The clerk called Yvonne Haversham, and the room went very quiet, the way a room goes quiet when the next witness is the one everyone has been waiting for and dreading at the same time. Yvonne rose from her seat near the back, and she walked to the front slowly, her hands clasped tight before her, her face pale, her eyes down. She was a small woman, and she looked smaller still in that great room, and I wanted to stand and go to her, but I knew that this was her moment, and that she had to walk it alone. She took the stand, and she gripped the rail with both hands, and she did not look at Landon at all.
"Mrs. Haversham," the hearing chair said, gently, "please tell this authority what you heard, in your own words, and take your time."
Yvonne drew a breath that shook, and then she spoke, and her voice was quiet, but it carried, because the room was holding its breath. "The night before the anniversary cruise," she said, "I was in our house, in Vienna, and Landon was in his study, and the door was open, and he was speaking on the telephone. I did not mean to listen. I was passing the door, on my way to the kitchen, and I heard his voice, and I stopped, because I had never heard him speak that way before. He was angry, and he was afraid, and he said, 'She has found the invoices. She is going to call an audit. She has to go.'"
She paused, and her hands tightened on the rail, and I could see her knuckles whiten. "I stood in the hallway, and I did not move, and I listened, because I could not believe what I had heard. He said it again. 'She has to go. Before the cruise. Before she can talk to anyone.' And then he was quiet, and I heard him put the telephone down, and I went to the kitchen, and I stood there, and my hands were shaking, and I did not know what to do."
The hearing chair leaned forward. "Mrs. Haversham, who was he speaking about? Who had to go?"
Yvonne looked up, and for the first time she looked across the room, and her eyes met mine, and I saw the tears in them, and the courage, and the grief, all at once. "His mother," she said. "Theodora. He was speaking about Theodora. I knew it then, and I know it now. There was no one else it could have been. She was the only person who had found the invoices. She was the only person who could call an audit. And the next evening, on the cruise, she went overboard, and Landon told everyone she had drowned, and I knew, from the moment he told me, that it was not an accident."
A sound went through the room, a low sound, half gasp and half groan, and the chair raised a hand, and the sound died, and Yvonne went on, her voice stronger now, as if the telling of it had given her back her strength. "I did not speak at first, because I was afraid. I was afraid of what he would do to me, and I was afraid of what people would say, and I was afraid that no one would believe me. But then Mrs. Haversham came to me, alive, and she told me what had happened on the deck, and she asked me to tell the truth, and I knew that I had to. I am her daughter-in-law. I have lived in her house. I have eaten at her table. And I will not stand by while the man I married tries to murder his own mother and call it an accident."
Landon stood up, and his face was flushed, and his voice was loud. "Yvonne, you are lying. You are confused. You heard a business conversation, and you have twisted it. I was speaking about a contract, about a supplier, about—"
"Be quiet," Yvonne said, and her voice, which had been so quiet, rang out across the room, clear and hard as a bell. "Do not call me a liar in front of these people. I heard what I heard. You said, 'She has to go.' You said it twice. And she went, Landon. She went into the river, and you stood on that deck and watched her go, and you came home and told me she was dead, and you cried, and I held you, and I believed you, and I have hated myself for believing you ever since."
She stopped, and she was crying now, openly, and the clerk handed her a handkerchief, and she pressed it to her eyes, and the room sat in silence, and I felt my own tears come, and I did not wipe them away. The hearing chair thanked her, gently, and told her she could step down, and she walked back to her seat, and Wesley rose and went to her, and he put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him, and I saw Landon sit down, slowly, his face white, his hands empty, and I knew that his own wife's words had done what no paper could do: they had shown the room his heart, and there was nothing left in it for anyone to pity.
Chapter 34
— Kieran Takes the Stand