There she stood, poised at the courtroom threshold, one gloved hand upon the mahogany door. Her outfit was as harlotrous as ever, her hair a perfect lick of flame, her lips blood-red and precise. She moved like perfume—silently, invisibly—leaving a lingering trace behind each step of her ruby heels which clicked across the tiles like a countdown.
"Arrest her!" I shouted. "Quickly, seize her now before she escapes!" I looked desperately to the Imbecile, to the Judge, but nobody moved. They were all just staring at her languid approach.
"Génial," she mused, drifting through the Gallery. "You are so popular, hein?"
I called for the White Ram, insisting that he place her in custody. "As Prosecutor, I compel you to act."
"Bravo, mon chérie," said Desiree, praising my assertion as très attractif whilst undoing her red trench coat. With a casual shrug she slipped it off her shoulders and hung it on the White Ram's horn.
"Hey! What do I look like?" bleated the beast.
"Mais, bien sûr," said Desiree. "Ze goat rack."
"It's coat rack, you devil-woman!" He hurled her coat to the floor, snarling at her to take the oath—but Desiree only tickled the underside of his chin and the beast immediately melted. "Awwww, zat's better, hein?"
"If you wouldn't mind, Miss du Coeur…" said the Judge.
Desiree batted an eyelash. "Ah! Bonsoir, monsieur le Judge! But you may call me Desiree." Her sultry voice diffused into the courtroom and I hastened to interject lest the Judge become as heady as a bee in a sunflower field. "Don't listen to her, Your Honour. She's a killer, I tell you. A killer!"
Desiree chuckled. "Oh là là. Mon chérie has quite ze mood, ce soir. Forgive him, monsieur le Judge, for it happens often during prolonged exposure to stress. Like ze baby who is… un-swaddled."
"You are not a doctor!" I yelled. "And stop fondling that dirty ram!"
The Judge banged his stethoscope. He cleared his throat and adjusted his wig and glasses. Looking back through his notes, he recalled that Winston Lane had told the court that I had accused Desiree of killing Doctor Wheeler. The Professor confirmed this and requested she take the stand.
"Avec plaisir!" Desiree strutted confidently to the stand and, despite myself, my eyes feasted upon her milky white flesh, drinking in thirstily the blood red corset like an uninterrupted log of one of my father's rare Bordeaux's. I was hardly the only one either. And while the Jewry, to their credit, remained steadfast in their learning, I could see that even the lead Rabbi had begun to sweat.
"Let us begin at the beginning," said the Professor. "How is it that you came to be at Clearview Psychiatric Asylum?"
"Bonne question," said Desiree, informing the court that she'd always been fascinated with those extraordinary minds whose idiosyncrasies enjoy likening ravens to writing desks. "It was always my dream to be at such a facility," she said.
"As an inmate?"
"As a doctor." She produced thereupon a slim folder which contained—much to my dismay—a selection of first class certificates that endorsed Desiree du Coeur as a professionally accredited psychotherapist.
"Impossible," I declared. "They must be forgeries."
Alas after much scrutiny, both the Professor and the Judge deemed them genuine. Transferred from the Académie de Médecine de Démence, Desiree claimed to have taken residence at Clearview over a decade ago.
"Laurent was my mentor," she said, "and together we pushed ze boundaries of Therapeutics." She went on to describe her doctoral thesis which postulated that sociopathic personalities could only be understood by other sociopathic personalities.
"Which is why I developed my méthode d'empathie extrême," said Desiree.
"I see," said the Professor, scanning a copy of the thesis. "So you chose to be confined to a cell?"
"Voila." She expounded to the Court how she'd been locked up for twenty-two hours of the day—all in the name of science. When her thesis proved formidable, she'd drafted the results for submission into the International Journal of Medicine—but Doctor Wheeler had sabotaged her.
"He wanted all ze credit," she said. "And before I knew it, he had me captured as an inmate réel."
The Gallery erupted in outrage. Such deplorable misconduct was utterly unconscionable. There were shouts of indignation, of scandal, but my voice rose supreme.
