Cain His Brother (44 page)

Finally the coroner spoke.

“Mr. Rathbone, are you suggesting that Lord Ravensbrook intentionally killed Caleb Stone?”

“I am suggesting that it is a possibility, sir.”

Goode closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat, anguish written all over his face.

Two spots of color touched Milo Ravensbrook's cheeks, but he neither moved nor spoke.

Selina Herries bit her knuckles and stared at Rathbone. “In God's name, man, for what conceivable reason?” the coroner asked.

The door opened at the back of the court and Monk came in, drenched with rain, tousled and exhausted for lack of sleep, but accompanied by an elderly man and a stout woman in black.

Rathbone felt weak with relief. His voice trembled as he answered the coroner.

“I will call witnesses to answer that question, sir. I shall begin with the Reverend Horatio Nicolson, of Chilverley, with your permission.”

The coroner hesitated. He looked around the room, saw the wide-eyed faces, the anticipation, the journalists who were still present sitting with pencil in hand, faces bright with eagerness. He could not disallow it. “I shall stop you if for one instant there is irrelevance, or any attempt at unsubstantiated attack!” he warned. “Be very careful, Mr. Rathbone, very careful indeed! I will have no one's good name taken lightly.”

Rathbone bowed his head in acknowledgment and called Horatio Nicolson to the witness stand.

Slowly, with deep regret and obvious embarrassment, the Reverend Nicolson mounted the witness stand and took the oath.

Rathbone began by establishing precisely who he was so that the court might understand his importance.

“So you knew Lord Ravensbrook and his family quite well at the time Angus Stonefield came to Chilverley?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” Nicolson answered, his face grave.

“Did you come to know Angus?”

“Yes. I tutored him in Latin, beginning when he was about eight, I believe. He was an excellent student, intelli gent, willing and quick to learn. A most agreeable boy, so thoughtful and well mannered.” He smiled at the memory, in spite of himself.

“My wife was especially fond of him. She worried about him. He was quite often ill, you know, and at times seemed very withdrawn.” His voice dropped a little. “There was a sadness in him, especially when he was very young.

Most rational, I suppose, having lost both his parents at such an early age.”

“Did he continue to be such an excellent student, Mr. Nicolson?” Rathbone asked.

Nicolson's face pinched with grief.

“No. I am afraid he became very erratic. At times he was excellent, his old self. And then there would be occasions when I would hardly see him for several weeks.”

“Do you know the reason for this?”

Nicolson drew in a deep breath and let it out in a silent sigh. “I asked, naturally. Lord Ravensbrook confided in me that he had become most recalcitrant at times, hard to discipline, and on occasion even openly rebellious.”

There was a faint rustling in the room. No one was yet interested.

Nicolson's head lifted. “Although I must say in his defense that Lord Ravensbrook was a hard man to please.” He spoke as if he had not seen Ravensbrook in the room, nor did his eyes move towards where he sat, stiff and pale. “He was handsome, charming and talented himself,” Nicolson continued. “And he expected those in his own family to come up to his standards. If they did not, he was harsh in his criticism.”

“But Angus was not, strictly speaking, his own family,” Rathbone pointed out. “Except distantly. Was he not the child of a cousin?”

Nicolson's face tightened, touched with a deep pity. “No sir, he was the illegitimate son of his younger brother, Phineas Ravensbrook. Stonefield was the young woman's name, which was all he was legally entitled to. But he was Ravensbrook by blood.”

Rathbone heard the murmur of surprise around the room, the indrawn breath.

The coroner leaned forward, as if about to interrupt, then changed his mind.

“Why did Lord Ravensbrook not adopt him?” Rathbone asked. “Especially since he had lost his wife and had no children of his own.”

“Lord Ravensbrook and his brother were not close, sir.” Nicolson shook his head, a great weight of sadness in his voice, and in the gentle lines of his face. “There was tension between them, a deep-lying rivalry that could take no joy in the other's happiness or success. Milo, the present Lord Ravensbrook, was the elder. He was clever, charming and talented, but I think his ambition was even larger than his abilities, considerable as they were.”

Memory lit his face. “Phineas was quite different. He had such vitality, such laughter and imagination. Everyone loved Phineas. And he seemed to have no ambition at all, except to enjoy himself…”

The coroner leaned across his table.

