Starrbelow

by Christianna Brand

  ‘This phial of laudanum, since the morning of my wife’s death, has disappeared; and in the embers of the fire in Lady Weyburn’s room that day were found some remains that might be splintered and molten glass.

  ‘My lords, ladies—you will hear the testimony of the coachman who drove the carriage when my wife, the Countess, and her friend, Lady Weyburn, encountered the Duchess of Witham in the park—now eight weeks ago—with Lord Weyburn. He will tell you that throughout the argument that followed, the Countess was scandalized at Lady Weyburn’s conduct, that she repeatedly begged her to desist, that when Lady Weyburn publicly claimed recognition for her son as Lord Weyburn’s heir, the Countess exclaimed that it was wrong, unjust and dishonest to do so and that if Lady Weyburn persisted she herself would tell her cousin, Lord Weyburn, the truth.

  ‘My lords, ladies, gentlemen of the jury—Lady Weyburn replied to this, “If you speak, I will kill you.”’

  Witnesses: to the conversation in the carriage, to long arguments afterwards, the two ladies being closeted in Lady Weyburn’s room—she was at this time staying at the Frome mansion in London with her friend, the Earl being away from home. Witness of a footman to voices raised in argument, in protestation, in pleading, half heard through a closed door; of a butler to a meal taken up and returned hardly touched, to white faces on either side of the table, lips silent in the presence of servants, ringed hands trembling.… Witness of the Countess’s own maid. ‘It was near midnight when my lady retired. No, there was no laudanum in her room. Yes, my lady would know of the laudanum in his lordship’s closet close by. There was one phial of laudanum only, in the closet; in the morning it was still there.’ Witness of Lady Weyburn’s maid. ‘It was near midnight when I prepared my mistress for bed. My lady was silent, but she was never one to gossip with her maid. Yes, there was laudanum, a large phial of laudanum, in her ladyship’s medicine chest. My lady would take laudanum sometimes, but not from that phial: she had some small quantities measured out into tiny phials, each sufficient for a dose. As long as I have known her, my lady has had the large phial and it has not been touched.’

  ‘It was kept in her medicine chest? And, on this particular night, the chest was placed—where?’

  ‘The chest was placed in a closet, my lord, with her ladyship’s jewel-case. The chest was locked, but the key in the lock. I put both boxes in the cupboard and locked the door, and put the key of the cupboard door in a hiding place: this was always our habit when we were from home, we changed the place each night. Upon this occasion, I said to her, “I will put the key here, my lady,” and slipped it into the toe of a shoe. My lady, the Countess, had then retired to bed, we were alone in the room, no one but her ladyship could have known where the key was hid for I did not know myself until I put it there.’

  ‘Very well: you have been very clear. Now—as to laudanum, what did Lady Weyburn say to you?’

  ‘My lady looked ill, my lord, and very tired. I said, “Shall you sleep, my lady?”—this was before I put the medicine chest away, sir: and she said, “Leave me out one small phial of the laudanum, in case I do not.” In the morning, my lord, this phial lay broken by her bedside, there were dregs of laudanum in the glass by her side and her ladyship had to be woken from a heavy sleep.’

  But—had woken at last—to the news that Christine could not be awakened, would never wake again; lay dead on her bed, no glass beside her, no broken phial—but with the smell of laudanum on her lips.

  Witnesses. Witnesses to Lady Weyburn, being awakened, having simulated grief and horror at her friend’s death, witness to her having stammered out, still half crazy from the drugged sleep, some explanation of the Countess’s having perhaps come through to her room, found her already asleep, helped herself from the chest and, ignorant of the correct dose, taken the larger phial.… Witness of the maid again, however: in the morning the closet containing the medicine chest had been found locked and the key in its hiding-place.

  The heavy lids lay like twin shields across the blue eyes, guarding her thoughts from the prying eyes of men. Composed in their studied arrangement in her lap, the fan held open between relaxed fingers, her hands lay motionless. Through all the terrible indictment, she spoke not a word. ‘What answer have you to make, madame, to his lordship’s charge?’

  ‘None. I make no answer to so monstrous a proposition.’

