Clara Casewell, Attorney to the Villainess [Vol 1 Complete]

The gallery stirred again, and Prince Justan let the moment settle before he turned to Princess Mikhaila.

“Esteemed kadi. The truth of this matter is not complicated, and I shall not insult the court by pretending otherwise. Pedro purchased the food. Pedro distributed the food. Pedro was the last man seen alive with the victim. When officers came to question him, Pedro fled from the reach of imperial justice and left behind a residue of poisonous herbs. We have established the means and the opportunity. That is all that is required.”

Clara stood. “Hardly. Aren’t you forgetting something? You’ve yet to suggest a motive.”

As soon as she closed her mouth, she noticed everyone in the room was glaring at her, Warren included.

“What my colleague means to say is that the honored accuser has made some salient points so far, but he has not yet established why Lord Pedro would commit this crime. He is, after all, a wealthy man of stature in Arcadia, and it seems of little benefit to him to come to a dinner in Istantinople for the sake of wanton murder.”

Oops. I got so used to arguing against Righton that I forgot I can’t speak like that to every prosecutor.

Clara cleared her throat. “Yes, that is exactly it, esteemed kadi. Even if this court accepts the testimony presented by the witness as the truth—which is not something we have conceded yet—there was simply no reason presented for Pedro de Bragança, assuming that is indeed the true identity of this ‘Pedro Alcântara’, to poison a merchant. If it was poisoning at all. We have heard remarkably little about the dinner itself.”

She gestured toward Secondos, whose eyes widened as she spoke.

“The witness told us that Pedro brought food, and three men sat down to eat. But he has not told us who invited whom, what was discussed during the dinner, or even what the relationship was between Anis and Pedro, if any.”

Mikhaila’s gaze flicked from Clara to Justan and back again. “That… that does seem like an important thing,” she said cautiously. “If they were eating together, they must have been talking about something. And if the talking is the reason someone di-died, then we should know what the talking was about. Right?” She glanced at the bearded clerk, who showed no reaction. “Right. Witness, tell the court more about the dinner.”

Secondos’s mustache twitched. “The dinner?”

“Yes,” said the kadi. “A-am I not speaking clearly?”

“The dinner. The discussion at the dinner.” Secondos pressed his hands to his cheeks. “Of course, esteemed kadi. Of course.” He took a deep breath. “Business. We talked about business.”

Silence again.

“What kind of business?” asked Warren.

“Spice business. The trade. Prices, mostly. The harvests this season have been uneven, you see, the rains in the south came late, the caravans from the east have been delayed, the cost of pepper at the wholesale level has risen by nearly…”

Secondos went on about the details of the spice trade. The moment he’s actually on topic, he can barely cobble a sentence together, but as soon as he drifts, he becomes Shakespeare. There’s something off about him.

Clara interrupted him. “Esteemed kadi, if it please the court, this testimony needs to be more specific. Witness, when you say you discussed spice prices, was this a general conversation, or a specific negotiation? Were Anis and Pedro engaged in a transaction? Was Pedro buying? Selling? Were you involved in the deal, or merely a guest at the meal?”

Secondos pulled on his mustache. “It is—it was—a discussion.”

“A discussion of what nature?” she pressed.

“Of a spice nature.”

Clara’s eyelid twitched.

“A spice nature?” Warren repeated. “You’ll have to be more precise than that, Witness. What exactly was discussed?”

There was a long pause. Secondos glanced at the gallery, then at the ceiling, then back at Warren.

“I do not remember,” he said. “It has been many weeks, you understand. The mind, esteemed friend of the court, is not what it once was, particularly for one such as I, who has, in the conduct of his trade, sat at many such tables and shared many such meals, and the particulars of any one evening’s conversation, however significant in hindsight, are apt to disappear like a desert mirage.”

Clara opened her mouth to speak, but Warren was faster. “You have told this court that you maintained a decade-long—or at least six years, by your lowest estimate—relationship with the victim. That you dined together often, and that you were complementary. And yet you cannot remember what was discussed at your last meal together? Surely, having heard news of his death on the next day, those details would have solidified themselves in your mind.”

