by Anne Perry
“Was there nothing in between, Mrs. Carlyon?” Rathbone said very softly. “No more moderate course—nothing between condoning the abuse and murder?”
She stood silent, gray-faced and suddenly very old.
“Thank you,” he said with a bleak smile, a baring of the teeth. “That was my own conclusion too. Mr. Lovat-Smith?”
There was a sigh around the room, a long expelling of breath.
The jury looked exhausted.
Lovat-Smith stood up slowly, as if he were now too tired to have any purpose in continuing. He walked over to the witness box, regarding Felicia long and carefully, then lowered his eyes.
“I have nothing to ask this witness, my lord.”
“You are excused, Mrs. Carlyon,” the judge said coldly. He opened his mouth as if to add something, then changed his mind.
Felicia came down the steps clumsily, like an old woman, and walked away towards the doors, followed by a silent and total condemnation.
The judge looked at Rathbone.
“Have you any further evidence to call, Mr. Rathbone?”
“I would like to recall Cassian Carlyon, my lord, if you please?”
“Is it necessary, Mr. Rathbone? You have proved your point.”
“Not all of it, my lord. This child was abused by his father, and his grandfather, and by one other. I believe we must know who that other man was as well.”
“If you can discover that, Mr. Rathbone, please do so. But I shall prevent you the moment you cause the child unnecessary distress. Do I make myself plain?”
“Yes, my lord, quite plain.”
Cassian was recalled, small and pale, but again entirely composed.
Rathbone stepped forward.
“Cassian—your grandmother has just given evidence which makes it quite clear that your grandfather also abused you in the same manner. We do not need to ask you to testify on that point. However there was one other man, and we need to know who he is.”
“No sir, I cannot tell you.”
“I understand your reasons.” Rathbone fished in his pocket and brought out an elegant quill knife with a black-enameled handle. He held it up. “Do you have a quill knife, something like this?”
Cassian stared at it, a pink flush staining his cheeks.
Hester glanced up at the gallery and saw Peverell look puzzled, but no more.
“Remember the importance of the truth,” Rathbone warned. “Do you have such a knife?”
“Yes sir,” Cassian answered uncertainly.
“And perhaps a watch fob? A gold one, with the scales of justice on it?”
Cassian swallowed. “Yes sir.”
Rathbone pulled out a silk handkerchief from his pocket also.
“And a silk handkerchief too?”
Cassian was very—pale. “Yes sir.”
“Where did you get them, Cassian?”
“I …” He shut his eyes, blinking hard.
“May I help you? Did your uncle Peverell Erskine give them to you?”
Peverell rose to his feet, and Damaris pulled him back so violently he lost his balance.
Cassian said nothing.
“He did—didn’t he?” Rathbone insisted. “And did he make you promise not to tell anyone?”
Still Cassian said nothing, but the tears brimmed over his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
“Cassian—is he the other man who made love to you?”
There was a gasp from the gallery.
“No!” Cassian’s voice was high and desperate, shrill with pain. “No! No, he isn’t. I took those things! I stole them—because—because I wanted them.”
In the dock Alexandra sobbed, and the wardress beside her held her shoulder with sudden, awkward gentleness.
“Because they are pretty?” Rathbone said with disbelief.
“No. No.” Cassian’s voice was still hard with anguish. “Because he was kind to me,” Cassian cried: “He was the only one—who—who didn’t do that to me. He was just—just my friend! I …” He sobbed helplessly. “He was my friend.”
“Oh?” Rathbone affected disbelief still, although his own voice was harsh with pain. “Then if it was not Peverell Erskine, who was it? Tell me and I will believe you!”
“Dr. Hargrave!” Cassian sobbed, crumpling up and sliding down into the box in uncontrolled weeping at last. “Dr. Hargrave! He did! He did it! I hate him! He did it! Don’t let him go on! Don’t let him! Uncle Pev, make them stop!”
There was a bellow of rage from the gallery. Two men seized Hargrave and held him before the bailiff could even move.
Rathbone strode over to the witness box and up the steps to help the child to his feet and put his arms around him. He half carried him out, and met Peverell Erskine down from the gallery and forcing his way past the bailiff and marching over the space in front of the lawyers’ benches.
“Take him, and for God’s sake look after him,” Rathbone said passionately.
Peverell lifted the boy up and carried him out past the bailiffs and the crowd, Damaris at his heels. The door closed behind them to a great sigh from the crowd. Then immediately utter stillness fell again.
Rathbone turned to the judge.
“That is my case, my lord.”
The clock went unregarded. No one cared what time it was, morning, luncheon or afternoon. No one was moving from their seats.
“Of course people must not take the life of another human being,” Rathbone said as he rose to make his last plea, “no matter what the injury or the injustice. And yet what else was this poor woman to do? She has seen the pattern perpetuate itself in her father-in-law, her husband—and now her son. She could not endure it. The law, society—we—have given her no alternative but to allow it to continue—down the generations in never-ending humiliation and suffering—or to take the law into her own hands.” He spoke not only to the jury, but to the judge as well, his voice thick with the certainty of his plea.
