The Twisted Root (40 page)

Rathbone raised his eyebrows very slightly. "You find abortion repugnant?"

"Of course I do! Doesn’t every civilized person?"

"Of a healthy child, from a healthy mother, I imagine so," Rathbone agreed. "Then tell us, Mr. Campbell, why you had the woman staying in your house—so that your scullery maid carried up her meals to her on a tray?"

Campbell hesitated, lifting his hands. "If—if that was done, it was without my knowledge. The servants... perhaps they felt... I don’t know... a pity—" He stopped. "If that ever happened," he added.

Tobias took his turn, briefly.

"Was that with your knowledge, or approval, Mr. Campbell?"

"Of course not!"

The court adjourned for luncheon.

The family of Flora Bailey arrived. Rathbone called her brother, a respected physician, as his first witness of the afternoon.

The gallery was packed. Word had spread like fire that something new was afoot. The tide had turned.

"Dr. Forbes," Rathbone began, "your sister spent time in the home of Mr. Aiden Campbell immediately before her disappearance. Were you aware of that?"

"No sir, I was not. I knew she had a case she considered very important but also highly confidential. The mother-to-be was very young, no more than a child herself, and whoever engaged her was most anxious that both she and the child should receive the very best attention. The child was much wanted, in spite of the circumstances. That is all she told me."

Rathbone was startled. "The child was wanted?"

"So my sister told me."

"And was it born healthy?"

"I have no idea. I never heard from my sister again."

"Thank you, Dr. Forbes. May I say how sorry I am for the reason which brings you here."

"Thank you," Forbes said soberly.

"Dr. Forbes, one last question. Did your sister have any feelings regarding the subject of abortion?"

"Very deep feelings," Forbes answered. "She was passionately opposed to it, regardless of the pity she felt for women who already had as many children as they could feed or care for, or for those who were unmarried, or even who had been assaulted or otherwise abused. She could never bring herself to feel it acceptable. It was a matter of religious principle to her."

"So she would not have performed an abortion herself?"

"Never!" Forbes’s face was flushed, his emotion naked. "If you doubt me, sir, I can name a dozen professional men who will say the same of her."

"I do not doubt you, Dr. Forbes, I simply wanted you to say it for the court to hear. Thank you for your patience. I have nothing further to ask."

Tobias half rose to his feet, then sat down again. He glanced across at Rathbone, and for the first time there was misgiving in his face, even anxiety.

Again there was silence in the room. No one even noticed Harry Stourbridge stand up. It was not until he spoke that suddenly every eye turned to him.

"My lord..." He cleared his throat. "I have listened to the evidence presented here from the beginning. I believe I now understand the truth. It is very terrible, but it must be told or an unbearable injustice will be done. Two women will be hanged who are innocent of any wrong."

The silence prickled like the coming of a storm.

"If you have information pertinent to this trial, then you should most certainly take the stand again, Major Stourbridge," the judge agreed. "Be advised that you are still under oath."

"I am aware of it, my lord," Stourbridge answered, and walked slowly from his seat, across the open space and up the steps of the witness box. He waited until the judge told him to proceed, then in a hoarse, broken voice, with desperate reluctance, he began.

"I come from a family of very considerable wealth, almost all of it in lands and property, with sufficient income to maintain them and some extra to provide a more than comfortable living. However, it is all entailed, and has been so for generations. I inherited it from my father, and it will pass to my son."

He stopped for a few seconds, as if regathering his strength. There was not a sound in the room. Everyone understood that here was a man laboring under terrible emotions as he realized a truth that shattered his life.

"If I had not had a son," he continued with difficulty, his voice trembling, "the property would have passed to my younger brother." Again he paused before gathering the strength to proceed. "My wife found it extremely difficult to carry a child. Time and again she conceived, and then miscarried within the first few months. We had almost given up hope when she came to visit me in Egypt while I was serving in the army there. It was a dangerous posting both because of the fighting and because of the natural hazards of disease. I was anxious for her, but she was determined to come, at all costs."

