Defend and Betray Read online

  Peverell seemed unmoved, except by politeness and a certain outward sympathy for Felicia.

  “I will point out all the possible courses to her, Mama-in-law, and the results, as I believe them, of any action she might make.” He dabbed his lips with his napkin and his face retained so smooth an expression he might have been discussing the transfer of a few acres of farmland, with no real perception of the passions and tragedies of which they were speaking.

  Damaris watched him with wide eyes. Edith was silent. Randolf continued with his soup.

  Felicia was so angry with him she had great difficulty in controlling her expression, and on the edge of the table her fingers were knotted around her napkin. But she would not permit him to see that he had beaten her.

  Randolf put his spoon down. “I suppose you know what you are doing,” he said with a scowl. “But it sounds very unsatisfactory to me.”

  “Well the army is rather different from the law.” Peverell’s expression was still one of interest and unbroken patience. “It’s still war, of course; conflict, adversarial system. But weapons are different and rules have to be obeyed. All in the brain.” He smiled as if inwardly pleased with something the rest of them could not see, not a secret pleasure so much as a private one. “We also deal in life and death, and the taking of property and land—but the weapons are words and the arena is in the mind.”

  Randolf muttered something inaudible, but there was acute dislike in his heavy face.

  “Sometimes you make yourself sound overly important, Peverell,” Felicia said acidly.

  “Yes.” Peverell was not put out of countenance in the least. He smiled at the ceiling. “Damaris says I am pompous.” He turned to look at Hester. “Who is your barrister, Miss Latterly?”

  “Oliver Rathbone, of Vere Street, just off Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” Hester replied immediately.

  “Really?” His eyes were wide. “He is quite brilliant. I remember him in the Grey case. What an extraordinary verdict! And do you really think he would be prepared to act for Alexandra?”

  “If she wishes him to.” Hester felt a surge of self-consciousness that took her by surprise. She found herself unable to meet anyone’s eyes, even Peverell’s, not because he was critical but because he was so remarkably perceptive.

  “How excellent,” he said quietly. “How absolutely excellent. It is very good of you, Miss Latterly. I am sufficiently aware of Mr. Rathbone’s reputation to be most obliged. I shall inform Mrs. Carlyon.”

  “But you will not allow her to entertain any false notions as to her choices in the matter,” Felicia said grimly. “No matter how brilliant”—she said the word with a peculiar curl of her lip as though it were a quality to be held in contempt—“this Mr. Rathbone may be, he cannot twist or defy the law, nor would it be desirable that he should.” She took a deep breath and let it out in an inaudible sigh, her mouth suddenly tight with pain. “Thaddeus is dead, and the law will require that someone answer for it.”

  “Everyone is entitled to defend themselves in their own way, whatever they believe is in their interest, Mama-in-law,” Peverell said clearly.

  “Possibly, but society also has rights, surely—it must!” She stared at him defiantly. “Alexandra’s ideas will not be allowed to override those of the rest of us. I will not permit it.” She turned to Hester. “Perhaps now you will tell us something of your experiences with Miss Nightingale, Miss Latterly. It would be most inspiring. She is truly a remarkable woman.”

  Hester was speechless with amazement for a moment, then a reluctant admiration for Felicia’s sheer command overtook her.

  “Yes—by—by all means …” And she began with the tales she felt would be most acceptable to them and least likely to provoke any further dissension: the long nights in the hospital at Scutari, the weariness, the patience, the endless work of cleaning to be done, the courage. She forbore from speaking of the filth, the rats, the sheer blinding incompetence, or the horrifying figures of the casualties that could have been avoided by foresight, adequate provisions, transport and sanitation.

  * * *

  That afternoon Peverell went first to see Alexandra Carlyon, then to Vere Street to speak to Oliver Rathbone. The day after, May 6, Rathbone presented himself at the prison gates and requested, as Mrs. Carlyon’s solicitor, if he might speak with her. He knew he would not be refused.

  It was foolish to create in one’s mind a picture of what a client would be like, her appearance, or even her personality, and yet as he followed the turnkey along the gray passages he already had a picture formed of Alexandra Carlyon. He saw her as dark-haired, lush of figure and dramatic and emotional of temperament. After all, she had apparently killed her husband in a rage of jealousy—or if Edith Sobell were correct, had confessed it falsely in order to shield her daughter.

  But when the turnkey, a big woman with iron-gray hair screwed into a knot at the back of her head, finally unlocked the door and swung it open, he stepped into the cell and saw a woman of little more than average height. She was very slender—too slender for fashion—her fair hair had a heavy natural curl, and her face was highly individual, full of wit and imagination. Her cheekbones were broad, her nose short and aquiline, her mouth beautiful but far too wide, and at once passionate and humorous. She was not lovely in any traditional sense, and yet she was startlingly attractive, even exhausted and frightened as she was, and dressed in plainest white and gray.

  She looked up at him without interest, because she had no hope. She was defeated and he knew it even before she spoke.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Carlyon,” he said formally. “I am Oliver Rathbone. I believe your brother-in-law, Mr. Erskine, has told you that I am willing to represent you, should you wish it?”

