Soul

by Tobsha Learner

  ‘I see. Is it also not true that Colonel Huntington and yourself were discovered on the night of July twenty-fourth at Feng’s Oriental Palladium, otherwise known as a notorious opium den in Mincing Lane, and that Colonel Huntington was so intoxicated he had to be carried out of the building?’

  ‘It would not be the first time two city gentlemen were guilty of a little overindulgence,’ Hamish replied wryly.

  The gallery and several members of the jury broke into laughter.

  Smash! The judge’s mallet resounded. ‘Mr Cohen, will you please desist from attacking the victim’s reputation.’

  ‘I apologise, Your Honour.’ Erasmus swung back to Hamish. ‘Mr Campbell, would you say that Colonel Huntington might have been in a fragile state of mind at the time of his death?’

  ‘I cannot answer that. I was not privy to his psychology.’

  ‘No, but you were privy to a rather generous stipend, which included an apartment rented for you by your “mentor”. Pray tell me what kind of “research” required the use of…’ He pulled a list from his pocket and, lifting his spectacles to his face, read aloud: ‘Two Louis V sofas, a Napoleon III ebony and brass-inlaid bedstead with mattress, a piano, the use of a butler and maid…oh, and several opium pipes?’

  Flummoxed, Hamish Campbell looked over at Mr Abby, the prosecutor, who lifted his brows quizzically. Sensing support slipping away, the young student faltered. ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘I have no more questions.’

  After glancing at the jury, Hamish stepped down from the witness box. Erasmus sat back down and reaching over to the next row leaned to whisper in Lavinia’s ear.

  ‘I do believe the jury may be swinging our way, my dear.’

  73

  Los Angeles, 2002

  KLAUS REACHED FOR HIS WINE GLASS. ‘I know it must have come as a huge shock to you,’ he said, ‘but that wasn’t my experience. It was like a pressure had been building for months. I just couldn’t deal with it any more. You must understand that.’

  ‘Can we just talk about practicalities?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  Julia watched as he swallowed a mouthful of wine.

  ‘Do you mind if I make a quick phone call?’ she said. ‘It’s work.’ She indicated the phone that sat on the sideboard.

  ‘Not at all.’

  She stepped behind him, slid open the drawer and took out the gun then aimed it at his head. Klaus, his back to her, continued to sip his wine. Julia stood there, paralysed, her finger curled around the trigger.

  As Gabriel careered down the hill, he saw there was a car in Julia’s driveway that he didn’t recognise: a red Golf Volkswagen with a miniature Belgian flag in the corner of the rear window. His instinct had been right.

  The road flattened out and he skidded into Julia’s front yard, dropping the bike on the lawn. He pelted to the front door and rang the bell.

  Open, open, he prayed. To his horror, nothing sounded inside the house.

  74

  Old Bailey, 1861

  LAVINIA STOOD IN THE WITNESS BOX, her hands gripping the rails. This moment, imagined, had terrified her, but now, in its actual execution, terror had detached her from her body. The weeks in custody had thrown her into an examination of her behaviour and psychology: she knew she was guilty and must face her judges, both now and after her death. But here, standing before the rows of curious spectators, completely exposed, all she could think of was her son and how she should try to preserve her life for his sake.

  Mr Abby stepped forward.

  ‘Mrs Huntington, is it true your husband asked you to assist him in this ritual?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So you were witness to his preparation and, how shall I put it, his transportation…’—his sardonic tone had the court laughing—‘…on the evening of September sixteenth, and, I might add, to his horrific death the same evening.’

  ‘I was, sir.’

  ‘And you did nothing to save him from dying?’

  ‘Objection, Your Honour,’ Erasmus cried. ‘That is a blatant accusation!’

  ‘Objection noted. Please answer the question, Mrs Huntington.’

  ‘I was rendered immobile by a great fear, sir.’

  ‘A great fear or a great indifference?’

  Lavinia hung her head. ‘I do not know.’

  Mr Abby, fuelled by what he perceived as a minor victory, strolled along the row of jurors, studying their faces as if to say I told you so. At the end of the row, he spun back around to the witness box with great dramatic effect.

