by Anne Perry
Goode rose to his feet, and was also overruled.
The coroner adjourned the sitting until the following day.
Rathbone and Goode left the court together, deep in anxiety. There was no word from Monk.
The first witness of the morning was Hester Latterly.
“Miss Latterly.” The coroner smiled at her benignly. “There is no need to be nervous, my dear. Simply answer the questions to the best of your ability. If you do not know the answer, then say so.”
“Yes sir.” She nodded and smiled back at him innocently.
“You were leaving the courtroom after attending the trial, when you were informed by the gaoler Bailey that someone was injured and needed medical assistance, is that correct?” He was not going to allow her to ramble by telling the story in her own words. He had summarized it for her most precisely.
Rathbone swore under his breath.
“If Monk doesn’t come within an hour, it is all going to be over,” Goode said. “Where in God’s name is he? Is there an early train from Chilverley this morning? Should I go and look for him?”
Rathbone glanced around desperately. “I’ll send a clerk,” he said.
“Mr. Rathbone?” the coroner said with a frown.
“I beg your pardon,” Rathbone apologized grimly.
The coroner turned to Hester. “Miss Latterly?”
“Yes?”
“Would you please answer the question?”
“I beg your pardon, sir. What was it?”
Very carefully the coroner repeated himself.
“Yes sir,” she replied. “I had attended the trial with Lady Ravensbrook.” She then repeated the entire procedure of her departure, Bailey’s arrival, Enid’s reaction, her own reaction, the instructions she had given to the coachman and her reasons for doing so, all the alternatives and why they were unacceptable, Enid’s assurance that she would be perfectly able to manage and that she would indeed go home, and then her return with Bailey through the courtroom buildings and her arrival at the cells. Nothing the coroner could say—and he tried several times—would stop her. She seemed not to hear him.
Rathbone shot a sideways glance at Goode, and saw his incredulity, and the beginning of a bleak amusement.
“Yes,” the coroner said grimly. “Thank you. What did you see when you arrived at the cells, Miss Latterly? Please confine yourself to what is relevant.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Please confine yourself to what is relevant, Miss Latterly.”
“To what, sir?”
“To what is relevant, Miss Latterly!” the coroner said extremely loudly.
“Relevant to what, sir?”
The coroner controlled himself with some effort.
“To the matter of Caleb Stone’s death, madam.”
“I am afraid I don’t know what is relevant,” she replied without a flicker of expression in her face. “It would seem, from what I observed, that he was possessed by such a frantic hatred of his erstwhile guardian, Lord Ravensbrook, that he was prepared, at any cost whatever, even the certain sacrifice of his own life by hanging … surely a most damnable way to die, to inflict upon him some injury, even to wish his death. I am sorry. That is a very complicated sentence. Perhaps I had better rephrase it—”
“No!” the coroner shouted. Then he drew a deep breath. “That is not necessary, Miss Latterly. Your meaning is perfectly plain, even if not your reasons for believing so.”
She launched into her reasons for believing so, impervious to his attempted interruptions. She seemed to be hard of hearing, verging upon outright deafness. She described in detail exactly how Lord Ravensbrook had appeared to her, describing every sign with clinical thoroughness, and drawing upon her experience of soldiers in shock in the Crimea to illustrate that her opinion was an expert one. Then she described his wounds, their appearance, her treatment of them, how she had been obliged to make use of Rathbone’s shirt, and why the gaolers’ shirts would not do, her apologies to Rathbone for the inconvenience and her belief that Ravensbrook would make good his loss. When she had finished that, without drawing breath, she went on to describe Ravensbrook’s response to the treatment. By half past twelve she still had not reached the point where she had opened the cell door and seen the body of Caleb Stone.
The coroner adjourned the sitting for luncheon, and retired exhausted.
“Brilliant, if somewhat farcical,” Goode said dourly, in the same tavern as the day before. “But unless Monk turns up with something this afternoon, it will achieve nothing. I think one of us should go to Chilverley and get him!”
