The Reckoning (73 page)

The Certiorari and Return were proclaimed, a long recitation at the end of which the indictment against Harvey Sale,
Marquess of Penrith, brought wandering attentions sharply
back to the present. Now they had come to the nub of it.
Black Rod was sent to call the accused to the Bar, where he
knelt before the Lord High Steward. Though no-one actually
spoke in the gallery, there was a shifting and swaying all
along the seats, and a whispering just below the level of
sound, like a cornfield moving in a light breeze, at the appear
ance of the prisoner. Harvey Sale, dressed in a blue coat, buff
small clothes and white stockings, was tall, handsome, and
noble; but somehow fragile, bareheaded amongst the robed
splendour of his peers. The black mourning-bands on his
sleeves reminded everyone of the tragic circumstances of his
appearance in the House today; and that innocent or guilty,
his wife and children were dead, and his life in ruins.

The Lord High Steward indicated that the prisoner might
rise, whereupon he was conducted to a stool placed within the
Bar, and the charge was read to him: that the Most Honour
able Harvey George Sale, Baron Lasonby, Earl of Wyndham, and Marquess of Penrith, a peer of England, on the twentieth
day of August in the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and
seventeen in the parish of Stainton in the County of Buck
inghamshire did kill and murder Lady Flaminia Sale.

To the charge, the accused pleaded Not Guilty in a firm
but not defiant tone, and another inaudible sigh ran around
the gallery.

‘
And how will you be tried?' the Lord High Steward
enquired.

‘By God and my peers,' said Penrith.

‘
God send your lordship a good deliverance,' said the Lord
High Steward politely. The prisoner sat, and Sir Samuel
Shepherd rose to make his opening speech and present the
case for the Crown.

The first witness he called was Rebecca Hill, who gave a
long account of the history of Sale's marriage, and of the rela
tionships between him, his wife, and his wife's cousin. Other
servants were called to testify that Lord Harvey Sale and Miss
Haworth met in secret whenever his lordship visited Stainton,
though none could say what the subject of their secret discus
sions might have been; and that his lordship was 'mad for
her', and took every opportunity of being alone with her. And
yet other servants were called upon to give their account of
the day in question, how his lordship had arranged for them all to go to the fair in the brake, and how Mrs Hill had been
that upset to be sent off, leaving her mistress all alone.

‘
Disgusting, is it all to be servants' tittle-tattle?' Lady
Tonbridge said at last in an audible whisper, causing the
Sergeant-at-Arms to look up at the gallery reprovingly.

Sir Rigby Fielding, however, agreed with her view when he
visited Chelmsford House that evening, at the end of the first
day.

‘
This case should never have been brought. The magistrate
was an opinionated fool, the Grand Jury didn't know its busi
ness, and the bench should have directed it quite otherwise.

However, it can't be helped now, we shall have to see it
through. But don't worry, Lady Chelmsford, we'll come out
all right, we'll triumph.’

On the second day Sir Samuel called the doctor who had attended the twin girls in their last illness. He testified that
Lady Flaminia had been deeply shocked and grieved, having
been much attached to her babies. A picture was being
painted of a simple, domesticated woman, prey to the
machinations of two heartless lovers. It was a moving picture,
Rosamund thought, but one that might easily backfire: a
great many of the lords whose task it would be to make judge
ment must themselves have lovers as well as virtuous wives,
without being in the slightest way inclined towards murder.

Then Polly Haworth was called. The spectators sat up
straighter; all eyes were fixed on that pale, wraith-like figure,
and the silence in the House was deafening.

‘
You were Lord Harvey Sale's lover, were you not?' Sir
Samuel asked without preamble.

Polly swayed. 'No – no,' she whispered. Rosamund
clenched her hands in her lap, and her nails dug into her
palms. Don't ask her the wrong questions, she prayed; and
towards Polly directed the urgent mental plea, don't say more
than you have to.

‘
I suggest that is why you remained with Lady Harvey all
those years: in order to indulge your criminal desire to be
near Lord Harvey.'

‘
No. Not so. I was Lady Harvey's companion. We were
brought up together. She asked me to stay with her.’

‘
Then how would you describe your relationship with Lord
Harvey?' Sir Samuel asked sweetly. The trap yawned beneath
Polly's feet.