"How dare you!" I roared. "You're just twisting what happened to me. That's my story, you succubus!"
The Judge banged his stethoscope. "Calm down, counsellor," he said. "And for the last time: stay in your lane or else I'll find you in contempt of Court."
"I'm already in contempt."
"Mais, oui," muttered Desiree. "Les Troisième…"
"Oh shut up," I told her, objecting fully to her testimony, and declaring it utterly ridiculous. It was a rash move, and one which the Judge was only too thrilled to sneer at. "Very well, counsellor," he said. "And just to be clear, you're objecting to the fact that her story is ridiculous, or that the ridiculous story is your own?"
Bastard, I thought. And I'd have said much worse had not the Professor then held out his hand. "If it would please my learned friend, I should very much like to finish my line of questioning."
Cursing myself, I sat back down.
"Miss du Coeur," continued the Professor, his voice turned low and slow. "In the ten years you claim to have been unjustly confined, did you have any further interaction with Doctor Wheeler?"
Desiree nodded. "Laurent would visit me," she said. "In my cell."
Her tone caused a ripple of unease, and when the Professor asked her to elaborate, Little Boy Pronin was ejected from the Courtroom. What followed, I shall not detail—but in much the same way as the Professor's stories could afflict the listener's souls, Desiree's subsequent narration hit the flesh.
The stethoscope rapped hard. "I rather think we have the gist," stammered His Honour the Judge, who was looking less and less like the "victim", and a very far cry from honourable.
"Yes indeed," agreed the Professor. "That's quite the… therapeutical approach."
Desiree shed a few brave tears and he smoothly handed her his pocket handkerchief. "I know this must be hard," he said, and for a moment he seemed truly sympathetic. "But in your expert opinion, Miss du Coeur, isn't it precisely these kinds of situations that lead to crimes of passion?"
"Absolutement," she said.
A silence fell.
The Professor smiled like a shark.
The Gallery leaned forward and I too felt my jaw go slack. The Judge asked the witness to consider her statement. "You are implicating yourself quite damningly," he said.
"Perhaps," said Desiree. "But zat is ze truth."
On that note, the Professor rescinded the floor, and with gritted teeth did the Judge demanded my cross-examination.
"What the hell do you want me to say?" I asked him. "She just admitted to killing you."
Desiree clicked her tongue. "Pardon, mon cherie, but in fact I did not. For while it's true zat I had motive, it's your motive which iz stronger." She sat up straight and in the most erudite fashion told the Court that I had an acute, if sensationalised, Oedipus Complex.
"Oh no I bloody don't," I objected.
"Overruled," barked the Judge. "Unless you're able to present your psychiatric certificate? No? Then be quiet, counsellor."
"But what does all this have to do with anything?"
"C'est tout," answered Desiree, explaining in simple terms that I'd projected a father's persona—along with all my paternal resentments—onto Doctor Wheeler. "It's a common response to authority," she said. "And all the more so for Les Oedipuses, hein?"
"I am not an Oedipus!" I insisted.
"Mais, oui, mon cherie. You wished to kill ze Doctor Wheeler so you could have sex with me."
"I didn't kill Doctor Wheeler."
Desiree tilted her head. "Then why," she said, "did you have sex with me?"
The very word shook the courtroom and from the ceiling, down on a silver spider thread, came the photograph:
Desiree. Straddled atop me, in my own cell.
"No!" I shouted, turning to the aghast Gallery. "That's not what happened. She's the one who broke into my cell. And when I rejected her she jumped on top of me!"
It was no use. The sea of my own faces turned dark and under their malicious gaze my cheeks burned hot and guilty. I cursed. I shouted. I charged at Desiree but a searing pain cut through my ankle and I collapsed to the floor.
Pulling up my trouser leg, I was horrified to see my ankle had swollen to three times its size.
"What is this?" I yelled.
"Murderer," said the spider from my cell as it scuttled over my shoe. I lunged for it rabidly, completely missing the glint of gossamer which suddenly yanked me off the ground, and left me dangling high above the courtroom.