“He would come if he had anything!” Rathbone said.
When the court reconvened, it was packed to standing room. No one offered an explanation as to why. Perhaps it was because it had not gone as expected, perhaps it was the hope of some revelation, possibly it was Hester’s performance, and the sense of the absurd. Suddenly it had all become interesting.
The coroner had dined well. He was in a better mood for battle and he met Hester’s resumption of evidence with a stern eye and a voice which was perfectly willing and capable of shouting her down.
“Would you please tell me if Caleb Stone was dead when you looked into the cell, Miss Latterly. ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ will suffice.”
“Yes,” she said with a smile of agreeability.
“He was dead?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
At some length she told him, explaining all the ways by which one might know that life is extinct.
“I am a physician and a lawyer, ma’am!” he shouted above her. “I am perfectly aware of the difference between life and death.”
“I beg your pardon?” she said pleasantly.
He repeated what he had said.
“No.” She shook her head. “I mean I am sorry for having told you what you already know, sir. Of course, I knew you must be a lawyer. I did not appreciate you were a physician also. If I have slighted you, I am very sorry.”
“Not at all,” he said graciously. “Thank you. I have nothing further to ask you.” He looked at Rathbone and Goode meaningfully. “Your evidence has been most complete!” he added.
Nevertheless Goode rose to his feet and asked her to clarify as much as he could possibly misunderstand. He was drawing to the end of his wit and invention when an elderly gentleman in clerical garb made his way, with difficulty, to the front of the room and handed a letter to Rathbone.
Rathbone tore it open and read it, and let out an audible sigh of relief.
Goode turned to look at him, and saw the rescue in his eyes. He allowed Hester to draw to a close at last and be released with a sigh of gratitude from the coroner, and some disappointment from that part of the crowd who had known neither Caleb nor Angus, and had no emotional involvement in the outcome.
The doctor who had examined the body was called. The coroner dealt with his evidence and dispatched him in less than a quarter of an hour. Neither Goode nor Rathbone could think of anything further to ask him. He had said that the cause of death was a slashing wound from the penknife which had caught the jugular vein, and the deceased had then bled to death. It was quite consistent with him having held the weapon in his other hand, and its being forced back into his throat in a fall or during a struggle. There was nothing more to add.
Rathbone rose to his feet. Where on earth was Monk? If he did not appear in the next few minutes they would lose by default. He could not spin this out any longer. The coroner’s patience was stretched to breaking. “With respect, sir, while all this is both true and relevant, it still does not tell us whether his death was accidental or not.”
“In the absence of proof that it was suicide, Mr. Rathbone,” the coroner said patiently, “we shall have to assume that he attacked Lord Ravensbrook in the same jealousy and hatred which apparently possessed him with regard to his brother, only in this case his weapon was turned upon himself, and he became the victim.”
R
athbone took a deep breath and laid his reputation in the balance.
“Or there is the third possibility, sir; that it was not Caleb who attacked Lord Ravensbrook, but that the outcome was exactly what was meant from the beginning.”
There was utter silence, not even an indrawn breath of disbelief. It was as if life in the room were suspended. Enid was ashen-faced, Genevieve paralyzed.
Finally the coroner spoke.
“Mr. Rathbone, are you suggesting that Lord Ravensbrook intentionally killed Caleb Stone?”
“I am suggesting that it is a possibility, sir.”
Goode closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat, anguish written all over his face.
Two spots of color touched Milo Ravensbrook’s cheeks, but he neither moved nor spoke.
Selina Herries bit her knuckles and stared at Rathbone. “In God’s name, man, for what conceivable reason?” the coroner asked.
The door opened at the back of the court and Monk came in, drenched with rain, tousled and exhausted for lack of sleep, but accompanied by an elderly man and a stout woman in black.
Rathbone felt weak with relief. His voice trembled as he answered the coroner.
“I will call witnesses to answer that question, sir. I shall begin with the Reverend Horatio Nicolson, of Chilverley, with your permission.”
