Permission 39

Permission 52

Gael knew parties like this. He’d never been a guest at one before. He wasn’t a guest now. He needed the judge to grant his client bail in a city where he had no friends and no favors to call in. It didn’t help that the city paper had published a photo of his client splattered with blood and looking shell shocked. This wasn’t New York. It was Atlanta and he was way too old to give pity eyes to a judge to get his way.

No, he was a grown man, dignified, with authority, in an expensive suit and matching eyepatch, waiting for a judge he didn’t know while sitting in a room with more blue blood portraits and fancy on the walls that his whole home precinct of New York was likely to be able to put together. The room made Alfred’s house look garish and uppity. This was all polished dark wood and ornate picture frames where an edge was as wide as a man’s hand.

The drapes were a deep blue velvet, framing windows that were once and again as tall as he was, and so perfect, and so old that they’d probably been robbed of King George himself. Still, it wasn’t like the uppity houses he’d visited in France either. Those had been old and grounded like ancients that weren’t afraid of war, as they’d seen it already. This mansion downtown Atlanta was full of itself like it had seen war, and wasn’t quite done fighting because it wasn’t possible that it lost. Being a Northerner in spirit and on principle, Gael felt offended by the stubborn aura in the finery of the house.

“Are you finding amusement in your thoughts, Mr. McNeil?” The voice belonged to a young woman who very much belonged in a house like this. Her accent was slow, a relaxed poetic lace that dared the world to continue the industrial revolution. Her dress was a dark blue as well, some light velvet in two layers that swirled around her long legs as she let herself into the room and then into his personal space. Her dark hair was short, done with intentional curls that almost looked painted on.

Gael took a step back from what was now her personal space. Cane in his left hand, he pressed his hat over his heart with the other, bowing slightly like a Shakespearean actor, including a nice English accent, “My Lady, what thoughts can a man have in the presence of an angel?”

She rolled her eyes. “Here, I was told that you were a Yankee.”

“A man is certainly many things throughout the course of his life,” Gael said effortlessly, slipping into the South Carolina accent he’d picked up. “I fear you have the advantage on me.”

“Is that not a woman’s right in this world,” she asked, holding out her hand, sheer blue sleeve resting just at the edge of her fingers.

Hat still in hand, he gracefully bowed and lifted her hand with the back of his to touch his lips to her delicate and fashionably pale fingers. “I expect it is a woman’s right to take the advantages she wishes in this world. May I have your name, Miss?”

“I’m Alice Grimwald, the judge’s only daughter, Mr. McNeil. Do you have a favorite poet, sir?”

“I’m quite partial to Yeats and Dickinson.” He rested the hand with his hat on the small of his back. “And you Miss Grimwald?”

“I adore Miss Dickinson. They whisper about her so, you know.” Alice leaned forward just a little, as a flower leans just to a bee to entice.

“I wouldn’t know,” Gael said, really not wanting to have that particular conversation.

“Quote me Yeats then. I’ve been told he’s not proper form for a lady.”

“Nonsense,” Gael said, taking one more step back from her, ostensibly so he’d have space to gesture with his hat. “Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the starlit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow. That is my favorite passage of Yeats.”

“The cocks of Hades crow,” she repeated, genteelly touching a fingertip to her chin, “My that is a splendid turn of the tongue.”

Gael was sure that Miss Grimwald knew exactly what people whispered, finding every word some bit of shiny for the crow he could see in her smile. “As pleasurable as your conversation is, I have come to speak with your father on a very urgent manner.”

“Oh he knows you’re here,” she said with a raven’s smile. “Would you like a cigar?”

There were some wars that Gael was sure he was never going to see properly, let alone win. “I do enjoy cigars.”

“Splendid,” she said, striding across to the gilt bar with a natural sway to her hips that was just enough to hypnotize, but didn’t interfere with the unladylike length of her stride. “Do you, perhaps, have matches or a lighter?”