“She pleaded with her husband to stop. She begged him—and he disregarded her. Perhaps he could not help himself. Who knows? But you have seen how many people’s lives have been ruined by this—this abomination: an appetite exercised with utter disregard for others.”
He stared in front of him, looking at their pale, intent faces.
“She did not do it lightly. She agonized—she has nightmares that border on the visions of hell. She will never cease to pay within herself for her act. She fears the damnation of God for it, but she will suffer that to save her beloved child from the torment of his innocence now—and the shame and despair, the guilt and terror of an adulthood like his father’s—destroying his own life, and that of his future children—down the generations till God knows when!
“Ask yourselves, gentlemen, what would you have her do? Take the easier course, like her mother-in-law? Is that what you admire? Let it go on, and on, and on? Protect herself, and live a comfortable life, because the man also had good qualities? God almighty …” He stopped, controlling himself with difficulty. “Let the next generation suffer as she does? Or find the courage and make the abominable sacrifice of herself, and end it now?
“I do not envy you your appalling task, gentlemen. It is a decision no man should be asked to make. But you are—and I cannot relieve you of it. Go and make it. Make it with prayer, with pity, and with honor!
“Thank you.”
Lovat-Smith came forward and addressed the jury, quiet, stating the law. His voice was subdued, wrung with pity, but the law must be upheld, or there would be anarchy. People must not seek murder as a solution, no matter what the injury.
It was left only for the judge to sum up, which he did gravely, using few words, and dismissing them to deliberate.
The jury returned a little after five in the evening, haggard, spent of all emotion, white-faced.
Hester and Monk stood side by side at the back of the crowded courtroom. Almost without being aware of it, he reached out and held her hand, and felt her fingers curl around his.
/> “Have you reached a verdict upon which you are agreed?” the judge asked.
“We have,” the foreman replied, his voice awed.
“And is it the verdict of you all?”
“It is, my lord.”
“And what is your verdict?”
He stood absolutely upright, his chin high, his eyes direct.
“We find the accused, Alexandra Carlyon, not guilty of murder, my lord—but guilty of manslaughter. And we ask, may it please you, my lord, that she serve the least sentence the law allows.”
The gallery erupted in cheers and cries of jubilation. Someone cheered for Rathbone, and a woman threw roses.
In the front row Edith and Damaris hugged each other, and then as one turned to Miss Buchan beside them and flung their arms around her. For a moment she was too startled to react, then her face curved into a smile and she held them equally close.
The judge raised his eyebrows very slightly. It was a perverse, verdict. She had quite plainly committed murder, in the heat of the moment, but legally murder.
But a jury cannot be denied. It was the verdict of them all, and they each one faced forward and looked at him without blinking.
“Thank you,” he said very quietly indeed. “You are discharged of your duty.” He turned to Alexandra.
“Alexandra Elizabeth Carlyon, a jury of your peers has found you not guilty of murder, but of manslaughter—and has appealed for mercy on your behalf. It is a perverse verdict, but one with which I have the utmost sympathy. I hereby sentence you to six months’ imprisonment; and the forfeit of all your goods and properties, which the law requires. However, since the bulk of your husband’s estate goes to your son, that is of little moment to you. May God have mercy on you, and may you one day find peace.”
Alexandra stood in the dock, her body thin, ravaged by emotion, and the tears at last spilled over and ran in sweet, hot release down her face.
Rathbone stood with his own eyes brimming over, unable to speak.
Lovat-Smith rose and shook him by the hand.
At the back of the courtroom Monk moved a little closer to Hester.
Now in bookstores …
A SUDDEN, FEARFUL DEATH
Another Inspector Monk Novel by
Anne Perry
Here are the opening pages of A SUDDEN, FEARFUL DEATH.…
1
WHEN SHE FIRST came into the room, Monk thought it would simply be another case of domestic petty theft, or investigating the character prospects of some suitor. Not that he would have refused such a task; he could not afford to. Lady Callandra Daviot, his benefactress, would provide sufficient means to see that he kept his lodgings and ate at least two meals a day, but both honor and pride necessitated that he take every opportunity that offered itself to earn his own way.
This new client was well dressed, her bonnet neat and pretty. Her wide crinoline skirts accentuated her waist and slender shoulders, and made her look fragile and very young, although she was close to thirty. Of course the current fashion tended to do that for all women, but the illusion was powerful, and it still woke in most men a desire to protect and a certain rather satisfying feeling of gallantry.
“Mr. Monk?” she inquired tentatively. “Mr. William Monk?”
He was used to people’s nervousness when first approaching him. It was not easy to engage an inquiry agent. Most matters about which one would wish such steps taken were of their very nature essentially private.
Monk rose to his feet and tried to compose his face into an expression of friendliness without overfamiliarity. It was not easy for him; neither his features nor his personality lent itself to it.
“Yes ma’am. Please be seated.” He indicated one of the two armchairs, a suggestion to the decor of his rooms made by Hester Latterly, his sometimes friend, sometimes antagonist, and frequent assistant, whether he wished it or not. However, this particular idea, he was obliged to admit, had been a good one.
