Dinah and Cobie spent the last night of the Markendale action in one another’s arms. She had said to him, once they were alone together, ‘It was all true, wasn’t it? What counsel said. And what you and Mr Van Deusen said in the witness box was all fairy stories.’
Cobie said, tongue in cheek, his eyes almost merry, ‘The jury will decide tomorrow who is lying—and who is telling the truth.’
Dinah was suddenly angry with him. ‘Don’t juggle words with me, Cobie. I know you too well,’ and then, ‘The bath was in the whorehouse, wasn’t it?’
For a moment he couldn’t think of what she was speaking, and then he remembered the time he had made love to her in the bath and their conversation afterwards.
‘Oh, Dinah, Dinah, you’re a wonder. You note that I admit nothing. What will you surprise me with next?’
Almost Dinah told him about the baby—but not with the shadow of the lawsuit hanging over them. Tomorrow night, she thought, win or lose, we can celebrate, and be happy in private.
She said, a little shyly, ‘Cobie, is there anything I can do for you? What you did or didn’t do in Arizona Territory means nothing to me, you know.’
He said into her neck. ‘Nothing, Dinah. Just be Dinah, that’s all.’
After that they made love, gently, as though both of them were precious porcelain and might shatter. The ecstasy was so long and sweet that Dinah fell asleep after it almost immediately.
Not surprisingly, while asleep, she met Cobie in the land of her dreams. He was a very young man again, the man she now knew had been Jumping Jake Coburn, with his long hair, his tanned and bearded face, and his bright blue eyes—the eyes she would have recognised anywhere. They were in the desert and behind him was a range of mountains, mauve against a sky as blue as his eyes. He came towards her, smiling.
She was so pleased to see him that she flung her arms around him and kissed him before asking, ‘And where is Mr Van Deusen? I mean, Schultz.’
‘Back there,’ he told her, waving a hand towards the bottom of the slight slope on which they stood where a small town nestled in a hollow. ‘But what are you doing here, Dinah, so far from home?’
‘Home,’ she told him. ‘This is my home since my home is always with you, wherever you are. Is this the place of which Sir Halbert spoke today? The place where you blew up a train?’
He held her away from him and repeated what he had said to her earlier, in that other life, ‘Oh, Dinah, you’re a wonder. Will nothing ever surprise you?’
She pointed at the little town, and said eagerly, ‘Take me there. I should like to see it.’
He shook his head. ‘Alas, much though I love you, I may not. There, I am the age that I was then, and were I to take you into San Miguel—that outlaws’ sanctuary—you would become the little girl you were ten years ago, which would never do. I love you too much to do that to you.’
He had told her that he loved her, not once but twice! And he had never said that to her in their daytime life. Even as she thought this he, and the scenery in which they stood, began to fade, and before she could ask herself why this should be, she was asleep.
And in the morning she forgot that he had at last confessed his love for her; even if she had remembered him saying so, she might, regretfully, have dismissed it as a wish come true—which could only happen in a dream.
Cobie, however, could not sleep. He held Dinah tenderly to him, and thought again of Belita, for the first time without feeling guilt for her death.
He remembered what Hendrick had said, that he was not God, could not take the world’s troubles on his shoulders, and could not, should not, try to remedy them all.
Tomorrow, when this was over, he would tell Dinah what he should have told her long ago: that he loved her dearly, and that in future all that he did, all that he planned, would be done in the knowledge that he must not jeopardise her, nor spoil either her, or what lay between them. Cobie Grant would settle down at last, and tend his own backyard, the world might wag as it list.
Finally, sliding towards sleep, he thought again of his father and mother, Jack and Marietta, who had loved him—and doubtless still did love him. He began to feel the most bitter regret that he had cut himself off from them, had rejected not only their love, but also any acknowledgement that they were his father and mother. No, Sophie must not be allowed even that triumph.
Somehow, one way or another, he must become reconciled with them, try to make up to them for the last ten years. Finally, as though he had had a great burden lifted from his shoulders, he slept more peacefully than he had done for as long as he could remember, his hand in Dinah’s.
