by Anne Perry
“Did your mother ever say anything to you to indicate that she thought so, or that the relationship gave her any anxiety or distress of any sort?”
“No—no, I cannot recall that she ever mentioned it at all.”
“Never?” Rathbone said with surprise. “And yet you were very close, were you not?”
For the first time Sabella quite openly looked up towards the dock.
“Yes, we were—we are close.”
“And she never mentioned the subject?”
“No.”
“Thank you.” He turned back to Lovat-Smith with a smile.
Lovat-Smith rose.
“Mrs. Pole, did you kill your father?”
The judge held up his hand to prevent Sabella from replying, and looked at Rathbone, inviting him to object. It was an improper question, since it had not been part of the examination in chief, and also she should be warned of the possibility of incriminating herself.
Rathbone shrugged.
The judge sighed and lowered his hand, frowning at Lovat-Smith.
“You do not need to answer that question unless you wish to,” he said to Sabella.
“No, I did not,” Sabella said huskily, her voice little more than a whisper.
“Thank you.” Lovat-Smith inclined his head; it was all he had required.
The judge leaned forward. “You may go, Mrs. Pole,” he said gently. “There is nothing further.”
“Oh,” she said, as if a little lost and wishing to find something more to say, something to help. Reluctantly she came down, assisted for the last two steps by the clerk of the court, and disappeared into the crowd, the light catching for a moment on her pale hair before she was gone.
There was an adjournment for luncheon. Monk and Hester found a man with a sandwich cart, purchased a sandwich each and ate them in great haste before returning to find their seats again.
As soon as the court reassembled and came to order the next witness was summoned.
“Fenton Pole!” the bailiff said loudly. “Calling Fenton Pole!”
Fenton Pole climbed up the stairs to the stand, his face set, his jaw hard in lines of utter disapproval. He answered Lovat-Smith tersely but very much as though he believed his mother-in-law to be guilty, but insane. Never even for an instant did he turn his head and look up at her. Twice Lovat-Smith had to stop him from expressing his view in so many words, as if it excused the family from any connection. After all madness was like a disease, a tragedy which might strike anyone, therefore they were not accountable. His resentment of the whole matter was apparent.
There were murmurs of sympathy from the crowd, even one quite audible word of agreement; but looking at the jury again Hester could see at least one man’s face cloud over and a certain disapproval touch him. He seemed to take his duty very seriously, and had probably been told much about not judging the case before all the evidence was in. And for all he sought impartiality, he did not admire disloyalty. He shot Fenton Pole a look of deep dislike. For an instant Hester felt unreasonably comforted. It was silly, and her wiser self knew it, and yet it was a straw in the wind, a sign that at least one man had not yet condemned Alexandra outright.
Rathbone asked Fenton Pole very little, only if he had any precise and incontrovertible evidence that his father-in-law was having an affair with Louisa Furnival.
Pole’s face darkened with contempt for such vulgarity, and with offense that the matter should have been raised at all.
“Certainly not,” he said vigorously. “General Carlyon was not an immoral man. To suppose that he indulged in such adulterous behavior is quite unbalanced, not rational at all, and without any foundation in fact.”
“Quite so,” Rathbone agreed. “And have you any cause, Mr. Pole, to suppose that your mother-in-law, Mrs. Carlyon, believed him to be so deceiving her, and betraying his vows?”
Pole’s lips tightened.
“I would have thought our presence here today was tragically sufficient proof of that.”
“Oh no, Mr. Pole, not at all,” Rathbone replied with a harsh sibilance to his voice. “It is proof only that General Carlyon is dead, by violence, and that the police have some cause, rightly or wrongly, to bring a case against Mrs. Carlyon.”
There was a rustle of movement in the jury. Someone sat up a trifle straighter.
Fenton Pole looked confused. He did not argue, although the rebuttal was plain in his face.
“You have not answered my question, Mr. Pole,” Rathbone pressed him. “Did you see or hear anything to prove to you that Mrs. Carlyon believed there to be anything improper in the relationship between Mrs. Furnival and the general?”
