The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon

  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.

  Demiris nodded slowly, as though the movement cost him an effort.

  "I wanted to kill you," he said wearily, and it was an old man's voice. "I had everything worked out."

  "Why didn't you?"

  He replied quietly, "Because you killed me first. I've never needed anyone before. I suppose I've never really been in pain before."

  "Costa--"

  "No. Let me finish. I'm not a forgiving man. If I could do without you, believe me I would. But I can't. I can't go through any more. I want you back, Noelle."

  She fought to show nothing of what she was feeling inside. "That's really not up to me anymore, is it?"

  "If I could have you freed, would you come back to me? To stay?"

  To stay. A thousand images flashed through Noelle's mind. She would never see Larry again, never touch him, hold him. Noelle had no choice, but even if she had, life was sweeter. And as long as she was alive, there was always a chance. She looked up at Demiris.

  "Yes, Costa."

  Demiris stared at her, his face filling with emotion. When he spoke, his voice was husky. "Thank you," he said. "We're going to forget the past. It's gone and nothing will change it." His voice brightened. "It's the future I'm interested in. I'm going to engage an attorney for you."

  "Who?"

  "Napoleon Chotas."

  And that was the moment that Noelle really knew she had won the chess match. Check. Checkmate.

  Now Napoleon Chotas sat at the long wooden lawyer's table thinking about the battle that was about to take place. Chotas would have much preferred that the trial be held in Ioannina rather than in Athens, but that was impossible, since by Greek law a trial could not take place in the district where the crime had been committed. Chotas had not the slightest doubt about the guilt of Noelle Page, but that was unimportant to him, for like all criminal lawyers he felt that the guilt or innocence of a client was immaterial. Everyone was entitled to a fair trial.

  The trial that was about to begin, however, was something different. For the first time in his professional life Napoleon Chotas had allowed himself to become emotionally involved with a client: He was in love with Noelle Page. He had gone to see her at Constantin Demiris' request and though Chotas had been familiar with the public
image of Noelle Page, he had been totally unprepared for the reality. She had received him as though he were a guest paying a social call. Noelle had showed neither nervousness nor fear, and at first Chotas had attributed it to her lack of understanding of the desperateness of her situation. The opposite had proved to be true. Noelle was the most intelligent and fascinating woman he had ever encountered and certainly the most beautiful. Chotas, though his appearance belied it, was a connoisseur of women, and he recognized the special qualities that Noelle possessed. It was a joy for Chotas merely to sit and talk with her. They discussed law and art and crime and history, and she was a constant amazement to him. He could fully appreciate Noelle's liaison with a man like Constantin Demiris. but her involvement with Larry Douglas puzzled him. He felt that she was far above Douglas, and yet Chotas supposed that there was some unexplainable chemistry that made people fall in love with the most unlikely partners. Brilliant scientists married empty-headed blondes, great writers married stupid actresses, intelligent statesmen married trollops.

  Chotas remembered the meeting with Demiris. They had known each other socially over the years, but Chotas' law firm had never done any work for him. Demiris had asked Chotas to his home at Varkiza. Demiris had plunged into the conversation without preamble. "As you may know," he had said, "I have a deep interest in this trial. Miss Page is the only woman in my life I have ever truly loved." The two men had talked for six hours, discussing every aspect of the case, every possible strategy. It was decided that No-elle's plea would be Not Guilty. When Chotas rose to leave, a deal had been agreed upon. For undertaking Noelle's defense Napoleon Chotas would be given double his usual fee, and his firm would become the major legal counsel to Constantin Demiris' far-flung empire, a plum worth untold millions.

  "I don't care how you do it," Demiris had concluded, fiercely. "Just see to it that nothing goes wrong."

  Chotas had accepted the bargain. And then, ironically, he had fallen in love with Noelle Page. Chotas had remained a bachelor, though he kept a string of mistresses, and now when he had found the one woman he wanted to marry, she was out of his reach. He looked at Noelle now, sitting in the defendant's box, beautiful and serene. She wore a simple black wool suit with a plain, high-necked white blouse, and she looked like a Princess from a fairy tale.

  Noelle turned and saw Chotas staring at her and gave him a warm smile. He smiled back, but his mind was already turning to the difficult task that lay ahead of him. The clerk was calling the Court to order.

  The spectators rose as two judges in business suits entered and took their seats on the bench. The third judge, the President of the Court, followed and took the center seat. He intoned, "I synethriassis archetai."

  The trial had begun.

  Peter Demonides, Special Prosecutor for the State, nervously rose to make his opening address to the jury. Demonides was a skilled and able prosecutor, but he had been up against Napoleon Chotas before--many times, in fact--and the results were invariably the same. The old bastard was unbeatable. Almost all trial lawyers browbeat hostile witnesses, but Chotas coddled them. He nurtured them and loved them and before he was through, they were contradicting themselves all over the place, trying to be helpful to him. He had a knack of turning hard evidence into speculation and speculation into fantasy. Chotas had the most brilliant legal mind Demonides had ever encountered and the greatest knowledge of jurisprudence, but that was not his strength. His strength was his knowledge of people. A reporter had once asked Chotas how he had learned so much about human nature.

  "I don't know a damned thing about human nature," Chotas had answered. "I only know about people," and the remark had been widely quoted.

