AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes, you can’t help it, however careful you are, if you write slowly. The best forgeries may not be as close to the originals as a really good copy, but they are done swiftly, with assurance, so they look natural. Whoever did these was very careful, but not clever enough to do away with the signs you can see with a microscope.”
“Would you be willing to sw
ear to that in court?” Kitteridge asked.
“Of course,” Miriam replied. “But you’d need a lot more than that to prove anything.” She turned to Daniel. “What are you trying to prove anyway? That he did embezzle, or that he didn’t?”
“We’re for the defense,” he answered. “That he didn’t.”
She looked at him very candidly. “And what about the other crime you said was worse? Are you trying to bring that up? Or make sure it doesn’t arise, even tangentially in character reference? Or as explanation as to why he left Washington so hastily? Because if you want to protect him altogether, you should have him plead guilty to the embezzlement, pay the money back, and get the embassy to withdraw the charges. Case closed. Nobody would have any cause to raise the other issue, whatever it is, never mind give evidence of it in court.”
Suddenly Daniel’s mind was whirling. He thought of her as a forensic doctor, a pathologist who read evidence as another person might read a book. He had forgotten she was a lawyer’s daughter. Of course, if they really wanted to protect Sidney, they would at least point out that option to him. Whether he took it or not was his choice. Whether they proved that some of the letters of authorization of payment were forgeries or not had nothing to do with using the trial to revisit the question of the attack on Rebecca and make it hideously public.
What would Sidney choose, if he really were innocent of the embezzlement? And of the assault?
Or innocent of the embezzlement, but guilty of the assault?
Miriam must have seen these thoughts written in his face. Daniel felt totally transparent and, for a moment, terribly young.
“Damn!” Kitteridge swore. “What a thundering mess! Thank you very much, Miss fford Croft. You have clarified half of it for us and made the other half much worse.”
“I haven’t changed what it is, Mr. Kitteridge,” she replied. “Just shone a bit of light on it. If you have any other evidence, I would be happy to look at it for you.”
“Not yet, and probably not ever,” he said ruefully. “Before we tidy this up, and preferably so that we haven’t done the prosecution’s work for them, would you like to have supper? I’ve got some pretty decent pork pies. And cider.”
“Thank you very much. I would,” she accepted. She looked at Daniel and gave a half smile. “It doesn’t help, does it?”
He forced himself to smile back. “Not yet.”
CHAPTER
Eleven
THE CASE AGAINST Philip Sidney opened in a minor court several miles from the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey, and thus also from Lincoln’s Inn, where most of the lawyers’ chambers were situated, including those of fford Croft and Gibson.
Daniel went by underground train. Later, if things got more urgent, he might hire a taxi.
The train was crowded and noisy as it rattled from station to station under the city. He did not want to read papers relevant to the trial in public, so he sat in silence and considered what he could do. There were very few possible arguments. He knew them by heart and did not feel sanguine about any of them. The only good thing was that the prosecution had produced a far longer list of witnesses than he had expected, which indicated a very thorough case, but which also allowed him far more time to work for some break in Sidney’s favor.
Having been given the list at somewhat short notice, he had spent the intervening time learning as much as he could about the witnesses.
“All character witnesses,” Kitteridge had remarked sourly when Daniel showed him the list. “As we supposed. They’re not going to ship half the Washington embassy over here. Still, you might be able to make something of it. Better find out what you can regarding this lot. Got to have something to argue about—with luck, trip them up over. Get to it, Pitt!” And he had handed the list back to Daniel.
That had been three days ago. Four, if you counted Sunday, when nobody’s office was open. Kitteridge had not yet heard back from the Washington police about Morley Cross’s whereabouts. Was the man afraid of being questioned?
The train arrived at the nearest station to the court. Daniel walked the three blocks through the hot, dusty street to the courthouse and went in. The halls were already buzzing with people. Someone had seen to it that word got around, Daniel thought grimly. This case was going to be about a lot of different things, least among them the possible embezzlement of one hundred pounds from a British embassy thousands of miles away.
Philip Sidney looked cornered when he was brought in and led to the dock. He glanced anxiously at Daniel, almost as if he were awaiting execution: brave and desperate, but determined to show it as little as possible. Was he a superb actor, or was there something essentially brave in him, something like the hero whose name he bore?
Daniel could not ally that with Rebecca Thorwood’s account of the assault, essentially the act of a cowardly man. And yet Tobias Thorwood had sworn to it. They had done a certain amount of digging into Tobias’s character and found only a decent and honorable man, with a deep love of his wife and his only living child. No one had caught him in any dishonesty, verbal or financial.
The judge was a clean-shaven, middle-aged man of unremarkable features, but the more Daniel looked at him, the more he saw a scholar within the robes, rather than a man here to exercise power or further his career with a controversial decision. Or perhaps Daniel was just being hopeful. Heaven knew, there was little enough to cling to.
The jury was sworn, twelve ordinary citizens, all of good standing, all men, of course. Women were not considered serious and emotionally stable enough to make an important judgment that might affect the rest of a person’s life. They might too easily become frightened or confused. Daniel had grown up with a mother and sister who had dispelled any such idea very quickly. In his earliest years, he had known the Pitts’ maid, Gracie, all five-foot-nothing of her, and she was the most down-to-earth judge of character he had ever met. And Great-grandmother Mariah was not impressed by anyone at all, probably not even the old Queen!
And he could remember very clearly Great-aunt Vespasia. Kings, never mind high court judges, had admired her for her courage as well as beauty.
But you dealt with what was, not what you would like to have had, and Daniel was here trying to defend a man he was deeply afraid might be guilty, if not of the lesser crime, then of the greater.