“Ah—well … said like that, I suppose not. I don’t know what you have in mind.”
“Nothing, Mr. Pole. And it would be quite improper for me to suggest anything to you, as I am sure his lordship would inform you.”
Fenton Pole did not even glance at the judge.
He was excused.
Lovat-Smith called the footman, John Barton. He was overawed by the occasion, and his fair face was flushed hot with embarrassment. He stuttered as he took the oath and gave his name, occupation and residence. Lovat-Smith was extremely gentle with him and never once condescended or treated him with less courtesy than he had Fenton Pole or Maxim Furnival. To the most absolute silence from the court and the rapt attention of the jury, he elicited from him the whole story of the clearing away after the dinner party, the carrying of the coal buckets up the front stairs, the observation of the suit of armor still standing on its plinth, who was in the withdrawing room, his meeting with the maid, and the final inevitable conclusion that only either Sabella or Alexandra could possibly have killed Thaddeus Carlyon.
There was a slow letting out of a sigh around the courtroom, like the first chill air of a coming storm.
Rathbone rose amid a crackling silence. Not a juryman moved.
“I have no questions to ask this witness, my lord.”
There was a gasp of amazement. Jurors swiveled around to look at one another in disbelief.
The judge leaned forward. “Are you sure, Mr. Rathbone? This witness’s evidence is very serious for your client.”
“I am quite sure, thank you, my lord.”
The judge frowned. “Very well.” He turned to John. “You are excused.”
Lovat-Smith called the upstairs maid with the red hair, and sealed beyond doubt the incontestable fact that it could only have been Alexandra who pushed the general over the stairs, and then followed him down and plunged the halberd into his body.
“I don’t know why this has to go on,” a man said behind Monk. “Waste o’ time.”
“Waste o’ money,” his companion agreed. “Should just call it done, ’ang ’er now. Nothing anyone can say to that.”
Monk swung around, his face tight, hard, eyes blazing.
“Because Englishmen don’t hang people without giving them a chance to explain,” he said between his teeth. “It’s a quaint custom, but we give everyone a hearing, whatever we think of them. If that doesn’t suit you, then you’d better go somewhere else, because there’s no place for you here!”
“ ’Ere! ’Oo are you callin’ foreign? I’m as English as you are! An’ I pay me taxes, but not for the likes of ’er to play fast an’ loose wi’ the law. I believe in the law, I do. Can’t ’ave women going ’round murderin’ their ’usbands every time they get a fit o’ jealousy. No one in England’d be safe!”
“You don’t believe in the law,” Monk accused bitterly. “You believe in the rope, and mob rule, you just said so.”
“I never did. You lyin’ bastard!”
“You said forget the trial, overthrow the courts, hang her now, without waiting for a verdict.” Monk glared at him. “You want to do away with judge and jury and be both yourself.”
“I never said that!”
Monk gave him a look of total disgust, and turned to Hester, as they rose on adjournment, taking her a trifle roughly by the
elbow, and steering her out through the noisy, shoving crowd.
There was nothing to say. It was what they could have expected: a crowd who knew no more than the newspapers had led them to believe; a judge who was fair, impartial and unable to help; a prosecuting counsel who was skilled and would be duped or misled by no one. The evidence proved that Alexandra had murdered her husband. That should not depress them or make them the least discouraged. It was not in question.
Monk was pushing his way through the people who jostled and talked, swirling around like dead leaves in an eddy of wind, infuriating him because he had purpose and was trying to force his way out as if somehow haste could help them to escape what was in their minds.
They were out in Old Bailey and turning onto Ludgate Hill when at last he spoke.
“I hope to God he knows what he is doing.”
“That is a stupid thing to say,” she replied angrily, because she was frightened herself, and stung for Rathbone. “He’s doing his best—what we all agreed on. And anyway, what alternative is there? There isn’t any other plan. She did do it. It would be pointless to try to deny it. There’s nothing else to say, except the reason why.”
“No,” he agreed grimly. “No, there isn’t. Damn, but it’s cold. June shouldn’t be this cold.”