  ‘Did you love your husband, Mrs Huntington?’

  The direct nature of the question floored Lavinia. Staring at the prosecutor—his eyebrows raised in query, his whole face a parody of disingenuous bewilderment, as if the very question astounded him—Lavinia suddenly found that she could not lie—neither to protect herself nor her child. I am my father’s daughter, she thought; I cannot utter falsehoods after swearing an oath upon the Bible. Paralysed by this knowledge, she faltered.

  ‘Will you answer the question?’

  Lifting her chin, she tried to blank out the leering faces beyond the prosecutor: some expectant; some already closed in judgement; others appearing to be willing her to defend herself—or so she imagined.

  ‘I did, sir, perhaps too much so.’

  A ripple ran through the court. Lavinia stayed focused on the prosecutor.

  ‘I believe now that I might have had unnatural and unrealistic expectations of such an emotion,’ she said. ‘As a younger person, I read novels and was much influenced by their romantic notions. My husband was a great deal older than I; in the early days of our marriage, he was both mentor and husband to me, and we enjoyed much intellectual discourse. Then later…’

  ‘Later, you quarrelled. About what, Mrs Huntington?’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘Come now, we have already heard how Colonel Huntington received bruises about the head due to your hysteria—’

  ‘Objection!’

  ‘Dismissed, Mr Cohen. Continue, Mr Abby.’

  ‘Did you engage in a relationship with Mr Aloysius O’Malley while he was in the employment of your husband?’

  Condemn me if you must, but not Aloysius, she prayed. During the cold of the prison nights, she had imagined her execution a thousand times over. Exhausted, she now wished only for the charade to finish. They had worn her out with their questioning. Every day when she entered that court, she had to suffer the hysteria of the newspaper men and a crowd of screaming women holding placards. The letters she had received in the last month had not helped: impassioned notes from wronged women; letters from young girls trapped in arranged marriages who had elected Lavinia as their champion, death threats from cuckolded husbands. But the most terrible deprivation they had imposed upon her was not being able to see her son Aidan. She had not seen him since her arrest and the unbearable absence widened with each passing day.

  She turned to Aloysius. The coachman had been in the dock for the past three days and Lavinia had longed for the chance to speak with him. But at the end of each session she was bustled away to her cell. Aloysius: just the sounding of his name gave her strength. Aloysius. She stared at his helmet of dark hair, his green eyes now conveying a sensibility that stretched across the courtroom like a rope to a foundering vessel.

  ‘Will you please answer the question.’ The prosecutor’s harsh voice jolted her back.

  ‘We had a brief liaison, initiated by myself.’

  So there it is, I have condemned myself: the realisation ran like a shudder throughout her whole body. But now that she had actually said the words, a great calm followed—a sense of disconnection, as if she floated high above the proceedings.

  The court seemed to voice a collective gasp, then broke into shocked murmuring. The judge slammed down his gavel and the murmuring ceased.

  Determined to be heard, Lavinia continued. ‘You have to understand that I was driven by loneliness. He h
ad come from the same county, from my homeland. He is innocent of murder! He is merely guilty of succumbing to my seduction.’

  ‘So you admit there was a murder?’

  ‘I do not know. I only know that at the time of my husband’s death, I was possessed by a great jealousy and a great despair. I believed I would never have my marriage back, nor ever have the freedom to love another. At twenty years of age, one’s life yawns before one like an eternity—’

  ‘Jealous of whom, Mrs Huntington? Surely not of the friendship between Colonel Huntington and Mr Hamish Campbell?’

  ‘I repeat, I cannot say. But I do not believe myself responsible for my own actions at the time of my husband’s death.’

  ‘That will be all, Your Honour.’ Mr Abby bowed briefly to the judge who then indicated that Lavinia should take her seat.

  75

  Los Angeles, 2002

  JULIA STOOD THERE FOR WHAT seemed an eternity, wanting to kill him, knowing she had the capacity.

  ‘Aren’t you going to make your call?’ Still eating, Klaus didn’t bother to turn around.

