Minor Corruption (24 page)

“What about the bushy hair?” Cobb
spluttered.

“I demonstrated that a few minutes ago: a
trick of light and shadow. We both have stood in that barn doorway
and gazed into that stall. So you know perfectly well what I’m
talking about. Is it not possible that there was no rape, but
merely a sexual liaison between Betsy and some local with lots of
brown or blond hair? I hate to say it, Cobb, but you simply did not
do your job.”

“I don’t have to stand here and listen to yer
lawyer’s double-talk!” Cobb cried.

“It was you who came steaming in here,” Marc
said, steaming himself.

“Well, I’m steamin’ out now!”

With that, Cobb marched to the door, opened
it, and slammed it shut. Then, aware that he had left his helmet
inside, he slipped back in, avoided Marc’s eyes, scooped up the
helmet, strode to the door and slammed it even harder. Then he
stomped off, Marc’s taunting phrase “didn’t do your job” abuzz in
his head. He had not been this angry in his entire life.

THIRTEEN

Marc decided to avoid Baldwin House and go straight
home, for there seemed little use in meeting Robert for further
discussion of the case as they had apparently agreed to disagree.
Anyway, the trial would finish tomorrow or Thursday. He was also
hoping to get some sympathy from Beth after his bitter clash with
Cobb in the wig-room. Beth, however, had other ideas. She shipped
Junior and Maggie off to the kitchen with Etta and directed Marc to
sit down with her on the chesterfield in the parlour.

Marc took one look at her face and said, “Not
you too, darling?”

Beth smiled. “I take it yer friends have not
been impressed with the way you conducted yerself today?”

“That’s an understatement,” Marc said, and
took the opportunity to unburden himself of the day’s tribulations.
Beth listened intently, as she always did, but there were no
sympathetic nods except when he repeated Robert’s maxim about the
supremacy of the law itself. But she did offer a tiny smile at
Cobb’s reappearance to fetch his helmet.

“I’m real sorry you and Cobb had it out,” she
said when he had finished, “but I can see why he was so angry. This
was a big investigation fer him. And on his own, too. You made him
look bad today. I hope to Heaven you don’t have to put him on the
stand.”

“So do I.”

“Still, I’m surprised you lost your
temper.”

“When he questioned my motives, I lost all
patience with the man. And I just struck back, somewhat blindly,
I’m sorry to say.”

“Well, dear, I saw somethin’ in you today
that I hadn’t seen before.”

“Oh?”

“And I don’t mean just yer grit and
determination and downright stubbornness.”

“Well, thanks for those anyway.”

Beth frowned. “I hate to say it, but I
thought you were unnecessarily cruel to Jake Broom.”

“Why ‘unnecessarily’?” Marc said with more
sarcasm that he intended. “Wouldn’t ‘cruel’ do nicely?”

“Now don’t get in a huff, luv. I meant what I
said. I know you have to be cruel sometimes in a courtroom where
lives are at stake. The greatest cruelty is to hang a man who is
not guilty, I know that. I just thought you went further than you
had to. You accused the lad of bein’ a rapist when you knew he
wasn’t. And Cambridge showed the jury that was so when he went on
about the young man not returnin’ to do himself in with a
cock-and-bull story.”

Marc was duly chastened. He
had
gone
further than he had planned to. Showing the jury that Broom was
fanciful and could have misinterpreted or wrongly described the
scene in the stall was all he needed to do. Broom’s testimony had
been impeached long before Marc had got carried away,
Dougherty-like. “I don’t know why I did that,” he said. “I so
wished to see this thing over, for the sake of that suffering old
man.”

Beth looked so serious that Marc was sure
another accusation was coming, but she said quietly, “What
are
yer motives, luv?”

“Cobb accused me of toadying up to the
Baldwins and fighting for my own self-interests in regard to the
Reform party, and I suppose he was close enough to the truth to
have me respond in anger. But what drives me, in addition to
friendship and party loyalty, is justice. I believe Seamus Baldwin
is incapable of that crime or even of paying for a botched
abortion, and I desperately want to get an acquittal.”

“So you have no doubts about his
innocence?”

Marc was startled by the suddenness of Beth’s
query. “Of course not. Don’t tell me that Neville Cambridge is
getting to you, too?”

