The Sins of the Wolf (38 page)

But when the time came and she was winched up into the packed court, even the warmth of the two coal fires and the expectant crowd of people crammed together to fill every space did not reach inside her and stop the shaking or ease the locked muscles.

She did not search their faces to see Monk, or Callandra, or Henry Rathbone. It was too painful. It reminded her of all she valued and might so very soon have to leave. And that was looking more and more likely with every witness who spoke. She had seen Argyll’s tiny victories—and was not deceived. They were not enough to light hope in anyone but a fool. They kept the battle alive, futile as it was so far. They prevented surrender—but not defeat.

The first witness of the day was Connal Murdoch. The last time she had seen him had been in the railway station in London. He had been stunned with the news of Mary’s death, confused by it, and anxious for his wife and her state both of health and of mind. Now he looked quite different. The frantic, slightly disheveled air was totally gone. He was
neatly dressed in plain black, well cut but unimaginative. It was expensive without being elegant, probably because the man himself had no conception of grace, only of what was fitting.

But she could not deny the intelligence in his face with its hooded eyes, nervous mouth and slightly receding hair.

“Mr. Murdoch,” Gilfeather began with an amiable air. “Allow me to take you through the events of that tragic day, as you are aware of them. You and your wife were expecting to meet Mrs. Farraline on the overnight train from Edinburgh?”

Murdoch looked grim and nodded slightly as he replied.

“Was it Mrs. Farraline herself who wrote to you of her visit?”

“Yes.” Murdoch looked a trifle surprised, although presumably Gilfeather had taken him through the questions before the session began.

“Was there any indication in her letters that she was anxious or concerned for her safety?”

“Of course not.”

“No mention of a family difficulty, a quarrel of any sort, any kind of ill feeling whatsoever?”

“None at all!” Murdoch’s voice was growing sharper. The idea was repellent to him and the fact that Gilfeather had raised it clearly displeased him.

“So you had no sense of foreboding as you traveled to the station to meet her, no thought whatever that there could be anything wrong?”

“No sir, I have said not”

“What was the first intimation you received that all was not well?”

There was a stir in the room. Interest was awoken at last.

In spite of herself Hester looked at Oonagh and saw her pale face with its lovely hair. She was sitting next to Alastair again, their shoulders almost touching. For a moment Hester felt sorry for her. Absurdly she remembered quite clearly opening the letter from Charles which told her
of her own mother’s death. She had been standing in the sharp sunlight on the quayside at Scutari. The mail boat had come in while she had a few hours off duty, and she and another nurse had walked down to the shore. Many of the men were already embarking on the homeward journey. The war was all but over. The heat had gone out of the battle. It was the time when the cost could so clearly be seen, the wounded and the dead counted, the victory shabby and the whole fiasco pointless. One day the heroism would be remembered, but then it had all seemed only a matter of pain.

England had been a dream of such strangely mixed values: all the calm of old culture, a land at peace, quiet lanes and rich fields with trees bending low, people going quietly about their undoubting business. And at the same time old buildings of ineffable grace housing men whose bland, entrenched stupidity had sent untold young men to their deaths with a complacency that was still without the guilt she felt it should have had.

She had torn the letter open eagerly, and then stood with the black words dazzling on the white paper, reading them over and over as if each time there were some hope they might change and say something different. She had grown cold in the wind without realizing it.

Was that how Oonagh McIvor had felt when the letter had come telling her that Mary was dead?

From her face now it was impossible to tell. All her concentration seemed to be on supporting Alastair, who looked ashen pale. They were the two eldest. Had they been peculiarly close to Mary? She remembered Mary saying how they had comforted each other in childhood.

Connal Murdoch was relating how the news had been broken to him first, and how he had then told his wife. He was a good witness, full of quiet dignity and understated emotion. His voice quivered only occasionally, and no one could have told whether it was grief or anger, or any other powerful emotion.

