Chapter Six
The magistrate took his place on an ornate chair beneath a wooden archway bearing the Shaftesbury coat of arms. The clerk had a desk to perch at, and the fifty-strong audience were seated on crowded pews.
There was much scuffing of boots on floorboards, much murmuring; a smell of wax polish, hair and warm bodies.
David and Mona sat with their arms linked, as a single entity, and Toby was to one side.
He had never felt so alone, and was so tense he had to remind himself to breathe. The bailiff cleared his throat.
The prosecution had the first witness: Joanna Bowen, with her sharp-edged condemnation.
Noah Cornwallis, in Kit’s defence, demanded to know whether she had been looking up at the crucial moment; whether she had actually seen and not extrapolated, due to the darkness and the cider, Kit take aim and throw.
‘As surely as I see you now,’ Joanna said, narrowing her eyes.
They had Constable Pryce, who testified to several incidents of trespass and dangerous climbing, and to Kit’s history of throwing things at people.
How Kit had been arrested for assault only the year before, after pelting the constable with farmyard ordure.
How he would have been prosecuted for causing bodily harm then, had Pryce himself not condescended to drop the charge.
Toby loathed the man, and fantasised about causing him some actual bodily harm.
There was also one of the farm boys, who described catching Kit in acts of degrading self-abuse on more than one occasion, including one time when he found Kit spying from behind a tree as he and Missy kissed.
The coroner described Missy’s head injury and the effect of it in general terms. He stated that there was no way to tell from the injury whether the stone had been thrown by accident or design.
Dr Anscombe, the surgeon-physician, described the treatment Missy had received at the Westminster Memorial with considerably less sang froid. He seemed almost distressed, in fact.
On Kit’s side were his family – respectable, well liked.
The school’s headmaster, Mr Coniston, testified that despite Kit’s behavioural abnormalities and low intellect, he had never once lashed out at another child in all his years of attempted schooling.
Next stood Timothy Crudge, another respected gentleman, who had known the accused from birth; then – to the surprise and delight of the Meriwethers – the Reverend Anthony Nimrod, who spoke to the assembly as though the whole thing were an astonishing waste of time and public money.
‘I hardly think lobbing a few horse-apples at a policeman makes the boy a murderer,’ he said.
Toby could have kissed his sour old face.
Noah Cornwallis argued that, in the dark, Kit could have had no real hope or intention of actually hitting Missy – or anyone – with the stone, but the magistrate gave no quarter there.
‘He was calling her name, Mr Cornwallis, and gesticulating for her attention. The intended target of his missile can scarcely be in any doubt.’
‘Then let us bear in mind Christopher’s reduced intellectual capacity, Your Worship; for it seems to me that he remains, in many ways, a child, and a child cannot be expected to fully understand—’
‘A child does not spy upon a maiden out courting; nor is he driven so wild by the sight of her that he must abuse himself publicly in the most obscene manner.’
‘What is this?’ Toby whispered furiously to his father. ‘He speaks as though he has decided already!’
David didn’t reply. A sharp smell of sweat was coming off him.
But they had Theo. Cornwallis had warned them that in cases like this, where there was no material proof and only the testimony of witnesses to rely upon, it was impossible to be assured success.
Only five people had been at the castle that night, and given that Toby’s account had been all but dismissed, it came down to Theo’s word against Joanna’s.
She would be the last to speak for Kit – the last of all the witnesses, in fact, because she was nowhere to be seen.
Toby checked his watch – she’d known the session began at nine-thirty; it was now a quarter past ten.
He caught Crudge’s eye; the old man looked troubled, and gave a shake of his head, so Toby turned to stare at the panelled door through which Theo would walk. Through which she must walk.
Theo had hardly slept. When she’d dozed it was to lurch awake moments later, from chaotic dreams of onrushing disaster.
The night terrors receded once she was up and dressed, but fatigue made it hard to think clearly.
Every time she told herself she would do what needed to be done – stand up and speak and not be unnerved – a hundred doubts argued loudly that she would fail.
That she would be caught out in her lie, and that Kit would be punished for it in the worst possible way.
She couldn’t touch her breakfast, and wished with all her heart that Crudge could have come to fetch her and go with her to the Town Hall for courage.
‘You look ill, Theo,’ Diana said. ‘And your hair is lank. Perhaps you shouldn’t go after all.’
