Defend and Betray

by Anne Perry

  The following morning he went to see Alexandra before court began. He did not know what he could say to her, but to leave her alone would be inexcusable. She was in the police cell, and as soon as she heard his step she swung around, her eyes wide, her face drained of all color. He could feel the fear in her touching him like a palpable thing.

  “They hate me,” she said simply, her voice betraying the tears so close to the surface. “They have already made up their minds. They aren’t even listening. I heard one woman call out ‘Hang her!’ ” She struggled to keep her control and almost failed. She blinked hard. “If women feel like that, what hope is there for me with the jury, who are all men?”

  “More hope,” he said very gently, and was amazed at the certainty in his own voice. Without thinking he took her hands in his, at first quite unresisting, like those of someone too ill to respond. “More hope,” he said again with even greater assurance. “The woman you heard was frightened because you threaten her own status if you are allowed to go free and Society accepts you. Her only value in her own eyes is the certainty of her unquestionable purity. She has nothing else marketable, no talent, no beauty, no wealth or social position, but she has her impeccable virtue. Therefore virtue must keep its unassailable value. She does not understand virtue as a positive thing—generosity, patience, courage, kindness—only as the freedom from taint. That is so much easier to cope with.”

  She smiled bleakly. “You make it sound so very reasonable, and I don’t feel it is at all. I feel it as hate.” Her voice quivered.

  “Of course it is hate, because it is fear, which is one of the ugliest of emotions. But later, when they have the truth, it will swing ’round like the wind, and blow just as hard from the other direction.”

  “Do you think so?” There was no belief in her and no lightness in her eyes.

  “Yes,” he said with more certainty than he was sure of. “Then it will be compassion and outrage—and fear lest such a thing happen to those they love, their own children. We are capable of great ugliness and stupidity,” he said gently. “But you will find many of the same people just as capable of courage and pity as well. We must tell them the truth so they can have the chance.”

  She shivered and half turned away.

  “We are singing in the dark, Mr. Rathbone. They aren’t going to believe you, for the very reasons you talk about. Thaddeus was a hero, the sort of hero they need to believe in, because there are hundreds like him in the army, and they are what keep us safe and build our Empire.” She hunched a little farther into herself. “They protect us from the real armies outside, and from the armies of doubt inside. If you destroy the British soldier in his red coat, the men who stood against all Europe and defeated Napoleon, saved England from the French, acquired Africa, India, Canada, quarter of the world, what have you left? No one is going to do that for one woman who is a criminal anyway.”

  “All you are saying is that the odds are heavy against us.” He deliberately made his voice harder, suppressing the emotion he felt. “That same redcoat would not have turned away from battle because he was not sure of winning. You haven’t read his history if you can entertain that thought for a second. His finest victories have been when outnumbered and against the odds.”

  “Like the charge of the Light Brigade?” she said with sudden sarcasm. “Do you know how many of them died? And for nothing at all!”

  “Yes, one man in six of the entire Brigade—God knows how many were injured,” he replied flatly, aware of a dull heat in his cheeks. “I was thinking more of the ‘thin red line’—which if you recall stood a single man deep, and repulsed the enemy and held its ground till the charge broke and failed.”

  There was a smile on her wide mouth, and tears in her eyes, and no belief.

  “Is that what you intend?”

  “Certainly.”

  He could see she was still frightened, he could almost taste it in the air, but she had lost the will to fight him anymore. She turned away; it was surrender, and dismissal. She needed her time alone to prepare for the fear and the embarrassment, and the helplessness of the day.

  The first witness was Charles Hargrave, called by Lovat-Smith to confirm the events of the dinner party already given, but primarily to retell his finding of the body of the general, with its terrible wound.

  “Mr. Furnival came back into the room and said that the general had had an accident, is that correct?” Lovat-Smith asked.

  Hargrave looked very serious, his face reflecting both his professional gravity and personal distress. The jury listened to him with a respect they reserved for the more distinguished members of certain professions: medicine, the Church, and lawyers who dealt with the bequests of the dead.

  “Quite correct,” Hargrave replied with a flicker of a smile across his rakish, rather elegant sandy face. “I presume he phrased it that way because he did not want to alarm people or cause more distress than necessary.”

  “Why do you say that, Doctor?”

  “Because as soon as I went into the hallway myself and saw the body it was perfectly apparent that he was dead. Even a person with no medical training at all must have been aware of it.”

  “Could you describe his injuries—in full, please, Dr. Hargrave?”

  The jury all shifted fractionally in their seats, attention and unhappiness vying in their expressions.

  A shadow crossed Hargrave’s face, but he was too practiced to need any explanation as to the necessity for such a thing.

  “Of course,” he agreed. “At the time I found him he was lying on his back with his left arm flung out, more or less level with one shoulder, but bent at the elbow. The right arm was only a short distance from his side, the hand twelve or fourteen inches from his hip. His legs were bent, the right folded awkwardly under him, and I judged it to be broken below the knee, his left leg severely twisted. These guesses later turned out to be correct.” An expression crossed his face it was impossible to name, but it did not seem to be complacency. His eyes remained always on Lovat-Smith, never once straying upwards towards Alexandra in the dock opposite him.

