Slaves of Obsession

by Anne Perry

  She faced Deverill like a rabbit in front of a snake. Never once did she allow her eyes to stray towards Merrit in the dock.

  The watch was passed up to her but she refused to touch it.

  “Have you seen it before, Miss Parfitt?” Deverill asked gently.

  At first her throat was so tight, her lips so dry, that her voice would not come.

  Deverill waited.

  “Yes,” she said at last.

  “Can you tell us where, and in what circumstances?”

  She swallowed convulsively.

  “We all realize that you would immeasurably rather not,” Deverill said with a charming smile. “But loyalty to the truth must outweigh the desire not to cause trouble for a friend. Just tell me exactly what happened, what you saw and heard. You are not accountable for the actions of others, and only an unjust or guilty person would hold you to be. Where did you see this watch, Miss Parfitt, and in whose possession?”

  “Merrit’s,” she answered, her voice little above a whisper.

  “Did she show it to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Did she say?”

  Dorothea nodded. Deverill held her gaze as if she were mesmerized.

  “Lyman Breeland had given it to her as a token of his love.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “She really thought he loved her. She had no idea he was wicked … honestly! She must have found out, and given it back to him, because she would never have had anything to do with killing her father … not ever! I know she argued with him because she thought he was terribly wrong to sell the guns to that man from the South, because the South keeps slaves. But you don’t kill people over things like that!”

  “I am afraid they do in America, Miss Parfitt,” Deverill said with wry regret. “It is a subject about which some people feel so violently that their behavior is beyond the bounds of ordinary law and society. One of the most tragic of all kinds of war is beginning, even as we stand here in this peaceful courtroom and argue our differences. And we none of us know where it will end. Please God, we will not, with our own prejudices and greeds, make it any worse.”

  It was a sentiment Rathbone felt profoundly, and yet Deverill’s giving voice to it irritated him like a scraped elbow. Whether Deverill meant it or not, Rathbone had no doubt he expressed it to manipulate the emotions of the court.

  Dorothea had no idea what to make of it. She stared at him with open confusion.

  “Mr. Deverill,” the judge admonished, leaning forward, “are you chastising the witness for her lack of knowledge as to the outcome of the present tragedy across the Atlantic?”

  “No, my lord, certainly not. I am simply trying to point out that some people feel passionately enough about the issues of slaving to kill those who differ from them.”

  “It is unnecessary, Mr. Deverill. We are aware of it,” the judge said dryly. “Have you anything further to ask Miss Parfitt?”

  “No, my lord, thank you.” Deverill turned to Rathbone. His foretaste of victory was plain in his face, in the confidence of the way he stood, balancing with his back a trifle arched and his shoulders squared. “Sir Oliver?”

  Rathbone rose to his feet. The watch was the most powerful piece of evidence against Merrit, the one thing he could not explain away. Deverill knew it as well. What mattered was what the jury saw.

  “Miss Parfitt,” he said, matching Deverill smile for smile, gentleness for gentleness. “Of course you have no choice but to tell us that Merrit Alberton showed you the watch that Breeland gave to her as a token of his feelings for her. You said it first with no knowledge of its meaning, and now cannot withdraw it. We all understand that. But Mr. Deverill omitted to ask you exactly when this incident occurred. Was it the day of Daniel Alberton’s death?”

  She looked suddenly relieved, seeing escape. “No! No, it was several days before that. At least two, and maybe three. I don’t recall exactly now. I could get my diary?”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he declined. “Not for me, anyway. Could she have given it back to him for any reason? A quarrel, possibly? Or to have the catch altered, or put on a chain, or something else engraved?”

  “Yes!” she said eagerly, her eyes widened. She seemed to hesitate for a moment.

  “Thank you,” he said quickly, afraid she would embellish it and be caught in an invention. “That is all we need to know, Miss Parfitt. Please do not strive to help. Only what you know is evidence, not what you may wish, or even believe.”

  “Yes …” she said awkwardly. “I … I see.”

  The judge looked at Deverill.

  Deverill shook his head with a slight smile. He knew he did not need to make more of it.

  The court adjourned for the day, and Rathbone went straight to see Merrit. He found her alone in the cell used for such meetings. The wardress was stationed outside the door, a big woman with her hair scraped back severely and a pink, scrubbed face. She shook her head slightly as Rathbone went past her and the key clanked in the lock.

  “It’s not going well, is it?” Merrit said as soon as they were alone. “The jury think Lyman did it. I can see it in their faces.”

  Did she instinctively think of Breeland before herself, or had she not yet grasped that she also was charged equally with him? No one believed she had fired the shots herself, but an accomplice in such a crime would be held just as responsible and punished with the same finality. He could not afford to be gentle with her. She must face the truth of the situation before it was too late even to try to save it.

  “Yes, they do,” he agreed candidly. He saw the pain in her eyes, the trace of unreasonable hope that she was wrong die away. “I am sorry, but it is inescapable, and I would not be helping your cause if I were to pretend otherwise.”

