The courtroom was almost Gothic. A high, vertical style of architecture that reminded him of the anatomy lecture theater in Oosterbrugge. Steep galleries of seats on three sides; on the fourth side perched the judge and other court officials behind brownish black bars. The small amount of natural light allowed in came from a circle of stained-glass windows high up in the pointed roof, and without doubt reinforced the impression of a vertical, descending hierarchy, a vision of the world order that must have hovered in the mind’s eye of the building’s creator in the middle of the previous century.
This courtroom was crammed full, with not a single seat vacant.
The majority, getting on for two hundred people, was naturally seated in the public galleries. And the majority of those were pupils of Bunge High School. Mitter gathered that he was the direct cause of this year’s top-of-the-league score for truancy.
There were also journalists in the public galleries. They sat without exception in the front row, their legs crossed and with notebooks on their knees. Or sketchbooks-taking photographs was not permitted in court, he now remembered. He was surprised by the large number; there must have been a dozen of them. That surely had to indicate that this case was of national interest, not just a provincial happening.
Mitter’s place was below the galleries, in the arena itself.
There also sat Ruger, whose cold seemed to be getting better; Havel, the judge; prosecuting attorney Ferrati and his assistants; and a small number of other lawyers and ushers.
Plus a jury. This was comprised of four men and two women, sitting behind a partition to the right of the judge, all of them looking sympathetic. Apart from the one second from the right, who was an erect gentleman with an artificial arm and a furrowed brow.
Also present was a large bluebottle. It spent most of its time on the ceiling, directly above the prosecuting attorney’s desk; but occasionally it undertook tours of the room and almost always homed in on one of the two female members of the jury; sitting on the right of the furrowed brow. The fly launched an attack on her nose over and over again, and despite the fact that she brushed it aside every time, it kept on coming back with renewed energy and unfailing persistence.
These raids were accompanied by a low humming noise, which made a pleasant contrast to the rather shrill voice of the prosecuting attorney. A bit like a duet featuring a cello and a harpsichord, and especially noticeable in the pauses, while the lawyer was recovering his breath.
Apart from that, the day’s events were quite boring.
To start with, everybody kept having to stand up and sit down again as the judge and jury took their places. Then the judge outlined the charge, and Ruger explained that his client was not guilty. Next, the prosecuting attorney started to present the case for the prosecution, an exercise that lasted for an hour and forty minutes and concluded with the accused, Janek Mattias Mitter, forty-six years old, born in Rheinau, resident in Maardam for the past twenty-six years, appointed as a teacher of history and philosophy at Bunge High School in 1973, being accused of murdering (or alternatively unlawfully killing) his wife, Eva Maria Ringmar, thirty-eight years of age, born in Leuwen, resident in Maardam since 1990 and until her death employed as a teacher of English and French at the previously mentioned high school, by drowning her in the bath at the apartment they shared in Kloisterlaan 24, at some point early in the morning of October 5. The crime had been committed under the influence of intoxicating alcoholic beverages, but there was nothing, and he repeated that there was nothing at all, to suggest that Mitter had been so intoxicated that he was not responsible for his actions. These accusations would be supported by an overwhelming mass of technical proof, expert analysis, and statements taken from witnesses, and when this process was completed it would be clear to members of the jury and everyone else present that the accused was obviously guilty as charged and there could only be one verdict: guilty.
Of murder.
Or at the very least, manslaughter.
Then it was Ruger’s turn. He blew his nose and spent the next hour and twelve minutes asserting that nothing at all had happened as described by the prosecuting attorney, that his client had nothing at all to do with his wife’s death, and this would be proved without a shadow of doubt.
Then came a two-hour break for lunch. The bluebottle left the jury benches and made its way to the ceiling in order to sleep, while everybody else murmured their way out of the courtroom, duly observing the proprieties of the occasion.
One of the girls in the gallery was bold enough to wave to Mitter, who gave her an encouraging nod in response.
It took him just over ten minutes to consume his pasta dish in his cell in the basement of the courthouse. He spent the rest of the lunch break lying on his back on the bed and observing a damp patch on the ceiling, while he waited for the afternoon’s proceedings to commence.
These proceedings were devoted exclusively to so-called technical evidence. A number of police officers of various kinds took to the stand, including Van Veeteren; also a pathologist, a physician, a forensic specialist, and somebody called Wilker-son. He stuttered, and called himself a toxicologist.
The public galleries were somewhat less full-presumably headmaster Suurna had got wind of what was going on. But the journalists were still present in force, leaning back in relaxed postures in order to assist the digestive process. If any of them dozed off, at least they refrained from snoring.
It was not easy to determine what was achieved during the afternoon. Ferrati and Ruger exchanged hairsplitting soph-istries, Judge Havel occasionally intervened to restore order, and a member of the jury asked a question about the possible presence of fragments of skin under fingernails.
At no point did Mitter himself need to speak, and when the court adjourned shortly after four p.m., he had long since ceased to pay any attention. Instead, he yearned for three things: solitude, silence, and darkness.
As for who had taken the life of Eva Ringmar, it could be said that, generally speaking, nobody knew anything more than the bluebottle.