  “The injuries?” Lovat-Smith prompted.

  “At the time all that was visible was bruising to the head, bleeding from the scalp at the left temple where he had struck the ground. There was a certain amount of blood, but not a great deal.”

  People in the gallery were craning their necks to stare up at Alexandra. There was a hiss of indrawn breath and a muttering.

  “Let me understand you, Doctor.” Lovat-Smith held up his hand, strong, short-fingered and slender. “There was only one injury to the head that you could see?”

  “That is correct.”

  “As a medical man, what do you deduce from that?”

  Hargrave lifted his wide shoulders very slightly. “That he fell straight over the banister and struck his head only once.”

  Lovat-Smith touched his left temple.

  “Here?”

  “Yes, within an inch or so.”

  “And yet he was lying on his back, did you not say?”

  “I did,” Hargrave said very quietly.

  “Dr. Hargrave, Mr. Furnival has told us that the halberd was protruding from his chest.” Lovat-Smith paced across the floor and swung around, staring up at Hargrave on the witness box, his face creased in concentration. “How could a man fall from a balcony onto a weapon held upright in the hands of a suit of armour, piercing his chest, and land in such a way as to bruise himself on the front of his temple?”

  The judge glanced at Rathbone.

  Rathbone pursed his lips. He had no objections. He did not contest that Alexandra had murdered the general. This was all necessary, but beside the point of the real issue.

  Lovat-Smith seemed surprised there was no interruption. Far from making it easier for him, it seemed to throw him a trifle off his stride.

  “Dr. Hargrave,” he said, shifting his balance from one foot to the other.

  A juror fidgeted. Another scratched his
nose and frowned.

  “I have no idea,” Hargrave replied. “It would seem to me as if the only explanation must be that he fell backwards, as one would naturally, and in some way twisted in the air after—” He stopped.

  Lovat-Smith’s black eyebrows rose curiously.

  “You were saying, Doctor?” He spread his arms out. “He fell over backwards, turned in the air to allow the halberd to pierce his chest, and then somehow turned again so he could strike the floor with his temple? All without breaking the halberd or tearing it out of the wound. And then he rolled over to lie on his back with one leg folded under the other? You amaze me.”

  “Of course not,” Hargrave said seriously, his temper unruffled, only a deep concern reflected in his face.

  Rathbone glanced at the jury and knew they liked Hargrave, and Lovat-Smith had annoyed them. He also knew it was intentional. Hargrave was his witness, he wished him to be not only liked but profoundly believed.

  “Then what are you saying, Dr. Hargrave?”

  Hargrave was very serious. He looked at no one but Lovat-Smith, as if the two of them were discussing some tragedy in their gentlemen’s club. There were faint mutters of approval from the crowd.

  “That he must have fallen and struck his head, and then spun, the halberd been driven into his body when he was lying on the ground. Perhaps he was moved, but not necessarily. He could quite naturally have struck his head and then rolled a little to lie on his back. His head was at an odd angle—but his neck was not broken. I looked for that, and I am sure it was not so.”

  “You are saying it could not have been an accident, Dr. Hargrave?”

  Hargrave’s face tightened. “I am.”

  “How long did it take you to come to this tragic conclusion?”

  “From the time I first saw the body, about—about one or two minutes, I imagine.” A ghost of a smile moved his lips. “Time is a peculiar commodity on such an occasion. It seems both to stretch out endlessly, like a road before and behind with no turning, and at the same time to crush in on you and have no size at all. To say one or two minutes is only a guess, made afterwards using intelligence. It was one of the most dreadful moments I can recall.”

  “Why? Because you knew someone in that house, one of your personal friends, had murdered General Thaddeus Carlyon?”

  Again the judge glanced at Rathbone, and Rathbone made no move. A frown crossed the judge’s face, and still Rathbone did not object.

  “Yes,” Hargrave said almost inaudibly. “I regret it, but it was inescapable. I am sorry.” For the first and only time he looked up at Alexandra.

  “Just so,” Lovat-Smith agreed solemnly. “And accordingly you informed the police?”

  “I did.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rathbone looked at the jury again. Not one of them looked at the dock. She sat there motionless, her blue eyes on Rathbone, without anger, without surprise, and without hope.

  He smiled at her, and felt ridiculous.

  10

  Monk listened to Lovat-Smith questioning Charles Hargrave with a mounting anxiety. Hargrave was creating an excellent impression with the jury; he could see their grave, attentive faces. He not only had their respect but their belief. Whatever he said about the Carlyons they would accept.

  There was nothing Rathbone could do yet, and Monk’s intelligence knew it; nevertheless he fretted at the helplessness and the anger rose in him, clenching his hands and hardening the muscles of his body.

  Lovat-Smith stood in front of the witness box, not elegantly (it was not in him), but with a vitality that held attention more effectively, and his voice was fine, resonant and individual, an actor’s instrument.

  “Dr. Hargrave, you have known the Carlyon family for many years, and indeed been their medical adviser for most of that time, is that not so?”

  “It is.”

  “You must be in a position to have observed their characters, their relationships with one another.”

  Rathbone stiffened, but did not yet interrupt.