Tsk. I would’ve phrased that better than he did, but at least the point still got made.

“I shall remind the court,” Justan said, with a newfound sharpness in his tone, “that the witness’s recollection of the events has had ample time to fade. The crime happened almost two months ago, and this trial has been delayed only because the accused chose to flee rather than answer questions in a timely manner. Had Pedro de Bragança presented himself for inquiry on the eleventh of April, as any honest man would have, this court would not now be dependent on the imperfect memory of events many weeks past. I would humbly suggest that the responsibility for any such defect belongs to the man who made the delay necessary, not to the witness—and talk of business leading to murder would hardly be surprising.”

That was a very convenient claim for the prosecution to make. Turn the gap in their own case into an accusation against the defendant. Clara almost respected it.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

She could try to argue the point, but that would only bring more attention to the fact that Pedro was on the run. Warren had smoothly evaded that the first time it came up, but it would be best not to linger on it, and instead move on to explore another possible avenue of defense.

Unfortunately, Warren seemed primed to take the bait. “As I have stated before, honored accuser, to characterize the defendant’s behavior as ‘fleeing’ is—”

Clara tugged at his sleeve and whispered, “Let me take this. I have another idea, and we shouldn’t waste time on this point again.”

Warren turned his head slightly, just enough to meet her eyes. “Casewell, we discussed—”

“Again, you discussed. I never agreed to it. And the result has been us stepping over each other all morning.” She kept her voice low, beneath the rustle of the gallery. “I’ll make you an offer. Step aside for me to try a new line of questioning, and if it doesn’t go anywhere, I’ll sit quietly for the rest of the day and let you lead. That way we can both stop embarrassing ourselves.”

He narrowed his eyes, then gave a small nod. “Alright. Try what you want to try, then the rest is mine.”

“Deal.”

Clara smoothed out the front of her suit and turned to Secondos. Alright, let’s test his memory.

“Esteemed kadi, with the court’s permission, I would like to ask the witness a few more questions about the dinner itself. The meal, as the honored accuser has correctly emphasized, is at the heart of this case. Yet there is one component that has not been addressed at all.”

Princess Mikhaila eyed her curiously. “Which is?”

“What was on the table, esteemed kadi, beside the food,” said Clara.

“The plates?”

“The drinks, esteemed kadi.”

Justan leaned forward. “Esteemed kadi, with respect to the friends of the accused, it has already been established that the witness’s recollection is imperfect. Must we really subject ourselves to more of this most… elongated testimony, when the essential elements of the night have already been established?”

“With respect to the honored accuser,” said Clara, already tired of the sound of the words respect and honored, “this case is about poisoning. Poison can be delivered through any number of means, not just food. The healer determined the victim was poisoned by his evening meal, which I have not contested, but ‘meal’ includes what is drunk as well as what is eaten. The witness has said Pedro brought only the food, so what did the three of them drink?”

“I like to drink juice when I have dinner,” said Princess Mikhaila, nodding. “Mr. Merchant, what did you three drink that night?”

“The drinks! E-er, that is to say…” Secondos stammered. “Yes, there usually are drinks at dinners. I mean. Yes. There were drinks. It is the custom, in Istantinople and beyond, that one does not eat dry. The mouth requires moisture, the throat requires—”

“What did the three of you drink, Witness? And who prepared it?” asked Clara.

“The three of us? Us, specifically? Me, Anis, and the Arcadian?” He swallowed. His eyes flicked to the lattice screen. “Anis prepared drinks for us. He and I had coffee. We always took coffee, as do most people in the Empire. It is the way of things.”

“And Pedro? What did he drink?”

Secondos hesitated. “Tea, naturally. As all Arcadians do, since they regrettably do not appreciate the elegance of coffee. It is your custom, yes?”

Clara smiled.

Got you.

“Tea,” she repeated. “Are you certain of this, Witness?”

“Y-yes,” said Secondos. “That is what Arcadians drink.”