‘
He was my cousin's husband,' she said at last, and there
was muted laughter in the gallery.

‘
Do you mean that you had for him no more fondness than
for any other cousin-by-marriage?’

Polly looked wretched. Her eyes were fixed on her interlo
cutor like a rabbit staring at a stoat. 'I loved him,' she said
faintly.

‘You were in love with him?' he pressed.

‘Yes.’

There was a tense silence, and Rosamund held her breath,
wondering what the next devastating question would be; but
then Sir Samuel invited Miss Haworth, in his most silky
tones, to tell in her own words the events of that last day of
Lady Harvey's life.

Polly began, falteringly, in a voice that barely carried to
their lordships, far less the gallery, but she hadn't gone very
far when Sir Samuel stopped her.

‘
Miss Haworth, you say that Lady Harvey urged you to go
to the fair and leave her alone in the house. Was that not a
very remarkable thing for her to have done?’

Polly did not know how to answer that.

‘Why do you think she did that?'

‘
She had been very upset since the babies died. She never
went out anywhere, or did anything.'

‘
She was shocked and grieved, we heard from Doctor
Priddy. Would you agree with that?'

‘
Yes.'

‘We heard yesterday from her maid that she was very much
depressed after the death of her daughters. Would you agree
with that?'

‘Yes.'

‘
And yet you agreed to go away for the day and leave her
alone in the house. Now is that not a very remarkable thing
for
you
to have done?’

A mild upsurge amongst the spectators relieved Polly of the
need to answer the question.

Sir Samuel resumed. 'What was Lord Harvey's attitude on
this occasion? Surely he would not wish his grieving wife to be
left alone in the house all day?'

‘
He tried to persuade her to come with us. But she was very stubborn when she wanted to be.'

‘
And did he try to persuade you to stay with her?’

Polly looked down at her hands. 'Lady Harvey wanted to
be left alone. She said so many times.’

Sir Samuel passed on to their day at the Summer Fair.
‘You stayed there all day with Lord Harvey?'

‘
Yes,' Polly said in a low voice.

‘And was he with you all of the time?’

Rosamund saw the small figure of Polly seem to grow
smaller, shrinking together with distress.

‘
Well, Miss Haworth? Was Lord Harvey with you for every minute of that day in Aylesbury?'

‘No,' Polly said, and it sounded like a sigh.

Under questioning she told of the dinner, her feeling faint,
being helped to the bedchamber, waking to the presence of
the chambermaid and being told she had been asleep for four
hours.

‘
And where was Lord Harvey during that time while you
were asleep?'

‘I don't know,' Polly said unhappily.

‘
You don't know,' Sir Samuel said kindly. 'Well, of course
you don't — it would not be reasonable to expect you to,
would it?' A fluttering murmur through the House. 'And four
hours is a long time. A man may go quite a long way in four
hours, at four miles per hour on foot, or at
nine miles per hour
on horseback’

Lord Eldon interposed at that point. 'Sir Samuel, this is not the moment for you to make observations of that sort.
Kindly confine yourself to questioning the witness.’

Sir Samuel bowed and resumed, asked Polly when she next
saw Lord Harvey, and she told in halting phrases about the
journey back to Stainton, and the discovery of Flaminia's
body. During the narration she grew gradually more halting,
her voice weaker, her face paler, until at last she sank fainting
to the ground, causing a sensation all around the House,
which it took the Sergeant-at-Arms some time to quell.

When order was restored, and Miss Haworth was revived, and given water and a chair, Sir Samuel declined to ask any
more questions, and Sir Rigby Fielding rose to his feet.

‘
Miss Haworth, you say that it was at Lady Harvey's insist
ence that you left her alone in the house. Did you, at the time,
find this insistence surprising?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘
She had been spending most of her time alone — sitting
alone in the nursery or in her room, staring at nothing.
When I tried to coax her to do something, she would just send
me away, asking to be left alone.'

‘
She sent you away — as she did on this occasion?’

‘
Yes.'

‘
And did Lord Harvey find it surprising that his wife
should want to be left alone?'

‘
No, I don't think so.'

‘You asked, in his presence, to be allowed to stay with Lady Harvey, and she begged you to leave her alone.'

‘Yes.'

‘And what did Lord Harvey say to that?'