She managed to smile. “Shouldn’t it? It frequently is.”
He glared at her wordlessly.
“It’ll get better.” She shrugged and pulled her cloak higher. “Thank you for saving me a seat. I’ll be here tomorrow.”
She parted from him and set off into the chill air. She took a hansom, in spite of the expense, to Callandra Daviot’s house.
“What has happened?” Callandra asked immediately, rising from her chair, her face anxious as she regarded Hester, seeing her tiredness, the droop of her shoulders and the fear in her eyes. “Come sit down—tell me.”
Hester sat obediently. “Only what we expected, I suppose. But they all seem so very rational and set in their ideas. They know she did it—Lovat-Smith has proved that already. I just feel as if no matter what we say, they’ll never believe he was anything but a fine man, a soldier and a hero. How can we prove he sodomized his own son?” Deliberately she used the hardest word she could find, and was perversely annoyed when Callandra did not flinch. “They’ll only hate her the more fiercely that we could say such a thing about such a fine man.” She spoke with heavy sarcasm. “They’ll hang her higher for the insult.”
“Find the others,” Callandra said levelly, her gray eyes sad and hard. “The alternative is giving up. Are you prepared to do that?”
“No, of course not. But I’m trying to think, if we are realistic, we should be prepared to be beaten.”
Callandra stared at her, waiting, refusing to speak.
Hester met her look silently, then gradually began to think.
“The general’s father abused him.” She was fumbling towards something, a thread to begin pulling. “I don’t suppose he started doing it himself suddenly, do you?”
“I have no idea—but sense would suggest not.”
“There must be something to find in the past, if only we knew where to look,” she went on, trying to make herself believe. “We’ve got to find the others; the other people who do this abysmal thing. But where? It’s no use saying the old colonel did—we’ll never prove that. He’ll deny it, so will everyone else, and the general is dead.”
She leaned back slowly. “Anyway, what would be the use? Even if we proved someone else did, that would not prove it of the general, or that Alexandra knew. I don’t know where to begin. And time is so short.” She stared at Callandra miserably. “Oliver has to start the defense in a couple of days, at the outside. Lovat-Smith is proving his case to the hilt. We haven’t said a single thing worth anything yet—only that there was no evidence Alexandra was jealous.”
“Not the others who abuse,” Callandra said quietly. “The other victims. We must search the military records again.”
“There’s no time,” Hester said desperately. “It would take months. And there might be nothing anyway.”
“If he did that in the army, there will be something to find.” Callandra’s voice had no uncertainty in it, no quaver of doubt. “You stay at the trial. I’ll search for some slip he’s made, some drummer boy or cadet who’s been hurt enough for it to show.”
“Do you think …?” Hester felt a quick leap of hope, foolish, quite unreasonable.
“Calm down, order your mind,” Callandra commanded. “Tell me again everything that we know about the whole affair!”
Hester obeyed.
When the court was adjourned Oliver Rathbone was on his way out when Lovat-Smith caught up with him, his dark face sharp with curiosity. There was no avoiding him, and Rathbone was only half certain he wanted to. He had a need to speak with him, as one is sometimes compelled to probe a wound to see just how deep or how painful it is.
“What in the devil’s name made you take this one?” Lovat-Smith demanded, his eyes meeting Rathbone’s, brilliant with intelligence. There was a light in the back of them which might have been a wry kind of pity, or any of a dozen other things, all equally uncomfortable. “What are you playing at? You don’t even seem to be trying. There are no miracles in this, you know. She did it!”
Somehow the goad lifted Rathbone’s spirits; it gave him something to fight against. He looked back at Lovat-Smith, a man he respected, and if he were to know him better, might even like. They had much in common.
“I know she did,” he said with a dry, close little smile. “Have I worried you, Wilberforce?”
Lovat-Smith smiled with answering tightness, his eyes bright. “Concerned me, Oliver, concerned me. I should not like to see you lose your touch. Your skill hitherto has been one of the ornaments of our profession. It would be … disconcerting”—he chose the word deliberately—“to have you crumble to pieces. What certitude then would there be for any of us?”