“That is an interesting assertion to make, considering Pedro de Bragança does not care for tea. He is something of an oddity among us Arcadians, you see.”

Warren raised an eyebrow.

“İtiraz!” Justan’s hand was open, palm angled towards the dais, and his tone was loud but formal—the Byzottoman equivalent, Clara assumed, of an objection. The clerk struck his staff once against the floor in acknowledgement.

“A man’s personal preferences are not determinative of his actions on any given evening. I often partake of food or drink that I do not care for, when the situation demands it. One often simply accepts what is placed before him out of simple courtesy to his host. Pedro de Bragança was a foreigner at an Istantinople dining table. If tea was offered to him as an alternative to coffee, he may well have chosen it over going thirsty.”

“That does not follow, honored accuser,” countered Clara. “Pedro de Bragança does not merely dislike tea—he is actually an enthusiast of the Empire’s coffee, calling it among the finest in the world. Ask the duchess, or anyone who knows him well, and they will all tell you the same thing. So there would be no reason for him to take tea over coffee, if coffee was an option.”

“Um.” Princess Mikhaila looked at her brother, then at Clara. “I don’t understand. So what does that mean? You’re saying that because the man doesn’t like tea, he… didn’t drink the tea? Or there wasn’t tea? I’m sorry, I’m getting confused.”

“No need to apologize, esteemed kadi,” said Clara warmly. “It is, in fact, a confusing testimony, and that is precisely the point I am making. The witness’s account leaves us with only two possibilities, and both of them are quite serious.”

She raised one finger.

“The first possibility is that the witness is telling the truth, in which case the Arcadian who sat at that table on the tenth of April drank tea and did not want coffee, and so he was likely not Pedro de Bragança. Instead, he was some other Arcadian, one who does drink tea, traveling under a name similar to the former duke’s for unknown reasons. However, this alone would not explain why the witness has failed to recall so many other details of that night.”

Then she raised another finger.

“Which leads me to the second possibility. That this witness, for reasons I do not yet know, is fabricating his account! It would explain why he can describe so much history and background in exhausting detail, but cannot recall a single specific word that was exchanged over a meal he supposedly attended. Esteemed kadi, I posit that the witness is lying to the court!”

Mikhaila frowned deeply. “Mr. Merchant. Are you lying to me?”

Secondos yelped. “No, that is not… That is to say, I have not… I would not…”

Clara continued, “At this point, who’s to say that dinner even happened? Maybe Anis didn’t even meet with any Arcadians!”

“No, wait! The dinner did happen!” said Secondos, his mustache flailing up and down as he wheezed. “I swear it! It did! By my father’s name! My grandfather’s! And both temples he contributed to!”

“You swear it. And yet, Witness, when this court asked you what was discussed at this dinner you swear took place, you cannot say. When this court asks you what was drunk, you give an answer that contradicts what is known about the accused. When this court asks for any specific detail at all, you offer either a fabrication or a fog. Why should this court believe a single word that came out of your mouth today?”

Secondos prostrated himself again. “I… I have spoken what I know to be true. That is not a lie.”

“That is a very interesting way to phrase it.” Clara crossed her arms. “What you know to be true, and not what you saw. Witness, I will ask you plainly. Were you actually at a dinner with the victim that night?”

“That night, I dine many nights, and of course I dined on the tenth of April too, and—”

“Yes or no, Witness.”

“It is a more complicated question than yes or no. You see, I—”

“It seems like a simple question to me,” said the kadi. “Yes or no, Mr. Merchant?”

Secondos’s whole body trembled. He pressed his palms against his thighs, then against his cheeks, then against his heart. “…No,” he said at last. “I was not. But the dinner happened! It happened! That’s what I was told! Yes! I was told that the Arcadian dined with Anis, and then Anis died!”

Wait, he was ‘told’? So everything Secondos said… it was all hearsay?

“Secondos Yapalotoulos!” Clara pointed at him, allowing herself to smirk. “It seems your testimony was just a lot of second-hand yapping!”

“Ahhhhh!” Secondos winced, then collapsed onto the floor.