“I do,” Gael said, somehow feeling like he’d accidentally stepped behind enemy lines.

“Excellent!” She bent over behind the bar until she found a key, which used to unlock a decently respectable humidor. “Brazilian or Cuban?”

“Brazilian, please,” Gael said. He’d never had a Brazilian cigar.

“Are you sure,” she asked looking back over her shoulder, a little raven angel. “I like the Cuban much better.”

“I’ve never had a Brazilian,” he admitted.

“My poor darling poet!” She brought three cigars out, locked up the humidor, and crossed back to him with a victorious smile. “Here now, you should put these in your pocket. Maybe Daddy will offer you another one.”

“Thank you,” he said, tucking them into his inner vest pocket and pulling out his cigarette box with a special space for matches. He held that out to her, offering her a match, patiently waiting as she clipped the tip of her cigar, with the tool she’d had in a nearly invisible pocket. Kate-Marie never had any pockets. It was a bone of contention.

Cigar between her red-tinted lips, she gracefully took a match, and all of his cigarettes. “You can get more,” she said with a smile as he gave her the eye. His cigarettes disappeared into her pocket. She actually struck the match on her bracelet before shaking it out and handing it back to him.

He cleared his throat, made sure it was out and cold, then dropped it into his pocket. Men were supposed to have pockets. With a bit too much haste, he grabbed his cane back up and took weight off his knee.

Now sitting on the arm of the chair opposite the one nearest him, she took a long slow almost kiss like drag on her cigar and blew happy rings of smoke.

It was not polite to pull out one’s pocket watch under such circumstances.

“Oh sit down, Mr. McNeil. A man with such a fabulous cane shouldn’t have to stand when it isn’t needed.”

He ‘ummed’ quietly, but sat down in the damask chair, hat resting on his knee. “Do you have a favorite poet?”

“Of course I do,” she said, smirking happily. “What happened to your knee?”

“My plane hit the ground at high speed,” he said, hoping that would dissuade her from pursuing that line of questioning.

“Dashing!” She slipped off the arm and into the chair properly, chewing at her lip as she studied him. “Is that what happened to your eye?”

“Yes,” he said, wishing very much for one of his cigarettes back.

“So you were a pilot, over there?”

“Yes.”

“Did you paint the love of your life on your plane and give it a name?”

“My plane was ‘The Moon’s Permission,” Gael said.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” She punctuated that with a very nice solid smoke ring and snapped her pretty fingers just at the top, turning it into a heart.

“Wouldn’t it matter more if I had a wife?”

“You’re not wearing a ring.”

They stared at each other until she laughed. “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore....”

“Poe is excellent,” Gael agreed.

“Do you like dancing, Mr. McNeil?”

“I have, in the past. My knee does not allow for it nowadays.”

“Such a pity,” she said, “I think you would make a fabulous dance partner.”

“Alice,” her father snapped as he stepped through the door. “I specifically told you not to come in here and bother Mr. McNeil! Give me that,” he snarled as he removed the cigar from her hand. “Go back to the party, you willful child! Adults have work to do.”

“Yes, Father,” she said sweetly, but with the eye facing away from her father the judge, she winked at Gael. “Please be nice to him, Daddy. He likes poetry.”

“Oh well, that makes all the difference then,” he grumbled. “Go! Go on with you. He didn’t come here to see you, girl. He has actual work to do.” As he grumbled, he opened up his humidor and pulled out a smaller American made cigar.

“I do hope to see you again, Mr. McNeil,” she said, princess waving to him as she left them alone in the smoking room.

The judge looked like his daughter, but his hair was wispy white and half gone. His eyes were that same unusual color. “I thought I was going to be a force to be reckoned with when I became a judge, but I shall never be able to manage that girl. Do you smoke, my boy?”

“I do,” Gael said, accepting the smaller cigar. “Thank you very much for this and for agreeing to see me. I am sorry for interrupting your party.”

