Chapter Seven
The trial was not mentioned at Hallewell House.
The newspaper was mysteriously not delivered that week.
Still, the night before it was due to begin Theo’s pulse picked up, and would not slow.
It was the thought that she could still go to Dorchester; that she should go.
That she might hold her nerve and lie through her teeth, and somehow save Kit.
If you do not, then you were never a friend.
Her heart vibrated. She panted as though she’d been running, and her muscles spasmed uncontrollably.
Dr Anscombe had travelled to Dorchester for the trial, so another doctor came.
A man named Fortescue, with a granite face and lifeless eyes, who looked at Theo as though she were a specimen in a jar.
He gave her drops of something in water that slowed everything down, drawing a thick curtain between her and the rest of the world.
She drifted, dimly grateful that the decision had been taken out of her hands.
The courthouse in Dorchester Shire Hall was several times the size of the council chamber in Shaftesbury, the ceiling three times as high.
Lord Paxton-Nevis sat beneath a far grander canopy, behind a properly constructed bench.
Witnesses spoke from a raised box, and spectators sat in two tiers of galleried seating.
Cold October sunshine lanced through windows ten feet tall.
Kit stood in the dock, his skinny wrists manacled.
He was not permitted to sit, and rocked from foot to foot.
Now and then he looked up at David and Mona, who blew him kisses and tried to smile.
Then his wide, restless eyes moved to Toby, and all Toby could do was nod.
In quiet moments they heard Kit’s murmurs and hums of distress.
The room smelled just the same – of wood and hair and breath.
And, besides a crowd of curious strangers and a brace of journalists, most of the same people were there, too.
The same witnesses gave their same testimonies.
All bar Theo, of course. Toby had asked Mr Crudge if she planned to attend, and guessed the answer from the way his face fell.
‘She really isn’t well, Toby,’ he said. ‘Please try to forgive her.’
‘But is she really ill, or is it just . . . girlish hysterics?’
‘Well, I haven’t been permitted to visit for a fortnight or more. I have written for news, but Mrs Hallewell is very keen for nothing to disturb her daughter. The doctor has prescribed rest, and I am sure—’
‘I’m sure she’s hiding her face, nothing more,’ Toby snapped.
‘Toby,’ Crudge admonished. ‘She feels it very deeply.’
‘What’s the use in her feeling it, if she does nothing?’
He turned away before Crudge could reply.
Yet he couldn’t shake the idea that Theo would appear, in the end.
Just like she had at the magistrate’s hearing: late, and half shot with nerves, but there.
She would sneak out of the house, and come to speak for Kit.
He could picture it clearly: the clerk whispering to the judge; Noah Cornwallis pricking up his ears; the door opening and all of them turning to see a breathless Theo rush in.
Anxious, perhaps, but ready to say what needed to be said.
Ready to save Kit from the calumny of Joanna Bowen and Constable Pryce.
Toby’s own testimony served only to worsen his frustration.
‘You say the stone was dislodged accidentally by your brother’s foot, as he fought for balance?’ the prosecutor said.
‘Yes. After Missy herself had goaded him to––’
‘And yet, we have it from another eyewitness that Melissa was some forty feet clear from the base of the wall when the stone struck.’ He checked his notes. ‘“The length at least of two coaches and four” has been attested to. You dispute that?’
‘I . . . yes. It wasn’t that far.’ The lie made his pulse tick in his throat.
‘Because it seems highly unlikely, does it not, that a stone merely dislodged would fly so far, even from height?’ The prosecutor gave him no time to reply.
‘So, in whom ought the court to put their faith, Mr Meriwether? You, who, it seems to me, would say anything at all to assist your brother in his predicament, regardless of the oath you have sworn upon the Holy Bible; or Miss Bowen, who was at Missy’s side when the blow landed, and has no cause to lie whatsoever? ’
‘No cause except her spite. She took against Kit from the very start, because he was different, and––’
‘Young man, I think you have said enough.’
Toby looked at Cornwallis, who gave a terse nod. He stood there a few seconds longer, boiling with the need to say more, to shout, to force them to listen. Then, rigid with stifled desperation, he had no choice but to step down.