Hester looked for Kenneth Farraline but could not see him. Had he embezzled from the company? And when his mother found out, murdered her? Weak men had done such things before, especially if they were besottedly in love, and then, afraid of the consequences of a rash action, done something even more panic-stricken in trying to conceal it.

Would Oonagh conceal it for him?

Hester stared at her strange powerful face and could not even guess.

Connal Murdoch was talking about meeting Hester in the stationmaster’s office. It was an extraordinary thing to stand and hear it recounted through someone else’s eyes and be unable to speak to correct lies and mistakes.

“Oh certainly,” he was saying. “She appeared very pale, but quite composed. Of course we had no idea then that she herself was responsible for Mother-in-law’s death.”

Argyll rose to his feet.

“Yes, yes, Mr. Argyll,” the judge said impatiently. He turned to the witness stand. “Mr. Murdoch, whatever your own convictions, we in the court presume a person is innocent until the jury has returned a verdict of guilty. You will please remember that in your replies.”

Murdoch looked taken aback.

Argyll was obviously aching to put the criticism in his own words, far more decisively than the judge, and he was not to be permitted. Behind him Oliver Rathbone was sitting rigidly, motionless except for the fingers of his left hand, drumming on a sheaf of notes.

Hester looked at the rest of the Farralines. One of them had killed Mary. It was absurd that she should stand here fighting for her life, and be able to stare at their faces one after another, and not know which one it was, even now.

Did they know, all of them—or only the one who had done it?

Old Hector was not there. Did that mean he was drunk as usual, or that Argyll intended to call him? He had not told her.

Sometimes it was better to have someone else plan the defense and conduct the battle. And there were other times she felt so agonizingly helpless she would have given anything at all to be able to stand up and tell them herself, question people, force the truth out of them. And even while the thought raced through her mind, she knew it would be totally futile.

Gilfeather concluded his questions and sat down with a smile. He looked comfortable, well satisfied with his position, and so he should. The jury was sitting in solemn and disapproving silence, their faces closed, their minds already set. Not one of them looked towards the dock.

Argyll rose to his feet, but there was little he could say and nothing at all to contest.

Behind him Oliver Rathbone was fuming with impatience. The longer this evidence took, the more firmly entrenched in the jurors’ minds was Hester’s guilt. Men were reluctant to change a decision once made. Gilfeather knew that as well as he did. Clever swine.

The judge’s face also was narrow and hard. His words might be full of legally correct indecision, but one had only to see him to know what his own verdict was.

Argyll sat down again almost immediately, and Rathbone breathed a sigh of relief.

The next person to be called was Griselda Murdoch. It was a piece of emotional manipulation. She had recently given birth and she looked pale and very tired, as if she had traveled only with difficulty for so tragic an event. The sympathy from the crowd was palpable in the air. The hatred for Hester increased with a bound till it hung thick like a bad smell in a closed space.

For Rathbone it was a nightmare. He did not know whether he would have attempted to tear her apart rather than allow the sympathy to build, or whether it would only make matters immeasurably worse. He was almost glad it was not his decision to make.

And yet to sit there helplessly was almost beyond bearing.
He looked at Argyll, and could not read his face. He was staring through furrowed brows at Griselda Murdoch, but he could have been merely listening to her with concentration, or he could have been planning how to trap her, discredit her, attack her character, her veracity, or any other aspect of the effect she would have upon the jury.

“Mrs. Murdoch,” Gilfeather said softly, as if he were addressing an invalid or a child. “We are deeply sensible of your courage in coming to testify in this tragic matter, and of the cost it must have been for you to travel this distance in your present state of health.”

There was a murmur of sympathy around the room and someone spoke his approval aloud.

The judge ignored this.

“I will not trouble you to relive your emotions at the railway station, Mrs. Murdoch,” Gilfeather continued. “It would distress you for no purpose, and that is the furthest thing from my intention. If you would be so kind as to tell us what transpired after you returned to your home, with your husband, knowing that your mother had died. Do not hurry, and choose your words exactly as you please.”

“Thank you, you are most kind,” she said shakily.

