The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [463]
“Where have you been?” Monk demanded furiously. “You’re late.”
She was torn between snapping back and gratitude to him for thinking of her. The first would be pointless and only precipitate a quarrel when she least wanted one, so she chose the latter, which surprised and amused him.
The Bill of Indictment before the Grand Jury had already been brought at an earlier date, and a true case found and Alexandra charged.
“What about the jury?” she asked him. “Have they been chosen?”
“Friday,” he answered. “Poor devils.”
“Why poor?”
“Because I wouldn’t like to have to decide this case,” Monk answered. “I don’t think the verdict I want to bring in is open to me.”
“No,” she agreed, more to herself than to him. “What are they like?”
“The jury? Ordinary, worried, taking themselves very seriously,” he replied, not looking at her but straight ahead at the judge’s bench and the lawyers’ tables below.
“All middle-aged, I suppose? And all men of course.”
“Not all middle-aged,” he contradicted. “One or two are youngish, and one very old. You have to be between twenty-one and sixty, and have a guaranteed income from rents or lands, or live in a house with not less than fifteen windows—”
“What?”
“Not less than fifteen windows,” he repeated with a sardonic smile, looking sideways at her. “And of course they are all men. That question is not worthy of you. Women are not considered capable of such decisions, for heaven’s sake. You don’t make any legal decisions at all. You don’t own property, you don’t expect to be able to decide a man’s fate before the law, do you?”
“If one is entitled to be tried before a jury of one’s peers, I expect to be able to decide a woman’s fate,” she said sharply. “And rather more to the point, I expect if I come to triad to have women on the jury. How else could I be judged fairly?”
“I don’t think you’d do any better with women,” he said, pulling his face into a bitter expression and looking at the fat woman in front of them. “Not that it would make the slightest difference if you did.”
She knew it was irrelevant. They must fight the case with the jury as it was. She turned around to look at others in the crowd. They seemed to be all manner of people, every age and social condition, and nearly as many women as men. The only thing they had in common was a restless excitement, a murmuring to one another, a shifting from foot to foot where they were standing, or a craning forward if they were seated, a peering around in case they were to miss something.
“Of course I really shouldn’t be ’ere,” a woman said just behind Hester. “It won’t do me nerves any good at all. Wickedest thing I ever ’eard of, an’ ‘er a lady too. You expec’ better from them as ought ter know ’ow ter be’ave their-selves.”
“I know,” her companion agreed. “If gentry murders each other, wot can yer expec’ of the lower orders? I ask yer.”
“Wonder wot she’s like? Vulgar, I shouldn’t wonder. Of course they’ll ’ang ’er.”
“O’ course. Don’t be daft. Wot else could they do?”
“Right and proper thing too.”
“’Course it is. My ’usband don’t always control ’isself, but I don’t go murderin’ ’im.”
“’Course you don’t. No one does. What would ’appen to the world if we did?”
“Shockin’. And they’re sayin’ as there’s mutiny in India too. People killin’ an’ murderin’ all over the place. I tell yer, we live in terrible times. God ’isself only knows what’ll be next!”
“An’ that’s true for sure,” her companion agreed, sagely nodding her head.
Hester longed to tell them not to be so stupid, that there had always been virtue and tragedy—and laughter, discovery and hope—but the cleric called the court to order. There was a rustle of excitement as the counsel for the prosecution came in dressed in traditional wig and black gown, followed by his junior. Wilberforce Lovat-Smith was not a large man, but he had a walk which was confident, even a trifle arrogant, and full of vitality, so that