Light & Dark

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  ‘My love,’ she said, ‘I must get you out of here. I must tell them the truth.’ She put her fingers gently to his lips to stop him from interrupting. ‘I don’t care what happens to me. Truly I don’t. All I care about is you!’

  ‘It’s no use, flower,’ he said. ‘My only chance is to depend on the lawyer. He’s a good man who will do his best for me.’

  ‘But darling, I cannot bear it. It’s because of me that you are in this awful place and your life is in such danger. I cannot go on living in Blackwood House—a free woman, as if I have done nothing—when it was I who killed Gavin, not you.’

  ‘Hush!’ He lowered his voice. ‘They are just outside the door and might hear you.’

  ‘I can’t bear it, Robert.’

  ‘For my sake, you must!’

  ‘But it’s for your sake that I must tell them the truth.’

  ‘It could only make things worse and it certainly wouldn’t make them release me from here. All it would do is involve you. That’s the only thing I dread, flower. Don’t do that to me.’

  ‘Oh, Robert!’

  ‘I want to think of you walking in the Bathgate Hills as free as a bird. I like to imagine you looking across the spread of fields and woods in all their warm colours and seeing the Forth glistening in the distance. In my mind and heart I’m always with you there.’

  Oh, love that needs no words. The wordless journey through the eyes into the soul. Skin that knows skin, the familiarity of flesh and bone. Love beyond flesh.

  ‘Don’t come back here again for any reason,’ he said. ‘My flower must not wither in such a place.’

  He kissed her gently, then put down her veil and before she could stop him he had called for the guards and they were leading him away.

  She felt herself shrinking like an old woman. Mrs Musgrove had to support her, half-carrying her from the prison into the carriage.

  Not a word passed between them during the whole journey back to the Bathgate hills and Blackwood House. Leaning back against the padded seat of the coach, eyes closed, Lorianna felt herself from time to time drift mercifully into unconsciousness.

  Opening her eyes eventually as the coach rocked up the Drumcross Road, she saw the beautiful arch of trees and the sight of it and of the hills beyond brought a rush of tears to her eyes, a sudden panic of sobbing.

  It was impossible that Robert should not be here in the countryside where he belonged.

  ‘Control yourself!’ Mrs Musgrove said coldly. ‘We shall soon be at the house and the servants must not see you in this state.’

  ‘I don’t care about the servants. I don’t care about anybody, except him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Musgrove mouth twisted. ‘And look where it’s got you!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lorianna sobbed in bewilderment. ‘Nothing has been Robert’s fault.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I warned you that men were nothing but trouble. They are not worth it.’

  ‘Robert is worth anything!’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ the housekeeper said. ‘I knew it was unwise to go there. That man has you demented. You must lie down as soon as we get in and I will give you some medicine.’

  Lorianna didn’t want to take any more laudanum. It would be like leaving Robert and drifting away into a muzzy, pain-free world on her own. A sense of urgency made her want to be alert to follow his trial—to remain aware of every detail of what was happening to him. At the same time she didn’t know how she could endure it. Again Mrs Musgrove had to support and half-carry her, for she hadn’t enough strength to climb from the carriage and walk the few steps into the house.

  Lizzie opened the door and ran to help Mrs Musgrove. One on each side, they half-carried, half-dragged her up the stairs and into the bedroom.

  The sweet perfume of flowers drifted in through the open window from the leafy garden, but Lorianna still had the smell of the Calton Jail in her nostrils, thick, sour, all-pervading. She felt sick.

  ‘I don’t want any medicine,’ she said, trying to push the black-mittened hand away.

  ‘You must take it.’

  ‘No! Leave me alone.’

  She could hear keys jangling and the sound brought the prison back, the horror of it weakening her so much that Mrs Musgrove succeeded in forcing the laudanum into her mouth.

  27

  Miss Viners would not have missed the trial for anything. She was dressed in her good brown coat topped with a narrow fur at her throat, the furry face of the dead animal vying with her own in sharpness and bobbing about as she hurried along.