  She bit her lip. “I know.” Her voice was hoarse. “They are so mistaken in him. He would never do anything so vile … but even if they could not understand that, surely they can be made to see that there was no cause to? He received a note that my father had changed his mind and would sell the guns to him after all. He had found a way of escaping his commitment to Mr. Trace and was free to offer them to the more honorable cause. They were there at Euston Square Station. There was even a special train just to transport them.”

  “I believe I can prove that he could not have fired the shots himself,” he agreed, allowing no lift of hope into his voice. He must not mislead her, even by implication. “What I cannot prove is that whoever did it was not paid to by Mr. Breeland. And that is just as serious a crime. Since you and he left England with the guns, you are accomplices in robbery and murder.…” He held up his hand as she began to protest. “I can make a good argument that you were unaware of what had happened, and therefore innocent—”

  “But Lyman is innocent too!” she cut in, leaning forward urgently, her eyes bright. “He had no idea anyone had killed to get the guns!”

  “How do you know that?” he asked very gently. It was not a challenge. There was no confrontation.

  “I …” she started to answer. Then she blinked, her face puckering with dismay. “You mean how can I prove it to them? Surely …” Again she stopped.

  “Yes, you do have to,” he answered the question he thought had been in her mind. “In law one is presumed innocent unless you can be proved to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Consider the word reasonable. Do you believe, after listening to the evidence so far, that the men in the jury box will have the same idea of what is true as you will have? We lose reason in emotion. When you think of issues like war, injustice, slavery, the love of your family or your country, your way of life, are any of us guided purely by reason?”

  She shook her head minutely. “No,” she whispered. “I suppose not.” She took a deep breath. “But I know Lyman! He would not stoop to anything dishonorable. Honor, what is right, is dearer to him than anything. That is part of the reason I love him so much. Can’t you make them see that?”

  “And are you absolutely certain that what is right
would not include sacrificing three men to the cause of obtaining guns for the Union?” he asked.

  She was very pale. “Not by murder!” But her voice shook. Her eyes filled with tears. “I know he was not in the warehouse yard that evening, Sir Oliver, because I was with him all the time, and I was not there. I swear that!”

  He believed her. “And how did the watch come to be there? How do I explain that to the jury?”

  Fear rippled through her. He could not mistake it.

  “I don’t know! It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t explain it.”

  “When did you last see the watch?”

  “I’ve been trying to think, but my mind is in such turmoil the harder I try the less clear it becomes. I remember showing it to Mrs. Monk, and I had it the day after that, because that was when Dorothea admired it, so of course I told her about it.” She flushed very faintly, hardly more than a suspicion of color in her pale face. “After that … I’m not certain. Times get muddled in my memory. So much happened, and I was furious with my father.…” The tears spilled over her eyes and she fought for self-control.

  Rathbone did not interrupt her or try to offer words they both knew he could not mean.

  “Could you have lost it, or left it on a garment you were not wearing?” he asked at length.

  “I suppose so.” She seized the explanation. “I must have. But Lyman would never have left it in the yard, and who else could?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I shall have Monk investigate it. It may now be possible your father took it with him.”

  “Oh, yes! That could be, couldn’t it?” At last there was a lift of hope in her voice. “Sir Oliver, who was it that killed him? Was it Mr. Shearer? That is very dreadful. I know my father trusted him. They had worked together for years. I only met him once. He was rather grim, sort of … I’m not sure … angry. At least I thought he was.” She searched his face to see if he understood what she found so difficult to say. “Was it for money?”

  “It seems as if it was.”

  “How could my father have been so wrong about him?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps because we tend to judge others by our own standards.”

  She did not answer. And within a few moments he took his leave, trying to encourage her to keep heart.

  He did not especially wish to see Breeland, but it was a duty he must not shirk. He found him standing by the chair and small table in the room assigned for him. His face was stiff, his shoulders locked so tight they strained the fabric of his jacket. He looked accusingly at Rathbone, and Rathbone could not blame him for it. He disliked the man, and Breeland must know it, and also that Rathbone’s first loyalty was to Merrit Alberton. It was Judith, after all, who was paying him. It was Merrit’s desire, not Breeland’s, that they be charged as one, and she would not claim any special innocence. She was determined to stand with him, although Rathbone wondered if it was now love for Breeland or love of loyalty which kept her.

  Without warning he felt a keen pity for Breeland, thousands of miles from home and overwhelmingly among strangers who hated him for what they believed him to be. Perhaps had Rathbone been in similar circumstances he would have wrapped himself in the same icy dignity. It was the last protection Breeland had left, to seem not to care. And why should anyone parade his vulnerability for his enemies to stare at?

  Could Shearer have murdered Alberton without Breeland’s knowledge, and certainly without his complicity? And should Breeland, owing all his allegiance to his own people, locked in a terrible war, not have taken the guns so fortuitously offered him—simply because he suspected they had been obtained by deceit? It was war, not trade. For him they were the survival of a cause, not a matter of profit.

