Chapter Six #2
Theo’s relief at being outside was so great that twenty minutes passed before she began to grasp how badly she had failed. They were on their way back to Hallewell before the Meriwethers had even emerged, and Crudge went with her this time.
‘Did it finish?’ she asked him, her voice dull with exhaustion. ‘Or must I go back again?’
‘It finished, dear one,’ Crudge said.
‘And . . . the outcome? Is Kit to be allowed home?’
She knew the answer before it came. Only the feeblest of hopes made her ask.
‘No, Theo.’ Crudge could not soften the news. ‘The charge of murder stands. The case now passes up to the Court of Assize.’
Toby had never walked up the path between the box hedges of Hallewell House before, nor across the terrace to the huge doorway. He felt watched, and unwelcome.
‘Your card?’ said the young manservant who answered his knock, once he’d explained that he wasn’t a guest, nor expected. He swept his gaze over Toby’s worn shoes and ill-fitting jacket, then shut the door in his face. Toby stiffened his spine. Anger churned as he waited.
‘Mrs Hallewell is indisposed,’ the servant said stonily, on his return.
He started to close the door again, but Toby stopped it with one hand.
‘It was Miss Theodora Hallewell, rather, that I’d hoped to speak with,’ he said. ‘On an important matter.’
The servant rolled his eyes impatiently. ‘Well, what do you think she’ll say to that? Take a hint, fella.’
Toby beat his retreat with as much poise as he could, stopping halfway home to lean against a wall until he’d quietened the fury of unsaid things in his head.
Cornwallis had won one important victory at the Town Hall. Given Kit’s handicap, the magistrate had been persuaded to let him await trail where he was, at the police station, rather than transferring him to Dorchester Prison. And they’d been allowed to take him extra blankets and food.
One day, Kit showed Toby the lucky charm Theo had given him: Abrecan’s coin.
‘She says no ghosts can come while I’ve got it. She says I’ll be safe while I’ve got it.’
‘That’s a very special thing,’ Toby said, desperate to believe she was right.
At home he struggled to focus, his attention wandering from his books, over and over, as he reminded himself to have faith in the judicial system.
But then, as September began and the date of the trial was set, Noah Cornwallis discovered which judge would be sitting.
And Toby saw the blood drain from his face.
Lord Humphrey Paxton-Nevis was an unyielding man by reputation; a man of almost no fellow feeling, known to come down particularly hard on men who’d harmed young women.
‘Try not to worry,’ the barrister said. ‘Christopher is only just seventeen. He would not condemn one so young.’
But it sounded to Toby as though he were trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.
Theo came down with a fever soon after her encounter with the magistrate.
Her sixteenth birthday came and went without notice.
Cook made her endless cups of beef tea, and her mother dosed her with Eno’s Fruit Salts and purgatives.
The fatigue of hopelessness smothered her will to do anything, and she lay in bed for long hours, damp and silent, while the glorious summer ripened and faded.
When Theo saw the first rusty blotches on the horse chestnut trees she wept, because everything was dying, and everything would.
Diana called Dr Anscombe. Theo had no idea of the day, or the date. The curtains were drawn in her room, and his face loomed towards her, lit by a candle. He looked so handsome, so calm and concerned. Did you ever see such a beautiful man?
‘How do you do, Miss Hallewell?’
Theo stared at him and thought of Missy. Her instant infatuation; her sudden, tenuous hopes. ‘Missy wanted to marry you,’ she whispered. ‘That’s why she came to see you at the hospital. I don’t think she’d have bothered, otherwise. And I wish she hadn’t.’
He drew back a fraction. ‘As do I, upon occasion. Yet, I still believe I was her best chance.’
Dr Anscombe laid his palm on Theo’s forehead, then checked her pulse. His fingers were warm. He fetched a stethoscope from his bag. ‘With your permission, I will listen to your heart?’
He moved the collar of her shift aside and reached in delicately. Theo awaited his verdict with disinterest. She knew her heart was still beating.
‘I can’t seem to understand it,’ she murmured. ‘That Missy’s heart isn’t beating any more. It was so strong – she was so strong. She seemed to be––’
‘Even the strongest among us are but flesh and blood.’ The doctor gave a small frown. ‘You dwell upon it, Miss Hallewell?’
‘I can’t stop thinking about her. Or about Kit. Poor, poor Kit!’
‘You are young to be faced with so much mortality,’ he said softly.