  Parliament House had always fascinated her. Lying to the south of the ancient St Giles Cathedral in Parliament Square, the ground on which the building now stood had originally been the burial place attached to St Giles and had lain open to the south, descending in successive terraces down to the Cowgate. Typically of hilly Edinburgh, this meant that only one storey was seen from the north but from the south at least half a dozen.

  Inside there were endless dark stone stairways to descend, leading to range after range of vaults and cellars which had to be explored by flickering match or lanthorn. Had they disinterred all the bodies which had been buried there when it was the graveyard of St Giles, she wondered. Or were the bones of the dead still rotting down there? One thing was certain in her mind: their spirits would be haunting the place. If only she could slip down and make contact with them! Once, when attending another murder trial, she had managed to go some way on the pretext of being lost. But before she was found and banished upstairs again, all she had managed to hear echoing through the gloom was the brisk but ghostly sound of legal feet overhead. Down there were the cells of the police office where Kelso was being held at this moment, waiting to be led up the trap-stair to the dock in the Justiciary Court.

  Reaching the covered arcade off which led the entrances to the courts of law and justice, she went into the entrances and along the corridor to peep into the Great Hall where once the Parliament of Scotland had sat. It was crowded with counsel parading ritually back and forth. Under the dark, oak-beamed roof, attired in their billowing black gowns, they were like restless, sharp-faced crows. They were obviously intent on considering or discussing their briefs, and looking down on them with equal solemnity from the tiers of heavy pictures on the walls, or from the statues on their plinths, were the judges and law commentators of the past. Such as the sardonic-mouthed Braxfield, or Old Forbes of Culloden who stretched out a thin stone hand as if trying to still the waters of strife.

  Miss Viners tried to pick out some of the actors who would be taking part in the drama of the Crown versus Robert Kelso, but failed and had to content herself with hurrying away to make sure she had a good seat in the court where she would be able to see everyone there and thoroughly enjoy herself.

  John Stirling, counsel for the defence, was pacing alone. He was a tall, slender man with a slightly forward stoop and silvery fair hair under his short bar wig. Despite his usual air of quiet confidence appropriate to the dignity of his profession, a faint creasing of his eyes and a tightness at his mouth betrayed that he was worried. Over the years he had developed an instinct and this instinct now told him that Robert Kelso was innocent. The trouble was that the man was being uncooperative. He was hiding something, Stirling felt sure. With stubborn insistence Kelso had claimed he had not killed Gavin Blackwood and when first questioned by the police, he had been equally adamant that he had had nothing to do with Blackwood’s death. The police had called him a liar and said they had a witness who had seen him in the woods where Blackwood’s body had been found. Kelso denied that he had set foot out of his farmhouse all evening and then just clammed up. This denial would be used as corroborating evidence against him.

  The witness the police spoke of would, of course, be the Lord Advocate’s star performer and would be put in the witness box early this morning while the jury were wide awake and willing to listen.

  Stirling sighed as he mad
e his way out to the corridor, his legal papers clutched in one hand. ‘Ah well, unus testis, nullus testis!’ *

  In over a hundred years the sombre dark oak courtroom had seen most of the notable criminal trials of Scotland. Now, in the grim sunken dock facing the judge sat Robert Kelso, flanked by two policemen wearing white gloves and each armed with a baton. Not that the batons would be the slightest good if Kelso turned nasty, Stirling thought. The man looked as strong as the proverbial ox.

  Stirling fussed absently with the papers on the table in front of him. Perhaps his unease, a feeling indeed that amounted almost to sadness, had something to do with the fact that Kelso was like himself a ‘Bathgate bairn’. Not only that, he had often admired Kelso’s performance at the Highland Games and shared in the pride of his achievements in bringing honour and credit to the town.