  Breeland stared at him. “I assume that at some point in this farce you will attempt to defend at least Miss Alberton, if not me?” he said coldly. “Although I would remind you she came willingly with me to America, and Monk will testify to that.”

  “I am more concerned to hear him testify as to the exact times of the events on the night of the murders, and your train to Liverpool,” Rathbone replied levelly. “It will be a simpler matter to convince them of the fact that Shearer may well have planned and committed the murders and the theft of the guns, with the intention of selling them to you, and you buying them in good faith, than it will be to make them feel well disposed towards you.”

  “What does that matter?” Breeland said bitterly. “I am a foreigner. They don’t understand my cause, or sympathize with it. They don’t know what America stands for. They have not caught our dream. I can’t help that. Surely they at least understand justice?” It was said with an air of challenge, and not a little of insult.

  Rathbone reminded himself of the man’s isolation, of how much he had already sacrificed for a cause that was both noble and unselfish. Would he himself have done any better, any more wisely? Would such threat, and such lack of understanding and respect all around him, not have made him lash out also?

  “Juries are people, Mr. Breeland, and subject to emotional impulses like the rest of us,” he said as mildly as he could, keeping the edge out of his voice. “They will not remember everything that is said to them. In fact, they will probably not even hear it all, or perceive it in the way we wish them to. Very often people hear what they think they will hear. Make them feel some respect for you, some liking, and they will see the best, and recall it when it matters. This is not peculiar to English juries; it is part of the nature of all people, and we choose to be tried before a jury precisely because they are ordinary. They work on instinctive judgment and common sense as well as the evidence presented to them. Your own common law is based upon this.”

  “Yes, I know.” Breeland’s lips were tight. Rathbone felt there was fear as well as anger and idealism behind the mask of his face. He did well that it was not the overriding thing. “I cannot make people like me. And I will not grovel. My cause speaks well enough for me. I would abolish slavery from the earth.” Now his voice rang with passion, his eyes alight. “I would give every man the chance to be his own master, to believe what he chooses and speak his mind without fear.”

  “It sounds marvelous,” Rathbone said wearily, but with total sincerity. “I am not sure if it can exist. Liberty is always a matter of balancing one thing against another, gains and losses. But that is not the issue. You can fight for whatever you wish once you are free to leave the dock. First accomplish that, and to do it you will need to behave with a little more humanity. Believe me, Mr. Breeland, I am very good at my profession … easily as good as you are at yours. Take my advice.”

  Breeland stared at him, his eyes steady and fixed, fear far down in their depths bright and hard.

  “Do you … do you think you can prove me innocent?” he said softly.

  “I do. Now make the jury pleased to see me do it!”

  Breeland said nothing, but some of the ice in him melted.

  In the morning Monk was called to the witness stand to corroborate first Casbolt’s evidence of their visit to Breeland’s rooms, and then their terrible discovery in the warehouse yard in Tooley Street.

  Deverill treated him with civility, but he could draw him to say little beyond a simple “Yes” or “No.” He knew perfectly well, as was his skill to know, that Monk worked with Rathbone and his interest was in the defense. He had no intention of allowing Monk to cloud the issue or raise questions.

  Monk wished there were some he could raise. So far he could think of nothing to add, even had Deverill allowed him to.

  He substantiated all that Lanyon had already told them about their pursuit of the barge down the river as far as Greenwich and Bugsby’s Marshes beyond.

  “Now tell me, Mr. Monk, when you reported your findings to Mrs. Alberton, did she then request you to undertake any further activities on her behalf?” Deverill asked with wide eyes and acute interest in every line of his body.

  It angered Monk to have to play out Deverill’s charade, but
he had no choice. Deverill asked his questions far too cleverly to give him room to say anything else without lying, and being caught at it.

  “She asked me to go to America and bring her daughter back,” he replied.

  “Alone?” Deverill was incredulous. “A superhuman task, surely—and one not designed to enhance Miss Alberton’s honor or reputation.”

  “Not alone,” Monk said tartly. “She suggested I take my wife with me. And Mr. Philo Trace also expressed a desire to go, which I was glad to accept, since he knew the country and I did not.”

  “Most practical, at least as far as it extends,” Deverill damned it with faint praise. “Mrs. Alberton can hardly have foreseen this situation today.” He turned on the spot, his coat swinging. “Or perhaps she did. Perhaps she loved her husband and wished his murder avenged. Even at this cost!”

  Rathbone started to rise.

  “Not very logical,” Monk criticized with a cold smile. “If all she wanted was justice, she would have employed someone to go to America and kill Breeland—and Miss Alberton also, had she thought her guilty.” He ignored the gasps around the room. “That would have been easier to accomplish, and less expensive. Only one man necessary, and no return fare for Breeland or Miss Alberton, and no chance of their escape.”

  “That is an appalling suggestion, sir!” Deverill said in well-displayed horror. “Barbaric!”

  “No more so than yours,” Monk retorted. “And no sillier.”

  There was a faint titter of laughter around the gallery, more a release of tension than amusement.