  Lovat-Smith smiled, glanced at Rathbone, then back up at Hargrave.

  “Please be careful to answer only from your own observation,” he warned. “Nothing that you were told by someone else, unless it is to account for their own behavior; and please do not give us your personal judgment, only the grounds upon which you base it.”

  “I understand,” Hargrave acknowledged with the bleakest of smiles. “I have given evidence before, Mr. Lovat-Smith. What is it you wish to know?”

  With extreme care as to the rules of evidence, all morning and well into the afternoon Lovat-Smith drew from Hargrave a picture of Thaddeus Carlyon as honorable and upright, a military hero, a fine leader to his men, an example to that youth which looked to courage, discipline and honor as their goals. He had been an excellent husband who had never ill-used his wife with physical violence or cruelty, nor made excessive demands of her in the marriage bed, but on the other hand had given her three fine children, to whom he had been a father of devotion beyond the normal. His son adored him, and rightly so, since he had spent much time with the boy and taken great care in the determination of his future. There was no evidence whatsoever that he had ever been unfaithful to his wife, nor drunk to excess, gambled, kept her short of money, insulted her, slighted her in public, or in any other way treated her less than extremely well.

  Had he ever exhibited any signs whatever of mental or emotional instability?

  None at all; the idea would be laughable, were it not so offensive.

  What about the accused, who was also his patient?

  That, tragically, was different. She had, in the last year or so, become agitated without apparent cause, been subject to deep moods of melancholy, had fits of weeping for which she would give no reason, had absented herself from her home without telling anyone where she was going, and had quarreled violently with her husband.

  The jury were looking at Alexandra, but with embarrassment now, as if she were someone it was vulgar to observe, like someone naked, or caught in an intimate act.

  “And how do you know this, Dr. Hargrave?” Lovat-Smith enquired.

  Still Rathbone sat silently.

  “Of course I did not hear the quarrels,” Hargrave said, biting his lip. “But the weeping and the melancholy I saw, and the absences were apparent to everyone. I called more than once and found unexplainably that she was not there. I am afraid the agitation, for which she would never give me a reason, was painfully obvious each time she saw me in consultation. She was so disturbed as to be hysterical—I use the word intentionally. But she never gave me any reason, only wild hints and accusations.”

  “Of what?” Lovat-Smith frowned. His voice rose dramatically with interest, as if he did not know what the answer would be, although Monk, sitting almost in the same seat as on the previous day, assumed he must. Surely he was far too skilled to have asked the question without first knowing the answer. Although it was just possible his case was so strong, and proceeding without challenge, that he might have thought he could take the risk.

  The jury leaned forward a trifle; there was a tiny rustle of movement. Beside Monk on the bench Hester stiffened. The spectators near them felt no such restraints of delicacy as the jury. They stared at Alexandra quite openly, faces agog.

  “Accusations of unfaithfulness on the general’s part?” Lovat-Smith prompted.

  The judge looked at Rathbone. Lovat-Smith was leading the witness. Rathbone said nothing. The judge’s face tightened, but he did not interrupt.

  “No,” Hargrave said reluctantly. He drew in his breath. “At least, they were unspecific, I was not sure. I think she was merely speaking wildly, lashing out at anyone. She was hysterical; it made no sense.”

  “I see. Thank you.” Lovat-Smith inclined his head. “That is all, Doctor. Please remain where you are, in case my learned friend wishes to question you.”

  “Oh indeed, I do.” Rathbone rose to his feet, his voice purring, his movements tigerli
ke. “You spoke most frankly about the Carlyon family, and I accept that you have told us all you know, trivial as that is.” He looked up at Hargrave in the high, pulpitlike witness stand. “Am I correct, Dr. Hargrave, in supposing that your friendship with them dates back some fifteen or sixteen years?”

  “Yes, you are.” Hargrave was puzzled; he had already said this to Lovat-Smith.

  “In fact as a friendship with the family, rather than General Carlyon, it ceased some fourteen years ago, and you have seen little of them since then?”

  “I—suppose so.” Hargrave was reluctant, but not disturbed; his sandy face held no disquiet. It seemed a minor point.

  “So in fact you cannot speak with any authority on the character of, for example, Mrs. Felicia Carlyon? Or Colonel Carlyon?”

  Hargrave shrugged. It was an oddly graceful gesture. “If you like. It hardly seems to matter; they are not on trial.”

  Rathbone smiled, showing all his teeth.

  “But you mentioned your friendship with General Carlyon?”

  “Yes. I was his physician, as well as that of his wife and family.”

  “Indeed, I am coming to that. You say that Mrs. Carlyon, the accused, began to exhibit signs of extreme distress-indeed you used the word hysteria?”

  “Yes—I regret to say she did,” Hargrave agreed.

  “What did she do, precisely, Doctor?”

  Hargrave looked uncomfortable. He glanced at the judge, who met his eyes without response.

  “The question disturbs you?” Rathbone remarked.

  “It seems unnecessarily—exposing—of a patient’s vulnerability,” Hargrave replied, but his eyes remained on Rathbone; Alexandra herself might have been absent for all the awareness he showed of her.