made, but Barker’s confident demeanor was shattered: Higgs had him on the ropes, groggy.
“You consider yourself a fingerprint expert?”
“I certainly do.”
“Have you ever, in the many cases in which you’ve given expert testimony, introduced as evidence a lifted fingerprint without first photographing the actual impression of that print on the object in question?”
“Certainly-many times.”
“Name one.”
Barker paused. Gestured nervously. “I would need an opportunity to check my records….”
“I see. When you forgot your fingerprint camera, did you make any effort to get one here in Nassau? We understand the RAF has several.”
“Actually, no.”
“Did you wire Miami and send for one?”
“You know I didn’t.”
“When you dusted the bloody handprints in Sir Harry’s room, didn’t you know-fingerprint expert that you are- that they would be obliterated?”
“I knew it was a possibility.”
“Were they in fact obliterated?”
“Yes.”
“Well, did you at least measure these bloody handprints, to ascertain whether they came from a large hand or small?”
“I suppose I could have.”
“I put it to you that there were other prints on that Chinese screen, which were destroyed by the humidity.”
“That’s true.”
“If the accused was there that night, why weren’t his fingerprints similarly destroyed?”
“We got lucky, finding that one print.”
“Lucky? Is that the appropriate word? Perhaps you should say, ‘It was a miracle that we found it.’”
Melchen, seated in the courtroom, stood; his face was green and desperate. He rushed outside, pushing aside spectators seated on folding chairs in the aisle. At the press table, Gardner stood to look out the nearby window and started grinning. Faintly, despite the churn of fan blades overhead and the buzzing flies, the sound of vomiting could be heard.
“Did it ever occur to you, Captain Barker, that the burns on the accused’s face and arms could have been caused by sunburn?”
Barker glanced over at de Marigny, who sat smiling, eating this testimony up; his pale face mocked Barker.
“Sure,” Barker told Higgs, “but I saw how white he was and ruled that out.”
“Really. Were you not aware that the accused is a yachtsman, and constantly in the sun?”
Barker hadn’t realized de Marigny’s current complexion had to do with spending many weeks indoors of late- in the Nassau Jail.
“I, uh, was struck by the absence of sunburn in a yachtsman.”
Higgs hammered Barker like that all day. He put Barker and Melchen’s slipshod investigative practices-in particular the botched fingerprint work-under a merciless magnifying glass. He made Barker admit that he hadn’t told Melchen about the print until Bar Harbor.
“Captain Barker, I would like you to look at two photographs of fingerprints lifted experimentally by defense expert Leonard Keeler from the area on the screen from which you have testified Exhibit J came.”
Barker took the photographs.
“Can you explain why Exhibit J is so perfect a print-without the wood-grain markings in the background exhibited by these other lifted prints?”
“Well…perhaps these prints were not lifted from the same precise area as Exhibit J.”
“Would you like to experiment yourself, Captain Barker? Would you like to step down and take various sample prints from the Chinese screen, in full view of the court? Perhaps you will be ‘lucky’ again.”
“I, uh…don’t think that would be appropriate.”
“I see. There is, however, a pattern of sorts in the background of Exhibit J, is there not?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything on the background of that screen that resembles these circles?”
“No, sir.”
“When you were lifting prints from that screen on the morning of July nine, did Captain Melchen bring the accused upstairs?”
“I understand that he did.”
“And didn’t you go to the door of the room where Captain Melchen was interviewing the accused, and ask, ‘Is everything okay?’”
“I did not.”
“Wasn’t the accused’s latent print obtained from some object in that room, possibly the drinking glass Captain Melchen asked de Marigny to hand him?”
“Definitely not!”
And the accusatory finger was thrust. “But it was after he left that room that you claimed to have discovered the print, was it not?”
“Yes.”
Higgs walked away, and his voice filled the courtroom in a manner even the theatrical Adderley could have envied.
“I suggest that you and Captain Melchen deliberately planned to get the accused alone in order to get his fingerprints!”
“We did not!” Barker’s composure was a memory now; he was shouting, sweating.
“Your expert testimony has never before been called upon in a case of such great public interest, has it? May I suggest that in your desire for personal gain and notoriety, you have swept aside the truth and substituted fabricated evidence!”
“I emphatically deny that!”
“My lord,” Higgs said, his face solemn with disgust, “I am quite finished with this witness.”
Barker was slumping in the box, his face long, haggard; he’d taken a worse beating from Higgs than the one I gave him. He walked out of the courtroom cloaked in silence-his own, and that of everyone present, a silence that spoke eloquently of its contempt.
The court was adjourned for lunch, and Gardner caught up with me as the crowd pressed toward the outside.
“The prosecution hasn’t rested yet,” Gardner said, “but the defense could win this without calling a witness.”
“Think so?”
“Cut and dried, son-thanks to that fingerprint evidence you came up with. That was a piece of detective work worthy of Paul Drake.”
“Who’s Paul Drake?”
Gardner laughed and slapped me on the back. “I
“You’re cute, too, Erle.”
Gardner was right. For all intents and purposes, the trial was over: the frame de Marigny had been fitted for was obvious. The defense held the courtroom for several days, but all was anticlimax.
De Marigny himself was a strong, intense witness who told his own story well, gesturing expressively, his French accent reminding the jurors that this man was fighting for his life in a foreign land. With the help of Higgs, Freddie convincingly portrayed himself as not only a solvent, but successful businessman.
The prosecution was singularly unsuccessful in penetrating his shield of self; Hallinan almost pitifully focused on whether or not Freddie had a right to call himself “Count,” only to find out he indeed did, but chose not to, even having instructed the local newspapers never to use the title.
