Chapter 31 THE QUIET
Chapter 31
T HE Q UIET
Winchester, England
July 2, 1881
Miles’s body shook to the rhythm of the police wagon bumping up and down on the road. The back of his head burned. The handcuffs wrapped around his wrists were clasped so tight that they’d turned his hands blue.
He didn’t care.
All he felt was emptiness and loss.
His eyes burned holes in the floorboard as he sat there in shock. There were no thoughts, only numbness. Perhaps this was what death felt like, all light fading, his soul detaching from his physical body.
The policeman sitting across from him said, “Taking the law into your own hands, yeah? What did she steal from you?”
Miles didn’t respond, barely heard the man.
The policeman jabbed him with the billy club in the leg, but Miles didn’t flinch.
“Yeah, where you’re going it will be good to learn how to keep your mouth shut.”
Miles stayed silent.
When they arrived at the prison, he looked up at the tall walls. His father had taken him by one time, proudly showing it off, as it was recently built. Never did Miles think he’d see the inside of it.
Prison guards pushed him around like a rag doll as they processed him, made him change into a foul-smelling uniform, and then led him to a dank cell that reeked of death. When they locked the doors with an unforgiving finality, Miles lowered himself against the cold wall, leaning back with his head dropped forward.
Silence. Pain. Loss.
The emptiness passed through him endlessly.
One image repeatedly played in his mind.
Lillian falling, her blood splattering the floor.
Over and over, he watched her fall, saw her struggling for breath, eventually going quiet.
Days turned to weeks. A solicitor spoke with him, someone appointed by the district of Hampshire. People probably wondered why the family had not hired their own attorney. Miles knew why, and resentment simmered in his heart.
The solicitor asked him questions to which he did not respond. He simply held his gaze on the handcuffs that bound his hands.
“If I am to defend you, you must tell me what happened,” the solicitor insisted.
Miles had nothing to say.
“Dammit, Miles. You will swing for this.”
The gallows seemed as welcome a place as any.
The solicitor returned four times, promising Miles he would do his best in court. And he did. He tried to say that Miles had gone mad, as there had been a theft of a precious item: a diamond ring that belonged to Miles’s mother.
Miles never once looked at the judge. He hoped he’d be sentenced to death.
On September 12, 1881, the judge, a hefty man with a gravelly voice, asked Miles to stand. Miles did so, and then raised his head for the first time.
The judge swung down the mallet; Miles felt the tremor in his feet. “You are found guilty, and you will meet your death by hanging.”
Miles felt nothing. No dread. Perhaps his one thought was that the rope would be a comfort around his neck.
Only as the day for his execution drew near did the numbness wane, allowing anger to step in. His family had stood there and watched him be sentenced to death, and they’d let it happen. They’d agreed upon a lie and had stuck to it. More to the point, his brother had shot Lillian dead, and his father had rallied around him. They would soon stand on Gallows Hill with the rest of the townspeople and watch him swing.
He would have been consumed by hate, but it was the guilt of what he’d done to Lillian that was the strongest. He should have taken her the moment he met her and run far away. Come to think of it, he should not have let her in at all. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to love her, because he knew what trouble he was bringing into her life. This guilt would be the last emotion he felt when the noose tightened, for it wasn’t his brother who shot Lillian. It wasn’t his father who’d caused all this terror. It was he, himself. Miles Pemberton was the one who killed Lillian Turner.