by Anne Perry
Rathbone ignored it.
“About?” Edith looked slightly puzzled. He had not told her he was going to pursue this. He wanted her obvious unawareness to be seen by the jury. This case depended upon emotions as much as upon facts.
“Yes. What was the subject of the difference?”
Lovat-Smith groaned even more loudly. “Really, my lord,” he protested.
Rathbone resumed facing the judge. “My learned friend seems to be in some distress,” he said unctuously.
There was a loud titter of amusement, nervous, like a ripple of wind through a field before thunder.
“The case,” Lovat-Smith said loudly. “Get on with the case, man!”
“Then bear your agony a little less vocally, old chap,” Rathbone replied equally loudly, “and allow me to.” He swung around. “Mrs. Sobell—to remind you, the question was, would you please tell the court the subject of the quarrel between the governess, Miss Buchan, and the cook?”
“Yes—yes, if you wish, although I cannot see—”
“We none of us can,” Lovat-Smith interrupted again.
“Mr. Lovat-Smith,” the judge said sharply. “Mrs. Sobell, answer the question. If it proves irrelevant I will control Mr. Rathbone’s wanderings.”
“Yes, my lord. Cook accused Miss Buchan of being incompetent to care for Cassian. She said Miss Buchan was … there was a great deal of personal abuse, my lord. I would rather not repeat it.”
Rathbone thought of permitting her to do so. A jury liked to be amused, but they would lose respect for Miss Buchan, which might be what would win or lose the case. A little laughter now would be too dearly bought.
“Please spare us,” he said aloud. “The subject of the difference will be sufficient—the fact that there was abuse may indicate the depth of their feelings.”
Again Edith smiled hurriedly, and then continued.
“Cook said that Miss Buchan was following him around everywhere and confusing him by telling him his mother loved him, and was not a wicked woman.” She swallowed hard, her eyes troubled. That she did not understand what he wanted was painfully obvious. The jury were utterly silent, their faces staring at her. Suddenly the drama was back again, the concentration total. The crowd did not whisper or move. Even Alexandra herself seemed momentarily forgotten.
“And the cook?” Rathbone prompted.
“Cook said Alexandra should be hanged.” Edith seemed to find the word difficult. “And of course she was wicked. Cassian had to know it and come to terms with it.”
“And Miss Buchan’s reply?”
“That Cook didn’t know anything about it, she was an ignorant woman and should stay in the kitchen where she belonged.”
“Did you know to what Miss Buchan referred?” Rathbone asked, his voice low and clear, without any theatrics.
“No.”
“Was a Miss Hester Latterly present at this exchange?”
“Yes.”
“When you had parted the two protagonists, did Miss Latterly go upstairs with Miss Buchan?”
“Yes.”
“And afterwards leave in some haste, and without explanation to you as to why?”
“Yes, but we did not quarrel,” Edith said quickly. “She seemed to have something most urgent to do.”
“Indeed I know it, Mrs. Sobell. She came immediately to see me. Thank you. That is all. Please remain there, in case my learned friend has something to ask you.”
There was a rustle and a sigh around the court. A dozen people nudged each other. The expected revelation had not come … not yet.
Lovat-Smith rose and sauntered over to Edith, hands in his pockets.
“Mrs. Sobell, tell me honestly, much as you may sympathize with your sister-in-law, has any of what you have said the slightest bearing on the tragedy of your brother’s death?”
She hesitated, glancing at Rathbone.
“No, Mrs. Sobell,” Lovat-Smith cautioned sharply. “Answer for yourself, please! Can you tell me any relation between what you have said about your nephew’s very natural confusion and distress over his father’s murder, and his mother’s confession and arrest, and this diverting but totally irrelevant quarrel between two of your domestics?” He waved his hands airily, dismissing it, “And the cause at trial: namely whether Alexandra Carlyon is guilty or not guilty of murdering her husband, your brother? I remind you, in case after all this tarradiddle you, like the rest of us, are close to forgetting.”
He had gone too far. He had trivialized the tragedy.
