Mathew's Tale (18 page)

‘Then that concludes the Crown’s evidence.’

‘Very good.’ Bellhouse looked up at the wall clock. ‘We will adjourn for fifteen minutes. Keep the panel under guard.’

Mathew wanted to stand and rail against the injustice he had seen, but with an effort he held on to his temper. All he could do was smile at David as he sat in the dock, ashen-faced.

‘What can we do?’ he asked, as he joined Johnston and Irvine at the far end of Parliament Hall.

‘Very little,’ the advocate admitted. ‘They have been more clever than we could have anticipated. This is all going one way.’

‘Then David must tell his own story. He is such an evidently good man that they must believe him, more so with Barclay to speak for him.’

Johnston’s gaze fell to the floor. ‘There we are lost, sir,’ he murmured. ‘I summoned your minister yesterday as a witness, but he has declined.’

‘He has what?’ Mathew’s shout was so fierce that two promenading advocates jumped with fright.

‘He sent back the message that he was unable to attend. He gave no reason.’

‘Then damn him. A small part of me feared this; I believe I know the reason for his reluctance. My own testimonial will have to suffice.’

‘Sir,’ Innes Irvine murmured, ‘I do not recommend that you give evidence. Douglas and Cleland have you hamstrung with the evidence of your conduct at the funeral . . . unless you can deny it absolutely.’

‘That I cannot do, I’m afraid,’ he admitted.

‘Then you would be painted as two-faced, and not credible to the jury. It would deflect from any good Mr McGill might do himself.’

‘Then he is truly on his own. Innes, please go to him and explain why nobody can speak for him.’

The advocate hurried off to the other end of the hall, to confer with his client. Shortly afterwards the macer’s cry was heard once more and Lord Bellhouse returned.

The defence case was short and in no way sweet. To Mathew’s horror, when David McGill was called to give evidence, he remained seated and shook his head.

‘You have nothing to say in your defence?’ the judge asked him.

‘There is no point,’ the prisoner replied. ‘The Lord Advocate and this court, both are set against me. Any attempt to declare my innocence would do no good and would only endanger others. So I will sit silent, and let the jury hang an innocent man on the word of a pack of liars under the eye of a compliant judge.’

Bellhouse’s response fell not far short of a scream. ‘For that insult I would hang you twice!’

Then he turned to the jury. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said in a calmer tone, ‘you have heard the facts in his case, and short and simple they are. Sir Gregor Cleland is dead of a pistol ball in the brain. Three witnesses have sworn that it was put there by the accused, a man with malice towards him, aforethought and evident. No form of defence has been put before you, and that silence is eloquent in itself.

‘There are three verdicts open to you, as you will know, but your duty is clear. Go and do it now in the room provided, and dinna be long about it.’

Once again Mathew looked at the jurors, searching for any sign of defiance in their faces, but again he could find none. He checked his pocket watch as they filed from the court, and again when they returned. Less than six minutes had elapsed.

Bellhouse glowered at them as they sat. ‘Have you a verdict?’

The largest among the fifteen rose to his feet, a slab of a man who might have been a blacksmith away from the court, or more likely a merchant butcher, given the quality of his clothing. ‘We have, my Lord. We find the panel guilty as libelled.’

‘Is that the verdict of you all?’

‘It is, my Lord.’

‘Thank you. You are all discharged from further jury service.’

The Lord Justice Clerk turned to his macer and snapped his fingers, but the man knew what was expected of him, and had already produced the black cap, which was in fact no more than a simple square of black cloth. He stepped forward, and then, in accordance with a custom imported from the English courts, he placed it on top of the judge’s wig in token of the sentence about to be passed.

David McGill had risen to his feet unbidden. Bellhouse glared at him, with a cold, hard killer’s expression, one that Mathew had seen in battle all too often, and, he acknowledged, had probably worn himself.

‘You have been found guilty of the particularly heinous murder of a gentleman, unprovoked and in the presence of ladies. You will be taken from the Calton Jail in three days’ time, to the public scaffold in the Lawnmarket, where you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul, be He so minded.’

‘My soul needs no mercy,’ McGill replied, ‘for it is blameless in this matter. As for yours, my Lord Bellhouse, if there are such things as heaven and hell, it is unlikely that we will meet again, for I expect to walk on green fields, while you will surely roast forever in Auld Nick’s pit.’

‘You’ll be there before me,’ the judge grunted. ‘Take him away.’

He climbed down from the bench, and fell into step in formal procession behind his macer. As he passed, Mathew called after him, ‘At least your lunch will not be served cold, my Lord. Enjoy it.’

Bellhouse spun half round to face him, only to be greeted with a smile and a courtly bow. His mouth twisted into a snarl, but he held his tongue and left the hall.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘T
HREE DAYS,’ DAVID MCGILL
murmured, with a sad, thin smile. ‘They don’t keep a man hanging around, do they?’

Mathew stayed silent. Twenty years earlier, two years before Waterloo, he had stood guard over a soldier sentenced to be shot at dawn for the rape of a Spanish woman, and that victim had tried to keep his spirits up through humour. As the sun rose, though, he had pissed himself in his fear and had to be tied to the post with three ropes so that the firing squad could be sure of its target. He shuddered at that grim memory and hoped that his friend would be sustained in his courage when the moment came . . . if the moment came, for he had not given up hope.

