Deverill looked startled, and pleased, as if his adversary had unexpectedly surrendered.
“Are you well, Sir Oliver?” he enquired solicitously.
There was a faint titter around the gallery, instantly hushed at a glare from the judge.
“In excellent health, thank you,” Rathbone replied. “Quite well enough for a trip down the river to Bugsby’s Marshes, if I felt like it. I don’t. But please don’t let me stop you, if you feel it will serve your cause.”
“It will certainly not serve yours, sir!” Deverill returned.
“Nor harm it either.” Rathbone smiled. “It is irrelevant, a diversion. Please continue.…”
The judge had a very dry smile and directed them to proceed.
“Your witness,” Deverill invited.
Rathbone stood up and walked across the floor to stand in the middle of the open space. This time every eye was on him, waiting for him to begin the fight. So far he had not even parried a blow, much less struck one. He knew he must make a mark immediately or forfeit their attention.
“Sergeant Lanyon, you very diligently followed the trail of this barge all the way from Tooley Street, near Hayes Dock, down the Thames as far as Bugsby’s Marshes. It carried a cargo of something heavy, and we have assumed it was the guns from Mr. Alberton’s warehouse. Do you know the identity of the men who were seen by these various witnesses to whom you spoke? I mean know it, Sergeant, rather than deduce it from a dropped watch or a chance to purchase armaments for a cause.”
“No, sir. I only know they knew where the guns were and they wanted them enough to commit murder to take them,” Lanyon answered with only a flicker of expression in his mild, thin face.
“Just so,” Rathbone agreed. “But who were they?”
Lanyon’s jaw set hard. “I don’t know. But someone dropped that watch, and recently. Gold watches don’t lie around warehouse yards long before someone notices them.”
“Not in daylight, anyway.” Rathbone smiled very slightly. “Thank you, Sergeant Lanyon. You seem to have fulfilled your duty excellently. I have nothing more to ask of you … except … did you find out what happened to the guns after Bugsby’s Marshes? Or what happened to the barge afterwards?”
“No, sir.”
“I see. Don’t you find that curious?”
Deverill stood up.
Rathbone held out his hand. “I rephrase that, Sergeant Lanyon. In your experience as a police officer, is that a usual occurrence?”
“No, sir. I’ve looked hard for anything further, but I can’t find any trace of where the guns went after that, or the barge.”
“I shall enlighten you,” Rathbone promised. “About the guns, at least. The barge mystifies me as much as it does you. Thank you. I have nothing further to ask.”
After the luncheon adjournment Deverill called the medical officer, who described the exact manner of the killings. It was gruesome and distressing evidence, and the court heard it in near silence. Deverill seemed to begin with the intention of drawing from him every agonizing detail, then just in time realized that the jury were acutely aware of the pain it had to cause the widow, and this not only produced in them a very natural rage against the perpetrators but also against himself, for subjecting her to hearing, perhaps for the first time, a clinical description of horror she had been protected from before.
Rathbone looked up at Merrit in the dock and saw the agony in her eyes, her ashen skin now so bleached of color as to seem bruised, and the achingly rigid muscles of her arms and body as silent weeping racked through her. It would be a hard man indeed who could look at her and not believe that if she had had even the slightest knowledge of this before, let alone complicity, she was tortured with remorse now.
He also wondered what went through her mind regarding Breeland, sitting bolt upright as if on some military duty, his features composed, almost without expression.
In Rathbone’s mind the thing that burned up inside him with a rage he could not control was that Breeland never once extended his hand towards Merrit or made any gesture of pity for her. If he were distressed within himself, it was inside a loneliness nothing could break. Whatever he felt for her, he cared more for his cause, and the dignity and stoic innocence he presented to the world. If he had any human vulnerability, no one must see it. If he had weighed the cost to Merrit at all, it had not been heavy enough on the scales to show.
A military expert was called who testified that this peculiar method of binding the arms and legs over a pole was known to be practiced by the army of the Union to punish those of its members who had been found guilty of various crimes, the
Whether the court agreed with him it was impossible to say; they were overwhelmed with the savagery of the only case they had witnessed, and they were not at war. The necessities of the Union army, of any army, were unknown to them. The fact that the practice was specific to the army for which Breeland fought was an added condemnation. The hatred for him could be felt in the air like a hot, stinging smell.
Rathbone’s mind raced as to how he could undo the emotional damage. Mere facts would be drowned in the revulsion of feeling.
The last witness of the day was Dorothea Parfitt, the seventeen-year-old friend to whom Merrit had shown the watch and bragged a little of her love affair. Dorothea walked across the open space of the floor and tripped on the very first step up to the box. She had hold of the railing, so it was only barely noticeable, but she let out a little gasp and straightened herself, blushing.
Deverill was extremely gentle with her, doing all he could to ease her obvious consciousness that her words could condemn her friend, perhaps to the rope. What motive she had had in first saying this to the police no one else could know. It might have been envy, because Merrit had won the love of a most glamorous man who was older, braver, more mysterious and exciting than the youths she knew. It is very natural to want to prick vanity,
