everyone.
Juster stopped in front of him. He glanced to right and left at the flower beds, then up at the sunlight pouring through the chestnut leaves at the far end of the lawn. He drew in a deep breath of the fragrance of damp earth and blossoms.
Pitt was about to break the tension himself when Juster spoke.
“Adinett’s appeal failed,” he said quietly. “It will be in the newspapers tomorrow. A majority verdict-four to one. Voisey delivered it. He was one of the four. Abercrombie was the only dissenting voice.”
Pitt did not understand. Juster looked as if he had brought news of a defeat, not a victory. He seized on the only explanation he could think of, the one he felt himself, that to hang a man was a solution that degraded yourself and allowed the man no answer to his sin, no time to change. Certainly he believed Adinett had committed a profound evil, but it had always troubled him that he had no idea of the reason. It was just conceivable that had they known the whole truth everything might have looked different.
But even if it did not, and whatever Adinett was, to demand the final payment from him diminished those who exacted it more than it did him.
Juster’s face in the evening sun was bleak with anxiety. There was only reflected light in his eyes.
“They’ll hang him.” Pitt put it into words.
“Of course,” Juster answered. He pushed his hands into his pockets, still frowning. “That’s not why I came. You’ll read about it in the newspapers tomorrow, and anyway, you know as much about that as I do. I came to warn you.”
Pitt was startled. A chill grew inside him, in spite of the balmy evening.
Juster bit his lip. “There was nothing wrong with the conviction, but there are many people who can’t believe a man like John Adinett really murdered Fetters. If we could have provided them with a motive then they might have accepted it.” He saw Pitt’s expression. “I don’t mean the ordinary man in the street. He’s perfectly happy that justice has been done… possibly even agreeable that a man in Adinett’s position can meet with the same justice as he would. Such people don’t need to understand.” He squinted a little in the light. “I mean men of Adinett’s own class, men of power.”
Pitt was still uncertain. “If they didn’t overturn the verdict, then the law accepts both his guilt and that the trial was fairly conducted. They may grieve for him, but what else can they do?”
“Punish you for your temerity,” Juster answered, then smiled lopsidedly. “And perhaps me too, depending on how far they consider it my choice to prosecute.”
The warm wind stirred the leaves of the chestnut tree, and a dozen starlings swirled up into the air.
“I thought they had already hurled every insult that they could think of at me when I was on the witness stand,” Pitt replied, remembering with a flash of anger and pain the charges against his father. He had been taken by surprise that it still hurt so much. He thought he had pushed it into the background and allowed it to heal over. It startled him that the scab was so easily ripped off and that the wound should bleed again.
Juster looked unhappy, a faint flush on his cheeks. “I’m sorry, Pitt. I thought I had warned you enough, but I’m not sure that I did. It’s far from over.”
Pitt felt a catch in his throat, as if for an instant it was hard to breathe. “What could they do?”
“I don’t know, but Adinett has powerful friends… not powerful enough to save him, but they’ll take losing hard. I wish I could warn you what to expect, but I don’t know.” His distress was plain in his eyes and the slight droop to his shoulders.
“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” Pitt said honestly. “If you don’t prosecute a case because the accused has friends the whole law is worth nothing, and neither are we.”
Juster smiled, the corners of his mouth turning down. He knew it was true, but the price was far from as simple, and he knew Pitt was speaking with bravado, and irony as well. He held out his hand. “If I can help, call me. I can defend as well as I can prosecute. I mean it, Pitt.”
“Thank you,” Pitt said sincerely. It was a lifeline he might need.
Juster nodded. “I like your flowers. That’s the way to do it, lots of color all over the place. I can’t bear straight rows. Too easy to see the faults, apart from anything else.”
Pitt made himself smile. “That’s my belief as well.”
Together they stood drinking in the color in the evening air, the lazy droning of bees, the sound of children laughing in the distance, and the chattering birds. The perfume of the wallflowers was almost like a taste in the mouth.
Then finally Juster took his leave, and Pitt walked slowly back into the house.
The morning newspapers were all that Pitt had feared. In bold letters they announced the failure of Adinett’s appeal and that he would be executed in three weeks’ time. Pitt had already known, but seeing it in print made it more immediate. It tore away the last shred of evasion.
Almost underneath that news, where no one could miss it, was a long article by Reginald Cleave, who had defended Adinett and very openly still believed in his innocence. He spoke of the verdict as one of the great miscarriages of British justice in the current century, and predicted that the people would one day be bitterly ashamed of the establishment which had, in their name, carried out such a terrible wrong.
He did not castigate the judges of appeal, although he had some unkind words for the original trial judge. He was lenient with the jury, considering them unlearned men as far as the law was concerned, who were unwittingly led astray by those who were truly at fault. One of those was Ardal Juster. The main culprit was Pitt:
… a dangerously bigoted man who has abused the power of his office in order to carry out his private vendetta against the propertied classes because of the prosecution of his father for theft, when he was at an age not to understand the necessity and the justice of such a thing.
Since then he has defied authority in every way his imagination could conceive, short of actually losing his job and thus forfeiting the power he so profoundly desires. And make no mistake, he is an ambitious man, with an expensive wife to keep, and aspirations to act the gentleman himself.
But the officers who guard the law must be impartial, fair to all, fearing no one and favoring no one. That is the essence of justice, and it is in the end, the only freedom.
And there was more of the same, but he skipped over it, picking up a phrase here and there.
Charlotte was staring at him across the breakfast table, marmalade spoon in her hand. What should he tell her? If she saw the article it would make her angry first, then possibly frightened for him. And if he hid it, she would know he was being evasive, and that would be worse.
“Thomas?” Her voice cut across his thoughts.
“Reggie Gleave has written a rather vicious piece about the case,” he replied. “Adinett lost his appeal, and Gleave has taken it hard. He defended him, you remember. Perhaps he really thinks he’s innocent.”
She was looking at him narrowly, her eyes worried, reading his expression rather than listening to his words.
He made himself smile. “Is there any more tea?” He folded up the newspaper and hesitated for a moment. If he took it, she was perfectly capable of going out and buying another. And the fact that he had hidden it from her would make her worry more. He put it down again on the table.
She put down the marmalade spoon and poured the tea. She said nothing further, but he knew that the moment he was out of the house, she would read the newspaper.
In the middle of the afternoon Assistant Commissioner Cornwallis sent for Pitt. Pitt knew the moment he stepped into Cornwallis’s office that something was seriously wrong. He imagined a highly complex and embarrassing case, possibly even another like Fetters’s murder, implicating someone of importance. That was the sort of matter he dealt with lately.
Cornwallis stood behind his desk as if he had been pacing the floor and was reluctant to sit. He was a lithe man