  He stole a glance at Kelso now, dwarfing the two policemen in the dock. What a fine athlete he was, someone of unusual physical strength. The ‘Iron Man’, that was how he was known in the Bathgate Hills. He was gazing up at the golden coat of arms on the wall high above the judge. It was an imposing piece of metal sculpture, dominated by a lion and a unicorn and the words of the old French motto—Honi soit qui mal y pense. Eventually Kelso’s head bowed slightly and his eyes acquired a blank, faraway expression.

  ‘His Majesty’s Advocate against Robert Kelso,’ called the clerk of the court.

  Automatically Stirling rose and said, ‘I appear for the accused. He pleads not guilty.’

  The clerk of the court asked him to be seated and then, with none of the preliminary speeches of English courts, the trial in the Supreme Criminal Court of Scotland began.

  The bearded Lord Advocate rose like a black iceberg from a white sea of papers. ‘Call Crown witness number one.’

  All the time the formal witness was being given of identification of the body, Stirling was mentally bracing himself for the witness on whom he had no doubt the Crown’s case must rest. This witness was called as number three.

  The Lord Advocate’s ample girth exuded authority and the voice emerging from the black-bearded face filled the court like the ringing of some giant bell.

  ‘Your name is Walter McLeod?’

  ‘Yes, it is, sir.’

  Stirling thoughtfully tapped his fingers against his mouth as he appraised the man in the box. Wattie McLeod, the local poacher. Spruced up for the occasion, with hair plastered wetly to one side and shoulders screwed back as if on army pay parade.

  ‘And you live at Oaktree Cottage in the Bathgate Hills.’ The bell was majestically pealing out again.

  ‘That’s right, sir. I do.’

  ‘What age are you?’

  ‘I’m fifty-six years of age.’

  ‘What is your occupation?’

  ‘I’m a moudie catcher, sir.’

  ‘For the benefit of those in the court who do not understand the vernacular, could you explain what that term means?’

  ‘I catch moles which are causing trouble for farmers and ruining their land.’

  Stirling allowed himself a mental smile. He would soon make short work of this philanthropic respectability in cross-examination. His main thrust in Kelso’s defence, in fact, would have to lie in completely discrediting this witness. And then through witnesses of his own to establish the excellent character of Robert Kelso. Still pursuing the line of character, Stirling thought ruefully that it might have helped if the judge, the Lord Justice Clerk, had been a countryman like Kelso, or even if he had been a man of less bilious constitution. A lot could depend on his Lordship’s liver.

  ‘Now, let me get this quite clear,’ the Lord Advocate was booming out. ‘You are saying that you saw the accused, Robert Kelso, lift the body of Gavin Blackwood from his horse and lay it down on the ground with its head resting on a boulder.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s exactly what I saw. And he left Mr Blackwood’s horse there, and when Mr Blackwood was found like that folks thought he’d had an accident and fallen off his horse.’

  The Lord Justice Clerk, resplendent in his robes of scarlet red with white silk cape, and cuffs on which shone small cut-out diamonds, leaned forward on the bench and stuck out his sallow face to ask querulously, ‘Can you be more specific about the distance you were from the accused when you say you saw him place the body on the ground?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord. I was about two feet further away from Kelso than I am now and I could see him just as clearly.’

  The judge sank back into his nest of scarlet silk again. The Lord Advocate, however, knowing the line of questioning Stirling was bound to take, quickly jumped back with, ‘Although it was a dark and stormy night?’

  ‘The moon was shining then, sir. And the storm had abated. I was just about to step out of my shelter in fact, when Kelso came along.’

  ‘And you are perfectly convinced that the man you saw is the man in the dock. There is no doubt in your mind?’

  ‘None at all, sir. It was him all right.’

  Wattie’s apparent self-confidence began to diminish as soon as he saw Stirling stand up. This was no Edinburgh birkie; this man knew him. This man belonged to Bathgate—and his father before him. As far back as Wattie could remember, there had always been an office in Engine Street with a brass plate you could see your face in and the words: ‘Stirling and Dunlop, Solicitors and Notaries’.