And in his dreams he met her, but when dawn came and he awoke, all that he could remember of them was her eager, loving face…
Downstairs Sophie Massingham’s letter lay in the fire-grate. Grey ashes, to be swept away by the little maid in the morning.
The courtroom was as crowded as ever. The judge swept in, superb in his robes. Both counsel, who had been joking together in the robing room, were now scowling at one another. The defendants looked serious but cheerful. Only Sir Ratcliffe Heneage, feeling his doom upon him, sat there, glowering at them all, and at Jacobus Grant in particular. He hoped that he had enjoyed reading Sophie Massingham’s letter. The Prince of Wales was absent—on official duties.
Out of sight, Walker and his minions waited—for the action would surely end today, and they would have their man where they wanted him.
Both counsel excelled themselves in their closing speeches. Sir Halbert lauded Sir Ratcliffe to the skies. He dealt lightly with the other defendants, but with Cobie, he went for the jugular, describing him as an adventurer of the basest kind. He knew that nothing he said could wipe out the favourable impression which Mr Van Deusen had made, but he did his level best to try to suggest that he was as dubious as his friend.
He called the evidence of cheating against Sir Ratcliffe flimsy, and could not understand how the Prince of Wales could believe it, unless Sir Ratcliffe had been vilely traduced even before the evidence was presented. He also argued that signing the paper was not proof of Sir Ratcliffe’s perfidy, but rather of his loyalty in wishing to spare the Prince scandal.
‘I beg of you,’ he said to the jury, ‘to send Sir Ratcliffe back into the light again, to resume once more the career which has been so cruelly destroyed by these mistaken accusations. Let him rejoin his friends and be once more the subject of public and private acclaim.’
To the judge’s annoyance, the gallery, where the spectators knew nothing of Sir Ratcliffe, merely seeing him as a victim of the Prince of Wales, began to clap in his support as Sir Halbert sat down. The spectators seated downstairs, who knew more of the matter, by virtue of knowing Sir Ratcliffe, made no such demonstration.
‘Silence,’ roared the Lord Chief Justice, ‘This is not a theatre, nor—’ with a glare at Sir Halbert ‘—a music hall.’
Sir Darcy was restrained, and spoke more in sorrow than in anger. He chose not to refer at length to the pointless and unsupported accusations against Mr Grant, as he called them, but concentrated on the strong points of the defendant’s case. ‘Too quixotic,’ he called the notion that Sir Ratcliffe had merely signed the paper to save the Prince.
Finally all that was left was the judge’s summing up.
Lord Justice Coleridge left no doubt that he thought that Sir Ratcliffe Heneage had no case. He flew at Sir Halbert’s handling of his brief, the personal attacks on all the defendants, particularly on the unfortunate Mr Jacobus Grant, who had merely been doing his duty as an honest man by bearing witness to what he had undoubtedly seen.
‘I am left to assume,’ he said, ‘that the assault on Mr Grant’s reputation was precisely because it was his evidence which was the clincher in this case. He is an American, a guest in our midst. I hope that this graceless attack on him, so long pursued, and revealed by Dr Van Deusen to be baseless, will not cause him to think less of the system of justice in this country.’
&
nbsp; Sir Halbert was purple—no less than Sir Ratcliffe. Gossip had it that the Lord Chief Justice and Sir Halbert were at odds with one another and the judge was taking this opportunity to attack him on what he saw as weaknesses in his case.
The judge supported Sir Darcy’s claims that no man would be quixotic enough to destroy his reputation for another who had not asked him to do so.
‘You may,’ he told the jury, ‘be entitled to think that once Sir Ratcliffe Heneage placed his signature on the paper, that alone was good and sufficient reason for thinking him guilty. Can one believe that an innocent person would do any such thing? One recalls Shakespeare’s words, “Who steals my purse, steals trash…but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him And makes me poor indeed.”
‘That being so, it is impossible to believe any man would willingly brand himself dishonourable. Gentlemen of the jury, it is for you to decide.’
‘By God,’ whispered Kenilworth to Cobie, ‘He has left them nothing to decide. I could not have believed such a summing up. He has left Heneage’s case in tatters.’