  Julia didn’t answer. Every atom of her being was focused on the .44 Magnum, heavy in her hand, pointed at the back of his skull. It became fused with her skin, an organic extension of her anger.

  Klaus caught her reflection in the window opposite—a wisp of an outline, but clear enough. He swung around.

  ‘Don’t move!’ Julia said, her voice furious and urgent sounded out as violent as Klaus’s surprised expression.

  He turned back, his hands frozen to the table.

  ‘Julia—’

  ‘I want you to hear what you did to the three of us—you, me and our son—’

  ‘Julia, you’re not being rational—’

  ‘This isn’t about rationality! It’s about betrayal.’

  Klaus’s mobile phone started ringing in his jacket pocket.

  ‘Don’t answer it!’

  Somewhere in the room, a fly began to buzz. Then there came a sudden banging on the front door. The noise almost shocked Julia into pulling the trigger.

  Gabriel stood at the front door smashing his fists against the wood. Nobody answered, yet the lights were burning inside. He climbed the fence and ran around to the back of the house, to the bathroom window. To his relief it was ajar. He slipped his fingers under the frame, hoisted it up and climbed inside.

  The sound of a gun being fired and glass shattering rang through the house.

  ‘Julia!’ Gabriel screamed, and scrambled over the bathtub towards the door.

  76

  Old Bailey, 1861

  ‘THE PROSECUTION CALLS DOLLY COPPER to the stand!’

  The maid, dressed in a pretty bonnet as if for church, smiled at the assembly as she climbed the short staircase to the witness box. In a defiant and confident voice, she swore her oath on the Bible.

  Erasmus turned to Lavinia, who had paled. ‘Mr Abby has us caught on a back foot with a surprise witness. Who is she, Mrs Huntington? Will she be the source of some aggravation?’

  ‘I am afraid, sir, that she will.’

  The defence lawyer turned back to the witness stand, his demeanour grave as he examined the extreme youth of the woman. Her feminine frailty and the open honesty of her face would no doubt appeal to the jury.

  Mr Abby stood.

  ‘You have been in the employment of the Huntington household for three years, is this correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir, and I have been very happy there.’

  ‘Tell the court what you witnessed on the evening of September fifteenth.’

  Dolly Copper glanced quickly at Lavinia then averted her eyes.

  ‘I was in the library after the men had been there. I was just tidying up and doing my usual dusting—Mrs Beetle likes to inspect the house last thing at night and everything must be in its proper order—’

  ‘Get to the nub of the matter, Miss Copper. We adjourn for lunch in half an hour and brevity is essential,’ the judge interjected, stifling a yawn.

  ‘Yes, sir. Well, it was like this, the mistress came in and dismissed me, telling me she would replace the master’s cognac as he was particular about it. I remember thinking at the time that it was an odd thing to say, as it were always Mr Poole’s job to look after the wine and such. Knowing that it would be my head on the chopping block if the room wasn’t proper, I hung around the door—’

  Eramus leapt to his feet. ‘In other words, you were spying!’

  ‘I was not!’

  ‘Order in court!’ the judge commanded. ‘Pray continue, Miss Copper.’

  ‘Anyhow, that’s when I saw the mistress tipping something into the Colonel’s snuffbox. I knows what I saw ’cause I’d checked earlier to see whether the snuff needed topping up, and the box was full. I’m telling you, it weren’t snuff she was mixing in with the master’s tobacco, that’s for certain.’

  An audible gasp ran through the court. Lavinia gazed straight ahead, her face deliberately emotionless.

  The judge glanced sternly around the murmuring spectators as the jurors filed in. Lavinia dared not look at the twelve men who had been in discussion for over four hours behind closed doors. Whatever the verdict, she was determined to consider herself free—free of the burden of guilt, free spiritually.

  She looked across at Aloysius. The two of them were locked into this dreadful moment of waiting; her growing anxiety smashing against the court walls with each passing minute. She closed her eyes, imagining a different future: a small bridge over a river somewhere on the other side of the world, with the three of them standing together on it—Aloysius, Aidan and herself.

  ‘Have the jury reached a verdict?’ the judge asked.

