Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

Cleo was shaking, gasping for breath, and Rathbone was afraid he had driven her too far.

"I believed she’d been raped-or seduced," Cleo said in a whisper. "But God forgive me, I thought the attack was all jumbled up in her mind because of having a dead baby, poor little thing."

"Until …?" Rathbone said urgently, raising his voice. "Until she came running to you again, close to hysteria and terrified. And there was really a dead body on the Heath this time-James Treadwell! Who was she running from, Mrs. Anderson?"

The silence was total.

A juror coughed, and it sounded like an explosion.

"Was it James Treadwell?" Rathbone threw the question down like a challenge.

"No!"

"Then whom?"

Silence.

The judge leaned forward. "If you wish us to believe that it was not James Treadwell, Mrs. Anderson, then you must tell us who it was."

Cleo swallowed convulsively. "Aiden Campbell."

If she had set off a bomb it could not have had more effect.

Rathbone was momentarily paralyzed.

There was a roar from the gallery.

The jurors turned to each other, exclaiming, gasping.

The judge banged his gavel and demanded order.

"My lord!" Rathbone said, raising his voice. "May I ask for the luncheon adjournment so I can speak with my client?"

"You may," the judge agreed, and banged the gavel again. "The court will reconvene at two o’clock."

Rathbone left the courtroom in a daze and walked like a man half blind down to the room where Miriam Gardiner was permitted to speak with him.

She did not even turn her head when the door opened and he came in, the jailer remaining on the outside.

"Was it Aiden Campbell you were running from?" he asked.

She said nothing, sitting motionless, head turned away.

"Why?" he persisted. "What had he done to you?"

Silence.

"Was he the one who attacked you originally?" His voice was growing louder and more shrill in his desperation. "For heaven’s sake, answer me! How can I help you if you won’t speak to me?" He leaned forward over the small table, but still she did not turn. "You will hang!" he said deliberately.

"I know," she answered at last.

"And Cleo Anderson!" he added.

"No-I will say I killed Treadwell, too. I will swear it on the stand. They’ll believe me, because they want to. None of them wants to condemn Cleo."

It was true, and he knew it as well as she did.

"You’ll say that on the stand?"

"Yes."

"But it is not true!"

This time she turned and met his eyes fully. "You don’t know that, Sir Oliver. You don’t know what happened. If I say it is so, will you contradict your own client? You must be a fool-it is what they want to hear. They will believe it."

He stared back at her, momentarily beaten. He had the feeling that were there any heart left alive in her, she would have smiled at him. He knew that if he did not call her to testify, then she would ask the judge from the dock for permission to speak, and he would grant it. There was no argument to make.

He left, and had a miserable luncheon of bread which tasted to him like sawdust, and claret which could as well have been vinegar.

Rathbone had no choice but to call Aiden Campbell to the stand. If he had not, then most assuredly Tobias would have. At least this way he might retain a modicum of control.

The court was seething with anticipation. Word seemed to have spread during the luncheon adjournment, because now every seat was taken and the ushers had had to ban more people from crowding in.

The judge called them to order, and Rathbone rose to begin.

"I call Aiden Campbell, my lord."

Campbell was white-faced but composed. He must have known that this was inevitable, and he had had almost two hours to prepare himself. He stood now facing Rathbone, a tall, straight figure, tragically resembling both his dead sister and his nephew, Lucius, who was sitting beside his father more like a ghost than a living being. Every now and again he stared up at Miriam, but never once had Rathbone seen Miriam return his look.

"Mr. Campbell," Rathbone began as soon as Campbell had been reminded that he was still under oath. "An extraordinary charge has been laid against you by the last witness. Are you willing to respond to this-"

"I am," Campbell interrupted in his eagerness to reply. "I had hoped profoundly that this would never be necessary. Indeed, I have gone to some lengths to see that it would not, for the sake of my family, and out of a sense of decency and the desire to bury old tragedies and allow them to remain unknown in the present, where they cannot hurt innocent parties." He glanced at Lucius, and away again. His meaning was nakedly apparent.

"Mrs. Anderson has sworn that Miriam Gardiner claimed it was you she was running away from when she fled the party at Cleveland Square. Is that true?" Rathbone asked.

Campbell looked distressed. "Yes," he said quietly. He shook his head a fraction. "I cannot tell you how deeply I had hoped not to have to say this. I knew Miriam Gardiner- Miriam Speake, as she was then-when she was twelve years old. She was a maid in my household when I lived near Hampstead."

There was a rustle of movement and the startled sound of indrawn breath around the room.

Campbell looked across at Harry Stourbridge and Lucius.

"I’m sorry," he said fervently. "I cannot conceal this any longer. Miriam lived in my house for about eighteen months, or something like that. Of course, she recognized me at the garden party, and must have been afraid that I would know her also, and tell you." He was still speaking to Harry Stourbridge, as if this were a private matter between them.

"Obviously, you did not tell them," Rathbone observed, bringing his attention back to the business of the court. "Why would it trouble her so much that she would flee in such a manner, as if terrified rather than merely embarrassed? Surely the Stourbridge family was already aware that she came from a different social background? Was this so terrible?"

Campbell sighed, and hesitated several moments before replying.

Rathbone waited.

There was barely a movement in the courtroom.

"Mr. Campbell…" the judge prompted.

Campbell bit his lips. "Yes, my lord. It pains me deeply to say this, but Miriam Speake was a loose woman. Even at the age of twelve she was without moral conscience."

There was a gasp from Harry Stourbridge. Lucius half rose in his seat, but his legs seemed to collapse under him.

"I’m sorry," Campbell said again. "She was very pretty- very comely for one so young… and I find it repugnant to have to say so, but very experienced-"

Again he was interrupted by an outcry from the gallery.

Several jurors were shaking their heads. A couple of them glanced towards the dock with grim disappointment. Rathbone knew absolutely that they believed every word. He himself looked up at Miriam and saw her bend her ashen face and cover it with her hands as if she could not endure what she was hearing.

In calling Aiden Campbell, Rathbone had removed what ghost of a defense she had had. He felt as if he had impaled himself on his own sword. Everyone in the room was watching him, waiting for him to go on. Hester must be furious at this result, and pity him for his incompetence. The pity was worse.

Tobias was shaking his head in sympathy for a fellow counsel drowning in a storm of his own making.

Campbell was waiting. Rathbone must say something more. Nothing he could imagine would make it worse. At least he had nothing to lose now and therefore also nothing to fear.

"This is your opinion, Mr. Campbell? And you believe that Mrs. Gardiner, now a very respectable widow in her thirties, was so terrified that you would express this unfortunate view of her childhood and ruin the prospective happiness of your nephew?"