“Mr. Rathbone! Is this of any relevance to Caleb Stonefield's death? It seems to be very old history, and of a very personal nature. Can you justify it in this court?”

“Yes sir, it is at the very core of it,” Rathbone said with feeling momentary to passion. Something of the rage and the emergency in him must have been there in his voice and the angles of his body. Every eye was on him, and the coroner hesitated only a moment before permitting him to proceed.

Rathbone nodded to Nicolson.

“I am afraid he got away with much that perhaps he should not,” Nicolson said quietly, but his voice carried even to the back of the room in the silence. “He could smile at people, and they forgot their anger. They forgave him far too much for his own good, or for Milo's. The sense of injustice, you see? As if all the pleasures and pains of life could be weighed against each other-only God can do that… at the end, when it is all known.”

He sighed. “Perhaps that is why he was so harsh with poor Angus, to try to prevent him following in his father's footsteps. Such charm can be a terrible curse, undoing all that would be good in a man. It is not right that we should laugh our way out of justice. It teaches us all the wrong lessons.”

“Was Lord Ravensbrook so very harsh, Mr. Nicolson?”

“In my opinion, yes sir.”

“In what way?”

The coroner's face pinched, but he did not interrupt.

In the room there was a scrape of fabric on fabric, the squeak of a boot.

Milo Ravensbrook fidgeted and moved as if to speak, but did not.

Nicolson looked wretched, but he did not hesitate to reply in a soft, steady voice.

“He seemed at times impossible to please. He would humiliate the boy for mistakes, for foolishness which was merely born of ignorance, or uncertainty, lack of confidence. And of course the more a child is embarrassed, the more mistakes he makes. It is a terrible thing to feel worthless, sir, to feel you owe a debt of gratitude, and instead of paying it, you have to let down those you most wish to please.” He pressed on with difficulty through his obvious emotion. “As a small boy I saw Angus many times struggling to keep from weeping, and then the shame he felt when he could no longer help it, and was then chastened for that too. And he was bitterly ashamed of being beaten, which he was frequently. It terrified him, and then he felt himself a coward because of it.”

In the crowd a woman stifled a sob.

Selina Herries had not wept for Caleb's death. It was still too new a shock for her, her feelings towards the man too mixed between pride, contempt, and fear of him. Now her feelings for the child he must have been were simple. She let the tears run down her face without shame or hindrance.

Enid Ravensbrook's face was ash-gray and set in lines of intolerable pain, as if some long-feared tragedy had at last struck her. She looked sideways at her husband, but her expression was unreadable. Not once did he turn to her. Perhaps he did not dare to see what was in her eyes.

Genevieve Stonefield was beyond weeping, but she clasped Titus Niven's hand as if she might drown if she let it go.

“Mr. Nicolson…” Rathbone prompted.

Nicolson blinked. “My heart ached for him, and I was moved to speak to Lord Ravensbrook on his behalf, but I fear I did no good. My interference only provoked him to be even stricter. He thought Angus had complained to me, and he regarded that as both cowardice and a personal disloyalty.” “I see.”

To Rathbone it was a picture of such pain he was lost for more powerful or appropriate words. What must have lain beneath the surface of Angus's honorable and upright character? Could he ever have forgiven Ravensbrook for those years of misery?

The coroner had not interrupted, nor had his eyes once strayed to the clock, but now, deeply unhappy, he was compelled to speak.

“Mr. Rathbone, this past distress is most harrowing, but it is still, so far, irrelevant to the death of Caleb Stonefield. I am sure you must be aware of that. Mr. Nicolson's evidence has addressed itself solely to Angus.”

“That is because he never met Caleb,” Rathbone replied. “If I may be permitted to call my last witness, sir, she will explain it all.”

“I hope she can, Mr. Rathbone, otherwise you appear to have harrowed our emotions and wasted our time to no purpose.”

“It is to a purpose, I assure you. I call Miss Abigail Ratchett.”

Abigail Ratchett was a very stout woman with unnaturally black hair, considering that she must have been at least seventy-five. But apart from being hard of hearing, she was self-assured and quite in command of her wits. Every eye in the room was upon her.

“You are a nurse, Miss Ratchett?” Rathbone began, speaking clearly and rather above his usual pitch and volume.