The coroner hesitated. He looked around the room, saw the wide-eyed faces, the anticipation, the journalists who were still present sitting with pencil in hand, faces bright with eagerness. He could not disallow it.
“I shall stop you if for one instant there is irrelevance, or any attempt at unsubstantiated attack!” he warned. “Be very careful, Mr. Rathbone, very careful indeed! I will have no one’s good name taken lightly.”
Rathbone bowed his head in acknowledgment and called Horatio Nicolson to the witness stand.
Slowly, with deep regret and obvious embarrassment, the Reverend Nicolson mounted the witness stand and took the oath.
Rathbone began by establishing precisely who he was so that the court might understand his importance.
“So you knew Lord Ravensbrook and his family quite well at the time Angus Stonefield came to Chilverley?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” Nicolson answered, his face grave.
“Did you come to know Angus?”
“Yes. I tutored him in Latin, beginning when he was about eight, I believe. He was an excellent student, intelligent, willing and quick to learn. A most agreeable boy, so thoughtful and well mannered.” He smiled at the memory, in spite of himself. “My wife was especially fond of him. She worried about him. He was quite often ill, you know, and at times seemed very withdrawn.” His voice dropped a little. “There was a sadness in him, especially when he was very young. Most rational, I suppose, having lost both his parents at such an early age.”
“Did he continue to be such an excellent student, Mr. Nicolson?” Rathbone asked.
Nicolson’s face pinched with grief.
“No. I am afraid he became very erratic. At times he was excellent, his old self. And then there would be occasions when I would hardly see him for several weeks.”
“Do you know the reason for this?”
Nicolson drew in a deep breath and let it out in a silent sigh. “I asked, naturally. Lord Ravensbrook confided in me that he had become most recalcitrant at times, hard to discipline, and on occasion even openly rebellious.”
There was a faint rustling in the room. No one was yet interested. Nicolson’s head lifted. “Although I must say in his defense that Lord Ravensbrook was a hard man to please.” He spoke as if he had not seen Ravensbrook in the room, nor did his eyes move towards where he sat, stiff and pale. “He was handsome, charming and talented himself,” Nicolson continued. “And he expected those in his own family to come up to his standards. If they did not, he was harsh in his criticism.”
“But Angus was not, strictly speaking, his own family,” Rathbone pointed out. “Except distantly. Was he not the child of a cousin?”
Nicolson’s face tightened, touched with a deep pity. “No sir, he was the illegitimate son of his younger brother, Phineas Ravensbrook. Stonefield was the young woman’s name, which was all he was legally entitled to. But he was Ravensbrook by blood.”
Rathbone heard the murmur of surprise around the room, the indrawn breath.
The coroner leaned forward, as if about to interrupt, then changed his mind.
“Why did Lord Ravensbrook not adopt him?” Rathbone asked. “Especially since he had lost his wife and had no children of his own.”
“Lord Ravensbrook and his brother were not close, sir.” Nicolson shook his head, a great weight of sadness in his voice, and in the gentle lines of his face. “There was tension between them, a deep-lying rivalry that could take no joy in the other’s happiness or success. Milo, the present Lord Ravensbrook, was the elder. He was clever, charming and talented, but I think his ambition was even larger than his abilities, considerable as they were.”
Memory lit his face. “Phineas was quite different. He had such vitality, such laughter and imagination. Everyone loved Phineas. And he seemed to have no ambition at all, except to enjoy himself.…”
The coroner leaned across his table.
“Mr. Rathbone! Is this of any relevance to Caleb Stonefield’s death? It seems to be very old history, and of a very personal nature. Can you justify it in this court?”
“Yes sir, it is at the very core of it,” Rathbone said with feeling momentary to passion. Something of the rage and the emergency in him must have been there in his voice and the angles of his body. Every eye was on him, and the coroner hesitated only a moment before permitting him to proceed.
Rathbone nodded to Nicolson.
