The courts brought in Jeanne-Pauline Marat to testify that she had sold Mary arsenic. Jeanne-Pauline was, as expected, a hostile witness. She claimed she couldn’t remember having sold anything to Mary, or ever having seen her in her shop.
“It’s entirely possible that I saw her in my shop. But I don’t have a particular memory of it. Girls and young women are always coming into my shop. There are so many of them at all times. They all look the same, don’t they? We are meant to see girls as being interchangeable. We are meant to see them as being shells. They have no real futures and personalities they can choose. You saw Mary and Marie happen to look very much the same. But don’t all young girls look exactly the same?”
In the end, the prosecution didn’t really need Jeanne-Pauline’s testimony, as they had receipts for poison from her pharmacy. It was almost as though they had brought her in for the sake of a spectacle. Here was yet another murderer for the price of one. The trial had so much going for it.
What was most peculiar about the trial was that all the witnesses were women. They were in a play that had no parts for men.
* * *
Just when everyone thought the trial could not get any more delicious, Sadie Arnett arrived.
As the trial progressed, Sadie felt jealousy flood through her brain. She hadn’t thought she could still feel jealous of Marie. They had both achieved their goals and they had felt equal in every way. But now Marie was all everyone talked about. How could she compete against someone’s death?
She knew that in death Marie was more alive than she had been while breathing. Wherever her name came up in the city, everyone was able to picture her. She could appear before anyone now. Sadie felt the level of fame Marie had achieved meant she belonged to the masses and not to her. Marie was no longer Justine.
Sadie had always wanted to be part of the revolution. And now she would be. She would show them all who was the most eloquent writer and orator in the whole city. She would now appeal to them as a woman who would undoubtedly be demonized on the stand. That would make her known to everyone around her. Mary had tried to poison her, too, after all.
The trial was the only thing that got her out of bed. She sent her novel to a publisher in Paris that was interested in her work. She wanted her novel to be released as close as possible to the court date. She saw it as a chance for unparalleled publicity.
* * *
Sadie did not wear her beaten-up clothes and cloak to court. Her cloak had been at her disposal to render her invisible. She wanted to be as visible as possible. She arrived at court wearing a splendid outfit. She wore a dress with thick black and white stripes with an enormous bustle. It had a beautifully cut jacket. Her hair had been combed and arranged perfectly. On top of her hairdo she had a black bowler hat. She had black velvet gloves that fit her so perfectly, it was as though she had dipped her arms in black paint.
Everyone went silent when she appeared at the courtroom door. She wanted to present as a full-fledged aristocrat. Sadie caught George’s eye as she climbed into the witness stand. But she quickly looked away, as she no longer belonged to the Squalid Mile and her friendship with George was no longer meaningful to her.
There had been some debate over whether to consider her one of the revolutionaries. But Sadie was not actually a revolutionary. She had only ever been in search of her own freedom. She was fighting against her own constraints. She was not at all interested in increased wages or child care, or the actual changes needed for women of the working classes to be free. Everything she wrote was from a place of privilege. Hers was a different conversation from the one the revolutionaries were having.
She had made her inner voice be heard unfiltered. Instead of changing who she was as a little girl, she had grown into an outrageous, exaggerated version of herself. She represented the fully realized feminine soul. She had turned femininity on its head. She had shown it as something wild and ferocious and very powerful. And the courtroom waited for Sadie to speak, knowing they would hear something unbridled.
The lawyers made Sadie account for her actions the night of the murder.
“What do you recall of that night?”
“There were Napoleons all over the place. Or perhaps I was seeing double. At one point I was making love to a strongman.”
“What was this man’s name?”
“I’m not sure. I always think of him as the strongman. That’s what his job is. I saw him for the first time onstage at the music hall. Flavio the Extraordinaire, I think. Although I doubt his mother named him that.”
There was sudden laughter throughout the court.
“Please tell the court what you do for a living,” the lawyer said.
“I am a novelist of renown.”
“Were you employed at a brothel located on 67 Dandelion Alley for a period of no less than two years?”
“?‘Employed’ is an interesting word for it.”
There was laughter again. No one had expected Sadie to be so charming. No one had expected to be laughing during a murder trial.
“What did men pay you to do, exactly?”
“My work at the brothel was a theatrical undertaking of sorts. I went to boarding school in England for nine years. I was forced to act in a submissive way toward men. They struck me with a whip so I would comply. What does all that conditioning do to you in the end? I thought I would try the opposite. I would attempt to dominate men. When a scroll curls up one way, you roll it in another.”
“Did you enjoy this?”
“I took a certain amount of pleasure in my work. I thought I was good at it.”
“Are you a sapphist?”
“I’m not fussy. I take what I can get.”
The lawyer’s face went bright red whenever the court audience laughed at Sadie. He decided to get to the point.
“Did you feel you and Marie Antoine were in danger for your lives from Mary Robespierre?”
“Oh, most certainly.”
“Then why did you throw a ball?”
“The thrill, I suppose. I always take it as a compliment when someone wants to kill me. I wanted to meet some of my fans.”
“So you consider Mary Robespierre to be a fan?”
“Oh, definitely not. She had a perfectly good reason to go about murdering the two of us.”
“And what would that be?”
Sadie was feeling the rush of self-destructive behavior. It reminded her of being young, when there aren’t supposed to be consequences for your actions. She had faced such an enormous consequence as a child, she had never considered any action frivolous afterward. She had played a game of make-believe, and it had murdered someone. She had fired an imaginary gun and then realized how deadly imaginary bullets were. She stood there in the witness box smiling in her black-and-white-striped dress. It was as though she were already standing behind bars.
“Marie and I shot and killed her mother when we were twelve. It’s difficult to get over that sort of thing. Quite honestly, I’m surprised it took her so long to come for us.”
* * *