  ‘In default of an answer, we are free to infer your guilt.’

  ‘You may make what you like of it, my lord: I refuse to answer.’

  Lord Weyburn got suddenly to his feet. ‘My lord Duke—Lady Weyburn is in the right of this matter. The law has—tacitly, at least—absolved her of complicity in the death of the Countess of Frome. I say it should form no part of the present enquiry. I say she should be regarded as absolutely innocent.’

  His Grace looked down, astonished, his finger between two pages of the great book, as though about to open it out at a relevant passage and pass wise and instant judgement. ‘If her ladyship is innocent, my lord, why does she not simply say so?’

  ‘Her ladyship does say so: she has rejected the accusation.’

  ‘To reject is one thing; to offer an explanation (which only she can give) of the Countess’s death would clear her of suspicion.’

  ‘As to that,’ he said impatiently, ‘there may be a dozen explanations.’

  ‘You will find, if you examine it, my lord, that there are none. Lady Weyburn would have us believe that she slept through the night and knew nothing. If, then, the Countess came through—it’s true there was a communicating room—and helped herself: how could she have found the key?’

  ‘Perhaps Lady Weyburn has forgotten—perhaps she left the key in the lock.’

  ‘But she had no occasion to go to the cupboard; her own dose of laudanum had been left out by the maid and none other was used. In any event, the closet was found locked and the key still hidden. Even had the Countess found the key in the lock, how could she have known where to replace it?’

  ‘As to that—the maid may have talked, may have mentioned the hiding-place casually; perhaps to the Countess’s lady’s-maid.…’

  Witness of the maid, recalled, that she had spoken to no one. Several members of the servants’ hall could testify that she had spoken to no one but gone straight to bed (and one of the footmen that she stayed there all night—which corroboration, however, she did not put forward).

  ‘The Countess perhaps came back; and the hiding-place was referred to.’

  ‘Then why does not her ladyship say so? And supposing it true, why not ask then for the laudanum? And supposing she came again later, and finding Lady Weyburn asleep, as she says—overlooking the smaller phials, took the too-large one: why lock the closet again, why hide the key?…’

  ‘The closet contained Lady Weyburn’s jewels.’

  ‘Very well. The Countess of Frome, having talked exhaustively with Lady Weyburn since early afternoon, retired at last at midnight; returns again and enters into a conversation which for no imaginable reason turns to the hiding-place of the key; retires again, feels the need for laudanum, ignores the dose close to her hand, comes to her friend’s room, recollects the hiding-place of the key so providentially mentioned a little while earlier, unlocks the cupboard, ignores the proper dose put up in small phials and takes one enormously larger; relocks the cupboard, hides the key again and then … Where is the glass, my lord, from which the Countess drank? What has became of that larger phial?’

  ‘You know what became of the phial,’ said Lord Weyburn, angrily. ‘Its remains were in the embers of Lady Weyburn’s fire. The Countess may well have tossed it there, thinking nothing of it.’

  ‘And the glass?’

  ‘She used Lady Weyburn’s glass,’ he suggested, shrugging. ‘There was a glass at the bedside, already with dregs of laudanum in it. May not the Countess have broken the phial into that glass, drunk down the contents, not knowing she had the wrong, the too-large phial: and tossed the empty phial into the embe
rs of the fire?’ He shrugged again: it all sounded so simple—if you said it quickly.

  His Grace of Orrell thought so, too. ‘All this is dependent, my lord, of course, upon Lady Weyburn having told the Countess where the key was.’ It was his turn to shrug; he looked round the court, very meaningly. ‘But if she did,’ he said, ‘why doesn’t she say so?’

  He was silent, defeated. She raised her eyes and looked over at him with a small, ironical smile. ‘So soon, my lord? Are you already vanquished?’ She was resigned to it. ‘Ah, well—it was good of you to constitute yourself my champion in this matter at least: you did so once before, if you recall, though “within limits”, and that time also, failed at the first throw. So trouble yourself no further, I beg of you: you will only damage your cause and I need no champions. I did not kill my friend, I had no quarrel with her, she knew no secret of mine, I had no motive.’ She gave him a small bow, bending forward slightly in the great chair.

