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He smiled, a delicate, charming movement of the lips.
“Quite so.” He leaned against the edge of his desk and regarded her gravely. “I will question you first. You are my witness, you
understand? I shall ask you to tell the events of your family’s tragedy, simply, from your own point of view. I do not wish you to tell me anything that you did not experience yourself. If you do, the judge will instruct the jury to disregard it, and every time he stops you and disallows what you say, the less credence the jury will give to what remains. They may easily forget which is which.”
“I understand,” she assured him. “I will say only what I know for myself.”
“You may easily be tempted, Miss Latterly. It is a matter in which your feelings must be very deep.” He looked at her with brilliant, humorous eyes. “It will not be as simple as you may expect.”
“What chance is there that Menard Grey will not be hanged?” she asked gravely. She chose deliberately the harshest words. Rathbone was not a man with whom to use euphemisms.
“We will do the best we can,” he replied, the light fading from his face. “But I am not at all sure that we will succeed.”
“And what would be success, Mr. Rathbone?”
“Success? Success would be transportation to Australia, where he would have some chance to make a new life for himself—in time. But they stopped most transportation three years ago, except for cases warranting sentences over fourteen years—” He paused.
“And failure?” she said almost under her breath. “Hanging?”
“No,” he said, leaning forward a little. “The rest of his life somewhere like the Coldbath Fields. I’d rather be hanged, myself.”
She sat silent; there was nothing to say to such a reality, and trite words would be so crass as to be painful. Callandra, sitting in the corner of the room, remained motionless.
“What can we do that will be best?” Hester said after a moment or two. “Please advise me, Mr. Rathbone.”
“Answer only what I ask you, Miss Latterly,” he replied. “Do not offer anything, even if you believe it will be helpful. We will discuss everything now, and I will judge what will suit our case and what, in the jury’s minds, may damage it. They did not live through the events; many things that are perfectly clear to you may be obscure to them.” He smiled with a bleak, personal humor that lit his eyes and curved the corners of his abstemious mouth. “And their knowledge of the war may be very different from yours. They may well consider all officers, especially wounded ones, to be heroes. And if we try too clumsily to persuade them otherwise, they may resent the destruction of far more of their dreams than we are aware of. Like Lady Fabia Grey, they may need to believe as they do.”
Hester had a sudden sharp recollection of sitting in the bedroom at Shelburne Hall with Fabia Grey, her crumpled face aged in a single blow as half a lifetime’s treasures withered and died in front of her.
“With loss very often comes hatred.” Rathbone spoke as if he had felt her thoughts as vividly as she had herself. “We need someone to blame when we cannot cope with the pain except through anger, which is so much easier, at least to begin with.”
Instinctively she looked up and met his gaze, and was startled by its penetration. It was both assuring and discomfiting. He was not a man to whom she could ever lie. Thank heaven it would not be necessary!
“You do not need to explain to me, Mr. Rathbone,” she said with a faint answering smile. “I have been home long enough to be quite aware that a great many people require their illusions more than the bits and pieces of truth I can tell them. The ugliness needs to have the real heroism along with it to become bearable—the day after day of suffering without complaint, the dedication to duty when all purpose seems gone, the laughter when you feel like weeping. I don’t think it can be told—only felt by those who were there.”
His smile was sudden and like a flash of light.
“You have more wisdom than I had been led to suppose, Miss Latterly. I begin to hope.”
She found herself blushing and was furious. Afterwards she must confront Callandra and ask what she had said of her that he had such an opinion. But then more likely it was that miserable policeman, Monk, who had given Rathbone this impression. For all their cooperation at the end, and their few blazing moments of complete understanding, they had quarreled most of the time, and he had certainly made no secret of the fact that he considered her opinionated, meddlesome and thoroughly unappealing.
Not that she had not expressed her views of his conduct and character very forthrightly first!
Rathbone discussed all that he would ask her, the arguments the prosecuting counsel would raise, and the issues with which he would be most likely to attempt to trap her. He warned her against appearing to have any emotional involvement which would give him the opportunity to suggest she was biased or unreliable.
By the time he showed them out into the street at quarter to eight she was so tired her mind was dazed, and she was suddenly aware again of the ache in her back and the pinching of her boots. The idea of testifying for Menard Grey was no longer the simple and unfearful thing it had seemed when she had promised with such fierce commitment to do it.
“A little daunting, is he not?” Callandra said when they were seated in her carriage and beginning the journey back to dinner.
“Let us hope he daunts them as much,” Hester replied, wriggling her feet uncomfortably. “I cannot imagine his being easily deceived.” This was such an understatement she felt self-conscious making it, and turned away so Callandra would not see more than the outline of her face against the light of the carriage lamps.
Callandra laughed, a deep, rich sound full of amusement.
“My dear, you are not the first young woman not to know how to express your opinion of Oliver Rathbone.”
“Perspicacity and an authoritative manner will not be enough to save Menard Grey!” Hester said with more sharpness than she had intended. Perhaps Callandra would recognize that Hester spoke from a great deal of apprehension for the day after tomorrow, and a growing fear that they would not succeed.
It was the following day that she read in the newspapers of the murder of Octavia Haslett in Queen Anne Street, but since the name of the police officer investigating was not considered of any public interest, and therefore was not mentioned, it did not bring Monk to her mind any more than he already was each time she remembered the tragedy of the Greys—and of her own family.