‘Mathew,’ David continued, ‘you will find my affairs in order. You will be the executor of my estate, such as it is. I am glad your friend the governor has allowed us this conversation, for there are things I need to say.’ Mathew had gone straight from the court to the jail, where Stevens had taken the humane view that a condemned man could receive who he liked, when he liked.

‘I beg you to look out for my children. Jean is young yet, but do not let her grow up thinking of me as a bad man. As for Matt, I fear for him; he has his mother’s spirit and is the very boy to do something rash. Please restrain him as best you can.’

‘Hah,’ Mathew grunted, looking up from the table and into David’s eyes. ‘He may have to restrain me if the worst happens. I have power, the power that wealth confers on a man, and I will use it. The likes of Douglas and Bellhouse might be beyond me, but Cleland is not. I will crush that man like the pilliwinks; he will shit his breeks and beg for mercy before I am done with him.’

‘Not on my account, please,’ his friend begged. ‘The Lawnmarket must not have you too.’

‘Oh, it will not. Cleland has planted the seeds of his own destruction. All I will do is nurture them and help them grow. Worry not for your son either; I will treat him as my own, and Jean too.’

‘And Lizzie,’ David murmured. ‘Look after her too. For fifteen years I’ve felt badly about coming between you two.’

‘Then you must stop that now. You have been . . . Bugger it!’ he snapped. ‘I will not speak in the past tense. You are a perfect husband to her, a better match than I would have been. You have devoted your entire life to her, whereas even if my good friend Sir Victor had never written that hasty letter, I would not.

‘You may believe that my business success and my losing Lizzie are linked in some way. I know that others do, but it is not so. I would have been driven in the same way even with her as my wife, and she would have suffered for it. There is a phrase I like that Stockley uses of his expensive and fanciful daughter. He says she is “high maintenance”; so, in a different way, is Lizzie, as we both know.’

David smiled. ‘That she is, but she will hurt nonetheless.’ He grasped Mathew’s arm. ‘Please do not tell her of this, not until Friday is gone and I am dead. It is better she knows nothing until everything is done. Keep Matt close to you and keep her in ignorance.’

He nodded. ‘Agreed, but I will tell her nothing for I have not given up hope yet. If there is anything to be done I will do it . . . although I confess I do not know what that might be.’

‘Then do it, but keep me in ignorance too. I have three days, in which I must compose myself and make my peace with God. Bring my son to see me, but that is all.’

‘I will do that. Is there a chaplain here?’

‘Mr Stevens says so. I tell you, that man was upset when he heard my fate.’

‘If only the law in this city was as upright and honest as him.’

‘Those you found for me have done their best. Mathew, I would like to pay them from my own resources.’

‘That is one request I will not grant. There is no man in the world closer to me, so their efforts have been in my interests as well as yours. Now I must go to consult with them again, before Matt returns from his journey to the seashore and I have to tell him the news.’

Johnston was waiting for him in the hotel salon when he returned. ‘Sir,’ he said even before they were seated, ‘my profession owes you an apology for what you saw today. It was judicial murder.’

‘Not yet,’ Mathew pointed out. ‘The sentence has not yet been carried out. And even then, I would not call it murder. Yon Bellhouse is as evil a man as I’ve seen, but I do not believe that the Lord Advocate would collude with people he knew to be perjurers.’

‘Yet he was keen to see Mr McGill convicted. That I do not understand.’

‘Nor do I, or why Bellhouse was so cooperative with him. Is there any way left, Paul, by which they may be thwarted?’

‘No,’ the solicitor admitted. ‘Before I left Parliament House, Mr Irvine asked for leave to appeal, but this was rejected. Nobody crosses Bellhouse, not even his peers. Mr Fleming, it would be dishonest of me to suggest that any hope remains. We have failed our client and the rope is as good as round his neck.’

‘You have failed no one. I know how the cards were dealt against us; when the impeachment was blocked, David was finished. Bellhouse hastened the process, that was all. I will not give up hope while David is alive, but there is one other service I would ask of you, on his behalf.’

He gave Johnston brief instructions and then the solicitor left him to his thoughts, and to a reunion to which he was not looking forward with any pleasure.

Young Matt and Ewan Beattie returned from North Berwick just before six in the evening. Mathew broke the awful news in his room; he held his young ward to him as he wept, then calmed him as his fear turned into anger.

‘If my father dies, I will kill Cleland, I swear it,’ he raged.

‘You will swear nothing of the sort, for you would be killing your poor mother with the same blow. If this terrible thing comes to pass, your duty will be to her, and it will be best served by keeping her close, and yourself out of harm’s way. When my father died, I did the opposite, and there is not a day goes by when I do not regret it.’

‘Why?’ Matt retorted. ‘You were a hero in the wars.’

Mathew tapped his blind eye. ‘This does not make a man a hero, lad. I joined the army for money, a very little money, not out of love of my monarch. I fought well, and I lived, against the odds, but I was a fool for going in the first place, and for deserting those I loved.’