Still gripping her shawl about her shoulders, the woman sat down on the very edge of the chair, her back ramrod straight, her fair face tense with anxiety. Her narrow, beautiful hazel eyes never left his.
“How may I help you?” He sat on the chair opposite her, leaning back and crossing his legs comfortably. He had been in the police force until a violent difference of opinion had precipitated his departure. Brilliant, acerbic and at times ruthless, Monk was not used to setting people at their ease or courting their custom. It was an art he was learning with great difficulty, and only necessity had made him attempt it at all.
She bit her lip and took a deep breath before plunging in.
“My name is Julia Penrose, or I should say more correctly, Mrs. Audley Penrose. I live with my husband and my younger sister just south of the Euston Road …” She stopped, as if his knowledge of the area might matter and she had to assure herself of it.
“A very pleasant neighborhood.” He nodded. It meant she probably had a house of moderate size, a garden of some sort, and kept at least two or three servants. No doubt it was a domestic theft, or a suitor for the sister about whom she entertained doubts.
She looked down at her hands, small and strong in their neat gloves. For several seconds she struggled for words.
His patience broke.
“What is it that concerns you, Mrs. Penrose? Unless you tell me, I cannot help.”
“Yes, yes I know that,” she said very quietly. “It is not easy for me, Mr. Monk. I realize I am wasting your time, and I apologize.…”
“Not at all,” he said grudgingly.
She looked up, her face pale but a flash of humor in her eyes. She made a tremendous effort. “My sister has been … molested, Mr. Monk. I wish to know who was responsible.”
So it was not a petty matter after all.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently, and he meant it. He did not need to ask why she had not called the police. The thought of making such a thing public would crush most people beyond bearing. Society’s judgment of a woman who had been sexually assaulted, to whatever degree, was anything from prurient curiosity to the conviction that in some way she must have warranted such a fate. Even the woman herself, regardless of the circumstances, frequently felt that in some unknown way she was to blame, and that such things did not happen to the inncoent. Perhaps it was people’s way of coping with the horror it engendered, the fear that they might become similar victims. If it were in some way the woman’s own fault, then it could be avoided by the just and the careful. The answer was simple.
“I wish you to find out who it was, Mr. Monk,” she said again, looking at him earnestly.
“And if I do, Mrs. Penrose?” he asked. “Have you thought what you will do then? I assume from the fact that you have not called the police that you do not wish to prosecute?”
The fair skin of her face became even paler. “No, of course not,” she said huskily. “You must be aware of what such a court case would be like. I think it might be even worse than the—the event, terrible as that must have been.” She shook her head. “No—absolutely not! Have you any idea how people can be about.…”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “And also the chances of a conviction are not very good, unless there is considerable injury. Was your sister injured, Mrs. Penrose?”
Her eyes dropped and a faint flush crept up her cheeks.
“No, no, she was not—not in any way that can now be proved.” Her voice sank even lower. “If you understand me? I prefer not to … discuss—it would be indelicate …”
“I see.” And indeed he did. He was not sure whether he believed the young woman in question had been assaulted, or if she had told her sister that she had in order to explain a lapse in her own standards of mortality. But already he felt a definite sympathy with the woman here in front of him. Whatever had happened, she now faced a budding tragedy.
She looked at him with hope and uncertainty. “Can you help us, Mr. Monk? ‘Least’—at least as long as my money lasts? I have saved a little from my dress a
llowance, and I can pay you up to twenty pounds in total.” She did not wish to insult him, and embarrass herself, and she did not know how to avoid either.
He felt an uncharacteristic lurch of pity. It was not a feeling which came to him easily. He had seen so much suffering, almost all of it more violent and physical than Julia Penrose’s, and he had long ago exhausted his emotions and built around himself a shell of anger which preserved his sanity. Anger drove him to action; it could be exorcised and leave him drained at the end of the day, and able to sleep.
“Yes, that will be quite sufficient,” he said to her. “I should be able either to discover who it is or tell you that it is not possible. I assume you have asked your sister, and she has been unable to tell you?”
“Yes indeed,” she responded. “And naturally she finds it difficult to recall the event—nature assists us in putting from our minds that which is too dreadful to bear.”
“I know,” he said with a harsh, biting humor she would never comprehend. It was barely a year ago, in the summer of 1856, just at the close of the war in the Crimea, that he had been involved in a coaching accident and woken in the narrow gray cot of a hospital, cold with terror that it might be the workhouse and knowing nothing of himself at all, not even his name. Certainly it was the crack to his head which had brought it on, but as fragments of memory had returned, snatches here and there, there was still a black horror which held most of it from him, a dread of learning the unbearable. Piece by piece he had rediscovered something of himself. Still, most of it was unknown, guessed at, not remembered. Much of it had hurt him. The man who emerged was not easy to like and he still felt a dark fear about things he might yet discover: acts of ruthlessness, ambition, brilliance without mercy. Yes, he knew all about the need to forget what the mind or the heart could not cope with.
She was staring at him, her face creased with puzzlement and growing concern.
