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“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 after 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!”
“I went back,” Monk replied, his voice quiet, hard. “I found the witness, and I had him stand exactly where he had seen Angus and Caleb face each other. I stood where he said they did.”
