with his grief. Father never 'ad no time for 'im. Never owned 'im, he didn't, nor loved 'is mother neither.” Her face betrayed her feelings for Phineas Ravensbrook.
“What you say makes no sense, madam!” the coroner cried desperately. “If there was only one child, where did Caleb come from? Who was he? And who killed Angus?”
“I don't know nothing about that,” Miss Ratchett answered levelly. “I just know there were one baby. But I do know as children have a powerful imagination! I looked af ter a little girl once as 'ad a friend, all imaginary, and whenever she done something wrong, she said as how it were Mary what done it, not her. She was good, Mary was bad.”
“An ordinary excuse any child might make,” the coroner said. “I have children myself, madam. I have heard many such stories.”
The Reverend Nicolson rose to his feet. “I beg your pardon, sir.” He addressed the coroner respectfully, but he would not be denied. “But is it not possible that in his unhappiness, and his feeling of rejection, obligation and loneliness, that the boy created an alternative self which would take the blame for his failures, and which would also be free to hate his uncle as he wished to, as he did in his heart?”
He raised his voice above the mounting noise in the room, the groans and murmurs of horror, pity, rage or disbelief.
“Might it not begin as an escape within the imagination of an unhappy child's hurt and humiliation?” he asked. “And then grow into a genuine madness wherein he became two quite separate people, one who did everything to please, and earned the resultant rewards, and another who was free to feel, without guilt, all the anger and hatred for his rejection, because he was the son of a father who would not own him, and an uncle for whom he was never good enough, a reflection of the brother he envied, and upon whom he could no longer be revenged, except through the child?”
The coroner banged on his desk for silence. “Order!” he commanded. “That is a monstrous scene you paint, sir. May God forgive you for it. I should not be surprised if the Ravensbrook family cannot.” He looked at where Milo Ravensbrook sat rigid, white-faced but for the scarlet daubs on his cheeks.
But it was Enid Ravensbrook's expression, the rage and the pity in her, which made the coroner draw in his breath, and from which Rathbone knew that Nicolson was not so far wrong.
“Absolute insanity,” Ravensbrook said between his teeth. “For God's sake!
Everyone here knows there were two brothers! This woman is either wicked or she has lost her wits. Her memory is fuddled with drink.” He swung around.
“Genevieve! You have seen both Angus and Caleb!” He was shouting now. “Tell them this is preposterous!”
“I have seen them,” Genevieve said slowly. “But never together. I have never seen them at the same time. But… it couldn't be. They were utterly different. No.” She looked at Abigail Ratchett. “No, you have to be mistaken. It was over forty-one years ago. Your memory is confused. How many babies have you delivered? Hundreds?”
“It was one baby!” Abigail Ratchett said fiercely. “I'm not drunk and I'm not mad, no matter what anyone says.”
Genevieve turned to Monk, desperation in her face. She had to raise her voice to make herself heard. “You said someone saw them together on the day Angus was killed! Find that man and bring him here. That will solve it!”
The coroner banged again, demanding silence, then turned to Monk. “Well?” he said sharply. “Did you find such a witness? If you did, what is all the nonsense? It seems you are totally irresponsible, sir!”
“I went back,” Monk replied, his voice quiet, hard. “I found the witness, and I had him stand exactly where he had seen Angus and Caleb face each other. I stood where he said they did.”
Now, suddenly, there was not a sound in the room.
“I was before a mirror, sir,” Monk said with a brilliant smile. “I fought with my own reflection in a glass, and the man watching me relived a mirage.”
“That proves nothing!” Ravensbrook said thickly. “You have said Caleb confessed to murdering Angus. How can a man murder himself?”
“He said he had destroyed Angus,” Monk corrected. “And that I would never find the body. That was the joke. That is why he laughed. Caleb knew of Angus, and despised him. I think Angus did not know of Caleb. He could not bear to. For him it was truly another person, a dark presence beyond himself, and he was profoundly afraid of him.”
“Nonsense!” Ravensbrook retaliated, his voice rising. “You cannot prove such a wild and totally scurrilous story. Caleb was insane, certainly, and he murdered his brother. Then when he knew he would be convicted, and hanged, in a last frenzy of hatred, he attacked me too, because, God forgive me, I always loved Angus better. If I am guilty of a sin, it is that, and only that!”
The voice was rising again. People were moving about.
“It can be proved.” Monk lifted his voice, staring at the coroner. “The body of Caleb Stone is in the morgue.” He swung around to Selina. “Madam, do you know Caleb's body well enough to tell it from Angus's?”
“Yeah, 'course I do,” she said without blushing.
He looked at Genevieve. “And you, Mrs. Stonefield, could you tell your husband's body from Caleb's?”
“Yes.” Her voice was no more than a whisper, her face bloodless.
“Then let us put an end to this farce,” the coroner commanded. “We shall take these two ladies to the morgue.” He rose, his face set, his eyes unblinking. He did not even bother with the uproar in the court or pay the slightest attention to the journalists falling over one another to get out and find messengers.
The morgue attendant pulled back the sheet and uncovered the naked body as far as the groin. The room was cold, and smelled of water and death. The candlelight was yellow and left the corners in shadow.
Selina Herries leaned on Hester's arm, her face calm, almost beautiful, all the brashness and the anger gone from it. She looked at the face with its smooth brow, the chiseled mouth, the green eyes closed, then she looked down at the broad chest, scarred and marble white. The pattern of old injuries was quite individual.
“That's Caleb,” she said quietly. She touched his cold cheek with her fingers, gently, as if he could feel her. “God rest him,” she whispered.
The coroner nodded and Hester went out with her. A few minutes later she returned with Genevieve. Again the morgue attendant laid back the sheet.
Genevieve stared hard at the same calm face with its closed eyes, and the same white body with its old scars.
Finally her eyes filled with tears and they spilled down her cheeks in an anguish of pity, wrenching at her with a pain she would never forget.
“Yes,” she whispered so quietly that in any place but this room of death, it would not have been heard. “Yes, that is Angus. I know those scars as I know my own hand. I bandaged most of them myself. God make him whole, and give him peace at last.” She turned slowly and Hester held her in her arms while she wept the grief of all the lost pain she could not heal, the child she could not reach.
“I'll conduct the prosecution of Ravensbrook for murder,” Rathbone said with passion.
“You'll never prove it,” Monk pointed out.
“That doesn't matter!” Rathbone clenched his jaw, his body rigid. “The charge will ruin him. It will be enough.”
Monk leaned forward and picked up one of the dead hands. It was beautiful, perfect-nailed, and he knew now why Caleb had always worn gloves-to protect Angus's hands. He folded it carefully across the other. Perhaps no one else in the room could feel so deeply and with such an intimate pity for a man divided against himself, forever in fear of a dark half he did not know.
“Be at peace,” he said. “What debts you cannot pay, we will.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