Now he was speaking, the words poured out. Every man and woman in the room was listening intently. No one moved even a hand.

"She stayed with me for over a month." His voice cracked. "She seemed to enjoy it. Then she returned by boat down the Nile to Alexandria. I have had much time to think over and over on what has happened, to try to understand why my wife was killed. She was a generous woman who never harmed anyone." He looked confused, beaten. "And why Miriam, whom we all cared for so much, should have wished her ill.

"I tried to recall what had been said at the dinner table. Verona had spoken of Egypt and her journey back down the Nile. Lucius asked her about a particular excursion, and she said she had wished to go but had been unable because she had not been very well. She dismissed it as of no importance, only a quite usual complaint for her which had passed."

His face was very white. He looked across at Lucius. "I’m so sorry," he said hoarsely. Then he faced forward again. "Yesterday evening I went and read her diary of the time, and found her reference to that day when she had written of the pain, and her distress, and then she had remembered Aiden’s words of reassurance that it would all be well if she kept her courage and told no one. And she had done exactly as he had said." His voice dropped. "Then at last I understood."

Rathbone found himself hardly breathing, he was so intent upon Harry Stourbridge’s white face and tight, aching voice.

"When she reached England again," Stourbridge continued, "she wrote and told me that during her stay with me she had become with child, and felt very well, and hoped that this time she would carry it until birth. I was overjoyed, for her even more than for myself."

In the gallery a woman sobbed, her heart touched with pity, maybe with an empathy.

Rathbone glanced up at Miriam. She looked as if she had seen death face-to-face.

Harry Stourbridge did not look at her, or at Lucius, or at Aiden Campbell, but straight ahead of him into a vision of the past only he could see.

"In due time I heard that the child was delivered, a healthy boy, my son Lucius. I was the happiest man alive. Some short time after that I returned to duties in England, and saw him. He was beautiful, and so like my wife." He could not continue. It took him several moments to regain even the barest mastery of his voice. When he spoke it was hoarse and little above a whisper.

"I loved him so much—I still do. The truth has no—has nothing to do with that. That will never change." He took a deep breath and let it out in a choking sigh. "But I now know that he is not my son, nor is he my wife’s son."

There was a shock wave around the room as if an earthquake had struck. Jurors sat paralyzed. Even the judge seemed to grasp for his bench as if to hold himself steady.

Rathbone found his lips dry, his heart pounding.

Harry Stourbridge looked across at Lucius. "Forgive me," he whispered. "I have always loved you, and I always will." He faced forward again, at attention. "He is the baby my wife’s brother, Aiden Campbell, begot by rape upon his twelve-year-old maid, Miriam Speake, so that I should have an heir and his sister should not lose access to my fortune, should I die in action or from disease while abroad. She was always generous to him."

There was a low rumble of fury around the room.

Aiden Campbell shot to his feet, but he found no words to deny what was written on every face.

Two ushers moved forward simultaneously to restrain him, should it become necessary.

Harry Stourbridge went on as if oblivious to them all. He could not leave his story unfinished. "He murdered the midwife so she would never tell, and he attempted to murder the mother also, but distraught, hysterical, she escaped. Perhaps she never knew if her baby lived or died—until at her own engagement party she saw Aiden wield a croquet mallet, swinging it high in jest, and memory returned to her, and with understanding so fearful she could only run from us all, and keep silence even at the price of her life, rather than have anyone know, but above all Lucius himself, that he had fallen in love with his... own ... mother." He could no longer speak; in spite of all he could do, the tears spilled down his cheeks.

The noise in the court increased like the roar of a rising tide. A wave of pity and anger engulfed the room.

The ushers closed in on Aiden Campbell, perhaps to restrain him, perhaps even to protect him.

Rathbone felt dizzy. Dimly he saw Hester, and just beyond her shoulder, Monk, his face as shocked as hers.

He looked up at Miriam. Not for an instant now did he need to wonder if this was the truth; it was written in her eyes, her mouth, every angle of her body.