Beth laughed. “No, he’s not. You’ve fought
him blow fer blow. I’d say the jury is still out.”

“What worries me deeply, win or not, is that
I may have jeopardized my friendship with Cobb and with Robert, the
two men I admire most in this world. To lose the case
and
my
friends would be too terrible to bear. All my effort would have
been for nothing.”

Beth patted the back of his hand:

“Nothin’ is never fer nothin’, luv.”

***

Sixteen-year-old Edie Barr, the Crown’s final
scheduled witness, was first up on Wednesday morning. She was both
nervous and excited. She was aware of her blond good looks and of
the fact that they were being appreciated by the packed galleries.
Her employer’s son, Robert Baldwin, had taken her aside earlier and
told her she was to tell nothing but the absolute truth when
standing in the witness-box. There would be no recriminations as a
result of her testimony and, under no circumstance was she to feel
that she ought to tell less than the truth in order to protect the
Baldwin family. She had nodded dutifully, but had already mapped
out what she was going to say and why.

“Miss Barr, do you know the defendant well?”
Cambridge began.

“I do, sir,” Edie said in her most adult
voice. “Mr. Seamus came to Spadina on the first of July of this
year. I seen him many times a day ever since.”

“In your capacity as an upstairs maid at
Spadina?”

“That’s right. I’ve worked fer Dr. Baldwin
fer two years.”

“And Betsy Thurgood worked with you?”

“Betsy was the tweenie – ever since August.
She worked a bit up and down. We shared a room.”

“Please describe your relationship with
Seamus Baldwin, beyond servant and master.”

Edie blinked, then understood what was
wanted. “Oh, we both called Mr. Seamus our uncle, Uncle Seamus. He
said we had to.”

“Isn’t it odd for a gentleman of some sixty
years to be so chummy with the hired help?”

Edie winced at “hired help” but said, “Yes,
it is. But Uncle Seamus was like a big kid. He loved to tease and
play pranks, and he let us tease him back – as long as we didn’t do
it in front of visitors. Then it was all ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’”
Edie did not once look up at Uncle Seamus in the dock. In fact she
kept her wandering gaze everywhere but on that side of the
courtroom. For his part, Uncle Seamus seemed for the first time to
take a steady interest in the proceedings, leaning forward on the
railing of the dock.

“So he liked to tease, did he?”

“Not always,” Edie said with a glance at
Robert seated behind Marc. “He was our tutor, too. He had us read
to him and helped us with our writin’ and sums.”

“Taking an inordinate interest in two young
maids, was he?”

Marc got up, but it was Justice Powell who
barked, “Do not put words into the witness’s mouth, Mr. Cambridge,
especially ones she herself would never utilize.”

Cambridge apologized. “Tell us, Miss Barr,
what form the teasing would take.”

Edie blushed prettily. She loved that “Miss
Barr.” “Well, Uncle Seamus liked to bounce up behind us and give
our ribs a tickle. And we’d all laugh.”

“I see. Up and down the ribs, eh? What
else?”

“He’d bring us a sweet in our room and then
make us answer a riddle to win it.” Edie frowned. “Betsy always
won.”

“Now tell the court about your being a
ventriloquist’s dummy.”

Edie happily recounted sitting on Uncle
Seamus’s knee and flapping her jaw in synch with his words. Her
pretty eyes widened as she told of the response they got at several
soirées at Spadina, and she lingered over potentially salacious
details, which seemed to please Neville Cambridge greatly. Marc,
however, thought this testimony was redundant as earlier witnesses,
including Beth, had already established Uncle Seamus’s eccentric,
elfin habits and his attraction to children and young women. But
there was more to come.

“So it would be fair to say that you and Miss
Thurgood liked and admired Seamus Baldwin, referring to him
affectionately as your ‘uncle’?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cambridge now drew from among his notes a
sheet of paper. “I am holding here a letter, Milord, which I would
like to introduce as Exhibit B. It was found by the police among
the effects of Betsy Thurgood in her room at Spadina, as the
attached affidavit will attest to.”

The clerk took the letter and attestation to
the judge, who perused them carefully. Marc had seen the letter and
had a pretty good idea what was coming. The letter was now taken
over to the witness.

