Spider Webs

In Santa Felicia County, California, Cully Paul King, the attractive Caribbean captain of a private yacht — a black man, a ladies’ man — is on trial for first-degree murder. Madeline Pherson, a married woman whose body was found in the ocean, wrapped in kelp, was last seen on Cully’s boat, Bewitched. Cully is accused of killing her for her jewelry, which she kept in a green box that has mysteriously disappeared. But just as perplexing as the circumstances of Pherson’s death are the motives of the people involved in Cully’s trial. Cully’s lawyer, Charles Donnelly, has volunteered to become the defense counsel — for no fee. Eva Foster, the feminist court clerk, takes an unusual interest in the case. Harry and Richie Arnold, a father and son who were Cully’s crewmen, have vastly different stories to tell about the accused. All these characters are caught in webs of suspicions, secrets, and hidden passions, as are the crochety old Judge Hazeltine and Oliver Owen, the racist district attorney. Intermingled with the court proceedings are scenes from the private lives of the people involved in the trial: Eva Foster combining her work as court clerk with falling in love with the defendant; defense counsel Donnelly trying to cope with a life and a wife he despises; the teenaged crewman, Richie, convincing himself that Cully is his real father; and Cully himself presenting two faces to the world. Was he a promiscuous man with a violent temper when drunk? Or was he a hardworking innocent man drawn into someone else’s tragedy? As expert testimony weakens the case against Cully, it merely strengthens the opinion of his own lawyer, Donnelly, and the judge, Hazeltine, that he is guilty. Free-spirited Cully is not sure which would be worse, to be sent to prison or to be acquitted to face the demands of all the people who want something from him, people to whom he wishes to give nothing in return. Margaret Millar has been attending murder trials as a court watcher for forty years, but this is the first book she has written about a trial. Although entirely fictional, Spider Webs has all the elements of an actual trial — tragedy, comedy, and the suspense caused by the unpredictable behavior of human beings under stress.