Chapter 51
Matthew’s exhausted, but he sleeps badly.
Weeping women kept drifting into his dreams, starving rodents, Isobel crying out to him, her hands outstretched, though when he got close he saw that her skin was covered in suppurating sores.
He’s about to reach her, to pull her out of the lake in which she’s standing, when he’s knocked off his feet by a series of giant inflated hearts, as round as the image he saw from the post-mortem.
He turns to see hordes of them rolling down a hill at him, each larger than the next, giant pulsating globes of horror that cover him, weigh him down under the water till he drowns.
Now he’s sitting in the jury room again, waiting.
They’ve been here since before ten but no one has asked them to come into court yet.
The jury officer said something vague about legal arguments, but Matthew is at a loss.
So are the others. Emma is making tiresome noises about supporting animal charities, as if anyone cares what she does.
Before Matthew can say anything, the jury officer enters the room and tells them that it’s time. Probably for the best.
They file into court and take their seats.
To his surprise, he sees that the advocate who was representing Isobel is gone.
So is the solicitor. Miss Brodie and her junior are still in place, but the space where Isobel’s team were sitting is empty.
He glances over at the dock. The girl looks even worse than she did before, pale as death with red-rimmed eyes and scratches on her neck.
Maybe she’s getting some kind of skin condition too – if the trial is having this effect on Matthew, who’s only an observer, albeit one with certain privileges, how much harder must it be for her?
Eliza on the other hand is looking calm, resolute, her skin clear and her hair clean.
The contrast between them is painfully striking.
There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face – Macbeth again.
Funny how well he remembers the play. Shakespeare or not, Isobel looks guilty as sin, there’s no getting away from it.
As he has the thought, an itch starts on his face. He puts his hand up to find a patch of blistered skin by the corner of his mouth. His heart sinks.
The judge clears her throat. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may notice that Miss Goodly and her junior are no longer in court. This is because the accused Isobel Smyth has made the decision to represent herself. She has been fully advised as to the merits of this approach and is aware of the potential drawbacks.’
A gasp from the jury. Matthew’s heart skips a beat.
Miss Brodie stands. ‘I’d like to call Eliza to give evidence, please.’
Eliza flicks her hair back and walks over to the witness box.
The thrust of her evidence is clear, and as predicted by Matthew.
She was a poor, lost soul when Isobel came to the school.
Friendless and bullied, the girl had gravitated towards the charisma of the new girl, her self-confidence and the challenge that she presented to established ways of thinking.
Glamour and excitement had blinded Eliza to the reality of what they were doing.
She admitted that she’d been nasty to Christian on occasion, but Isobel had made her do it.
Matthew doesn’t believe a word of it. He’s trying to keep an open mind, but every word she says sets his teeth on edge.
She’s lying, he’s sure of it. But he’s the only one to see it, too, the little sparks that come from her eyes whenever she says Isobel’s name.
If anyone is possessed by a demon, it’s her.
Head to one side, her voice is low and sincere as she assures the court that no one had ever told her that Christian had a heart condition, or any other kind of health problem.
She hadn’t spoken individually to Christian’s mother or father; she’d been mortified by the way that their visit to Christian’s family home had worked out.
‘I told them not to do it,’ she says. ‘I told them that we shouldn’t behave like that in the chapel, that we should respect their property, but they wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘Why did you go with them, then?’
‘To keep an eye on it, see if I could stop it from going out of control.’
‘Do you think that you would have been better going and speaking to a grown-up?’
She pauses, stifles a sob. ‘Of course I see that now. But at the time, I didn’t know what to do. I tried to do the right thing, but I wanted to protect my friends as well. I thought that it would all stop.’
She licks her lips. Matthew starts. He could swear that what he sees is a little forked tongue darting out, flicking from corner to corner of her mouth.
‘Were you told by Christian’s mother that Christian had a heart condition?’
‘I wasn’t. No.’
‘Were you told by Christian’s father that Christian had a heart condition?’
‘Absolutely not.’
She holds to this line throughout the rest of the examination-in-chief. There’s more detail about the imbalance of her friendship with Isobel, how Isobel ran rings around her.
‘I now know that it was a form of coercive control,’ she says. ‘She would withhold affection if I didn’t do what she wanted. It was really hard to stand up to her.’
‘Did she tell you explicitly that you had to be unkind to Christian?’ Miss Brodie says.
‘Not in so many words. But it was obvious what she wanted me to do. It always was.’
‘Did she tell you why she wished to do Christian harm?’
For the first time Eliza looks uneasy. She’s shifting her weight from foot to foot, her calm expression a little tense.
‘Not as such,’ she says after a pause. ‘But there was one comment she made.’
‘What was that?’ Miss Brodie prompts when Eliza pauses again.
‘I think she was jealous of Christian’s family. She said she wished she had parents like that. A family that was still together.’
A hiss from the dock. Isobel is shaking her head. The judge looks at her sternly but says nothing.
‘Can you remember the exact words she used?’
‘Not exactly, no. It was something like that, though. After we stayed at Christian’s house.’
‘How did you feel about Christian?’
Her eyes flicker from side to side. It looks shifty to Matthew. ‘I liked her. Not as much as I liked Isobel – or rather, not as much as I thought I liked Isobel. But she was a nice girl. She didn’t deserve this.’
