The Darkened Room by Antonia Hildebrand

Author:Antonia Hildebrand [Hildebrand, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761092695
Publisher: Ginninderra Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

HOMICIDE DU JOUR

The jury selection process is intended to remove from serving on the jury anyone who has already formed an opinion on the accused’s guilt or innocence. That left a jury of six women and six men to decide Leonora’s fate. In age, they ranged from people in their sixties to twenty-five-year-olds and they were employed in a wide range of professions and occupations. Not quite a jury of Leonora’s peers but close enough.

Leonora looked fantastic – she had lost another five kilos in prison. Her hair was blonde and bobbed. She wore a series of stylish suits and looked every inch a lady. The jurors found it hard to believe she had shot two people in cold blood. That was, of course, her and her lawyer’s intention. The courtroom was packed – there were queues for seats and a daily, dignified struggle to get a front row seat. Everyone was talking about the case: not just the media but people in gyms, hairdressers and coffee shops. Everyone had an opinion. It was a case that polarised the public. And it was as much a performance as any play in a theatre. But, of course, being unrehearsed, there would be surprises along the way.

The prosecution was conducted by Moira Reynolds, who was more at home in the Family Court. Thirty-five years old, fair-haired and slender, and tallish with intelligent blue eyes, she was completely convinced of Leonora’s guilt. She thought it was a horrible murder but worse than that, a senseless murder. She told her husband over dinner one night, ‘Why didn’t she just take a lover and go back to uni and get another degree? She had so many options, but hate blinded her. She just wanted revenge. Someone took something that she thought was hers – her husband – and that was not to be endured.’

Moira Reynolds had no problem going after Leonora with a kind of implacable precision.

Rabinowitz watched her stride into the courthouse wearing a neat taupe suit under her robe and long brown boots up to her knees and murmured to his junior, Bettina Clark, ‘The Valkyrie is here.’

But Reynolds was no zealot – she leaned to the left on most issues, she believed in rehabilitation and was firmly opposed to the death penalty. Fortunately for Leonora, there wasn’t one in Australia.

During the trial, Moira Reynolds had witnesses who implied that Leonora never loved Sam – that she only married him because she knew he would eventually be worth a lot of money. Her parents were ambitious aspirationals themselves and expected her to marry a doctor or a lawyer. Antonella’s face turned stony during some of this testimony. According to Reynolds, Leonora’s rage all stemmed from having lost her affluent and glamorous lifestyle. But none of that really made sense. Leonora was a woman scorned, and possessed by jealousy and anger as a consequence. Her fanatical conviction that Sam was hers and only hers, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, was caused by the sexual jealousy that tortured her day and night.

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