  She smiled, but it was a ghost of a gesture, an effort dragged up out of an attempt at good manners rather than anything she felt.

  “How do you do, Mr. Rathbone. Yes, Peverell did tell me, but I am afraid you have wasted a journey. You cannot help me.”

  Rathbone looked at the turnkey.

  “Thank you—you may leave us. I will call when I want to be let out again.”

  “Very well,” said the woman, and she retreated, locking the door behind her with a loud click as the lever turned and fell into place.

  Alexandra remained sitting on the cot and Rathbone lowered himself to sit on the far end of it. To continue standing would be to give the impression he was about to leave, and he would not surrender without a fight.

  “Possibly not, Mrs. Carlyon, but please do not dismiss me before permitting me to try. I shall not prejudge you.” He smiled, knowing his own charm because it was part of his trade. “Please do not prejudge me either.”

  This time her answering smile was in her eyes only, and there was sadness in it, and mockery.

  “Of course I will listen to you, Mr. Rathbone; for Peverell’s sake as well as in good manners. But the truth remains that you cannot help me.” Her hesitation was so minute as to be almost indiscernible. “I killed my husband. The law will require payment for that.”

  He noticed that she did not use the word hang, and he knew in that moment that she was too afraid of it yet to say it aloud. Perhaps she had not even said it to herself in her own mind. Already his pity was engaged. He thrust it away. It was no basis on which to defend a case. His brain was what was needed.

  “Tell me what happened, Mrs. Carlyon; everything that you feel to be relevant to your husband’s death, starting wherever you wish.”

  She looked away from him. Her voice was flat.

  “There is very little to tell. My husband had paid a great deal of attention to Louisa Furnival for some time. She is very beautiful, and has a kind of manner about her which men admire a great deal. She flirted with him. I think she flirted with most men. I was jealous. That’s all …”

  “Your husband flirted with Mrs. Furnival at a dinner party, so you left the room and followed him upstairs, pushed him over the banister,” he said expressionlessly, “
and when he fell you went down the stairs after him, and as he lay senseless on the floor you picked up the halberd and drove it through his chest? I assume this was the first time in your twenty-three years of marriage that he had so offended you?”

  She swung around and looked at him with anger. Phrased like that and repeated blindly it sounded preposterous. It was the first spark of real emotion he had seen in her, and as such the very beginning of hope.

  “No of course not,” she said coldly. “He was more than merely flirting with her. He had been having an affair with her and they were flaunting it in my face—and in front of my own daughter and her husband. It would have been enough to anger any woman.”

  He watched her face closely, the remarkable features, the sleeplessness, the shock and the fear. He did see anger there also, but it was on the surface, a flare of temper, shallow and without heat, the flame of a match, not the searing heat of a furnace. Was that because she was lying about the flirting, the affair, or because she was too exhausted, too spent to feel any passion now? The object of her rage was dead and she was in the shadow of the noose herself.

  “And yet many women must have endured it,” he replied, still watching her.

  She lifted her shoulders very slightly and he realized again how thin she was. The white blouse and gray unhooped skirt made her look almost waiflike, except for the power in her face. She was not a childlike woman at all; that broad brow and short, round jaw were too willful to be demure, except by deliberate artifice, and it would be a deception short-lived.

  “Tell me how it happened, Mrs. Carlyon,” he tried again. “Start that evening. Of course the affair with Mrs. Furnival had been continuing for some time. By the way, when did you first realize they were enamored of each other?”

  “I don’t remember.” Still she did not look at him. There was no urgency in her at all. It was quite obvious she did not care whether he believed her or not. The emotion was gone again. She shrugged very faintly. “A few weeks, I suppose. One doesn’t know what one doesn’t want to.” Now suddenly there was real passion in her, harsh and desperately painful. Something hurt her so deeply it was tangible in the small room.

  He was confused. One moment she felt so profoundly he could almost sense the pulse of it himself; the next she was numb, as if she were speaking of total trivialities that mattered to no one.

  “And this particular evening brought it to a climax?” he said gently.

  “Yes …” Her voice was husky anyway, with a pleasing depth to it unusual in a woman. Now it was little above a whisper.

  “You must tell me what happened, event by event as you recall it, Mrs. Carlyon, if I am to … understand.” He had nearly said to help, when he remembered the hopelessness in her face and in her bearing, and knew that she had no belief in help. The promise would be without meaning to her, and she would reject him again for using it.

  As it was she still kept her face turned away and her voice was tight with emotion.

  “Understanding will not achieve anything, Mr. Rathbone. I killed him. That is all the law will know or care about. And that is unarguable.”

  He smiled wryly. “Nothing is ever unarguable in law, Mrs. Carlyon. That is how I make my living, and believe me I am good at it. I don’t always win, but I do far more often than I lose.”

  She swung around to face him and for the first time there was real humor in her face, lighting it and showing a trace of the delightful woman she might be in other circumstances.

  “A true lawyer’s reply,” she said quietly. “But I am afraid I would be one of those few.”

  “Oh please. Don’t defeat me before I begin!” He allowed an answering trace of lightness into his tone also. “I prefer to be beaten than to surrender.”

  “It is not your battle, Mr. Rathbone. It is mine.”

