Rathbone strode over to the witness box and up the steps to help the child to his feet and put his arms around him. He half carried him out, and met Peverell Erskine down from the gallery and forcing his way past the bailiff and marching over the space in front of the lawyers' benches.
“Take him, and for God's sake look after him,” Rathbone said passionately.
Peverell lifted the boy up and carried him out past the bailiffs and the crowd, Damaris at his heels. The door closed behind them to a great sigh from the crowd. Then immediately utter stillness fell again.
Rathbone turned to the judge.
“That is my case, my lord.”
The clock went unregarded. No one cared what time it was, morning, luncheon or afternoon. No one was moving from their seats.
“Of course people must not take the life of another human being,” Rathbone said as he rose to make his last plea, “no matter what the injury or the injustice. And yet what else was this poor woman to do? She has seen the pattern perpetuate itself in her fether-in-law, her husband-and now her son. She could not endure it. The law, society-we-have given her no alternative but to allow it to continue down the generations in neverending humiliation and suffering-or to take the law into her own hands.” He spoke not only to the jury, but to the judge as well, his voice thick with the certainty of his plea.
“She pleaded with her husband to stop. She begged him- and he disregarded her. Perhaps he could not help himself. Who knows? But you have seen how many people's lives have been ruined by this-this abomination: an appetite exercised with utter disregard for others.”
He stared in front of him, looking at their pale, intent faces.
“She did not do it lightly. She agonized-she has nightmares that border on the visions of hell. She will never cease to pay within herself for her act. She fears the damnation of God for it, but she will suffer that to save her beloved child from the torment of his innocence now-and the shame and despair, the guilt and terror of an adulthood like his father's- destroying his own life, and that of his future children-down the generations till God knows when!
“Ask yourselves, gentlemen, what would you have her do? Take the easier course, like her mother-in-law? Is that what you admire? Let it go on, and on, and on? Protect herself, and live a comfortable life, because the man also had good qualities? God almighty…”He stopped, controlling himself with difficulty. “Let the next generation suffer as she does? Or find the courage and make the abominable sacrifice of herself, and end it now?
“I do not envy you your appalling task, gentlemen. It is a decision no man should be asked to make. But you are-and I cannot relieve you of it. Go and make it. Make it with prayer, with pity, and with honor!
“Thank you.”
Lovat-Smith came forward and addressed the jury, quiet, stating the law. His voice was subdued, wrung with pity, but the law must be upheld, or there would be anarchy. People must not seek murder as a solution, no matter what the injury.
It was left only for the judge to sum up, which he did gravely, using few words, and dismissing them to deliberate.
The jury returned a little after five in the evening, haggard, spent of all emotion, white-faced.
Hester and Monk stood side by side at the back of the crowded courtroom. Almost without being aware of it, he reached out and held her hand, and felt her fingers curl around his.
“Have you reached a verdict upon which you are agreed?” the judge asked.
“We have,” the foreman replied, his voice awed.
“And is it the verdict of you all?”
“It is, my lord.”
“And what is your verdict?”
He stood absolutely upright, his chin high, his eyes direct.
“We find the accused, Alexandra Carlyon, not guilty of murder, my lord-but guilty of manslaughter. And we ask, may it please you, my lord, that she serve the least sentence the law allows.”
The gallery erupted in cheers and cries of jubilation. Someone cheered for Rathbone, and a woman threw roses.
In the front row Edith and Damaris hugged each other, and then as one turned to Miss Buchan beside them and flung their arms around her. For a moment she was too startled to react, then her face curved into a smile and she held them equally close.
The judge raised his eyebrows very slightly. It was a perverse verdict. She had quite plainly committed murder, in the heat of the moment, but legally murder.
But a jury cannot be denied. It was the verdict of them all, and they each one faced forward and looked at him without bunking.
“Thank you,” he said very quietly indeed. “You are discharged of your duty.” He turned to Alexandra.
“Alexandra Elizabeth Carlyon, a jury of your peers has found you not guilty of murder, but of manslaughter-and has appealed for mercy on your behalf. It is a perverse verdict, but one with which I have the utmost sympathy. I hereby sentence you to six months' imprisonment; and the forfeit of all your goods and properties, which the law requires. However, since the bulk of your husband's estate goes to your son, that is of little moment to you. May God have mercy on you, and may you one day find peace.”
Alexandra stood in the dock, her body thin, ravaged by emotion, and the tears at last spilled over and ran in sweet, hot release down her face.
Rathbone stood with his own eyes brimming over, unable to speak.
Lovat-Smith rose and shook him by the hand.
At the back of the courtroom Monk moved a little closer to Hester.
About Anne Perry
'Her grasp of Victorian character and conscience still astonishes,' said the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Hundreds of thousands of readers in Europe and America agree.
Anne Perry lives in Scotland.