Dr Anscombe took the stand, and Cornwallis did his utmost to prod the man into allowing even a chink of doubt.
‘There could have been an entirely unrelated infection of some kind, could there not?’ Cornwallis said. ‘Some hidden illness or congenital fault, which, once the girl was in a weakened state, conspired to overcome her?’
‘I assure you, Mr Cornwallis, that any doctor worth his salt would notice the signs of such a malady. Melissa Cartwright displayed none. And the very manner of her death – her having first fallen into an unresponsive state – testifies to the damage to her brain being the cause of it.’
‘You are entirely certain of that? There was no irregularity to her heart, or propensity to—’
‘The blow to her head caused her death, Mr Cornwallis,’ Anscombe said. ‘My operation was her best and only chance of survival, but the damage had already been done.’
‘Was she given some medication, perhaps, to which she may have reacted adversely—’
‘Mr Cornwallis,’ the judge interrupted. ‘There are only so many times we may expect the good doctor to repeat himself. Move on.’
Toby stared at Dr Anscombe and hated him, with his handsome face and kindly eyes; his curly hair and Greek nose lending him a hint of Lord Byron. What would it have cost him to admit that there might have been some other cause, even if he didn’t think it were true? To allow some hint of mitigation?
Lord Humphrey Paxton-Nevis had not seemed so very bad, on first inspection.
His reputation was such that Toby had half expected him to have mad eyes and the blood of innocents on his chin, but instead he was a man of around sixty, of medium height and build, with a not unpleasant face that gave little away.
He appeared cool, certainly; but that was appropriate to the gravity of his station.
Toby had felt a glimmer of hope. Here was a rational man, an intelligent man.
A man who would see through all the blether and recognise the absurdity of calling Kit a murderer.
But then, during Joanna Bowen’s spiel, he’d interrupted her to ask of Missy, tenderly: Pretty, was she?
Timothy Crudge spoke so warmly about Kit that Toby felt bad for having put him on the spot over Theo.
But, as the prosecutor pointed out, Crudge had not been there to see what happened that night.
The trial progressed quickly. Toby watched for the clerk’s whisper; for the judge’s nod; for Theo to make her entrance.
On the second day, Cornwallis called Dr Heinemann, a practitioner in the new field of psychology, who – his fee paid by Crudge – had assessed Kit.
He testified to his conclusion that Kit was suffering from a form of foreshortened development, which had halted his intellectual growth at around the age of seven.
He recommended that Kit be admitted to a clinical institution for further assessments to take place.
He had observed, during his examination, no murderous or violent urges in him.
Lord Paxton-Nevis was unconvinced. He leaned forward and fixed Heinemann with a stony eye.
‘Either the young man is of sound mind, and knew precisely what he was doing in throwing that rock, and is therefore a murderer through and through; or else he is a cretin, who had no understanding of the consequences of his outburst of temper, in which case he is a danger to all who encounter him and must not be allowed to go free. But he cannot be both, Dr Heinemann.’
‘My Lord,’ Cornwallis protested, ‘Dr Heinemann—’
‘Move on, Mr Cornwallis.’
Toby became aware of the loud thump of his own heart. That same sharp, animal smell, coming from his father. He realised that they were all falling. The ground beneath them was cracking, and no matter how they struggled, there was only one direction in which they could go.
His pulse accelerated by increments. His hands began to shake.
He knew he had to do something – that he must, because they were careening towards Kit’s committal, and it was all because Toby had gone along with Theo’s foolish game and had taken Kit with him.
Because he’d let Theo distract him, and lead him off into the beckoning darkness of the castle.
He needed to act, but he was paralysed. It was exactly like seeing Kit high up on that wall, and being rooted to the spot.
The terrible impotence was just the same.
He thought it might drive him mad. Something was building in his chest and he clenched his jaw to keep it in.
He watched with increasing desperation for Theo to rush in, frightened but resolute, and declare to them all that she had been there, that she had seen, and that it was not murder.
Even as the testimonies ended, and Kit fidgeted his manacles.
Even as the judge directed the jury, in the worst possible direction.