Chapter 35
The rest of the cross-examination is a car crash in slow motion.
Matthew can’t bear to look; he can’t turn away.
Lion against gazelle, hunter against hunted – Sasha’s as stuffed as her cat Carbonel.
She was the one obsessed with the mini coffins that were found on Arthur’s Seat.
She’d even persuaded Eliza and Isobel to go to the Museum of Scotland to look at them.
She’d marked the map herself, she’d gone up there herself because she was overwhelmed by guilt because of what she’d done to Christian, herself.
She’d written the letter to her mother in order to try and frame Isobel and Eliza.
She’d jumped not because anyone had told her to, but through her own volition.
When the jury leave the courtroom for a coffee break, they’re all buzzing with it.
The advocate has flipped the narrative on its head – look at the twist here.
Clearly it’s all Sasha’s fault. Matthew watches them all fussing around, deciding not to remind them that only yesterday they were fully convinced of Isobel and Eliza’s guilt.
She’s put together a good defence on Eliza’s behalf, that’s for sure, but it’s Miss Brodie’s job to put forward Eliza’s case. However truthful that might be. Or not.
Miss Goodly is on her feet when they return to court. Isobel’s defence advocate has spoken so little that Matthew can’t actually remember what her voice sounds like, surprised again by the sound of it. She asks only a few questions.
‘Isobel took all the magical rituals very seriously, didn’t she?’
Sasha thinks for a moment. Nods. ‘She seemed to, yes.’
‘And there’s no question that you and she were in a conspiracy to fake any of the messages, were you?’
‘No. We weren’t. I never spoke to her about them. I just saw them happen.’
‘At no point did she say that it was her intention to harm Christian, or bully her, did she?’
‘No. She didn’t say it. Not in so many words.’
‘Any accusation you make against Isobel plotting against Christian is based on supposition and assumption, isn’t it? Not actual knowledge?’
‘She never discussed it with me, no. She spent a lot more time with Eliza,’ Sasha says. She’s looking confused, as if the narrative has taken an unexpected turn.
‘As far as you are aware, Isobel believed she had magical powers, didn’t she?’
‘Yes. Well, it’s definitely what she said.’
‘And while she may have misused magical powers on occasion when it came to hexing some people, as far as Christian was concerned, she was simply carrying out what she considered to be her duty insofar as she was passing on messages from the spirit world and doing what the Devil told her to do?’
Sasha looks thoroughly taken aback. Not as taken aback as Matthew feels, though.
‘I mean, I guess so. Yes.’
‘Let me take you back to the first time that you discussed magic with Isobel.’
Sasha nods.
‘She told you that she was a witch, didn’t she?’ Miss Goodly says.
A pause. Sasha turns something over and over in her pocket before smelling her fingers. A chill passes through Matthew.
‘She did.’
‘And what’s more, you believed her. Didn’t you?’
Sasha nods her head, once. Twice. ‘I did believe her. I still do. I don’t know about Eliza, but Isobel is a witch. I know it.’
The lights in the courtroom flicker, dim. Go off. In the midst of the commotion that follows Matthew can hear only one voice. A strange chant, a rhythm unfamiliar to him. The sound melodious, but utterly chilling.
‘I shall go into a hare,
With sorrow and sych and meickle care;
And I shall go in the Devil’s name,
Ay while I come home again.’
‘Watch out, Sasha, I’m coming!’
A scream. A thump from the direction of the witness box. The lights flicker back on to reveal that Sasha has fainted, slumped over the witness box.
And where Isobel was standing, only an empty space.
It takes so long for everyone in the courtroom to calm down that the judge orders everyone out. ‘That’s quite enough. I want you back in fifteen minutes, and I will expect there to be quiet in my courtroom.’
‘This trial is beginning to mess with my head,’ Dharam says when they’re back in the jury room.
‘Yeah, I actually thought for a moment she’d managed to transform herself,’ Jasmine says.
Russell laughs. ‘I was looking out for a hare, seeing if she’d jumped all the way to the door. Didn’t occur to me she’d just decided to go.’ There isn’t much humour in his voice though, the laugh more like a bark.
‘Thank God we’ve got tomorrow off,’ Neil says. ‘I think the judge has had enough too, whatever she’s saying about pressing engagements and unprecedented circumstances.’
Matthew can only agree. He’s totally shaken by the way that the day has ended.
Of course, it turned out that Isobel had just taken herself downstairs to the cells from the dock when the lights went out.
But the fact that she’s reduced fifteen adults to the state that they were prepared to entertain the slightest possibility that the girl had transformed herself magically into an animal .
. . as Neil says, thank God they don’t have to come in tomorrow.
There’s only one answer for this week. Obliteration.
Matthew knows exactly how to find it.