Slaves of Obsession - Anne Perry [132]
“How could my father have been so wrong about him?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because we tend to judge others by our own standards.”
She did not answer. And within a few moments he took his leave, trying to encourage her to keep heart.
He did not especially wish to see Breeland, but it was a duty he must not shirk. He found him standing by the chair and small table in the room assigned for him. His face was stiff, his shoulders locked so tight they strained the fabric of his jacket. He looked accusingly at Rathbone, and Rathbone could not blame him for it. He disliked the man, and Breeland must know it, and also that Rathbone’s first loyalty was to Merrit Alberton. It was Judith, after all, who was paying him. It was Merrit’s desire, not Breeland’s, that they be charged as one, and she would not claim any special innocence. She was determined to stand with him, although Rathbone wondered if it was now love for Breeland or love of loyalty which kept her.
Without warning he felt a keen pity for Breeland, thousands of miles from home and overwhelmingly among strangers who hated him for what they believed him to be. Perhaps had Rathbone been in similar circumstances he would have wrapped himself in the same icy dignity. It was the last protection Breeland had left, to seem not to care. And why should anyone parade his vulnerability for his enemies to stare at?
Could Shearer have murdered Alberton without Breeland’s knowledge, and certainly without his complicity? And should Breeland, owing all his allegiance to his own people, locked in a terrible war, not have taken the guns so fortuitously offered him—simply because he suspected they had been obtained by deceit? It was war, not trade. For him they were the survival of a cause, not a matter of profit.
Breeland stared at him. “I assume that at some point in this farce you will attempt to defend at least Miss Alberton, if not me?” he said coldly. “Although I would remind you she came willingly with me to America, and Monk will testify to that.”
“I am more concerned to hear him testify as to the exact times of the events on the night of the murders, and your train to Liverpool,” Rathbone replied levelly. “It will be a simpler matter to convince them of the fact that Shearer may well have planned and committed the murders and the theft of the guns, with the intention of selling them to you, and you buying them in good faith, than it will be to make them feel well disposed towards you.”
“What does that matter?” Breeland said bitterly. “I am a foreigner. They don’t understand my cause, or sympathize with it. They don’t know what America stands for. They have not caught our dream. I can’t help that. Surely they at least understand justice?” It was said with an air of challenge, and not a little of insult.
Rathbone reminded himself of the man’s isolation, of how much he had already sacrificed for a cause that was both noble and unselfish. Would he himself have done any better, any more wisely? Would such threat, and such lack of understanding and respect all around him, not have made him lash out also?
“Juries are people, Mr. Breeland, and subject to emotional impulses like the rest of us,” he said as mildly as he could, keeping the edge out of his voice. “They will not remember everything that is said to them. In fact, they will probably not even hear it all, or perceive it in the way we wish them to. Very often people hear what they think they will hear. Make them feel some respect for you, some liking, and they will see the best, and recall it when it matters. This is not peculiar to English juries; it is part of the nature of all people, and we choose to be tried before a jury precisely because they are ordinary. They work on instinctive judgment and common sense as well as the evidence presented to them. Your own common law is based upon this.”
“Yes, I know.” Breeland’s lips were tight. Rathbone felt there was fear as well as anger and idealism behind the mask of his face. He did well that it was not the overriding thing. “I cannot make people like