“How kind of you,” Rathbone murmured sarcastically. “But easy victories pall after a while. If one always wins, perhaps one is attempting only what is well within one’s capabilities—and there lies a kind of death, don’t you think? That which does not grow may well be showing the first signs of atrophy.”
They were passed by two lawyers, heads close together. They both turned to look at Rathbone, curiosity in their faces, before they resumed their conversation.
“All probably true,” Lovat-Smith conceded, his eyes never leaving Rathbone’s, a smile curling his mouth. “But though it is fine philosophy, it has nothing to do with the Carlyon case. Are you going to try for diminished responsibility? You’ve left it rather late—the judge will not take kindly to your not having said so at the beginning. You should have pleaded guilty but insane. I would have been prepared to consider meeting you somewhere on that.”
“Do you think she’s insane?” Rathbone enquired with raised eyebrows, disbelief in his voice.
Lovat-Smith pulled a face. “She didn’t seem so. But in view of your masterly proof that no one thought there was an affair between Mrs. Furnival and the general, not even Mrs. Carlyon herself, by all accounts, what else is there? Isn’t that what you are leading to: her assumption was groundless, and mad?”
Rathbone’s smile broadened into a grin. “Come along, Wilberforce. You know better than that! You’ll hear my defense when the rest of the court does.”
Lovat-Smith shook his head, a furrow between his black eyebrows.
Rathbone gave him a tiny mock salute with more bravado than he felt, and took his leave. Lovat-Smith stood on the spot on the great courtroom steps, deep in thought, seemingly unaware of the coming and going around him, the crush of people, the chatter of voices.
Instead of going home, which perhaps he ought to have done, Rathbone took a hansom and went out to Primrose Hill to take supper with his father. He found Henry Rathbone standing in the garden looking at the young moon pale in the sky above the orchard trees, and half listening to t
he birdsong as the late starlings swirled across the sky and here and there a thrush or a chaffinch gave a warning cry.
For several moments they both stood in silence, letting the peace of the evening smooth out the smallest of the frets and wrinkles of the day. The bigger things, the pains and disappointments, took a firmer shape, less angry. Temper drained away.
“Well?” Henry Rathbone said eventually, half turning to look at Oliver.
“I suppose as well as could be expected,” Oliver replied. “Lovat-Smith thinks I have lost my grip in taking the case at all. He may be right. In the cold light of the courtroom it seems a pretty wild attempt. Sometimes I even wonder if I believe in it myself. The public image of General Thaddeus Carlyon is impeccable, and the private one almost as good.” He remembered vividly his father’s anger and dismay, his imagination of pain, when he had told him of the abuse. He did not look at him now.
“Who testified today?” Henry asked quietly.
“The Furnivals. Lord, I loathe Louisa Furnival!” he said with sudden vehemence. “She is the total antithesis of everything I find attractive in a woman. Devious, manipulative, cocksure of herself, humorless, materialistic and completely unemotional. But I cannot fault her in the witness box.” His face tightened. “And how I wanted to. I would take the greatest possible pleasure in tearing her to shreds!”
“How is Hester Latterly?”
“What?”
“How is Hester?” Henry repeated.
“What made you ask that?” Oliver screwed up his face.
“The opposite of everything you find attractive in a woman,” Henry replied with a quiet smile.
Oliver blushed, a thing he did not do often. “I didn’t see her,” he said, feeling ridiculously evasive although it was the absolute truth.
Henry said nothing further, and perversely Oliver felt worse than if he had pursued the matter and allowed him to argue.
Beyond the orchard wall another cloud of starlings rose chattering into the pale sky and circled around, dark specks against the last flush of the sun. The honeysuckle was coming into bloom and the perfume of it was so strong the breeze carried it across the lawn to where they were standing. Oliver felt a rush of emotion, a sweetness, a longing to hold the beauty and keep it, which was impossible and always would be, a loneliness because he ached to share it, and pity, confusion and piercing hope all at once. He remained silent because silence was the only space large enough to hold it without crushing or bruising the heart of it.
