At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [139]
“Let me understand you clearly, Corporal Tredway,” Faulkner said heavily. “Whoever fired the shot was standing in front of Major Northrup, looking straight at him?”
“Yes, sir.” Tredway gulped. He had no room for evasion, although he would clearly like to have had.
“Head up?” Faulkner persisted. “Head down? Turning, ducking?”
“No, sir,” Tredway said wretchedly.
“And you know this how?”
“Path of the bullet, sir. Straight through and out at the back, sir.”
“And the distance the man with the gun stood from Major Faulkner when he fired the shot?”
General Hardesty looked inquiringly at Joseph, but Joseph made no objection.
“The distance?” Faulkner repeated.
“Hard to say, sir,” Tredway answered.
“Touching him? Fifty feet? Half a mile?” Faulkner raised his eyebrows.
“Most like fifty feet, sir.”
“How do you know this, Corporal?”
“’Cos o’ the wound, sir. An’ how far the bullet went through.”
“And can you tell the kind of gun it was fired from? At least whether it was a handgun or a rifle? A British gun or a German one? Or French, perhaps?”
“We’ve got no French ’ere, sir,” Tredway said tartly. “They’re up farther to the east.” There was clear contempt in his voice for Faulkner’s ignorance. He was a man who shuffled papers, not one who fought.
“I was thinking of the gun itself, Corporal,” Faulkner corrected him. “Not the nationality of the man who fired it.”
There was a rustling in the room. Someone coughed.
Tredway flushed. “A rifle, sir.”
“British?”
“Couldn’t say, sir.” His jaw set hard.
“A rifle, possibly British, fired at apparently fifty feet,” Faulkner summarized. “Thank you, Corporal.” He gestured to invite Joseph to ask his questions.
Joseph stood up. Now that the moment had come he felt a sort of calm hopelessness. “Corporal Tredway, your knowledge is impressive, although I imagine after three years’ active service you have seen a great many wounds of all sorts? Rifle, revolver, pistol, shrapnel, shell splinters, even injuries caused by explosions, overturning gun carriages, panicking horses…”
Faulkner stared at him with mounting irritation.
Hardesty winced but did not interrupt. His expression suggested pity more than anger.
“Yes, Chaplain…I mean…Captain Reavley,” Tredway said, frowning.
“Any way to tell if they are caused by accident or by malice, Corporal?” Joseph asked.
“No, sir,” Tredway said, meeting Joseph’s eyes squarely. There was a flicker in them, as if he might have thought of smiling. “’Cept for horses panicking, like. That’s almost always accident. They don’t often do it maliciously. They’re better than people, that way.”
There was a slight ripple of laughter in the room.
Faulkner’s face tightened.
“And gun carriages,” Tredway added. “That’s more likely accident, down to stupidity…sir. They don’t have no malice neither.”
Joseph preempted Faulkner. “But gunshots would be most likely intended, I assume. Is there any way you can tell, from the injury itself?”
“No, sir. None at all, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Faulkner declined to pursue the issue. General Hardesty also did not take up his right to question the witness. He looked around slowly, gauging the emotion of the court, and perhaps judged correctly that almost to a man they were in sympathy with the accused. They would have to be forced or tricked into giving any evidence against them if it could be withheld, misinterpreted, or simply denied.
But Joseph knew it was a shallow victory. In the end it was the officers who would decide, not the men who crowded the benches or stood at the back waiting, their hands clenched, faces tense. There was no jury, no public opinion. Those who attended were either witnesses called or men who were off the front line due to injury.
The next witness took the stand. He recounted who he had seen—and where—on the day of Northrup’s death. He was neatly tricked by Faulkner into stating that most of the men charged, and Cavan in particular, had not been at their usual posts in the early evening. In fact, Cavan had not been in any of the places he usually was at that hour. The