  The Earl of Frome struggled up to his feet again. ‘As to motive … As to motive …’ He was silent a moment, shaking his head like a wounded bear, shaking off the fog of grief that closed in on him like a grey blanket, muffling his mind against sense and clarity. ‘As to motive—in August of the year 1754, madame, did you not—did you not write her a letter?—did you not write to her that you were in great trouble, ill, distressed, and obliged to leave England immediately, did you not implore her to go with you?… I—she—against my counsel she went with you, we—we quarrelled.…’ His voice broke, he stood staring down at his twitching hands, tears in his eyes, muttering to himself, oblivious of them all, small, choked-off sentences.… The only disagreement.… Parted.… All that time lost to them.… And all through her—through her.…

  She sprang to her feet. ‘My lord—why do you distress yourself, what good can it do to you: or to Christine? I pray you, for your own sake, let it rest.’

  He seemed to come back to the present with a start: he stared at her heavily. ‘How can I let it rest—until I know? How did she die? You killed her—because of what she knew.…’

  ‘I did not kill her,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Then prove it to me: answer me!’ He pursued the advantage quickly, before she hardened again in her resistance. ‘She agreed at last: she went with you to Italy—and so was witness to all that happened there?’

  ‘All the world is witness to that, my lord; I have not denied it. My son was born there.’

  ‘Upon what date, madame, was your son born?’

  ‘On February 15th, my lord, as I think you know.’ She waited for the hiss of indrawn breaths to die away, the dry rustle of fingers tapping out the tally of the months from August to February: from August 1st to February 15th. Into the subsequent chill silence she said, steadily: ‘He was prematurely born.’

  He showed no triumph: he repeated heavily: ‘Two months prematurely born.’

  ‘Rather more than two months: yes, my lord.’

  ‘Having been conceived upon the single occasion of the consummation of your marriage with Lord Weyburn?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Am I right in saying that the child was born in Florence?’

  ‘In Florence, yes.’

  ‘Why?’ said Lord Frome.

  She looked a little startled. ‘Why in Florence?’

  ‘Why not in Venice, madame, where your home was?’

  She feigned indifference but she looked at him warily.

  ‘I was in the care of my mother. My mother is restless since my father died, she ceaselessly changes her home. Moreover …’ She shrugged. ‘I did not want my affairs known to all Venice.’

  ‘Why not? You had come back there as a married woman: why should you not be having a child?’

  ‘Well, as to that …’ She thought about it a little. She said quickly: ‘As to that, my lord, the ways of our world of fashion are not quite clearly understood in Venice. In Italy, if a woman is married, she remains with her husband; to be apart while the first child is coming would seem to the simple people of Venice—curious. Moreover, Florence was my mother’s birthplace, she knew of a doctor there.…’

  ‘So you left Venice where everybody knew you: and went for the birth of this—premature—infant to Florence?’

  ‘Where, as you wish me to agree, no doubt—nobody knew me.’

  ‘Where nobody knew you. Or rather,’ he said, and once again the heavy, baffled look came about his face, the pain of grief for a moment half forgotten, came flooding back, ‘or rather—where one person knew you. One person who was with you, one person who saw all, knew all, one person who alone could have told us the secret truth: and cannot tell us because—because she has been silenced, because she’s dead.…’

  ‘The truth?’ she stammered. ‘The secret? I do not understand you, my lord: what truth could she know, what secret could she have told?’

  ‘She could have told,’ said the Earl of Frome, ‘whether the child was or was not—prematurely born.’

  For if not—then the case was over: for he could not possibly be Lord Weyborn’s son.

