Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [194]
There was a rustle of response and anticipation. But the mood of the crowd had changed entirely. It was no longer pity which moved them towards her, but pending judgment.
She took the stand head high, body stiff, eyes angry and proud. The judge required that she unveil her face, and she did so with disdainful obedience. She swore the oath in a clear, ringing voice.
“Mrs. Carlyon,” Rathbone began, standing in front of her, “you appear here on subpoena. You are aware of the testimony that has been given so far.”
“I am. It is wicked and malicious lies. Miss Buchan is an old woman who has served in my family’s house for forty years, and has become deranged in her old age. I cannot think where a spinster woman gets such vile fancies.” She made a gesture of disgust. “All I can suppose is that her natural instincts for womanhood have been warped and she has turned on men, who rejected her, and this is the outcome.”
“And Valentine Furnival?” Rathbone asked. “He is hardly an elderly and rejected spinster. Nor a servant, old and dependent, who dare not speak ill of an employer.”
“A boy with a boy’s carnal fantasies,” she replied. “We all know that growing children have feverish imaginations. Presumably someone did use him as he says, for which I have the natural pity anyone would. But it is wicked and irresponsible of him to say it was my son. I daresay it was his own father, and he wishes to protect him, and so charges another man, a dead man, who cannot defend himself.”
“And Cassian?” Rathbone enquired with a dangerous edge to his voice.
“Cassian,” she said, full of contempt. “A harassed and frightened eight-year-old. Good God, man! The father he adored has been murdered, his mother is like to be hanged for it—you put him on the stand in court, and you expect him to be able to tell you the truth about his father’s love for him. Are you half-witted, man? He will say anything you force out of him. I would not condemn a cat on that.”
“Presumably your husband is equally innocent?” Rathbone said with sarcasm.
“It is unnecessary even to say such a thing!”
“But you do say it?”
“I do.”
“Mrs. Carlyon, why do you suppose Valentine Furnival stabbed your son in the upper thigh?”
“God alone knows. The boy is deranged. If his father has abused him for years, he might well be so.”
“Possibly,” Rathbone agreed. “It would change many people. Why was your son in the boy’s bedroom without his trousers on?”
“I beg your pardon?” Her face froze.
“Do you wish me to repeat the question?”
“No. It is preposterous. If Valentine says so, then he is lying. Why is not my concern.”
“But Mrs. Carlyon, the wound the general sustained in his upper inside leg bled copiously. It was a deep wound, and yet his trousers were neither torn nor marked with blood. They cannot have been on him at the time.”
She stared at him, her expression icy, her lips closed.
There was a murmur through the crowd, a movement, a whisper of anger suddenly suppressed, and then silence again.
Still she did not speak.
“Let us turn to the question of your husband, Colonel Randolf Carlyon,” Rathbone continued. “He was a fine soldier, was he not? A man to be proud of. And he had great ambitions for his son: he also should be a hero, if possible of even higher rank—a general, in fact. And he achieved that.”
“He did.” She lifted her chin and stared down at him with wide, dark blue eyes. “He was loved and admired by all who knew him. He would have achieved even greater things had he not been murdered in his prime. Murdered by a jealous woman.”
“Jealous of whom, her own son?”
“Don’t be absurd—and vulgar,” she spat.
“Yes it is vulgar, isn’t it,” he agreed. “But true. Your daughter Damaris knew it. She accidentally found them one day …”
“Nonsense!”
“And recognized it again in her own son, Valentine. Is she lying also? And Miss Buchan? And Cassian? Or are they all suffering from the same frenzied and perverted delusion—each without knowing the other, and in their own private hell?”
She hesitated. It was manifestly ridiculous.