The Baker Street Jurors by Michael Robertson Page A

time.
    The steward opened the courtroom door and called them in. The lawyers were at their places in the center front of the courtroom, with papers and binders stacked at their tables. But there were no spectators yet.
    Ms. Sreenivasan guided the jurors to their seats, behind the eight-foot cloth screen, with a partial overhead awning that shielded the view from the gallery. After just a few moments, Mr. Walker told everyone to rise, the judge entered, and the court was called to order.
    The judge invited Mr. Slattery to open for the prosecution. Slattery stood up from behind his table.
    â€œThank you, my lord,” he said. And then he cleared his throat. He tucked in a lock of gray hair that had obstinately protruded below the back edge of his wig. He turned his head to look toward the jury. And then, catching sight of Nigel in the alternate jury section, Slattery remembered to look down and make sure that he had zipped his fly.
    He had. All was in order. He put his hand on his chin and pretended to think for a moment.
    Nigel wondered whether he was getting ready to waste the jury’s time with gratuitous flattery in the opening statement. What Nigel personally needed, more than flattery, was a beverage. A water. Or, better, another coffee. Just thinking about that made him want to clear his throat.
    Slattery approached the jury box, still apparently deep in thought. Then he raised his head and began. “It is a difficult thing to lose our heroes,” he said.
    Good move, thought Nigel. Get right to it. And now Nigel did clear his throat. Quite unintentionally.
    Slattery may have heard it, but if he did, he showed no obvious reaction.
    Sorry about that, thought Nigel. But nice opening.
    â€œIt is a difficult thing to lose our heroes,” said Slattery again. “We don’t want to see them fall. Oh, the tabloids might enjoy it well enough, just to capture our ten pence, but we don’t enjoy it, not really. We want our heroes to remain worthy of our admiration. And though we know that success in their athletic endeavors must someday yield to the ravages of time, we don’t want to see that happen to their character. We don’t want to see that at all, and we quite understandably resent it when anyone tries to insist that we do so.
    â€œBut you know and I know that we are all human. We are all fallible. And we all must be held accountable when our failures—our willful, intentional wrongs—do harm to another. That is justice. That is what our legal system is about.
    â€œAnd I will ask you to remember that, as I describe for you the events that have brought us here today.”
    He paused. He was about to turn and look back at the defendant in a deliberately timed move for the jury.
    Don’t do it, thought Nigel. Not yet, not with this defendant. Everyone still loves him. Prove he’s not a hero first, before you look at him.
    But no—Slattery did it—he looked.
    Nigel, almost subconsciously, shook his head and made a short note in his notebook.
    The jurors, following the prosecutor’s lead, were all now looking at McSweeney.
    McSweeney—perhaps nudged by his own lawyers, Nigel was watching for it, but couldn’t quite tell—looked back at the prosecutor, and then at the jurors—with a calm, reproachful expression that fairly reeked of innocence.
    â€œAww,” said a juror in the back row of the main section, very softly, as though about to pat a puppy.
    Slattery obviously heard it; he turned and put himself between the jurors and their view of the defendant.
    â€œWe shall,” he said loudly, “through both forensic evidence and witness testimony, show that the defendant killed his own wife, from a motive as old as mankind, and as reprehensible and deserving of punishment now as it has ever been. He killed her because he thought he owned her. He killed her because he learned he could no longer possess her. And he killed her because he thought