The jury retired. People stood up, yawned, moved about restlessly. Dinah gave Cobie a little wave, the first time she had acknowledged him publicly in court in the week which the trial had taken. He felt an immense relief. What had begun with his rescue of Lizzie Steele would soon be over. He had little doubt of what the verdict would be, however many reservations Sir Darcy Spenlow might have privately made to him.
Hidden away, Walker was still waiting, to seize his man once the verdict had been brought in. Not here, in the courtroom, one supposed, but in the street outside.
There was a sudden excited buzz of sound. Not ten minutes had elapsed and the jury had signified that they were ready to return!
‘Should have had a bet on it,’ Rainey whispered to Cobie. ‘Was a fool not to.’
Cobie said nothing. He saw that none of the jury looked at Sir Halbert when they filed in, and that the foreman of the jury avoided looking at Sir Ratcliffe when he stood to give the verdict against him and for the defendants in a firm, confident voice. At last, he thought, Lizzie Steele and her fellow victims will be avenged.
He had won his shadow battle with Sir Ratcliffe, but what he felt was not triumph, but a great sadness. The same sadness which he had felt when he had shot down Belita’s murderer, for no revenge could bring the poor victim back to life, and Lizzie Steele and her fellow-victims would still lie in their unknown graves.
Boos and cheers filled the courtroom. ‘The three noble peers’ and Cobie shook hands with one another. The gallery, very anti-Prince, and what it saw as the Prince’s cronies, was particularly noisy in its disapproval. A crowd had gathered in the street outside. The news of the verdict soon reached it, and cheers and counter-cheers told how it was divided.
Violet and Dinah ran up to Kenilworth and Cobie. Dagenham’s wife was not far behind.
‘Oh, I’m so glad it’s over, Cobie,’ Dinah whispered to him. ‘Now we can celebrate.’
Cobie put his arm around her, and murmured in her ear, ‘I hope so, Dinah. When we reach home we’ll tell Giles to run the bath for us.’
He began to push his way through the crowds. Most of those present in the body of the court were friendly, and called encouragement to him and the other defendants in their slow procession down the aisle, some patted him on the back, offered to shake his hand. Only Hendrick Van Deusen was missing.
Lord Kenilworth shook him by the hand again, and said, a broad smile on his face, ‘By God, Grant, you clinched it for us with that masterly display of memory in court, and Van Deusen finished Parker off when he was able to prove that the evidence about you from the States was a fabrication.’
Dagenham and Rainey nodded agreement. Only Dinah’s eye on him, he saw with inward amusement, was sardonic, as she stood on tip-toe to kiss him on the cheek, murmuring into his neck, ‘Appearances often deceive!’
Behind the defendants celebrating victory, Sir Ratcliffe, whose face had assumed a gallows’ hue on hearing the verdict, stood irresolute.
His counsel came up to him, and said abruptly, all his suave charm to his client gone now the case was over and lost, ‘A word to the wise. I believe that the police are waiting for you outside the court to arrest you on another matter. I would advise you to delay leaving for a few minutes until the crowd in the street outside has dispersed.’
Sir Ratcliffe nodded, and offered Sir Halbert his hand, which the latter refused to take. He was bitterly aware of the curious and hostile stares from those about him. It was immaterial whether the gallery thought him innocent, or whether the police arrested him: the jury’s finding meant that his life was over whether the law punished him for his crimes or not. Prisoner or free, he was doomed. Even if he escaped the gallows, social and financial ruin awaited him.
Outside the court, walking down the steps, Cobie turned to Dinah. ‘Where’s Hendrick gone? I want to thank him. He saved the day for me and for all of us.’
‘Amen to that,’ agreed Kenilworth. ‘Between you, you did for Sir Ratcliffe. The rest of us made a sorry impression.’ He looked about him.
The police were attempting, unsuccessfully, to try to move the mob on so that their carriages could be brought up for them.
Dinah said, ‘Oh, Mr Van Deusen kissed me when the verdict came in—and then told me that he had an important engagement elsewhere and must leave immediately. He asked me to offer you all his congratulations.’
