'Must be.'
'Thank you. That is all I have to ask you.'
'But not all I have!' Tobias cut in quickly, striding forward from his table. 'You were on the lawn mixing with the guests in your capacity as parlormaid, were you not?'
'Yes sir. I were carrying a tray of lemonade. Parkin had the champagne.'
'Is it easy to carry a tray loaded with glasses?'
'It’s all right, when you’re used to it. Gets heavy.'
'And you offered them to those guests whose glasses were empty?'
'Yes sir.'
'So you were not watching Mrs. Gardiner all the time?'
'No sir.'
'Naturally. Could she have received some message, either in words or on paper, that you were unaware of?'
'I suppose she could.'
'Is it possible, Miss Pembroke, that this was the best time for her to catch Treadwell alone, and with no duties or responsibilities which would prevent him from driving her from Cleveland Square? Is it possible, Miss Pembroke, that she knew the working of the household sufficiently well that she was aware she would find Treadwell in the mews, with the carriage available, and had planned in advance to meet him there and drive to a lonely place where she imagined they could do as they pleased together, unobserved, and where she intended—with the help of her foster mother—to get rid, once and for all, of the man who was blackmailing them both?'
Rathbone shot to his feet, but the protest died on his lips.
Tobias shrugged. 'I only ask if it’s possible,' he said reasonably. 'Miss Pembroke is an observant young woman. She may know.'
'I don’t!' she protested. 'I don’t know what happened, I swear!'
'Your loquacity seems to have ended in confusion,' the judge said acidly to Tobias. He turned to the jury. 'You will note that the question has gone unanswered, and draw your own conclusions. Sir Oliver, have you anything to add?'
Oliver had not.
Tobias was unstoppable. His rich voice seemed to fill the court, and there was hardly an eye which was not upon him. He called the lady’s maid who had seen Miriam in Verona Stourbridge’s room, and drew from her a highly damaging account of Miriam’s trying on the jewelry and apparently having read the diary.
'Do you know what is in the diary?' Tobias asked.
The girl’s eyes widened in horror. 'No sir, I do not.' Her tone carried bitter resentment that he should suggest such a thing.
'Of course not,' he agreed smoothly. 'One does not read another person’s private writings. I wondered perhaps if Mrs. Stourbridge had confided in you. Ladies can become extremely close to their maids.'
She was considerably mollified. 'Well ... well, I know she put in her feelings about things. She used to go back and read again some from years ago, when she was in Egypt. She did that just the day before she ... died ... poor lady.' She looked tearful, and Tobias gave her a moment or two to compose herself again—and to allow the jury to gather the full import of what had been said—before he continued.
He then went on to elicit a picture of Miriam as gentle, charming, biddable, struggling to fit into a household with a great deal higher social status than she was accustomed to, and unquestionably a great deal more money. It was a portrait quite innocent and touching, until finally he turned to the jury.
'A lovely woman striving to better herself?' he said with a smile. 'For the sake of the man she loves—and met by chance out walking on Hampstead Heath.' His face darkened, his arms relaxed until his shoulders were almost slumped. 'Or a clever, greedy woman blessed with a pretty face, ensnaring a younger man, unworldly-wise, and doing everything she could, suppressing her own temper and will, to charm him into a marriage which would give her, and her foster mother, a life of wealth they could never have attained in their own station?'
He barely paused for breath or to give Rathbone the chance to object. 'An innocent woman caught in a dreadful web of circumstances? Or a conniving woman overtaken by an equally cold-blooded and greedy coachman, who saw his chance to profit from her coming fortune but had fatally miscalculated her ruthlessness—and thus met not with payment for his silence as to her past, perhaps their past relationship with each other! Perhaps he was even the means of their meeting—far other than by chance? Instead, he met with violent death in the darkness under the trees of Hampstead Heath.'
Rathbone raised his voice, cutting across him scathingly and without reference to the judge.
'Treadwell certainly seems to have been a villain, but neither you nor I have proved him a fool! Why in heaven’s name would he threaten to expose Miriam Gardiner’s past—which neither you nor I have found lacking in virtue of any kind— before she had married into the Stourbridge family?' He spread his hands as if in bewilderment. 'She had no money to pay him anything. Surely he would have waited until after the wedding—indeed, done everything in his power to make sure it took place?' He became sarcastic. 'If, as you suggest, he even helped engineer the meeting between Mr. Stourbridge and Mrs. Gardiner, then it strains the bonds of credibility that he would sabotage his own work just as it was about to come to fruition.'
His point was valid, but it did not carry the emotional weight of Tobias’s accusation. The damage had been done. The jury’s minds were filled with the image of a scheming and duplicitous woman manipulating a discarded lover into a position where she could strike him over the head and leave his murdered body on the Heath.
'Was it chance, or was it Treadwell’s dying attempt to implicate his murderers that he used the last of his strength to crawl to the footpath outside Cleo Anderson’s door?' Tobias demanded, his voice ringing with outrage and pity. 'Gentlemen, I leave it to you!'
The court adjourned with Miriam and Cleo all but convicted already.