  The last day. The last day of sitting in torment in that lovely room, the great room with the crystal chandeliers, with the painted ceiling and slender marble columns, which for the past long week had been a prison; a prison where one sat in studied grace, wearing a proud face, smiling a scornful smile, spreading a painted fan to lie, fluttering only a little with the gentle movement of a jewelled hand, across a breast that hid a sick and despairing heart. The last day, perhaps, of wearing a proud title—for rebel how she might against the verdict of the court, that verdict must govern every hour of her life to come: and to whom would she be ‘my lady’ when my lord declared her none of his? The last, the final day.…

  Sir Henry Kidd:

  ‘My lord Duke, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen of the jury.… We come now to the last, the final day.…

  ‘We come at last to the final day—the final day of this Trial-by-Society, as I may call it, of Lady Weyburn of Starrbelow—as I may, for a little while yet, call her. Before the day closes, I shall bring before you one more witness: but this witness, whose evidence I venture to say will prove to be of paramount, of clinching importance to my presentation of the case, comes from abroad and has been detained upon the way—will be here today, but is not here yet. While we await him, let me entertain you, my lords, ladies and gentlemen—with a story.…

  ‘In the summer of 1753 there came here among us a certain young lady from Italy who—innocent or guilty—succeeded by an apparently accidental displacement of her dress in attracting the notice of the Town: and specifically of two gentlemen, one of royal, one of noble, birth. Under pressure from her guardians, she accepted the hand of the rich nobleman: but she had already given her heart, perhaps had already confided her honour, to the other: despite the other engagement, she married him secretly on Ladyday, March 25th, 1754. Some time about six weeks later, a child is conceived (and was born, in February of the following year). In the meantime, she is faced with her undertaking to marry his lordship at the end of May.

  ‘Members of the jury—we shall, perhaps, never know just what went wrong. The Prince was at this time a poor man, dependent upon august relatives abroad, going much in fear of them. Did they quarrel? Did they fall out of love altogether? Did they simply grow afraid of the future, now that the deed was done? At any rate, they came to a mutual plan: she was to proceed with the marriage to Lord Weyburn, the child—if they even yet knew about the child—could be fathered upon him: they would somehow destroy all records of the previous marriage—and that would be that.

  ‘That would have been that, indeed: but now something occurred to wreck all their plans. Lord Weyburn left his bride at the door of the church; and a child was positively on the way.

  ‘For a fortnight she hoped, prayed, struggled with the situation—and, sitting brooding at her window at Starrbelow, evolved alternative plans. She would send for the Prince, effect a reconciliation, deny her marr
iage to Lord Weyburn and throw in her lot with his: but should this fail, it was imperative that Lord Weyburn never discover the earlier marriage—the child must be fathered upon anyone but the Prince. With this in her mind, she lost no time even before she could discuss the matter with her true husband in embarking upon a career of flagrant misconduct—with a circle of profligates one of whom might later be suspected of fathering the child: for no time was to be lost. And it was as well she did: for from those long, secret, anxious discussions with Prince Anton, while his mistress was meanwhile “got out of the way”, no reconciliation was effected. She must continue to be Lady Weyburn and let her “husband” accuse her of infidelity if he would—he would find it hard to prove in law that a child born in wedlock to her was not his own.

  ‘Members of the jury—between us we have puzzled out the facts: and to all of us—to me as well as, I hope, to you—new light has come. For, looking back upon the first day of this trial: what evidence have we of any real, of any positive, misconduct on Lady Weyburn’s part with any of these gentlemen? The evidence of village wenches—tainted, as she herself showed us in a neat piece of “cross-examination”, with envy and spite: the evidence of servants resentful of the new mistress who appeared to have tricked their master into marriage—and much of that conflicting: the evidence of men boasting to one another, each doubtless believing the other favoured by her and anxious not to appear himself rebuffed; and—the evidence of herself, the evidence of deliberately publicized wild behaviour, of such trivia as the apparent acceptance of a pair of jewelled buckles (which she now denies, and which it has never been proved she did not buy for herself).… That at the beginning of this trial, I myself believed her guilty of wantonness, I do not deny: but I now believe, and hope to induce you also to believe, that this was all part of that carefully thought-out plan—which, moreover, was a plan with a dual purpose. A plan, first, to provide half a dozen names or more whom Lord Weyburn might suspect of fathering her child, thus drawing away attention from her marriage to Prince Anton: and a plan to facilitate the abstraction of that book of records from the chapel in Mayfair. For, growing up naturally enough no doubt from the episode of the “highwaymen” in Gloucestershire, this I now believe was the whole secret purpose of the “Treasure Seekers’ Circle”: to disguise among a dozen such escapades the theft of the register.