“Miss Barr, please read this letter aloud to
the court.”

In her best singsong voice, Edie read aloud
with the confidence that Seamus Baldwin had given her:

Dear sweetest one:

I know how impossible it is to love someone

so far above one’s station. I know also the pain of
watching you

close up every day of my life. I see your beautiful,
manly face

and your shining hair and your glinting eye as you
walk ever so

elegantly down the stairs each morning. I follow you
through the

day with my heart aflutter and my breathing stinted.
I swoon at

the sound of your voice, as pure as poetry, as
lilting as an Irish

tenor’s. Your laugh turns me giddy and one glance
from your

sea-blue eyes is enough to carry me through an
entire week. O

my precious and unattainable knight!

Your faithful admirer

Betsy

The effect on the courtroom was electric. Gasps of
disbelief. Sighs of disappointment. Tuts of revulsion. Here at last
was the direct connection between Seamus Baldwin and the
love-struck teenager. Perhaps it hadn’t been rape after all. It had
been worse, much worse. The brute had seduced her in that ugly
horse-stall, and she had not resisted. Surely they had been
carrying on their illicit affair for over two months! Ending
tragically in abortion, death, and now disgrace.

“Is this Betsy Thurgood’s hand as you know
it?”

“Yes, sir, it is. And I saw her write this
letter. She asked me to look over and check her spellin’ and commas
and the like.”

“I see. So even though there is no date on
this letter, you can tell us when it was penned?”

“Yes, sir. About the middle of
September.”

So, Marc thought, Edie had known about the
letter and had deliberately left it where Cobb could find it. But
why?

“Do you have an opinion as to who this person
is? The one whom Betsy admired ‘faithfully’?”

“Milord!”

“I’m going to allow it, Mr. Edwards. Miss
Barr knew Miss Thurgood well. They shared a room and much else, it
appears.”

“It has to be Uncle Seamus, doesn’t it?” Edie
said.

“Why would you say that?”

“Well, it says here it’s someone she sees in
the house every day. And that ‘shinin’ hair’ could only be Uncle
Seamus’s big white hair, couldn’t it?”

“Why, then, would she call him a knight?”

“Oh, Betsy was always livin’ in a dream
world, seein’ knights in shinin’ armour and all that sort of
nonsense.”

“Did Betsy ever confide in you that it was
Seamus Baldwin she admired and was in love with?”

“No, sir,” Edie, mindful of Robert Baldwin’s
admonitions, said with some reluctance. “I did ask, but she
wouldn’t tell.”

“Did you ever see Betsy and Seamus Baldwin in
a romantic embrace?”

“No, sir. Just the teasin’ and stuff. And it
was a crowded house. There ain’t any secrets in it.”

“What about outdoors? Could they have met on
the grounds?”

Edie pushed out her dainty lower lip,
reflected a moment and said, “They could’ve, though Uncle Seamus
only went outside to play his pipes at picnics or to go fishin’ up
by the mill in the little ravine there. Sometimes he told us he’d
go up to the other pool, past the dam, but Mr. Whittle liked to
fish there even though he was forbidden to, and Uncle Seamus liked
his privacy.”

“Privacy, eh? At the trout pool below the
mill? The one we’ve already heard about? And the same mill where
Betsy took her father’s lunch every day?”

“That’s right.”

With images of forbidden rendezvous in soft
grasses beside still trout pools floating through the minds of the
jurors, Neville Cambridge sat down, much pleased.

Marc stood up. “Miss Barr, that is a love
letter you have in hand, is it not? A love letter to a white
knight?”

“Sounds that way,” Edie said, curling her
lip. She did not appear apprehensive, but rather looked as if she
were anticipating yet another scene in the drama she had
envisaged.

“Did you ever write a letter like this?” Marc
said sternly.

Edie hesitated.

“May I remind you that you are under
oath.”

“Might have.”

“More than one?”

More curling of lip. “Maybe. I guess so.
Yes
.”

“You have several lovers, then, do you?”

There was a collective intake of breath at
this abrupt accusation.

Edie flinched but held onto the railing. “No,
sir, I do not. I’m a proper lady.”

“Then why and under what circumstances would
you have penned a love letter like the one written by Betsy?”