“I don’t know, Mr. Lovat-Smith,” she said with a sudden return of composure, her voice now grim and with a hard edge. “As you have just said, we are here to discover the truth, not to assess it beforehand. I don’t know why Alexandra did what she did, and I wish to know. It has to matter.”
“Indeed.” Lovat-Smith gave in gracefully. He had sufficient instinct to recognize an error and cease it immediately. “It does not alter facts, but of course it matters, Mrs. Sobell. I have no further questions. Thank you.”
“Mr. Rathbone?” the judge asked.
“I have no further questions, thank you, my lord.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Sobell, you may go.”
Rathbone stood in the center of the very small open space in front of the witness box.
“I call Miss Catriona Buchan.”
Miss Buchan came to the witness box looking very pale, her face even more gaunt than before, her thin back stiff and her eyes straight forward, as if she were a French aristocrat passing through the old women knitting at the foot of the guillotine. She mounted the stairs unaided, holding her skirts in from the sides, and at the top turned and faced the court. She swore to tell the truth, and regarded Rathbone as though he were an executioner.
Rathbone found himself admiring her as much as anyone he had ever faced across that small space of floor.
“Miss Buchan, I realize what this is going to cost you, and I am not unmindful of your sacrifice, nevertheless I hope you understand that in the cause of justice I have no alternative?”
“Of course I do,” she agreed with a crisp voice. The strain in it did not cause her to falter, only to sound a little more clipped than usual, a little higher in pitch, as if her throat were tight. “I would not answer did I not understand that!”
“Indeed. Do you remember quarreling with the cook at Carlyon House some three weeks ago?”
“I do. She is a good enough cook, but a stupid woman.”
“In what way stupid, Miss Buchan?”
“She imagines all ills can be treated with good regular meals and that if you only eat right everything else will sort itself out.”
“A shortsighted view. What did you quarrel about on that occasion, Miss Buchan?”
Her chin lifted a little higher.
“Master Cassian. She said I was confusing the child by telling him his mother was not a wicked woman, and that she still loved him.”
In the dock Alexandra was so still it seemed she could not even be breathing. Her eyes never left Miss Buchan’s face and she barely blinked.
“Is that all?” Rathbone asked.
Miss Buchan took a deep breath, her thin chest rising and falling. “No—she also said I followed the boy around too much, not leaving him alone.”
“Did you follow the boy around, Miss Buchan?”
She hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”
“Why?” He kept his voice level, as if the question were not especially important.
“To do what I could to prevent him being abused anymore.”
“Abused? Was someone mistreating him? In what way?”
“I believe the word is sodomy, Mr. Rathbone,” she said with only the slightest tremor.
There was a gasp in the court as hundreds of throats drew in breath.
Alexandra covered her face with her hands.
The jury froze in their seats, eyes wide, faces aghast.
In the front row of the gallery Randolf Carlyon sat immobile as stone. Felicia�
��s veiled head jerked up and her knuckles were white on the rail in front of her. Edith, now sitting beside them, looked as if she had been struck.
Even the judge stiffened and turned to look up at Alexandra. Lovat-Smith stared at Rathbone, his face slack with amazement.
Rathbone waited several seconds before he spoke.
“Someone in the house was sodomizing the child?” He said it very quietly, but the peculiar quality of his voice and his exquisite diction made every word audible even at the very back of the gallery.
“Yes,” Miss Buchan answered, looking at no one but him.
“How do you know that, Miss Buchan? Did you see it happen?”
“I did not see it this time—but I have in the past, when Thaddeus Carlyon himself was a child,” she said. “And I knew the signs. I knew the look in a child’s face, the sly pleasure, the fear mixed with exultancy, the flirting and the shame, the self-possession one minute, then the terror of losing his mother’s love if she knew, the hatred of having to keep it a secret, and the pride of having a secret—and then crying in the night, and not being able to tell anyone why—and the total and overwhelming loneliness …”
Alexandra had lifted her face. She looked ashen, her body rigid with anguish.
