Chapter 28
— The Hearing Begins
The hearing room in Vienna smelled of old wood and fresh paper, and for a moment I stood in the doorway and let the smell settle around me like a coat I had not worn in weeks. Tall windows looked out over the river, and the morning light came in grey and gold together. Rows of chairs faced a long table at the front. A clerk arranged papers with quiet hands. The hearing chair sat in the middle, reading a file, not looking up. I had waited for this morning through every cold night in Kieran's cottage and every long day of gathering proof, and now that it was here, my heart beat steady and slow, the way it does when a boat finds its channel at last.
Wesley walked beside me, carrying my leather case. Inside it were the logbook, the bank records, and the papers from the locked cabinet, wrapped in cloth the way I had wrapped them the night before. He wore his pilot's jacket, the dark blue one, and he looked older than his years. I touched his arm, and he nodded, and we took our seats at the table on the right. On the left sat Landon and Xavier, with their lawyer between them. Landon wore a suit I had never seen before, dark and expensive, and his face was smooth and calm, the face of a man who had rehearsed this morning a hundred times. Xavier sat stiffly, his hands folded, his eyes fixed on the table. I looked at them both, and I felt no anger at all, only a strange, clear pity.
The room filled slowly. Zane came in first, moving with the careful step of a man who had doubted and then decided, and he gave me a small nod before he sat behind us. Gwendolen followed, her white hair pinned neatly, her handbag clasped in both hands, and she took the seat beside Zane. Fenella arrived next, tall and composed, her coat still buttoned, and she did not look at Landon at all. Yvonne came in last, pale and quiet, and she sat near the back with her head down. I wanted to go to her, to tell her that she had done nothing wrong, but this was not the moment for comfort.
Detective Octavia stood near the door, her notebook closed, her eyes moving across the room the way a good investigator's eyes always move, missing nothing. Kieran was not there yet, and I felt a small tug of worry, but I knew his lock and his river, and I knew he would come when the river allowed him. The clerk called the room to order, and the low murmur of voices faded, and the hearing chair looked up at last and spoke in a voice that was neither warm nor cold, only fair.
"We are gathered," the chair said, "to hear evidence concerning the Haversham Danube Line, the reported death of its founder-chairwoman, the sale of two historic vessels, and the financial affairs of the company." The words fell into the room like stones into still water. I listened to my own name spoken aloud in that formal room, and I thought of Nelson, and of the first boat we had ever bought together, and of the promise we had made to each other on the deck at Passau, that the river would always come first.
The chair turned to Landon. "You reported your mother drowned during the anniversary cruise. You will have the opportunity to answer the evidence presented today." Landon nodded, and his lawyer whispered something to him, and he nodded again. Then the chair turned to me. "Mrs. Haversham, you will present your evidence first. Please proceed when you are ready."
I stood. My legs were steady. I had stood on the deck of the Danube Empress in worse weather than this, and I had faced worse storms than a room full of watching eyes. I looked out at the faces before me, at the people who had believed my son's story and at the people who had not, and I spoke in the voice I have used for forty years in boardrooms and on decks alike, plain and clear.
"Thank you," I said. "My name is Theodora Haversham. I am seventy-two years old, and I founded the Haversham Danube Line with my late husband, Nelson Haversham, sixty years ago. On the evening of our anniversary cruise, my son Landon pushed me from the deck of the Danube Empress into the river near the Wachau Valley. I survived because a lock-keeper pulled me from the water. I did not go to the police at once, because I needed proof, and I have spent the weeks since gathering it. Today I will show you that proof, piece by piece, and I will ask this authority to see the truth of what was done to my company, to my boats, and to me."
The room was silent. The clerk's pen scratched on paper. Landon's lawyer rose to object, and the chair raised a hand, and the lawyer sat down again. I opened my leather case, and I laid the logbook on the table, and the bank records beside it, and the papers from the locked cabinet beside those, and the three piles of evidence sat there in the morning light, solid and ordinary and damning. Outside the tall windows, the Danube moved past the city, grey and gold, indifferent and eternal, and I thought how glad I was that this river had kept me.