Présentation de l'éditeur
When distinguished criminal lawyer Venetia Aldridge defends a young man for the brutal murder of his mother, she views the case as simply another opportunity to demonstrate her brilliance in the courtroom. But within weeks of the trial Aldridge is found dead at her desk, a bloodstained barrister’s wig on her head. And as Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard attempts to make sense of events, the murders continue, inexorably spiraling into fresh complexities of horror.
“Shocking . . . fascinating . . .
A Certain Justice sucks the reader in right from the dramatic first line.”
–Los Angeles Times
“This is a P. D. James case to shiver through and revel in–dark page by dark page.”
–Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Enthralling . . . [P. D. James’s] stories always captivate.”
–Associated Press
“Taut, suspenseful, and deeply penetrating.”
–Baltimore Sun
“Gripping.”
–The Wall Street Journal
“A compelling tale of pride, deceit, and revenge.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Extrait
Murderers do not usually give their victims notice. This is one death which, however terrible that last second of appalled realization, comes mercifully unburdened with anticipatory terror. When, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 11 September, Venetia Aldridge stood up to cross-examine the prosecution's chief witness in the case of Regina v. Ashe, she had four weeks, four hours and fifty minutes left of life. After her death the many who had admired her and the few who had liked her, searching for a more personal response than the stock adjectives of horror and outrage, found themselves muttering that it would have pleased Venetia that her last case of murder had been tried at the Bailey, scene of her greatest triumphs, and in her favourite court.
But there was truth in the inanity.
Court Number One had laid its spell on her since she had first entered it as a pupil. She had always tried to discipline that part of her mind which she suspected could be seduced by tradition or history, yet she responded to this elegant wood-panelled theatre with an aesthetic satisfaction and a lifting of the spirit which was one of the keenest pleasures of her professional life. There was a rightness about the size and proportions, an appropriate dignity in the richly carved coat of arms above the dais, and the glittering seventeenth-century Sword of Justice suspended beneath it, an intriguing contrast between the witness box, canopied like a miniature pulpit, and the wide dock, in which the accused sat level-eyed with the judge. Like all places perfectly designed for their purpose with nothing wanting, nothing superfluous, it induced a sense of timeless calm, even the illusion that the passions of men were susceptible to order and control. Once from curiosity she had gone into the public gallery and had sat for a minute looking down at the empty court and it had seemed to her that only here, where the spectators sat close-packed, was the air knotted with decades of human terror, hope and despair. And now she was once more in the place where she belonged. She hadn't expected the case to be heard in the Old Bailey's most famous court or to be judged by a High Court Judge, but a previous trial had collapsed and the judge's sittings and court allocation had been reorganized. It was a happy omen. She had lost in Court One, but the memories of defeats there were not bitter. More often she had won.
Today, as always in court, she reserved her gaze for the judge, the jury, the witnesses. She seldom conferred with her junior, spoke to Ashe's solicitor seated in front of her or kept the court waiting even momentarily while she searched in her papers for a note. No defending counsel went into court better prepared. And she rarely glanced at her client, and then, when possible, without too obviously turning her head towards the dock. But his silent presence dominated her mind as she knew it did the court. Garry Ashe, aged twenty-one years and three mont