  A short man with a handlebar moustache whose edges reached to the winged tips of his collar, and who looked as if he’d be more comfortable behind the desk of a counting house, stood. ‘We have, Your Honour.’

  The juror handed a slip of paper to the clerk, who passed it to the judge. A terrible silence fell upon the room as the judge opened the slip then began reading.

  ‘In the case of Aloysius O’Malley, accused of conspiring with Mrs Lavinia Huntington to murder her husband, the jury finds the accused not guilty.’

  Up in the public gallery, Samuel sounded a solitary cheer. The exclamation echoed around the hushed space, as, their breath held as one, the rest of the spectators waited on the next verdict.

  The judge cleared his throat.

  ‘In the case of Mrs Lavinia Elspeth Huntington, the jury finds her guilty of murder—’

  Uproar broke out amongst the onlookers. While members of the Press, anxious to be the first to reach the printing room, pushed past the young American coachman who was now holding his head in horror. The Reverend Kane, in a sea of shouting people, began muttering the Lord’s Prayer. Meanwhile, the two accused stared at each other, motionless.

  The judge placed the black cap on his head.

  ‘The condemned will be taken from these premises and shall be hung by the neck until pronounced dead.’

  A great roar rose up in Lavinia’s head and the world ran away from her into sudden darkness.

  Upon seeing her daughter collapse, Meredith Murphy pushed her way to the front of the court.

  Lavinia’s face was chalk against the grey of her flannel dress. Mr Cohen and his clerk crouched beside her. Kneeling, Meredith reached into a pocket and placed a vial of smelling salts under Lavinia’s nose.

  ‘I am most dreadfully sorry, Mrs Murphy.’ The defence lawyer laid his hand gently upon the Irishwoman’s shoulder. ‘The jury and the whole of England was set against her from the start.’

  ‘You did your best, Erasmus, but even you cannot change the ways of the land, nor the travesty that often passes for marriage.’ She looked down at her daughter’s gaunt face, now resting upon her knee. ‘Sir, I have not wept for fifteen years, and I’ll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of seeing me weep now.’

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a small
cloth bag filled with guineas. ‘You’ll be wanting this.’

  The barrister handed the money back.

  ‘Dear woman, I will be as saddened as you to see her hang.’

  77

  Los Angeles, 2002

  GABRIEL RUSHED INTO THE DINING room. Julia stood holding a gun, staring at the shattered window opposite. Klaus was sitting in front of her, cowering, his hands covering his head.

  ‘I shot to miss, deliberately. I stopped myself,’ Julia murmured, amazed. Gabriel pulled the gun out of her hand.

  Klaus stood slowly and dabbed pointlessly at his wine-stained shirt. Then, as the full realisation of what had happened rushed through him, he swung around to Julia and started yelling.

  ‘You’re fucking crazy! I’m going to press charges—this will be the end of your career!’

  Lifting an arm, he moved to hit her. Gabriel blocked him. For a moment the two men stared at each other, then Klaus backed off.

  ‘You’re Naomi’s son, aren’t you?’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘What do you fucking think?! She tried to kill me! I want that gun confiscated and I will be pressing charges! You can testify for me.’

  ‘Testify? I saw nothing.’ Gabriel turned to Julia, still pressed against the sideboard in shock. ‘Julia?’

  Julia looked at Klaus—he was just an ordinary fallible man in his early forties, with bad skin and a receding hairline. She thought about his inability to be honest, his fatal need to please to the detriment of his own personality, his lack of professional discipline. He was a chameleon, a victim of his own moral and emotional weakness. And, for the first time, she pitied Carla.

  ‘You know what? I think we’re all finished now.’ She pushed her way past the two men and went into the kitchen. Leaning against the sink, she began to shake uncontrollably.

  ‘I had this sudden feeling that you were in danger. That sample you gave me to test…’ Gabriel stood in the doorway, only dimly aware that he was shouting. He was angry, angry with the horror of it all, and his voice boomed out, full of questions. ‘It tested positive! I checked it three times, and it came up positive every time. It’s definitely that sequence, Julia, but what’s really odd is that it’s female DNA.’