Sir Ratcliffe appeared in the doorway behind them. He could see Walker and the uniformed constables waiting for him at the bottom of the steps—and he knew that his doom was upon him. None of Kenilworth’s party saw, or heard him, until he suddenly called Cobie’s name.
‘Hey, Grant! Hey, you there, look at me!’
Cobie turned—to see his enemy, a pistol in his hand, an expression of hate and fury on his face, shouting at him.
‘Damn you, Grant, you’ve ruined me! But, by God, you’ll not live to enjoy it.’
The noise of the shot which took Cobie at almost point-blank range and sent him backwards down the steps past a horrified Dinah, who flung herself down beside him, calling his name, was succeeded by the crack of another.
This one lifted Sir Ratcliffe off his feet, and deposited him dead in front of the doorway by which he had just left the court.
Where the second shot had come from, no one knew.
Pandemonium reigned. Screaming, the crowd ran in all directions lest the gunman fire again.
Walker raced up the steps, hallooing to Bates to go to Sir Ratcliffe, to Alcott to try to find the man who had shot Heneage, whilst he fell on his knees beside the fallen Mr Dilley—with the hope, shared by a frantic Dinah, that some magic trick might yet save him.
Chapter Thirteen
He had been talking to Dinah. Someone had called his name, and he had turned—to be struck a dreadful blow.
The world about him was shattered. It disappeared. He was soaring high into the air, on wings, free as he had never been, making for the golden light which shone above him, the great ball which was the sun.
For a moment he looked down. There, far, far below him, on the dirty pavement outside the court, lay the shell of what had once been Jacobus Grant. A woman knelt by him, a man on her left hand. Then they were gone. He was springing at the sun, desperate to reach it. He no longer knew who, or what, he was, only that this was what he had always wanted. The freedom from self which he had never yet found.
He rose higher and higher, drawn inexorably towards the light. He knew, without knowing, that beyond it lay those who had gone before him, and transformed, were waiting for him, friends and enemies alike.
Time had gone: he knew only infinite space and infinite light. It was there just above him, the blazing orb. One last leap, and he would have it in his hands. He reached out, eager to forget himself and all he had been. Indeed, he no longer knew who he had been. At the last moment a great sound broke in on him, splintering and
shattering the purity of the nothingness which he was about to embrace.
Someone was calling a name over and over again. His name. He tried to ignore it, but could not, and even as his fingertips reached out again to touch the light, the name came again and again. ‘Cobie…Cobie…Cobie…’
It was a woman’s voice, reminding him of whom he had been.
He tried to leap up once more, but failed, and began to fall. He was dropping from the light into the dark. He could hear Sir Alan’s voice, and Hendrick’s, tolling out, ‘Those who fly too near the sun may do so once too often and be consumed by it.’
Oh, but he wanted to be consumed. He tried to rise again, but could only fall like Icarus—the legendary Greek being who had fashioned wings and ambitiously tried to fly with them—dropping towards earth, back to the shell on the ground.
He opened his eyes, and saw Dinah sobbing above him and Walker’s grieving face. This time, when his eyes closed again, it was not to leap into the light but to fall even further into the dark—earthbound once more.
‘He’s not dead,’ Walker told Dinah, ‘Not yet.’ He was too shocked to be tactful. ‘Best to get him home.’
Kenilworth, standing by, like most of those who had been around Cobie when he was shot, was in a profound state of shock. He was able to say through numb lips, ‘Doctors, surgeons. Leave that to me, Dinah.’
Cobie was bleeding profusely from his wound: the bleeding showing that he, at least, still lived, if only barely. Walker, before he had gone to Dinah, had already sent his officers to search for the man who had killed Sir Ratcliffe but, hampered by the crowds and hardly knowing from which direction the shot had come, their efforts were futile.
Walker wanted to ask Dinah where Mr Van Deusen was, but under the dreadful circumstances he could hardly do so without appearing callous beyond belief. Besides, he was shocked himself at the unprecedented sight of two men shot down in a London street.
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