Anne Perry - Defend and Betray

Hargrave thought for a moment before beginning.

“She could not keep still,” he said at length. “She kept moving from one position to another, at times unable even to remain seated. Her whole body shook and when she picked up something, I forget what, it,slipped through her fingers. Her voice was trembling and she fumbled her words. She wept uncontrollably.”

“But no deliriums, hallucinations, fainting, screaming?” Rathbone pressed.

“No. I have told you not.” Hargrave was impatient and he glanced at the jury, knowing he had their sympathy.

“Tell us, Dr. Hargrave, how would this behavior differ from that of someone who had just received a severe shock and was extremely distressed, even agonized, by her experience?”

Hargrave thought for several seconds.

“I cannot think that it would,” he said at last. “Except that she did not speak of any shock, or discovery.”

Rathbone opened his eyes wide, as if mildly surprised. “She did not even hint that she had learned her husband had betrayed her with another woman?”

He leaned a little forward over the rail of the witness box. “No-no, she did not. I think I have already said, Mr. Rathbone, that she could have made no such dramatic discovery, because it was not so. This affair, if you wish to call it that, was all in her imagination.”

“Or yours, Doctor,” Rathbone said, his voice suddenly gritted between his teeth.

Hargrave flushed, but with embarrassment and anger rather than guilt. His eyes remained fixed on Rathbone and there was no evasion in them.

“I answered your question, Mr. Rathbone,” he said bitterly. “You are putting words into my mouth. I did not say there was an affair, indeed I said there was not!”

“Just so,” Rathbone agreed, turning back to the body of the court again. “There was no affair, and Mrs. Carlyon at no time mentioned it to you, or suggested that it was the cause of her extreme distress.”

“That is…” Hargrave hesitated, as if he would add something, then found no words and remained silent.

“But she was extremely distressed by something, you are positive about that?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. When did this occur, your first observation of her state of mind?”

“I have not a precise date, but it was in July of last year.”

“Approximately nine months before the general's death?”

“That is right.” Hargrave smiled. It was a trivial calculation.

“And you have no idea of any event at this time which could have precipitated it?”

“No idea at all.”

“You were General Carlyon's physician?”

“I have already said so.”

“Indeed. And you have recounted the few occasions on which you were called to treat him professionally. He seems to have been a man in excellent health, and those injuries he sustained in action were quite naturally treated by the army surgeons in the field.”

“You are stating the obvious,” Hargrave said with tight lips.

“Perhaps it is obvious to you why you did not mention the one wound that you did treat, but it escapes me,” Rathbone said with the smallest of smiles.

For the first time Hargrave was visibly discomfited. He opened his mouth, said nothing, and closed it again. His hands on the rail were white at the knuckles.

There was silence in the courtroom.

Rathbone walked across the floor a pace or two and turned back.

There was a sudden lifting of interest throughout the court. The jury shifted on their benches almost imperceptibly.

Hargrave's face tightened, but he could not avoid an answer, and he knew it.

“It was a domestic accident, and all rather foolish,” he said, lifting his shoulder a little as if to dismiss it, and at the same time explain its omission. “He was cleaning an ornamental dagger and it slipped and cut him in the upper leg.”

“You observed this happen?” Rathbone asked casually.

“Ah-no. I was called to the house because the wound was bleeding quite badly, and naturally I asked him what had happened. He told me.”

“Then it is hearsay?” Rathbone raised his eyebrows. “Not satisfactory, Doctor. It may have been the truth-equally it may not.”

Lovat-Smith came to his feet.

“Is any of this relevant, my lord? I can understand my learned friend's desire to distract the jury's minds from Dr. Hargrave's evidence, indeed to try and discredit him in some way, but this is wasting the court's time and serving no purpose at all.”

The judge looked at Rathbone.

“Mr. Rathbone, do you have some object in view? If not, I shall have to order you to move on.”

“Oh yes, my lord,” Rathbone said with more confidence than Monk thought he could feel. “I believe the injury may be of crucial importance to the case.”

Lovat-Smith swung around with an expressive gesture, raising his hands palm upwards.

Someone in the courtroom tittered with laughter, and it was instantly suppressed.

Hargrave sighed.

“Please describe the injury, Doctor,” Rathbone continued.

“It was a deep gash to the thigh, in the front and slightly to the inside, precisely where a knife might have slipped from one's hand while cleaning it.”

“Deep? An inch? Two inches? And how long, Doctor?”

“About an inch and a half at its deepest, and some five inches long,” Hargrave replied with wry, obvious weariness.

“Quite a serious injury. And pointing in which direction?” Rathbone asked with elaborate innocence.

Hargrave stood silent, his face pale.

In the dock Alexandra leaned a fraction forward for the first time, as if at last something had been said which she had not expected.

“Please answer the question, Dr. Hargrave,” the judge instructed.

“Ah-er-it was… upwards,” Hargrave said awkwardly.

“Upwards?” Rathbone blinked and even from behind his elegant shoulders expressed incredulity, as if he could not have heard correctly.”You mean-from the knee up towards the groin, Dr. Hargrave?”

“Yes,” Hargrave said almost inaudibly.

“I beg your pardon? Would you please repeat that so the jury can hear you?”

“Yes,” Hargrave said grimly.

The jury was puzzled. Two leaned forward. One shifted in his seat, another frowned in deep concentration. They did not know what relevance it could possibly have, but they knew duress when they saw it, and felt Hargrave's reluctance and the sudden change in tension.

Even the crowd was silent.

A lesser man than Lovat-Smith would have interrupted again, but he knew it would only betray his own uncertainty.

“Tell us, Dr. Hargrave,” Rathbone went on quietly,”how a man cleaning a knife could have it slip from his hand so as to stab himself upwards, from knee to groin?” He turned on the spot, very slowly. “In fact, perhaps you would oblige us by snowing us exactly what motion you had in mind when you-er-believed this account of his? I presume you know why a military man of his experience, a general indeed, should be clumsy enough to clean a knife so incompetently? I would have expected better from the rank and file.” He frowned. “In fact, ordinary man as I am, I have no ornamental knives, but I do not clean my own silver, or my own boots.”

“I have no idea why he cleaned it,” Hargrave replied, leaning forward over the rail of the witness box, his hands gripping the edge.”But since it was he who had the accident with it, I was quite ready to believe him. Perhaps it was because he did not normally clean it that he was clumsy.”

He had made a mistake, and he knew it immediately. He should not have tried to justify it.

“You cannot know it was he who had the accident, if indeed it was an accident,” Rathbone said with excessive politeness. “Surely what you mean is that it was he who had the wound?”