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“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he declined. “Not for me, anyway. Could she have given it back to him for any reason? A quarrel, possibly? Or to have the catch altered, or put on a chain, or something else engraved?”
“Yes!” she said eagerly, her eyes widened. She seemed to hesitate for a moment.
“Thank you,” he said quickly, afraid she would embellish it and be caught in an invention. “That is all we need to know, Miss Parfitt. Please do not strive to help. Only what you know is evidence, not what you may wish, or even believe.”
“Yes …” she said awkwardly. “I … I see.”
The judge looked at Deverill.
Deverill shook his head with a slight smile. He knew he did not need to make more of it.
The court adjourned for the day, and Rathbone went straight to see Merrit. He found her alone in the cell used for such meetings. The wardress was stationed outside the door, a big woman with her hair scraped back severely and a pink, scrubbed face. She shook her head slightly as Rathbone went past her and the key clanked in the lock.
“It’s not going well, is it?” Merrit said as soon as they were alone. “The jury think Lyman did it. I can see it in their faces.”
Did she instinctively think of Breeland before herself, or had she not yet grasped that she also was charged equally with him? No one believed she had fired the shots herself, but an accomplice in such a crime would be held just as responsible and punished with the same finality. He could not afford to be gentle with her. She must face the truth of the situation before it was too late even to try to save it.
“Yes, they do,” he agreed candidly. He saw the pain in her eyes, the trace of unreasonable hope that she was wrong die away. “I am sorry, but it is inescapable, and I would not be helping your cause if I were to pretend otherwise.”
She bit her lip. “I know.” Her voice was hoarse. “They are so mistaken in him. He would never do anything so vile … but even if they could not understand that, surely they can be made to see that there was no cause to? He received a note that my father had changed his mind and would sell the guns to him after all. He had found a way of escaping his commitment to Mr. Trace and was free to offer them to the more honorable cause. They were there at Euston Square Station. There was even a special train just to transport them.”
“I believe I can prove that he could not have fired the shots himself,” he agreed, allowing no lift of hope into his voice. He must not mislead her, even by implication. “What I cannot prove is that whoever did it was not paid to by Mr. Breeland. And that is just as serious a crime. Since you and he left England with the guns, you are accomplices in robbery and murder.…” He held up his hand as she began to protest. “I can make a good argument that you were unaware of what had happened, and therefore innocent-”
“But Lyman is innocent too!” she cut in, leaning forward urgently, her eyes bright. “He had no idea anyone had killed to get the guns!”
“How do you know that?” he asked very gently. It was not a challenge. There was no confrontation.
“I …” she started to answer. Then she blinked, her face puckering with dismay. “You mean how can I prove it to them? Surely …” Again she stopped.
“Yes, you do have to,” he answered the question he thought had been in her mind. “In law one is presumed innocent unless you can be proved to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Consider the word reasonable. Do you believe, after listening to the evidence so far, that the men in the jury box will have the same idea of what is true as you will have? We lose reason in emotion. When you think of issues like war, injustice, slavery, the love of your family or your country, your way of life, are any of us guided purely by reason?”
She shook her head minutely. “No,” she whispered. “I suppose not.” She took a deep breath. “But I know Lyman! He would not stoop to anything dishonorable. Honor, what is right, is dearer to him than anything. That is part of the reason I love him so much. Can’t you make them see that?”
“And are you absolutely certain that what is right would not include sacrificing three men to the cause of obtaining guns for the Union?” he asked.
She was very pale. “Not by murder!” But her voice shook. Her eyes filled with tears. “I know he was not in the warehouse yard that evening, Sir Oliver, because I was with him all the time, and I was not there. I swear that!”
He believed her. “And how did the watch come to be there? How do I explain that to the jury?”
Fear rippled through her. He could not mistake it.
“I don’t know! It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t explain it.”
“When did you last see the watch?”
“I’ve been trying to think, but my mind is in such turmoil the harder I try the less clear it becomes. I remember showing it to Mrs. Monk, and I had it the day after that, because that was when Dorothea admired it, so of course I told her about it.” She flushed very faintly, hardly more than a suspicion of color in her pale face. “After that … I’m not certain. Times get muddled in my memory. So much happened, and I was furious with my father.…” The tears spilled over her eyes and she fought for self-control.
Rathbone did not interrupt her or try to offer words they both knew he could not mean.
“Could you have lost it, or left it on a garment you were not wearing?” he asked at length.
“I suppose so.” She seized the explanation. “I must have. But Lyman would never have left it in the yard, and who else could?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I shall have Monk investigate it. It may now be possible your father took it with him.”
“Oh, yes! That could be, couldn’t it?” At last there was a lift of hope in her voice. “Sir Oliver, who was it that killed him? Was it Mr. Shearer? That is very dreadful. I know my father trusted him. They had worked together for years. I only met him once. He was rather grim, sort of … I’m not sure … angry. At least I thought he was.” She searched his face to see if he understood what she found so difficult to say. “Was it for money?”
“It seems as if it was.”
