges. The center chair was for the President of the Court and above it hung a square, dirty mirror reflecting a section of the courtroom.

In front of the dais was the witness stand, a small raised platform on which was fixed a reading lectern with a wooden tray to hold papers. On the lectern in gold leaf was the crucifix, Jesus on the cross with two of his disciples by his side. Against the far wall was the jury box, filled now with its ten jurors. On the far left was the box where the accused sat. In front of the defendants' box was the lawyers' table.

The walls of the room were of stucco, and there was linoleum on the floor in contrast to the worn wooden floors in the courtrooms on the first floor. A dozen electric light bulbs hung from the ceiling, covered with glass globes. In a far corner of the room, the airduct of an old-fashioned heater ascended into the ceiling. A section of the room had been reserved for the press, and representatives were there from Reuters, United Press, International News Service, Shsin Hau Agency, French Press Agency and Tass, among others.

The circumstances of the murder trial itself would have been sensational enough, but the personae were so famous that the excited spectators did not know where to look first. It was like a three-ring circus. In the first row of benches was Philippe Sorel, the star, who, it was rumored, was a former lover of Noelle Page. Sorel had smashed a camera on the way into the courtroom and had adamantly refused to speak to the press. He sat in his seat now, withdrawn and silent, an invisible wall around him. One row in back of Sorel sat Armand Gautier. The tall, saturnine director was constantly scanning the courtroom as though mentally making notes for his next picture. Near Gautier sat Israel Katz, the famous French surgeon and resistance hero.

Two seats away from him sat William Fraser, special assistant to the President of the United States. Next to Fraser a seat had been reserved and a rumor swept through the courtroom like wildfire that Constantin Demiris was going to appear.

Everywhere the spectators turned was a familiar face: a politician, a singer, a well-known sculptor, an internationally famous author. But though the audience in the judicial circus was filled with celebrities, the main focus of attention was in the center ring.

At one end of the defendant's box sat Noelle Page, exquisitely beautiful, her honey skin a bit paler than usual, and dressed as though she had just stepped out of Madame Chanel's. There was a regal quality about Noelle, a noble presence that heightened the drama of what was happening to her. It whetted the excitement of the spectators and sharpened their blood-lust.

As an American newsweekly expressed it: The emotion that flowed toward Noelle Page from the crowd that had come to witness her trial was so strong that it became an almost physical presence in the courtroom. It was not a feeling of sympathy or of enmity, it was simply a feeling of expectation. The woman being tried for murder by the state was a superwoman, a goddess on a golden pedestal, who was high above them, and they were there to watch their idol being brought down to their level and destroyed. The feeling in the courtroom must have been the same feelings that were in the hearts of the peasants who watched Marie Antoinette riding to her doom in the tumbrel.

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Noelle Page was not the only act in the legal circus. At the other end of the defendant's box sat Larry Douglas, filled with a smoldering anger. His handsome face was pale, and he had lost weight, but those things only served to accentuate his sculptured features, and many of the women in the courtroom had an urge to take him in their arms and console him in one way or another. Since Larry had been arrested, he had received hundreds of letters from women all over the world, dozens of gifts and proposals of marriage.

The third star of the circus was Napoleon Chotas, a man who was as well known in Greece as Noelle Page. Napoleon Chotas was acknowledged to be one of the greatest criminal lawyers in the world. He had defended clients ranging from heads of government who had been found with their fingers in the public coffers, to murderers who had been caught red-handed by the police, and he had never lost a major case. Chotas was thin and emaciated-looking and he sat in the courtroom watching the spectators with large, sad bloodhound eyes in a ruined face. When Chotas addressed a jury, his speech was slow and hesitant, and he had great difficulty expressing himself. Sometimes he was in such an agony of embarrassment that a juror would helpfully blurt out the word that Napoleon Chotas was fumbling for, and when this happened the lawyer's face would fill with such relief and inexpressible gratitude that the entire panel of jurors would feel a wave of affection for the man. Outside the courtroom Chotas was a crisp, incisive speaker with a consummate mastery of language and syntax. He spoke seven languages fluently and when his busy schedule permitted, he gave lectures to jurists all over the world.

Seated on the lawyer's bench a few feet away from Chotas, was Frederick Stavros, the defense attorney for Larry Douglas. The experts agreed that while Stavros might be competent enough to handle routine cases, he was hopelessly out of his depth in this one.

Noelle Page and Larry Douglas had already been tried in the newspapers and in the minds of the populace and had been found guilty. No one doubted their guilt for a moment. Professional gamblers were offering thirty to one that the defendants would be convicted. To the trial, then, was lent the added excitement of watching the greatest criminal lawyer in Europe work his magic against enormous odds.

