“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, especially if it is exercised at your expense. She could not then have foreseen the terrible consequences. She would not even have been able to imagine standing here now, about to repeat her words, because she could not take them back, and give Deverill the power to place a rope around Merrit’s neck.
She faced Deverill like a rabbit in front of a snake. Never once did she allow her eyes to stray towards Merrit in the dock.
The watch was passed up to her but she refused to touch it.
“Have you seen it before, Miss Parfitt?” Deverill asked gently.
At first her throat was so tight, her lips so dry, that her voice would not come.
Deverill waited.
“Yes,” she said at last.
“Can you tell us where, and in what circumstances?”
She swallowed convulsively.
“We all realize that you would immeasurably rather not,” Deverill said with a charming smile. “But loyalty to the truth must outweigh the desire not to cause trouble for a friend. Just tell me exactly what happened, what you saw and heard. You are not accountable for the actions of others, and only an unjust or guilty person would hold you to be. Where did you see this watch, Miss Parfitt, and in whose possession?”
“Merrit’s,” she answered, her voice little above a whisper.
“Did she show it to you?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Did she say?”
Dorothea nodded. Deverill held her gaze as if she were mesmerized.
“Lyman Breeland had given it to her as a token of his love.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “She really thought he loved her. She had no idea he was wicked … honestly! She must have found out, and given it back to him, because she would never have had anything to do with killing her father … not ever! I know she argued with him because she thought he was terribly wrong to sell the guns to that man from the South, because the South keeps slaves. But you don’t kill people over things like that!”
“I am afraid they do in America, Miss Parfitt,” Deverill said with wry regret. “It is a subject about which some people feel so violently that their behavior is beyond the bounds of ordinary law and society. One of the most tragic of all kinds of war is beginning, even as we stand here in this peaceful courtroom and argue our differences. And we none of us know where it will end. Please God, we will not, with our own prejudices and greeds, make it any worse.”
It was a sentiment Rathbone felt profoundly, and yet Deverill’s giving voice to it irritated him like a scraped elbow. Whether Deverill meant it or not, Rathbone had no doubt he expressed it to manipulate the emotions of the court.
Dorothea had no idea what to make of it. She stared at him with open confusion.
“Mr. Deverill,” the judge admonished, leaning forward, “are you chastising the witness for her lack of knowledge as to the outcome of the present tragedy across the Atlantic?”
“No, my lord, certainly not. I am simply trying to point out that some people feel passionately enough about the issues of slaving to kill those who differ from them.”
“It is unnecessary, Mr. Deverill. We are aware of it,” the judge said dryly. “Have you anything further to ask Miss Parfitt?”
“No, my lord, thank you.” Deverill turned to Rathbone. His foretaste of victory was plain in his face, in the confidence of the way he stood, balancing with his back a trifle arched and his shoulders squared. “Sir Oliver?”
Rathbone rose to his feet. The watch was the most powerful piece of evidence against Merrit, the one thing he could not explain away. Deverill knew it as well. What mattered was what the jury saw.
“Miss Parfitt,” he said, matching Deverill smile for smile, gentleness for gentleness. “Of course you have no choice but to tell us that Merrit Alberton showed you the watch that Breeland gave to her as a token of his feelings for her. You said it first with no knowledge of its meaning, and now cannot withdraw it. We all understand that. But Mr. Deverill omitted to ask you exactly when this incident occurred. Was it the day of Daniel Alberton’s death?”
She looked suddenly relieved, seeing escape. “No! No, it was several days before that. At least two, and maybe three. I don’t recall exactly now. I could get my diary?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he declined. “Not for me, anyway. Could she have given it back to him for any reason? A quarrel, possibly? Or to have the catch altered, or put on a chain, or something else