He leaned away and began to coil his stethoscope, and Theo grabbed his arm. In the sudden, unexpected intimacy of the examination, she saw a chance.
‘Could you not say it was something else that killed her? Oh, please, Dr Anscombe, I beg you . . . It would not be a lie; not if it told a bigger truth.’
‘Whatever do you mean, Miss Hallewell?’
‘Kit never meant to hurt her! The judge and the jury will not know that, but we do. I do! With all my heart.’
The doctor studied her again, face troubled.
‘I heard about your collapse at the magistrate’s hearing,’ he said gently.
Theo shrank back.
‘You were not able to say your piece. It must weigh heavily on you.’
‘I failed him utterly.’
The doctor reached out and took her hand in both of his.
‘You did not. The events . . . the evidence is clear. You must trust to the wheels of justice, and to God, that the outcome will be all that it should be. However painful that may be.’
Theo hesitated. He sounded so certain that she was tempted to believe him. A man such as he must understand it better.
‘But they do not know Kit,’ she said. ‘How can they judge him fair?’
‘They will judge him fairly because they do not know him. Please, Miss Hallewell . . . you have done all you can for him. All any of us can do, in any situation, is speak truthfully. You are not to blame.’
Theo lay back, the desperation to make him understand fading into hopelessness. A wave of despair was dragging her away, but then a sudden movement across the room caught her eye. She heard the familiar rustle of her mother’s dress and realised, with a shock, that Diana had been there all along.
‘Well, Dr Anscombe? What is wrong with her? Is she hysterical?’
‘It is entirely possible to die from a broken heart, Mrs Hallewell, however unscientific that may sound.’
‘You suggest that she may die of this?’ Diana sounded more outraged than afraid.
‘Forgive me, no, I am not making myself clear. But – perhaps we should discuss the matter elsewhere.’
He glanced back at Theo, then came a step closer and lowered his voice.
‘Rest, Miss Hallewell. You are young, and very sensitive, but you will recover from this. Stay in bed a while longer, but not for too long. You need fresh air; a change of outlook. You must give your mind other things to do.’
Theo made some effort to do as he said, but it felt impossible.
‘If this carries on, I shall have to send for the doctor again,’ Diana said one day, pushing back the curtains and standing with her hands on her hips, a crisp silhouette against the sudden light – the long line and tight sleeves of her dress, her hair coiled on top of her head.
At length, she came to the bedside and laid a hand on Theo’s clammy forehead.
Their eyes met, and Theo thought she saw something stir beneath her mother’s hard surface.
Concern, perhaps even a momentary flash of unease.
A far-off memory surfaced, of her mother at Amy’s bedside as she lay dying.
Of the frightening agony on Diana’s face, and the way her eyes had skimmed over Theo, unseeing.
Theo searched for that look of care again now: the chance of sympathy between them. But it had gone.
Diana gripped her arms tightly. ‘This solves nothing, don’t you see?
You cannot simply . . . give up, and take to your bed when things are difficult.
You’re far too much like your father – you always have been.
You may think yourself apart from this world, but you aren’t.
You’re here, Theodora, and you have a role to fulfil.
You’re not a child any more; you can’t just stamp your foot and say you don’t want to play. ’
Theo said nothing, so Diana got up and went back to the window.
‘I need you to rally, and be well,’ she said quietly, almost to herself. ‘I need you to forget about what happened, and about Missy and that boy. Both of those boys.’
‘I can’t,’ Theo said.
‘You must. Or at least pretend to.’
Diana fetched an envelope from her pocket.
‘This arrived for you. Once you’ve read it, have a bath and get dressed. We will see you on the terrace for afternoon tea.’
Theo studied the writing eagerly, but it wasn’t from Toby, nor Crudge.
When she opened it, a small velvet bag dropped on to the bedspread.
It contained a gold pendant in the shape of a butterfly, the veins of its wings and the buds on its antennae picked out in perfect detail.
She knew at once where she’d seen it before, and what it must mean.
3, Springfield Villas,
Church Lane,
Chobham,
Surrey
Wednesday, 18th September, 1889
Dear Miss Hallewell,
I trust this finds you well. I am sorry to be the bearer of sad news, but must inform you that my beloved wife, Rosalind, succumbed to her illness and passed from this world some weeks ago, on the twenty-fourth of August. Two months to the day since we met you, and visited the spring together.
I apologise for not writing sooner but I have been indisposed.
A death long foreseen is nevertheless a shock, when it comes to it.