When it had been announced that Chotas was going to defend Noelle Page, the woman who had betrayed Constantin Demiris and held him up to public ridicule, the news had created a furor. As powerful as Chotas was, Constantin Demiris was a hundred times more powerful and no one could imagine what had possessed Chotas to go against Constantin Demiris. The truth was even more interesting than the bizarre rumors that were flying around.

The lawyer had taken on Noelle Page's defense at the personal request of Demiris.

Three months before the trial was scheduled to begin, the warden himself had come to Noelle's cell at the Saint Nikodemous Street Prison to tell her that Constantin Demiris had asked permission to visit her. Noelle had wondered when she would hear from Demiris. There had been no word from him since her arrest, only a deep, foreboding silence.

Noelle had lived with Demiris long enough to know how deep was his sense of amour-propre and to what lengths he would go to avenge even the smallest slight. Noelle had humiliated him as no other person ever had before, and he was powerful enough to exact a terrible retribution. The only question was: How would he go about it? Noelle was certain Demiris would disdain anything as simple as the bribing of a jury or judges. He would be satisfied with no less than some complex Machiavellian plot to exact his revenge, and Noelle had lain awake on her cell cot night after night putting herself in Demiris' mind, discarding strategy after strategy, just as he must have done, searching for a perfect plan. It was like playing mental chess with Demiris, except that she and Larry were the pawns, and the stakes were life and death.

It was probable that Demiris would want to destroy her and Larry, but Noelle knew better than anyone the subtlety of Demiris' mind, so it was also possible that he might plan to destroy only one of them and let the other one live and suffer. If Demiris arranged for them both to be executed, he would have his vengeance, but it would be over with too quickly--there would be nothing left for him to savor. Noelle had carefully examined every possibility, each possible variation of the game, and it seemed to her that Constantin Demiris might arrange to let Larry die and let her live, either in prison or under Demiris' control, because that would be the surest way to prolong his vengeance indefinitely. First Noelle would suffer the pain of losing the man she loved, and then she would have to endure whatever exquisite agonies Demiris had planned for her future. Part of the pleasure Demiris would derive from his vengeance would be in telling Noelle in advance, so she could taste the full measure of despair.

It had therefore come as no surprise to Noelle when the warden had appeared at her cell to tell her that Constantin Demiris wished to see her.

Noelle had been the first to arrive. She had been ushered into the warden's private office where she had been discreetly left alone with a makeup case brought by her maid, to prepare herself for Demiris' visit.

Noelle ignored the cosmetics and the combs and brushes that lay on the desk and walked over to the window and looked out. It was the first sight she had had of the outside world in three months, other than the quick glimpses when she had been taken from the Saint Nikodemous Street Prison to the Arsakion, the courthouse, on the day of her arraignment. She had been transported to the courthouse in a prison van with bars and escorted to the basement, where a narrow cage elevator had carried her and her warders to the second-floor corridor. The hearing had been held there and she had been remanded for trial and returned to the prison.

Now Noelle stared out the window and watched the traffic below on University Street, men and women and children hurrying home to be united with their families. For the first time in her life Noelle felt frightened. She had no illusions about her chances of acquittal. She had read the newspapers and she knew that this was going to be more than a trial. This was going to be a blood bath in which she and Larry were to be served up as victims to satisfy the conscience of an outraged society. The Greeks hated her because she had mocked the sanctity of marriage, envied her because she was young and beautiful and rich and despised her because they sensed that she was indifferent to their feelings.

In the past Noelle had been careless of life, recklessly squandering time as though it were eternal: but now something in her had changed. The imminent prospect of death had made Noelle realize for the first time how much she wanted to live. There was a fear in her that was like a growing cancer, and if she could, she was ready to make a deal for her life, even though she knew that Demiris would find ways to make it a hell on earth. She would face that when it happened. When the time came, she would find a way to outwit him.

Meanwhile she needed his help to stay alive. She had one advantage. She had always taken the idea of death lightly, so Demiris had no idea how much life meant to her now. If he had, he would surely let her die. Noelle wondered again what webs he had been weaving for her over the past few months, and even as she wondered, she heard the office door open and she turned around and saw Constantin Demiris standing in the doorway and after one shocked look at him, Noelle knew that she had nothing more to fear.

Constantin Demiris had aged ten years in the few months since Noelle had seen him. He looked gaunt and haggard, and his clothes hung loosely on his frame. But it was his eyes that held her attention. They were the eyes of a soul that had been through hell. The essence of power that had been within Demiris, the dynamic, overpowering core of vitality was gone. It was as though a light switch had been turned off, and all that was left was the pale afterglow of a faded, once remembered brilliance. He stood there, staring at her, his eyes filled with pain.

For a split second Noelle wondered whether this could be some kind of trick, part of a plan, but no man on earth could be that good an actor. It was Noelle who broke the long silence. "I'm sorry, Costa," she said.