  In addition to everything else this was the kind of trial that was tailor-made for Chotas to take before a jury, filled as it was with glamour, passion and murder. Of one thing Demonides was certain: Napoleon Chotas would let nothing stop him from winning this case. But neither would Demonides. He knew that he had a strong evidential case against the defendants, and while Chotas might be able to spellbind the jury into overlooking the evidence, he would not be able to sway the three judges on the bench. So it was with a feeling of determination mixed with apprehension that the Special Prosecutor for the State began his opening address.

  In skillful, broad strokes Demonides outlined the State's case against the two defendants. By law the foreman of the ten-man jury was an attorney, so Demonides directed his legal points to him and his general points to the rest of the jury.

  "Before this trial has ended," Demonides said, "the State will prove that these two people conspired together to cold-bloodedly murder Catherine Douglas because she stood in the way of their plans. Her only crime was in loving her husband, and for this she was killed. The two defendants have been placed at the scene of the murder. They are the only ones who had the motive and the opportunity. We shall prove beyond a shadow of a doubt..."

  Demonides kept his address short and to the point, and it was the turn of the Attorney for the Defense.

  The spectators in the courtroom watched Napoleon Chotas as he clumsily gathered his papers together and prepared to make his opening speech. Slowly he approached the jury box, his manner hesitant and difficult as though awed by his surroundings.

  Watching him William Fraser could not but marvel at his skill. If he had not once spent an evening with Chotas at a party in the British Embassy, Fraser too would have been deceived by the man's manner. He could see the jurors helpfully straining forward to catch the words that fell softly from Napoleon Chotas' lips.

  "This woman on trial," Chotas was saying to the jurors, "is not being tried for murder. There has been no murder. If there had been a murder, I am sure that my brilliant colleague for the State would have been good enough to have shown us the body of the victim. He has not done so, so we must assume that there is no body. And therefore no murder." He stopped to scratch the crown of his head and looked down at the floor as though trying to remember where he had left off. He nodded to himself, then looked up at the jury. "No, gentlemen, that is not what this trial is about. My client is being tried because she broke another law, an unwritten law that says you must not fornicate with another woman's husband. The press has already found her guilty of that charge, and the public has found her guilty, and now they are demanding that she be punished."

  Chotas stopped to pull out a large white handkerchief, stared at it a moment as if wondering how it had gotten there, blew his nose and replaced the handkerchief in his pocket. "Very well. If she has broken a law, let us punish her. But not for murder, gentlemen. Not for a murder that was never committed. Noelle Page was guilty of being the mistress of--" he paused delicately "--a most important man. His name is a secret, but if you must know it, you can find it on the front page of any newspaper."

  There was appreciative laughter from the spectators.

  Auguste Lanchon swung around in his seat and glared at the spectators, his little piggy eyes blazing with rage. How dare they laugh at his Noelle! Demiris meant nothing to her, nothing. It was the man to whom a woman gave up her virginity that she always cherished. The fat little shopkeeper from Marseille had not been able to communicate with Noelle yet, but he had paid four hundred precious drachmas for a courtroom pass, and he would be able to watch his beloved Noelle every day. When she was acquitted, Lanchon would step forward and take over her life. He turned his attention to the lawyer.

  "It has been said by the prosecution that the two defendants, Miss Page and Mr. Lawrence Douglas, murdered Mr. Douglas' wife so that the defendants could marry each other. Look at them."

  Chotas turned to look at Noelle Page and Larry Douglas and every eye in the courtroom did the same.

  "Are they in love with each other? Possibly. But does that make them plotters and schemers and murderers? No. If there are any victims in this trial, you are looking at them now. I have gone into all the evidence very carefully and I have convinced myself, as I will convince you, that these two people are innocent. Ple
ase let me make it clear to the jury that I am not representing Lawrence Douglas. He has his own counsel and a very able fellow he is. But it has been alleged by the state that the two people sitting there are fellow conspirators, that they have plotted and committed murder together. So if one is guilty, both are guilty. I tell you now that both are innocent. And nothing less than the corpus delicti will make me change my mind. And there is none."

  Chotas' voice was growing angrier. "It is a fiction. My client has no more idea than you do whether Catherine Douglas is dead or alive. How would she know? She has never even met her, let alone harmed her. Imagine the enormity of being accused of killing someone you have never laid eyes on. There are many theories as to what could have happened to Mrs. Douglas. That she was murdered is one of them. But only one. The most probable theory is that somehow she discovered that her husband and Miss Page were in love, and out of a feeling of hurt--not fear, gentlemen--hurt, she ran away. It is as simple as that, and for that you do not execute an innocent woman and an innocent man."

  Frederick Stavros, Larry Douglas' attorney, gave a surreptitious sigh of relief. His constant nightmare had been that Noelle Page would be acquitted, while his client would be convicted. If that happened he would become the laughing-stock of the legal profession. Stavros had been looking for a way to hitch onto Napoleon Chotas' star and now Chotas had done it for him. By linking the two defendants together as he had just done, Noelle's defense had become his own client's defense. Winning this trial was going to change Frederick Stavros' entire future, give him everything he had ever wanted. He was filled with a feeling of warm gratitude for the old master.

  Stavros noted with satisfaction that the jury was hanging on Chotas' every word.