“Yes sir, and midwife. At least I used to be.”

The coroner's face tightened.

Goode groaned.

Rathbone ignored them both.

“Were you in attendance when Miss Alice Stonefield was delivered of her two sons, in October of 1829, the father being one Phineas Ravensbrook?”

Rathbone glanced at Ravensbrook. He looked like a death's-head.

“I were in attendance, yes sir,” Miss Ratchett replied. “But it were just a normal birth like any other, no twins, sir, just the one child. Boy..

. beautiful he were. Healthy child. Called him Angus, she did.”

One could have heard a tin tack drop in the court.

“What?” Rathbone demanded.

The coroner leaned forward, peering at her.

“Madam, you are aware of what you are saying? There are people in this courtroom who knew both Angus and Caleb!”

“There were one baby, sir,” Miss Ratchett repeated. “I were there. Miss Alice had one baby. I were with her for all the time she nursed him. Knew him right until his poor mother were killed. Year after Phineas Ravensbrook died in some foreign place. It were after that as his uncle took him, poor little mite. Only five, he were, an' terrible took with his grief. Father never 'ad no time for 'im. Never owned 'im, he didn't, nor loved 'is mother neither.” Her face betrayed her feelings for Phineas Ravensbrook.

“What you say makes no sense, madam!” the coroner cried desperately. “If there was only one child, where did Caleb come from? Who was he? And who killed Angus?”

“I don't know nothing about that,” Miss Ratchett answered levelly. “I just know there were one baby. But I do know as children have a powerful imagination! I looked af ter a little girl once as 'ad a friend, all imaginary, and whenever she done something wrong, she said as how it were Mary what done it, not her. She was good, Mary was bad.”

“An ordinary excuse any child might make,” the coroner said. “I have children myself, madam. I have heard many such stories.”

The Reverend Nicolson rose to his feet. “I beg your pardon, sir.” He addressed the coroner respectfully, but he would not be denied. “But is it not possible that in his unhappiness, and his feeling of rejection, obligation and loneliness, that the boy created an alternative self which would take the blame for his failures, and which would also be free to hate his uncle as he wished to, as he did in his heart?”

He raised his voice above the mounting noise in the room, the groans and murmurs of horror, pity, rage or disbelief.

“Might it not begin as an escape within the imagination of an unhappy child's hurt and humiliation?” he asked. “And then grow into a genuine madness wherein he became two quite separate people, one who did everything to please, and earned the resultant rewards, and another who was free to feel, without guilt, all the anger and hatred for his rejection, because he was the son of a father who would not own him, and an uncle for whom he was never good enough, a reflection of the brother he envied, and upon whom he could no longer be revenged, except through the child?”

The coroner banged on his desk for silence. “Order!” he commanded. “That is a monstrous scene you paint, sir. May God forgive you for it. I should not be surprised if the Ravensbrook family cannot.” He looked at where Milo Ravensbrook sat rigid, white-faced but for the scarlet daubs on his cheeks.

But it was Enid Ravensbrook's expression, the rage and the pity in her, which made the coroner draw in his breath, and from which Rathbone knew that Nicolson was not so far wrong.

“Absolute insanity,” Ravensbrook said between his teeth. “For God's sake!

Everyone here knows there were two brothers! This woman is either wicked or she has lost her wits. Her memory is fuddled with drink.” He swung around.

“Genevieve! You have seen both Angus and Caleb!” He was shouting now. “Tell them this is preposterous!”

“I have seen them,” Genevieve said slowly. “But never together. I have never seen them at the same time. But… it couldn't be. They were utterly different. No.” She looked at Abigail Ratchett. “No, you have to be mistaken. It was over forty-one years ago. Your memory is confused. How many babies have you delivered? Hundreds?”

“It was one baby!” Abigail Ratchett said fiercely. “I'm not drunk and I'm not mad, no matter what anyone says.”

Genevieve turned to Monk, desperation in her face. She had to raise her voice to make herself heard. “You said someone saw them together on the day Angus was killed! Find that man and bring him here. That will solve it!”

The coroner banged again, demanding silence, then turned to Monk. “Well?” he said sharply. “Did you find such a witness? If you did, what is all the nonsense? It seems you are totally irresponsible, sir!”