Monk, staring at her, thought how unlike her sisters she was. She had not the courage of either of them, nor the passion of character. She might well be far easier for a man to live with, less demanding, less testing of patience or forbearance, but dear heaven she would also be infinitely less interesting. She was uncertain, timid, and there was a streak of self-pity in her that Oonagh would have found intolerable.

Or was it all an act, an outer garment designed to appeal to the court? Did she know who had killed her mother? Was it even conceivable, in a wild moment of insanity, that they had all conspired together to murder Mary Farraline?

No, that was absurd. His wits were wandering.

She was telling Gilfeather how she had unpacked Mary’s
cases and found her clothes and the list of items, and in so doing had failed to find the gray pearl pin.

“I see.” Gilfeather nodded sagely. “And you expected to find it?”

“Certainly. The note said that it should be there.”

“And what did you do, Mrs. Murdoch?”

“I spoke to my husband. I told him it was missing and asked his advice,” she replied.

“And what did he advise you should do?”

“Well, of course the first thing we did was to search thoroughly again, through everything. But it was quite definitely not there.”

“Quite. We now know that Miss Latterly had it with her. This is not in dispute. What then?”

“Well—Connal, Mr. Murdoch, was most concerned that it had been stolen, and he …” She gulped and took several seconds to regain her composure. The court waited in respectful silence.

Behind Argyll, Rathbone swore under his breath.

“Yes?” Gilfeather encouraged.

“He said we should be wise to call in our own doctor to give another opinion as to how my mother had died.”

“I see. And so you did exactly that?”

“Yes.”

“And whom did you call, Mrs. Murdoch?”

“Dr. Ormorod, of Slingsby Street.”

“I see. Thank you.” He turned with a disarming smile to Argyll. “Your witness, sir.”

“Thank you, thank you indeed.” Argyll uncurled himself from his chair and stood up.

“Mrs. Murdoch …”

She regarded him warily, assuming that he was essentially inimical.

“Yes sir?”

“These clothes and effects of your mother’s that you unpacked … I take it that you did it yourself, rather than having your maid do it? You do have a maid, I imagine?”

“Of course I do!”

“But on this occasion, possibly because of the uniquely tragic circumstances, you chose to unpack them yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

There was a rustle of disapproval around the room. One of the jurors coughed sharply. The judge frowned, seeming on the edge of speech, then at the last moment restrained himself.

“Wh-why?” Griselda looked nonplussed. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, Mrs. Murdoch,” Argyll repeated, standing grim and motionless, every eye fixed on him. “Why did you unpack your mother’s belongings?”

“I—I did not wish the maid to,” Griselda said chokingly. “She—she was …” She stopped, knowing that the sympathy of the court would finish it for her.

“No, madam, you have misunderstood me,” Argyll said carefully. “I do not mean why did you not have the maid do it. The answer to that, I am sure, we all understand perfectly, and would probably have felt the same in your position. I mean, why did you unpack them at all? Why did you not simply leave them packed, ready to return them to Edinburgh? It was tragically obvious she would no longer need them in London.”

“Oh.” She let out her breath in a sigh, her face very pale except for the faint splash of pink burning in her cheeks.

“One wonders why you unpacked them with such care when it was now quite irrelevant. I would not have done so in your position. I would have left them packed, ready to return.” Argyll’s voice dropped to a low rumble, and yet every word was hideously clear. “Unless, of course, I was looking for something myself?”

Griselda said nothing, but her discomfort was now only too apparent.

Argyll relaxed a little, leaning forward.

“Was the diamond brooch on this list of contents, Mrs. Murdoch?”

“Diamond brooch? No. No, there was no diamond brooch.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes, of … of course I am sure. Just the gray pearl and the topaz and the amethyst necklace. Only the gray pearl one was missing.”

“Do you still have that list, Mrs. Murdoch?”

“No … no. No I don’t. I … I don’t know what happened to it.” She swallowed. “What does it matter? You know Miss Latterly had the brooch. The police found it in her belongings.”