‘I must go.’
With an air of perplexed indignation, her mother had eventually consented to her attending the hearing, on the condition that Theo kept to her room until then and spoke of it to no one.
The remaining Hallewell guests were told that she was unwell.
Theo had written to Crudge and the Meriwethers to expect her, and when Peterson drove her into Shaftesbury it would be on the pretext of her seeing a doctor.
‘Well, you will make a pretty fool of yourself if you faint at the feet of the Justice of the Peace,’ Diana said.
In the tilt of Diana’s chin Theo saw that she half wanted that to happen. For Theo’s unexpected wilfulness to end in humiliation. In response, her resolve stiffened a fraction. She met Diana’s gaze more steadily. ‘I won’t faint.’
But on the drive into Shaftesbury, any such certainty deserted her again.
Her head thumped with the beat of her heart.
The lane out of West End was blocked by a flock of sheep refusing to be moved from one field to another.
Minutes ticked by while the collie dodged, the sheep milled and the shepherd cussed, and even as Theo fretted about it she felt a pathetic rush of hope that she might be saved from having to speak by something out of her control, some act of God.
But the sheep cleared eventually, and Peterson geed up the pony.
‘Never fear, Miss Hallewell,’ he said. ‘I shall get you there.’
And then they were outside the Town Hall, with its faux crenellations and its three-tiered portico, where the huge clock showed that the session had started almost an hour ago.
Peterson handed her down and her head swooped.
As though her mother had cursed her with prophecy, Theo was certain she would faint.
They would find her out. Nausea swelled and sank in horrible waves.
‘It won’t be a lie.’ She whispered Toby’s words to herself as she forced her feet across the cobbles, into the building and up the stairs.
She gave her name and was admitted to the council chamber.
The murmur of voices lowered. She could feel their eyes – so many eyes.
All those people watching her, and judging.
She didn’t dare look at any of them. Noah Cornwallis took her elbow, guiding her to stand beside the clerk’s desk and face the magistrate in his scarlet leather chair.
She glanced at him, and where she’d expected to see long robes with ermine, and a face of owlish wisdom, she saw rolling chins beneath a battered wig, and small, dispassionate eyes.
‘Please accept our apologies, Your Worship,’ Cornwallis said. ‘Miss Hallewell was unavoidably detained upon the journey.’
Theo had no memory of telling him that, if she even had.
‘Indeed,’ the magistrate grunted. ‘Well, child, what have you to say?’
Theo looked up. She felt naked. She tried to speak but her throat was closed. The excruciating silence seemed to go on for hours. She knew Toby was there, in one of the seats behind her. His parents too, and Crudge. The vicar. Joanna Bowen. Her skin crawled; she longed to disappear.
The fat magistrate seemed to take pity on her. He shifted in his seat.
‘Now, now, have no fear. I shan’t bite you. Can you tell me what happened on the night in question? The night Melissa Cartwright received her injury?’
‘It was an accident,’ Theo managed to say.
‘You’ll have to speak up, child.’
‘I . . . Kit . . .’
Her voice shook, and her head felt far too hot.
‘He . . . Kit didn’t mean to hurt anyone.’
‘That is for me to decide, young lady. What I would like to hear from you is precisely what you saw, with your own eyes.’
Again, the silence stretched. ‘I . . . I saw . . . Kit didn’t . . .’
She cast back desperately, trying to recall the wording of her written testimony. But the memory bubbled up, inexorably, of Kit’s hand finding a loose stone and casting it through the darkness. Look at me, Missy!
‘It was dark, and I saw him . . . It wasn’t his fault, and it . . . it’s not a lie,’ she stammered.
Any softness vanished from the magistrate.
‘Well, thus far you have said precious little that may or may not be taken as a lie, Miss Hallewell. But I wonder why you should feel the need to make that assertion?’
He stared at her. The floor pitched and Theo staggered slightly for balance. It was happening: he knew. She could think of nothing beyond making her escape.
The magistrate addressed the prosecution lawyer. ‘Mr Beavis. Perhaps you might have better luck with this witness?’
Cornwallis was at Theo’s elbow again in an instant.
‘Your Worship, forgive my interruption – it seems clear that Miss Hallewell is not well. I request she be excused, and taken outside for fresh air.’
‘Indeed.’ The magistrate waved a hand. ‘In any case, I have heard enough.’