‘You mean my mother?’ the youth murmured

‘Why do you say that?’ he asked, sharply.

‘Daphne told me,’ Matt replied, ‘my mother’s cousin, the one she doesna speak to. She told me you and she were sweethearts once.’

‘Then she should have held her tongue, for that is in the past. Matt, your father is my truest friend, and I will do anything in my power to save him.’

‘But you would not let me give evidence. You sent me away.’

‘Your father forbade it. The impeachment was withdrawn to save your life, and that is the truth of it. He is sacrificing himself for you. I understand that, and so should you. If you were my son I could not love you more than I do, and in his shoes I would have done the same to keep you safe.’

‘Then what can I do, Mathew?’ he wailed.

‘Nothing. Pray for your father and be brave when you see him, for the sight of your courage will help him keep his own.’

He waited until Matt had composed himself, and then they went down to dinner. ‘Our starvation will not help David,’ Mathew told him. ‘I have no taste for food either but we must nourish ourselves.’

They ate in silence. Ewan Beattie passed a few remarks about North Berwick and its fresh clean air, the rival of Carluke, but neither of his companions were of a mind for conversation. When they were finished, Mathew said to the coachman, privately, ‘Keep the boy close to you. I am going out to find a place where I can think. If there is another means of saving David, I must find it.’ He frowned. ‘That fellow you met, your compatriot who worked for the gaming club. Did he tell you where it was?’

‘In a house in a place called St Bernard’s Crescent, he said. There are all sorts of games on offer, and the company of ladies is available also.’

‘Is it, indeed?’

He left the hotel and walked out into the bright evening. He had no clear idea of what he would do, but before he knew it he found himself at Albany Street. The coffee shop on the corner was open, and so he went inside. The place was quiet; Mathew guessed that Tuesdays were not its busiest. There was a vacant table by the window and so he chose it, ordering coffee and a selection of cheeses.

‘A stranger in Edinburgh?’ the owner asked as he served him.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘From Lanarkshire; Carluke, in fact, in the Upper Ward. The Cleland family are our local gentry. I have been told they have a house in this area.’

‘They do, just along the road. As you would expect, they are customers of mine . . . but they have become just one now, since the murder of Sir Gregor. His brother called in this afternoon, filled with delight that they are hanging the perpetrator on Friday.’

‘Delight, you say? Satisfaction I could understand, but to glory in a man’s execution . . .’

The proprietor leaned closer to him. ‘I did not say this, you understand, but that is Sir Gavin’s way. Sir Gregor was no cherub, but his brother has no saving grace that I have discerned.’

The man stood, quickly, as if he was aware of his vulnerability in the window, turned on his heel and walked away. Mathew was left puzzled, until he looked out of the window and saw Gavin Cleland, on the other side of the street, striding out purposefully and swiftly, his eyes focused dead ahead.

He waited until the baronet had passed, and had crossed Dublin Street, then settled his account and set out after him. He walked a good hundred yards behind him, with his hat pulled down to shield his face as far as was possible. His quarry led him along Abercrombie Place, and then across Dundas Street and into Heriot Row, with its grey stone buildings on one side and gardens on the other, akin to Princes Street.

Just as Mathew was wondering where he would be led, and whether they were bound for St Bernard’s Crescent, Cleland turned off the pavement abruptly and mounted the steps that led up to a fine, four-storey, terraced house, the grandest in the street. He knocked on the door and was admitted.

Mathew stepped into the gardens, concealed by a tree and waited. As he watched he saw a carriage turn into the terrace from the street beyond, and then position itself outside the very house that Cleland had entered. It had no sooner stopped moving than the door opened once more, and Gavin Cleland stepped out.

There was a lady on his arm, as tall as he, but from what Mathew could see at least ten years younger, and a great beauty. Her hair was piled high, and surmounted by a tiny hat; she looked radiant and very happy. As he watched, the couple were helped into the carriage by its driver, who then climbed back up to his perch and drove off, the horse’s hooves clip-clopping on the cobbles, and the wheels rattling.

‘Well, well, well,’ Mathew whispered, stepping out of the gardens and crossing the street. He approached the house and saw from a distance the number, thirty-three, in large Roman numerals on the brown-painted front door. As he drew closer, he saw that there was a brass plate to the right, below the bell handle. He slowed his pace as he reached it and was able to read the name carved on it: ‘Mr J Douglas, Advocate’.

‘Yes, sir,’ a voice came from behind him, ‘that is indeed the Lord Advocate’s home, if you were wondering.’

He turned to see a young man, almost as tall as he, well-dressed, in a high collar that was part of what he took to be a school uniform.

‘Are you sure of that?’ he asked. ‘Douglas is a common name.’

‘That is he, be in no doubt. I know for I live at number twenty-four.’

‘Then who was the young lady I saw leave just now?’

‘That would be Miss Lucy Douglas, the Lord Advocate’s daughter. The gentleman would be Sir Gavin Cleland, of Cleland House, in Lanarkshire. He is said to be her suitor; my father remarked two nights ago that now he has inherited his brother’s estate, a betrothal is imminent.’