Free An Imperfect Spy by Amanda Cross Page A

one to be questioned about the battered woman syndrome. Reed had told her that a number of women in the prison his clinic would be associated with were there for having killed their battering husbands. Kate wondered how the old guard would react to this new twist of the law, though she thought she could guess.
    “And how do you like the company of lawyers?” Slade asked. “Or are you, because of your lawyer husband, quite used to having us around?”
    “I’m not used to it,” Kate said, “and I welcome the opportunity to talk about law instead of literature.Would you mind if I asked you some lawyerly questions? Blair did say you teach Criminal Law.”
    “Like your husband. Surely you can’t have any questions you couldn’t ask him?”
    That was a facer. “Well,” Kate said, adopting a simpering manner that always worked with just-met professors and other self-satisfied and powerful males, “I don’t like to bother him with questions when he comes home after a hard day’s work. One wants to show an interest, don’t you know, but one doesn’t want to hammer away.”
    “Very good thinking,” Slade said. “I wish you could pass your wisdom on to my wife. She seems to think I can explain every legal twist and turn the newspapers pepper us with. What was it you wanted to ask in these professional surroundings?”
    “Well,” Kate simpered on, “being a woman, I’m naturally interested in the new laws affecting women. The old laws don’t seem to have taken women into account.” She hoped this would get him onto the battered woman syndrome, but if not, she would have to get more specific.
    It appeared, however, that she had pushed the right button. “These changes in the law are preposterous nine tenths of the time,” he declared. “Giving women total rights over their bodies is bad enough, with no consideration for the fetus, but when you distort the law to let a woman murder her husband and let her off by rules that don’t apply to men, you have got yourself in real danger. Real danger.”
    “Surely that can’t happen,” Kate said, widening her eyes and crossing several fingers and toes.
    “It can and does, my dear. Practically every day. It might have happened to my oldest friend, Fred Osborne, but the only comforting aspect to his horrible death is the fact that his wife was sent to the prison on Staten Island before this battered-woman nonsense took hold, and I trust she will rot there. Betty Osborne should have been put to death, in my opinion, but despite what you say, the law is easier on women.”
    Kate forswore pointing out that New York State did not have the death penalty except for killing policemen. “I can’t believe that the wife of a friend of yours actually killed her husband,” she said.
    “Killed him in cold blood when he was asleep. Just as though he were an animal. Like a gang execution, really, that’s what it was. Horrible.”
    “Why was she mad at him?” Kate asked.
    “No reason; no reason on earth. She was just crazy, a mad, ungrateful, unbalanced woman.”
    “Did he beat her? Isn’t that why it’s called the battered woman syndrome?”
    “Of course he didn’t beat her; he was a member of this faculty, not a working-class thug. She claimed he beat her, of course, but I can tell you the worst he did was drink a bit much, and maybe he knocked her around once or twice when he was under the influence, but I’m sure she wasn’t battered. She had a nice home and two children; she was a liar and a nut, if you ask me. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Slade leftwith no pretense of courtesy; he was opting out of the discussion.
    Kate stood for a moment, reflecting on his remarks, isolated in this room of babbling voices, sharply aware of not belonging, of being, in fact, a spy in an enemy camp. She had barely begun to reflect on this strange experience when a glass was tapped, and a tall, trim, handsome man demanded attention. “Welcome,” he said, when the room grew