The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [213]
“I am already one hour and five minutes late!” I announced to scattered applause from the room.
“Then,” said the Magistrate simply, “you have complied with the court’s ruling and we may proceed.”
“Objection!” said Hopkins.
“Overruled,” replied the Magistrate as he picked up a tatty notebook that lay on the table in front of him. He opened it, read something and passed the book to one of his clerks.
“Your name is Thursday N. You are a housepainter?”
“No, she—” said Snell.
“Yes,” I interrupted, “I have been a housepainter, your honor.”
There was a stunned silence from the crowd, punctuated by someone at the back who yelled “Bravo!” before another spectator thumped him. The Examining Magistrate peered closer at me.
“Is this relevant?” demanded Hopkins, addressing the bench.
“Silence!” yelled the Magistrate, continuing slowly and with very real gravity: “You mean to tell me that you have, at one time, been a housepainter?”
“Indeed, your honor. After I left school and before college I painted houses for two months. I think it might be safe to say that I was indeed—although not permanently—a housepainter.”
There was another burst of applause and excited murmuring.
“Herr S?” said the Magistrate. “Is this true?”
“We have several witnesses to attest to it, your honor,” answered Snell, getting into the swing of the strange proceedings.
The room fell silent again.
“Herr H,” said the magistrate, taking out a handkerchief and mopping his brow carefully and addressing Hopkins directly, “I thought you told me the defendant was not a housepainter?”
Hopkins looked flustered.
“I didn’t say she wasn’t a housepainter, your honor, I merely said she was an operative for SpecOps-27.”
“To the exclusion of all other professions?” asked the Magistrate.
“Well, no,” stammered Hopkins, now thoroughly confused.
“Yet you did not state she was not a housepainter in your affidavit, did you?”
“No sir.”
“Well then!” said the Magistrate, leaning back on his chair as another peal of laughter and spontaneous applause broke out for no reason. “If you bring a case to my court, Herr H, I expect it to be brought with all the details intact. First she apologizes for being late, then she readily agrees to a past profession as a housepainter. Court procedure will not be compromised—your prosecution is badly flawed.”
Hopkins bit his lip and turned a dark shade of crimson.
“I beg the court’s pardon, your honor,” he replied through gritted teeth, “but my prosecution is sound. May we proceed with the charge?”
“Bravo!” said the man at the back again.
The Magistrate thought for a moment and handed me his dirty notebook and a fountain pen.
“We will prove the veracity of prosecution counsel by a simple test,” he announced. “Fräulein N, would you please write the most popular color that houses were painted in, when you were—” and here he turned to Hopkins and spat the words out—“a housepainter!”
The room erupted into cheers and shouts as I wrote the answer in the back of the exercise book and returned it.
“Silence!” announced the Magistrate. “Herr H?”
“What?” he replied sulkily.
“Perhaps you would be good enough to tell the court the color that Fräulein N has written in my book?”
“Your honor,” began Hopkins in an exasperated tone, “what has this to do with the case in hand? I arrived here in good faith to arraign Fräulein N on a charge of a Class II Fiction Infraction and instead I find myself embroiled in some lunatic rubbish about housepainters. I do not believe this court represents justice—”
“You do not understand,” said the Magistrate, rising to his feet and raising his short arms to illustrate the point, “the manner in which this court works. It is the responsibility of the prosecution council to not only bring a clear and concise case before the bench, but also to fully verse himself in the procedures that he must undertake to achieve that goal.”
The Magistrate