  “I would like to make it mine. And you do need a barrister of some kind to plead your case. You cannot do it yourself.”

  “All you can do is repeat my confession,” she said again.

  “Mrs. Carlyon, I dislike intensely any form of cruelty, especially that which is unnecessary, but I have to tell you the truth. If you are found guilty, without any mitigating circumstances, then you will hang.”

  She closed her eyes very slowly and took a long, deep breath, her skin ashen white. As he had thought earlier, she had already touched this in her mind, but some defense, some hope had kept it just beyond her grasp. Now it was there in words and she could no longer pretend. He felt brutal watching her, and yet to have allowed her to cling to a delusion would have been far worse, immeasurably dangerous.

  He must judge exactly, precisely all the intangible measures of fear and strength, honesty and love or hate which made her emotional balance at this moment if he were to guide her through this morass which he himself could only guess at. Public opinion would have no pity for a woman who murdered out of jealousy. In fact there would be little pity for a woman who murdered her husband whatever the reason. Anything short of life-threatening physical brutality was expected to be endured. Obscene or unnatural demands, of course, would be abhorred, but so would anyone crass enough to mention such things. What hell anyone endured in the bedroom was something people preferred not to speak of, like fatal diseases and death itself. It was not decent.

  “Mrs. Carlyon …”

  “I know,” she whispered. “They will …” She still could not bring herself to say the words, and he did not force her. He knew they were there in her mind.

  “I can do a great deal more than simply repeat your confession, if you will tell me the truth,” he went on. “You did not simply push your husband over the banister and then stab him with the halberd because he was overfamiliar with Mrs. Furnival. Did you speak to him about it? Did you quarrel?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She turned to look at him, her blue eyes uncomprehending.

  “What?”

  “Why did you not speak to him?” he repeated patiently. “Surely at some time you must have told him his behavior was distressing you?”

  “Oh … I—yes.” She looked surprised. “Of course … I asked him to be—discreet …”

  “Is that all? You loved him so much you were prepared to stab him to death rather than allow another woman to have him—and yet all you did was to ask—” He stopped. He could see in her face that she had not even thought of that sort of love. The very idea of a consuming sexual passion which culminated in murder was something that had not occurred to her with regard to herself and the general. She seemed to have been speaking of something else.

  Their eyes met, and she realized that to continue with that pretense would be useless.

  “No.” She looked away and her voice changed again. “It was the betrayal. I did not love him in that way.” The very faintest smile tugged at the corners of her wide mouth. “We had been married twenty-three years, Mr. Rathbone. Such a long-lived passion is not impossible, I suppose, but it would be rare.”

  “Then what, Mrs. Carlyon?” he demanded. “Why did you kill him as he lay there in front of you, senseless? And do not tell me you were afraid he would attack you for having pushed him, either physically or in words. The last thing he would have done was allow the rest of the dinner party to know that his wife had pushed him downstairs. It has far too much of the ridiculous.”

  She drew breath, and let it out again without speaking.

  “Had he ever beaten you?” he asked. “Seriously?”

  She did not look at him. “No,” she said very quietly. “It would help if he had, wouldn’t it? I should have said yes.”

  “Not if it is untrue. Your word alone would not be greatly helpful anyway. Many husbands beat their wives. It is not a legal offense unless you feared for your life. And for such a profound charge you would need a great deal of corroborative evidence.”

  “He didn’t beat me. He was a—a very civilized man—a hero.” Her lips curled in a harsh, wounding humor as she said it, as if there were s
ome dark joke behind the words.

  He knew she was not yet prepared to share it, and he avoided rebuff by not asking.

  “So why did you kill him, Mrs. Carlyon? You were not passionately jealous. He had not threatened you. What then?”

  “He was having an affair with Louisa Furnival—publicly—in front of my friends and family,” she repeated flatly.

  He was back to the beginning. He did not believe her; at least he did not believe that was all. There was something raw and deep that she was concealing. All this was surface, and laced with lies and evasions. “What about your daughter?” he asked.

  She turned back to him, frowning. “My daughter?”

  “Your daughter, Sabella. Had she a good relationship with her father?”

  Again the shadow of a smile curled her mouth.

  “You have heard she quarreled with him. Yes she did, very unpleasantly. She did not get on well with him. She had wished to take the veil, and he thought it was not in her best interest. Instead he arranged for her to marry Fenton Pole, a very agreeable young man who has treated her well.”

  “But she has still not forgiven her father, even after this time?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Such a grudge seems excessive.”

  “She—she was very ill,” she said defensively. “Very disturbed—after the birth of her child. It sometimes happens.” She stared at him, her head high. “That was when she began to be angry again. It has largely passed.”

  “Mrs. Carlyon—was it your daughter, and not you, who killed your husband?”

  She swung around to him, her eyes wide, very blue. She really did have a most unusual face. Now it was full of anger and fear, ready to fight in an instant.

  “No—Sabella had nothing to do with it! I have already told you, Mr. Rathhone, it was I who killed him. I absolutely forbid you to bring her into it, do you understand me? She is totally innocent. I shall discharge you if you suggest for a moment anything else!”