Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [148]
“Then what are you saying, Dr. Hargrave?”
Hargrave was very serious. He looked at no one but Lovat-Smith, as if the two of them were discussing some tragedy in their gentlemen’s club. There were faint mutters of approval from the crowd.
“That he must have fallen and struck his head, and then spun, the halberd been driven into his body when he was lying on the ground. Perhaps he was moved, but not necessarily. He could quite naturally have struck his head and then rolled a little to lie on his back. His head was at an odd angle—but his neck was not broken. I looked for that, and I am sure it was not so.”
“You are saying it could not have been an accident, Dr. Hargrave?”
Hargrave’s face tightened. “I am.”
“How long did it take you to come to this tragic conclusion?”
“From the time I first saw the body, about—about one or two minutes, I imagine.” A ghost of a smile moved his lips. “Time is a peculiar commodity on such an occasion. It seems both to stretch out endlessly, like a road before and behind with no turning, and at the same time to crush in on you and have no size at all. To say one or two minutes is only a guess, made afterwards using intelligence. It was one of the most dreadful moments I can recall.”
“Why? Because you knew someone in that house, one of your personal friends, had murdered General Thaddeus Carlyon?”
Again the judge glanced at Rathbone, and Rathbone made no move. A frown crossed the judge’s face, and still Rathbone did not object.
“Yes,” Hargrave said almost inaudibly. “I regret it, but it was inescapable. I am sorry.” For the first and only time he looked up at Alexandra.
“Just so,” Lovat-Smith agreed solemnly. “And accordingly you informed the police?”
“I did.”
“Thank you.”
Rathbone looked at the jury again. Not one of them looked at the dock. She sat there motionless, her blue eyes on Rathbone, without anger, without surprise, and without hope.
He smiled at her, and felt ridiculous.
10
Monk listened to Lovat-Smith questioning Charles Hargrave with a mounting anxiety. Hargrave was creating an excellent impression with the jury; he could see their grave, attentive faces. He not only had their respect but their belief. Whatever he said about the Carlyons they would accept.
There was nothing Rathbone could do yet, and Monk’s intelligence knew it; nevertheless he fretted at the helplessness and the anger rose in him, clenching his hands and hardening the muscles of his body.
Lovat-Smith stood in front of the witness box, not elegantly (it was not in him), but with a vitality that held attention more effectively, and his voice was fine, resonant and individual, an actor’s instrument.
“Dr. Hargrave, you have known the Carlyon family for many years, and indeed been their medical adviser for most of that time, is that not so?”
“It is.”
“You must be in a position to have observed their characters, their relationships with one another.”
Rathbone stiffened, but did not yet interrupt.
Lovat-Smith smiled, glanced at Rathbone, then back up at Hargrave.
“Please be careful to answer only from your own observation,” he warned. “Nothing that you were told by someone else, unless it is to account for their own behavior; and please do not give us your personal judgment, only the grounds upon which you base it.”
“I understand,” Hargrave acknowledged with the bleakest of smiles. “I have given evidence before, Mr. Lovat-Smith. What is it you wish to know?”
With extreme care as to the rules of evidence, all morning and well into the afternoon Lovat-Smith drew from Hargrave a picture of Thaddeus Carlyon as honorable and upright, a military hero, a fine leader to his men, an example to that youth which looked to courage, discipline and honor as their goals. He had been an excellent husband who had never ill-used his wife with physical violence or cruelty, nor made excessive demands of her in the marriage bed, but on the other hand had given her three fine children, to whom he had been