The jury sat immobile, eyes horrified, skin suddenly pale.
The judge looked at Lovat-Smith, but for once he did not exercise his right to object to the vividness of her evidence, unsupported by any provable fact. His dark face looked blurred with shock.
“Miss Buchan,” Rathbone continued softly. “You seem to have a vivid appreciation of what it is like. How is that?”
“Because I saw it in Thaddeus—General Carlyon—when he was a child. His father abused him.”
There was such a gasp of horror around the room, a clamor of voices in amazement and protest, that she was obliged to stop.
In the gallery newspaper runners tripped over legs and caught their feet in onlookers’ skirts as they scrambled to get out and seize a hansom to report the incredible news.
“Order!” the judge commanded, banging his gavel violently on his bench. “Order! Or I shall clear the court!”
Very slowly the room subsided. The jury had all turned to look at Randolf. Now again they faced Miss Buchan.
“That is a desperately serious thing to charge, Miss Buchan,” Rathbone said quietly. “You must be very certain that what you say is true?”
“Of course I am.” She answered him with the first and only trace of bitterness in her voice. “I have served the Carlyon family since I was twenty-four, when I came to look after Master Thaddeus. That is over forty years. There is nowhere else I can go now—and they will hardly give me a roof over my head in my old age after this. Does anyone imagine I do it lighly?”
Rathbone glanced for only a second at the jury’s faces, and saw there the conflict of horror, disgust, anger, pity, and confusion that he had expected. She was a woman caught between betraying her employers, with its irreparable consequences to her, or betraying her conscience, and a child who had no one else to speak for him. The jurors were of a servant-keeping class, or they would not be jurors. Yet few of them were of position sufficient to have governesses. They were torn in loyalties, social ambition, and tearing pity.
“I know that, Miss Buchan,” Rathbone said with a ghost of a smile. “I want to be sure that the court appreciates it also. Please continue. You were aware of the sodomy committed by Colonel Randolf Carlyon upon his son, Thaddeus. You saw the same signs of abuse in young Cassian Carlyon, and you were afraid for him. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And did you know who had been abusing him? Please be careful to be precise, Miss Buchan. I do mean know, supposition or deduction will not do.”
“I am aware of that, sir,” she said stiffly. “No, I did not know. But since he normally lived at his own home, not in Carlyon House, I supposed that it was his father, Thaddeus, perpetuating on his son what he himself endured as a child. And I assumed that that was what Alexandra Carlyon discovered, and why she did what she did. No one told me so.”
“And that abuse ceased after the general’s death? Then why did you think it necessary to protect him still?”
“I saw the relationship between him and his grandfather, the looks, the touching, the shame and the excitement. It was exactly the same as before—in the past. I was afraid it was happening again.”
There was utter silence in the room. One could almost hear the creak of corsets as women breathed.
“I see,” Rathbone said quietly. “So you did your best to protect the boy. Why did you not tell someone? That would seem to be a far more effective solution.”
A smile of derision crossed her face and vanished.
“And who would believe me?” For an instant her eyes moved up to the gallery and the motionless forms of Felicia and Randolf, then she looked back at Rathbone. “I’m a domestic servant, accusing a famous and respected gentleman of one of the most vile of crimes. I would be thrown out, and then I wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.”
“What about Mrs. Felicia Carlyon, the boy’s grandmother?” he pressed, but his voice was gentle. “Wouldn’t she have to have some idea? Could you not have told her?”
“You are naive, Mr. Rathbone,” she said wearily. “If she had no idea, she would be furious, and throw me out instantly—and see to it I starved. She couldn’t afford to have me find employment ever again, in case I repeated the charge to her social equals, even to friends. And if she knew herself—then she had decided not to expose it and ruin the family with the shame of it. She’d not allow me to. If she had to live with that, then she’d do everything in her power to keep what she had paid such a price to preserve.”