Then it comes to the pivotal moment, the altercation in the shed.
‘Isobel didn’t tell me anything of what she had planned, just that the Devil had told her what to do, it was all clear to her now.
I didn’t even know that she was going to kill the pigeon.
Do you think I would have agreed to something like that?
’ She stretches out her hands, plaintive.
‘I was so shocked when I saw Isobel do that I didn’t even think to argue when she nodded at me.
Sasha collapsed on the floor in a little ball and before I knew it, Isobel was running at Christian, waving her knife at her, shouting “now it’s your turn” at the top of her voice. ’
‘Did you think she was going to stab Christian?’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘What did Christian do?’
‘She started screaming as well. Pure terror. Then she turned round and she ran for her life.’
Mr Alexander cross-examines first. ‘You’re not telling the court how it was, are you?’
‘I am.’ The girl does indignation well, her voice rising but not overly so.
‘You’re telling the court how you wish it had been, isn’t that the case?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘And you and Isobel were working hand in hand to see how far you could push Christian?’
‘No.’
‘To see whether you could induce a heart attack in her – that was your and Isobel’s plan, wasn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘Isobel might have been driving this but you went along with it, isn’t that right?’
‘No. I didn’t. That’s not right.’
‘And you both planned to make Christian fear for her life in the final altercation, didn’t you?’
‘No.’
‘You knew Isobel had the knife, you knew what she was planning, didn’t you?’
‘No.’
‘And despite your desperate attempts to put the blame on to your co-accused, whether you or she was holding the knife when you both charged at Christian, you were in this together, every step of the way.’
The jurors around Matthew are shifting around in their seats.
It doesn’t look like they’re appreciating the tone that the advocate depute is taking with Eliza.
But if Mr Alexander senses this, it doesn’t affect his approach.
He takes every assertion that Eliza has made and suggests calmly that she’s making it up in order to shift all the blame on to Isobel.
‘That just isn’t true.’
‘No further questions, my lady.’
Isobel is next. It’s a surprise to see her walk out of the dock and go to the lectern.
She’s shorter than he realised, a slight figure still in her baggy tracksuit.
Daisy is taller by at least half a head.
Even with her emo, goth-like appearance, she doesn’t look scary. But then Matthew isn’t a teenage girl.
Eliza on the other hand is looking uncomfortable, some of the cockiness gone from her stance. But she puts her shoulders back and squares her jaw in preparation.
‘Remember when we did the first Ouija board,’ Isobel says. Her speaking voice is deeper than Matthew realised from the few occasions he’s heard her call out from the dock. It’s not unpleasant. ‘You were terrified too, weren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Eliza says. She’s talking very quietly.
‘You believed it was real, when the spirit took over the planchette and spelt out that Christian was going to die?’
A deep breath. ‘I did believe it was true, yes.’
‘You know that we didn’t plant the tarot cards either – the reading that Christian got that was so bad, you know that was true, too?’
Another deep breath. ‘Yes.’
‘Every time we called upon the spirits, they answered, didn’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘When we asked the Devil to come, he spoke to us. Didn’t he?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Isobel, you were making it up, you were making it all up. I know that now.’
‘You know that’s not true, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know anything any more.’ Eliza starts to cry. Miss Brodie starts forward as if to intervene but the judge holds up her hand.
‘Isobel,’ the judge says, ‘you must remember that your questions must be relevant to your defence.’
Isobel looks up at the bench, though it doesn’t look to Matthew as if she’s focusing on the judge at all.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Of course.’ It’s clear that she hasn’t really heard what was said.
‘A couple more things. It wasn’t me who was jealous of Christian’s family. It was you. You were jealous of their house. You always thought you had the biggest house of any of us until you saw hers and you realised that she was richer.’
Eliza laughs. It’s not a nice sound. ‘No, Isobel. You know that’s not true.’
‘And you know that Christian’s parents never spoke to us about Christian’s health.
No one ever said anything. They’re lying because they wish they had, but the truth is that as soon as they found out what had happened in the chapel, they threw us out.
Made us wait outside in the rain until the taxi came to take us away. ’
‘Oh Isobel,’ Eliza says. She’s regained some calm now. ‘I don’t know anything of the sort. I know they didn’t speak to me. But they could very well have spoken to you. It’s what you said afterwards.’
‘That’s a lie.’
Matthew tenses up. It looks like Isobel is losing control of herself. She’s bright red, her hands clenched tight in front of her. After a moment she pulls herself together.
‘You knew exactly what was going to happen in the shed. We’d discussed the pigeon sacrifice. I told you the Devil told me to do it.’
‘You know that’s not true, Isobel.’
Isobel swallows. ‘And you know it wasn’t me who went at Christian with the knife. I hadn’t been told to do that. It was your decision. You did it on your own. You’re lying when you say it was me.’
Eliza shakes her head. Her expression is calm.
‘It’s not a lie, Isobel. You know it. I wasn’t going to say anything, but if you’re going to tell these lies about me .
. . You told me explicitly that you knew something about Christian, and that you were going to make her wish that she had never been born. ’
‘You lying bitch,’ Isobel says, and hurls herself towards the witness box. She’s nearly at Eliza’s throat, hands outstretched in claws to attack her, before security get to her, a short, lumbering man who takes hold of her arm and pulls her away, ending the cross-examination abruptly.