He turned back to Harry Stourbridge.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "No one here can presume to know what it must have cost you to say this. I don’t know if Mr. Tobias has any questions to ask you, but I have none."

Tobias stood up, began to speak, and then stopped. He glanced at the jury, then back to the judge. "I think, my lord, that in the interests of truth, some further detail is required. Terrible as this story is, there are ..." He made a gesture of helplessness and left the rest unsaid.

Rathbone was still on his feet.

"I think now, my lord, that Mrs. Gardiner has nothing left to protect. If I call her to the stand, she may be prepared to tell us the little we do not know."

"By all means," the judge agreed. "If she is willing—and if she is able." He turned to Stourbridge. "Thank you, sir, for your honesty. We need ask nothing further of you."

Like a man walking through water, Harry Stourbridge went down the steps and stood for a moment in the middle of the floor. He looked up at the dock, where Miriam had risen to her feet. There was a gentleness in his face which held the room in silence, a compassion and a gratitude that even in her anguish she could not have failed to recognize.

He waited while she came down, the jailer standing aside as if he understood his duty was over.

Miriam stopped in front of Harry Stourbridge. Haltingly, he reached out and touched her arm, so lightly she could barely have felt it. He smiled at her. She put her hand over his for an instant, then continued on her way to the steps of the witness stand, climbed up and turned to face Rathbone and the court.

"Mrs. Gardiner," Rathbone said quietly, "I understand now why you preferred to face the rope for a crime you did not commit rather than have Lucius Stourbridge learn the truth of his birth. But that is not now possible. Nor can Aiden Campbell any longer hide from his acts—or blame you for any part of them. I do not require you to relive a past which must be painful beyond our imagining, but justice necessitates that you tell the jury what you know of the deaths of James Treadwell and Verona Stourbridge."

Miriam nodded very slightly, with just the barest acknowledgment, then in a quiet, drained voice she began.

"I ran from the croquet lawn. At first I did not care where I went, anywhere to be away from the house, alone—to try to realize what had happened, what it was I had remembered— if it could really be true. More than anything on earth, I did not want it to be." She stopped for a moment.

"Of course—it was, but I did not fully accept it then. I ran to the stables and begged Treadwell to take me anywhere. I gave him my locket as payment. He was greedy, but not entirely a bad man. I asked him to drive me to Hampstead Heath. I didn’t tell him why. I wanted to go back to where poor Mrs. Bailey was killed, to remember what really happened—if the flash of recollection I had on the croquet lawn was even some kind of madness."

Someone coughed, and the noise made people start in the tingling silence.

"Aiden Campbell must have seen my recognition," she went on. "He also remembered, and perhaps knew where I would go. He followed us, and found us near the tree where Mrs. Bailey’s body was hidden. He had to kill Treadwell if he was going to kill me, or he’d have been blackmailed for the rest of his life. He struck Treadwell first. He caught him completely by surprise.

"I ran. I know the area better than he because I lived near the Heath for years. Perhaps desperation lent me speed. It was getting dark. I escaped him. After that I had no idea where to go or what to do. At last, in the morning, I went to Cleo Anderson ... again. But this time I could not bear to tell even her what I knew."

"And the death of Verona Stourbridge, after you were released back into the Stourbridges’ custody," Rathbone prompted her.

She looked at him. "I couldn’t tell anyone...."

"We understand. What do you know about Verona Stourbridge’s death?"

"I believe she always thought Lucius was... an abandoned baby. She hid the truth from Major Stourbridge, but she had no knowledge of any crime, only her own deception, made from her despair that she would never bear a child for her husband. I know now that she knew it was Aiden’s child, but not about me or how he was concerned. She must have asked Aiden about it—and although he loved her, he could not afford to let her know the truth." Her voice dropped. "No matter how close they were, and they truly were, she might one day have told someone—she would have had to—to explain—" In spite of herself her eyes went to Lucius, sitting on the front bench, the tears running down his cheeks.