  ‘You say you are a mole-catcher,’ Stirling asked.

  Wattie’s heart sank. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Who employs you?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I will repeat the question,’ Stirling offered obligingly. ‘Who employs you?’

  ‘Eh … farmers.’

  ‘Which farmers? Can you give us names and addresses of—say—two farmers who have given you employment recently?’

  ‘Well, eh … John Hunterson of the Mains was the last …’

  ‘The last job you did as a mole-catcher was for a Mr John Hunterson?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘When was that?’

  Stirling was gratified to see that the witness was beginning to look distinctly shifty.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Was it last week?’

  ‘Eh, no.’

  ‘Last month?’

  ‘Maybe a wee bit longer than that.’

  Stirling smiled encouragingly. ‘Last year?’

  ‘Aye, it could have been.’

  His father had always said, ‘Never cross-examine crossly’, and Stirling asked with a quiet mildness of which his father would have been proud, ‘What have you been living on since, then?’

  ‘Och, eh, this and that. I manage not bad.’

  ‘I put it to you, Mr McLeod, that you manage very well.’

  Wattie shrugged uncomfortably. Then in the silence that followed as Stirling leaned towards the table and fingered some papers, his nerves strained so much that he was on the point of shouting out, ‘You sly bastard, you’re doing this on purpose!’ when suddenly Stirling spoke.

  ‘Is it true to say that you have been convicted on no fewer than nine occasions for poaching?’

  ‘A man has to live,’ Wattie countered resentfully.

  ‘Am I supposed to infer from that remark that you make a living from poaching?’

  Wattie hesitated and then thought—’What’s the use?’ John Stirling knew perfectly well he was a poacher and had been all his days.

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘I do say that. You are a poacher, Mr McLeod.’

  ‘A man’s got to make a living,’ Wattie repeated with growing indignation. ‘Some people would have me starve.’

  Stirling raised an eyebrow. ‘Some people? What people?’

  ‘Him for a start!’

  ‘Are you indicating the man in the dock, the accused, Robert Kelso?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘He made it difficult for you to go about your business, did he?’

  ‘He did, sir.’

  ‘I see. So in fact, contrar
y to what you said when questioned by the Lord Advocate, you did have an axe to grind with the accused.’

  ‘Well … I suppose if you put it like that. But I wasn’t the only one. Many a man that worked under him hated his guts.’

  Stirling was beginning to feel quite optimistic. There was no doubt in his mind that he was completely discrediting the poacher’s testimony. Yet still the unease persisted. It was not until witnesses four and five were called that he understood why—they, and not Wattie McLeod, were the Crown’s trump cards.

  Witness number four was Jessie Kirk, the dairymaid at the Blackwood home farm, and she testified that she had been out walking with her sweetheart on the night in question and had seen Kelso on horseback riding towards the Littlegate woods. She was a good witness for the prosecution, open-faced and clear-eyed and with a firm, sure voice. She was absolutely certain of what she had seen and looked straight at the jury when she said so.

  Stirling rose to cross-examine her.

  ‘Have you ever seen Mr Gavin Blackwood out riding at night?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never, sir. Mr Blackwood never did much riding round the estate, but when he did it was always during the day.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Robert Kelso out riding at night?’

  ‘Apart from the night Mr Blackwood was found dead, you mean? Oh, yes, often. Kelso often rode at night.’

  ‘Very well. Now let us come to the night in question. You say you saw Robert Kelso on horseback riding towards Littlegate woods?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You could see quite clearly?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Perfectly clearly. I’m quite sure it was him.’

  ‘Very well, what colour of horse was he riding?’

  ‘A black horse, sir.’

  ‘You’re quite sure of that, too?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Kelso always rode a black horse.’

  Stirling smiled. ‘But if what you say is true and it was Kelso riding towards the Littlegate woods, he must have been riding a tan-coloured horse with white face markings.’