“It’s Alice’s party, really. I just attend so I’ll still have a house in the morning. I know why you’re here. Just to let you know, now that Alice has become taken with you, you’re going to be the hottest gossip in Atlanta by morning. Be that as it may, I can not grant your request. Honestly, your client is safer in jail. The man she murdered was a very popular police officer, if you can believe that such a thing exists. If she were on the streets, she’d likely be lynched.”

“There hasn’t been a trial yet,” Gael pointed out.

“She’s as good as confessed, honestly. There wasn’t a lawyer in Georgia that would take her case, or we would have had her hung already.”

“I believe my client is innocent and if given the chance to settle her nerves after the loss of her lover, I believe we may be able to find the true killer.”

Grimwald leaned back in the chair, took a slow drag off the cigar he’d recovered from Alice, then another, all the while seemingly mapping out Gael’s soul in his mind. “Her lover?”

“That is what I understand from her sister and my client did not deny it. I believe that in her sorrow, she wants to be hung. This does no service to justice.”

“Indeed. As lovers, they were adulterers,” he said. He knocked ash into the glass bowl on the table next to him, “hardly innocent.”

“Still, not a capital crime. Miss Alice Tyndale deserves a fair day in court and the best chance to tell Atlanta what actually happened.”

“Do you think you’ll sway me because she has the same first name as my daughter?”

“No. I think I’ll sway you because measured justice is a virtue and mindless, brutal revenge on a victim of a crime is not.”

With a great tired sigh, the judge settled back and paid attention to his cigar for a good silent five minutes. “Alice, my Alice, has good taste in cigars.”

“I knew Alice, my Alice, in the war.”

“Your leg and eye? Were you and the accused lovers?”

“No, not even the thought of it. She was the nurse assigned to me. Honestly, I was half-mad with pain and a kind of terror that never came upon me in combat, but only when I was lost in a hospital bed.”

“How did you get injured, son? I don’t imagine legal services were in the trench. Were you an adjutant?”

“No, sir, I was a pilot. I flew 122 missions, well, 121 1/2.”

“Planes seem quite unsteady to me, just, well, I could never see myself flying one. I imagine Alice would run screaming towards the infernal thing. So where do you intend to lodge the accused if I release her into your custody?”

“I have arranged hotel lodgings. My brother-in-law, Dr. Walker, has accompanied me. He felt my health was too fragile for me to travel on my own. He is always over cautious.”

“Um,” Grimwald said sounding the way Gael imagined a tired walrus might sound. “You believe her to be honorable and not a flight risk? As I understand it, she’s virtually penniless. Such souls have little to lose.”

“One’s soul and justice for the ones we love is worth more than all the pennies in the world.”

“Oh, you are a poet. Consider marrying Alice, then she’ll be your problem.” He leveraged himself up out of the thickly cushioned chair. “I will release her into your custody. Trial in three days. Should either of you not present yourselves in my court, I will hold you in contempt. I will keep you in my jail until the idea of marrying Alice looks like heaven, and trust me, Mr. McNeil, that will take a very long time.”

“Thank you very much, sir!” Gael was deeply grateful to not have to bribe him. He’d honestly thought this was going to be much more expensive.

From the back of the bar, he produced paper, pen, and a seal. “I do way too much court business in my smoking room. It is the way of gentlemen. If I could keep Alice out of my cigars, it would be nearly ideal.”

Gael had gotten to his feet, weight on his cane as he waited for his knee to relax enough to unbend.

By the time it had, the judge was in front of him, holding out an envelope. “I will telephone them and tell them to expect you. I expect you’d like to collect her tonight?”

“Yes, sir, that would be best.”

“Just you be mindful of what you’re getting into. I think I’d like you, son.”

“Thank you, your honor.”

Grimwald watched Gael show himself out, thinking that if he could get that boy to move to Atlanta, marry Alice, that might just be ideal.