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“Yes, frequently,” Ravensbrook acknowledged. “He both hated and despised his brother.”
“Despised him?” Rathbone affected surprise.
Ravensbrook’s face was bitter. “He thought Angus weak and dependent, lacking in either courage or individuality. He thought him a coward, and said so. I imagine it was his way of excusing his own failure, in his mind.”
“Possibly.” Rathbone nodded. “We are, most of us, loath to admit fault in ourselves. Thank you, my lord. That is all I have to ask you. Would you be so good as to remain for my learned friend to speak with you.”
Ebenezer Goode was courteous, and at least outwardly genial. He rose to his feet and strolled into the center of the floor, his startling face full of interest.
“All this must be deeply distressing for you, Lord Ravensbrook. It would be for any man. I shall be as brief as I am able.” He sighed. “You have painted a vivid picture of two brothers who began with a deep bond between them and grew apart, one favored, obedient, talented; the other rebellious, unconventional, and rightly or wrongly, feeling himself less favored. It was not surprising he should express a resentment and a jealousy.” He glanced at the jury with his dazzling, wolfish smile. “Brothers do fight with each other at times. Any family man will tell you that. Yet you say that you never witnessed any of their fights?”
“That is correct.” There was no expression on Ravensbrook’s face.
“And the resultant injuries, whether from fights or other youthful masculine pursuits,” Goode pursued, “such as climbing trees, riding horses and so on, were they serious? For example, were there ever broken bones, concussions, dangerous bleeding?”
“No, merely abrasions and some severe bruising.” Ravensbrook remained expressionless, his voice flat.
“Tell me, my lord, did either brother suffer these injuries very much more
severely than the other?” Goode inquired.
“No. No, as far as I can remember, they were fairly equally matched.”
Goode shrugged. “And nothing was serious, nothing that you would consider a wounding, never intent to maim or permanently to damage?”
“No.”
“In other words, much as you or I may well have sustained in our youth?”
“Yes, if you will,” Ravensbrook agreed, his voice still without lift or interest, as though the entire subject were tedious.
“So in your knowledge, this regrettable jealousy never resulted in anything more than words?” Goode pressed.
“Not in my knowledge.”
Goode gave the court his wide, gleaming smile.
“Thank you, my lord. That is all.”
And so the trial progressed, and continued throughout the afternoon and the following day. Rathbone called Arbuthnot, who testified that Angus had come into the offices on the day of his disappearance, that a woman had visited him, after which he had declared that he was going to visit his brother, and expressed his intention to return, at least by the following day.
Ebenezer Goode could not shake him, and did not try.
Next followed a procession of witnesses from Limehouse and the Isle of Dogs, all adding their small pieces to the picture. It built slowly, indistinctly. It was all indicative, nothing conclusive. But the picture was dark, the setting for tragedy, and everyone in the courtroom could feel it like a coldness in the air.
Rathbone was aware at the edge of his mind of Hester sitting next to Enid Ravensbrook, of their faces as they watched the parade of frightened and troubled people one by one adding their few words, their tiny addition of color, to the story, still so full of gaps and shadows. He forced it to the edge of his awareness. Their feelings must not matter. Nor must those of Caleb, now sitting forward in the dock, staring down towards the crowd, although whose face he watched, Rathbone could not know, but his expression was still the same mixture of anger, pain and triumph.
Ebenezer Goode questioned them also, and showed just how fragmentary was their evidence. The picture remained partial, distorted, illusionary. But he could not dispel the ever-growing awareness of hatred, darkness, and the conviction that Angus Stonefield was dead, and by whatever means it was the man in the dock, with his passion of suppressed violence, who had accomplished it.
10
AFTER HE HAD FINISHED his evidence, Monk left the court. There was nothing he could accomplish there, and his own inner fear drove him to pursue the truth about Drusilla Wyndham. It was no longer a matter of what she could do to ruin his reputation and his livelihood, it was the question within himself as to what manner of man he was that she wished to, even at such a cost to herself.
She had accused him of assaulting her, of trying to force himself upon her. Was it possible that although he had certainly not done so this time, on some occasion in the past he had?
The thought was repulsive to him. He could not imagine any pleasure whatever in taking a woman against her will. It would seem a degrading performance to both parties, devoid of tenderness or dignity and with no communication of the mind, nothing shared beyond the most rudimentary physical contact, and afterwards the shame and the regret, and the sense of futility.
Had he really done such a thing?