“I am afraid he got away with much that perhaps he should not,” Nicolson said quietly, but his voice carried even to the back of the room in the silence. “He could smile at people, and they forgot their anger. They forgave him far too much for his own good, or for Milo’s. The sense of injustice, you see? As if all the pleasures and pains of life could be weighed against each other—only God can do that … at the end, when it is all known.”
He sighed. “Perhaps that is why he was so harsh with poor Angus, to try to prevent him following in his father’s footsteps. Such charm can be a terrible curse, undoing all that would be good in a man. It is not right that we should laugh our way out of justice. It teaches us all the wrong lessons.”
“Was Lord Ravensbrook so very harsh, Mr. Nicolson?”
“In my opinion, yes sir.”
“In what way?”
The coroner’s face pinched, but he did not interrupt.
In the room there was a scrape of fabric on fabric, the squeak of a boot. Milo Ravensbrook fidgeted and moved as if to speak, but did not.
Nicolson looked wretched, but he did not hesitate to reply in a soft, steady voice.
“He seemed at times impossible to please. He would humiliate the boy for mistakes, for foolishness which was merely born of ignorance, or uncertainty, lack of confidence. And of course the more a child is embarrassed, the more mistakes he makes. It is a terrible thing to feel worthless, sir, to feel you owe a debt of gratitude, and instead of paying it, you have to let down those you most wish to please.” He pressed on with difficulty through his obvious emotion. “As a small boy I saw Angus many times struggling to keep from weeping, and then the shame he felt when he could no longer help it, and was then chastened for that too. And he was bitterly ashamed of being beaten, which he was frequently. It terrified him, and then he felt himself a coward because of it.”
In the crowd a woman stifled a sob.
Selina Herries had not wept for Caleb’s death. It was still too new a shock for her, her feelings towards the man too mixed between pride, contempt, and fear of him. Now her feelings for the child he must have been were simple. She let the tears run down her face without shame or hindrance.
Enid Ravensbrook’s face was ash-gray and set in lines of intolerable p
ain, as if some long-feared tragedy had at last struck her. She looked sideways at her husband, but her expression was unreadable. Not once did he turn to her. Perhaps he did not dare to see what was in her eyes.
Genevieve Stonefield was beyond weeping, but she clasped Titus Niven’s hand as if she might drown if she let it go.
“Mr. Nicolson …” Rathbone prompted.
Nicolson blinked. “My heart ached for him, and I was moved to speak to Lord Ravensbrook on his behalf, but I fear I did no good. My interference only provoked him to be even stricter. He thought Angus had complained to me, and he regarded that as both cowardice and a personal disloyalty.”
“I see.” To Rathbone it was a picture of such pain he was lost for more powerful or appropriate words. What must have lain beneath the surface of Angus’s honorable and upright character? Could he ever have forgiven Ravensbrook for those years of misery?
The coroner had not interrupted, nor had his eyes once strayed to the clock, but now, deeply unhappy, he was compelled to speak.
“Mr. Rathbone, this past distress is most harrowing, but it is still, so far, irrelevant to the death of Caleb Stonefield. I am sure you must be aware of that. Mr. Nicolson’s evidence has addressed itself solely to Angus.”
“That is because he never met Caleb,” Rathbone replied. “If I may be permitted to call my last witness, sir, she will explain it all.”
“I hope she can, Mr. Rathbone, otherwise you appear to have harrowed our emotions and wasted our time to no purpose.”
“It is to a purpose, I assure you. I call Miss Abigail Ratchett.”
Abigail Ratchett was a very stout woman with unnaturally black hair, considering that she must have been at least seventy-five. But apart from being hard of hearing, she was self-assured and quite in command of her wits. Every eye in the room was upon her.
“You are a nurse, Miss Ratchett?” Rathbone began, speaking clearly and rather above his usual pitch and volume.
“Yes sir, and midwife. At least I used to be.”
The coroner’s face tightened.
Goode groaned.
Rathbone ignored them both.
“Were you in attendance when Miss Alice Stonefield was delivered of her two sons, in October of 1829, the father being one Phineas Ravensbrook?”