“I see.” Rathbone glanced at the jury, many of them craning up at the gallery, faces dark with disgust, then at Lovat-Smith, now sitting upright and silent, deep in concentration. “So you stayed in Carlyon House,” Rathbone continued, “saying nothing, but doing what you could for the child. I think we may all understand your position—and admire you for having the courage to come forward now. Thank you, Miss Buchan.”
Lovat-Smith rose to his feet, looking profoundly unhappy.
“Miss Buchan, I regret this,” he said with such sincerity it was palpable. “But I must press you a little more harshly than my learned friend has. The accusation you make is abominable. It cannot be allowed to stand without challenge. It will ruin the lives of an entire family.” He inclined his head towards the gallery, where now there was the occasional murmur of anger. “A family known and admired in this city, a family which has dedicated itself to the service of the Queen and her subjects, not only here but in the farthest parts of the Empire as well.”
Miss Buchan said nothing, but faced him, her thin body erect, hands folded. She looked fragile, and suddenly very old. Rathbone ached to be able to protect her, but he was impotent to do anything now, as he had known he would be, and she knew it too.
“Miss Buchan,” Lovat-Smith went on, still courteously. “I assume you know what sodomy is, and you do not use the term loosely?”
She blushed, but did not evade his look.
“Yes sir, I know what it is. I will describe it for you, if you force me.”
He shook his head. “No—I do not force you, Miss Buchan. How do you know this unspeakable act was committed on General Carlyon when he was a child? And I do mean knowledge, Miss Buchan, not supposition, no matter how well reasoned, in your opinion.” He looked up at her, waiting.
“I am a servant, Mr. Lovat-Smith,” she replied with dignity. “We have a peculiar position—not quite people, not quite furniture. We are often party to extraordinary scenes because we are ignored in the house, as if we had not eyes or brains. People do not mind us knowing things, seeing things they would be mortified to have their friends see.”
One of the jurors looked startled, suddenly thoughtful.
“One day I had occasion to return to the nursery unexpectedly,” Mi
ss Buchan resumed. “Colonel Carlyon had neglected to lock the door, and I saw him in the act with his son. He did not know I saw. I was transfixed with horror—although I should not have been. I knew there was something very seriously wrong, but I did not understand what—until then. I stood there for several seconds, but I left as soundlessly as I had come. My knowledge is very real, sir.”
“You witnessed this gross act, and yet you did nothing?” Lovat-Smith’s voice rose in disbelief. “I find that hard to credit, Miss Buchan. Was not your first duty clearly towards your charge, the child, Thaddeus Carlyon?”
She did not flinch.
“I have already told you, there was nothing I could do.”
“Not tell his mother?” He waved an arm up towards the gallery where Felicia sat like stone. “Would she not have been horrified? Would she not have protected her child? You seem, by implication, to be expecting us to believe that Alexandra Carlyon,” he indicated her with another expansive gesture, “a generation later, was so violently distressed by the same fact that she murdered her husband rather than allow it to continue! And yet you say that Mrs. Felicia Carlyon would have done nothing!”
Miss Buchan did not speak.
“You hesitate,” Lovat-Smith challenged, his voice rising. “Why, Miss Buchan? Are you suddenly not so certain of answers? Not so easy?”
Miss Buchan was strong. She had already risked, and no doubt lost, everything. She had no stake left, nothing else could be taken from her but her self-esteem.
“You are too facile, young man,” she said with all the ineffable authority of a good governess. “Women may be as immeasurably different from each other as men. Their loyalties and values may be different also, as may be the times and circumstances in which they live. What can a woman do, in such a position? Who will believe her, if she accused a publicly loved man of such a crime?” She did not once betray that she even knew Felicia was there in the room with them, much less that she cared what Felicia thought or felt. “People do not wish to believe it of their heroes, and both Randolf and Thaddeus Carlyon were heroes, in their own ways. Society would have crucified her as a wicked woman if they did not believe her, as a venally indiscreet one if they did. She would know that, and she chose to preserve what she had. Miss Alexandra chose to save her child, or to try to. It remains to be seen whether or not she has sacrificed herself in vain.”
