“I’d like to come in.”
“I prefer to talk here.”
But Cobb was too quick for the lad. Hebrushed past him and entered the murky interior. Two women sat at adeal table, peeling potatoes. In the dim light afforded by a nearbywindow, Cobb could see that one was young and pretty. The other wasof indeterminate age. She might have been under thirty but life hadscrawled its stress and strain across a sunken face with pale,frightened eyes set deep in bruised sockets. Her auburn hair hungdown her back like frayed strands of hemp.
“And this must be Missus Kilbride,”Cobb said with a slight tip of his helmet towards the prettyone.
“That’s my Marion,” Kilbride said, lookingdismayed.
“So it is. And this young lady would be yersister – Lottie Thurgood.”
FOURTEEN
Marc felt dazed and disoriented as he stood up tocross-examine Dr. Baldwin. What could he do? Were there anymitigating circumstances? Any way of blunting the dagger pointed atUncle Seamus’s heart?
“You said McCall’s daughter was almosteighteen?” he began lamely.
“Yes,” Dr. Baldwin said with some semblanceof enthusiasm, “she was a month away from her majority. And theaffair was not sordid in the way Mr. Cambridge tried to imply.Susan McCall was a mature young woman in love. This was no tawdryseduction. My uncle swore to me that he loved her and immediatelyoffered to marry her, an offer she was keen to accept.”
“But Mr. McCall would not agree?” Marc wasstarting to get his second wind.
“No. He felt the difference in their ages wasinsupportable. He had tried to keep them apart all along, and whenthey succumbed to – to their mutual passion, he discovered them andthreatened to have the law on my uncle. It was then arranged forhim to retire quietly, and following his deep depression, furtherarrangements were made to have him join his family here inToronto.”
Well, it could have been worse, Marc thought.But not by much.
Cambridge went right back to work in hisrebuttal.
“Seamus Baldwin and Miss Mcall were foundin flagrante delicto in a bed in the McCall household?”
“That’s what I was told, yes.”
“A sixty-year-old man with aseventeen-year-old innocent girl?”
Dr. Baldwin merely nodded, but Cambridgewasn’t interested in the exact nature of his response.
“And her father threatened to have the law onhim, as he had every right to because Seamus Baldwin was guilty ofstatutory rape and the corruption of a minor, am I right?”
“Yes,” Dr. Baldwin said, his face full ofmisery.
“No more questions, Milord.”
No more were needed, Marc thought.
It was a gloomy post-mortem in Robert’s chambers.The trial had been scheduled to continue on Thursday morning, whenMarc was expected to begin his defense. But there was no defense.No character witness could be produced who could undo the damagedone by the afternoon’s testimony. Marc had placed all his eggs inone basket: impeaching the Crown’s testimony and developingalternative accounts of the crime – and those eggs had beensmashed, along with the basket. Worse still was the unthinkablethought that refused to stay put in his subconscious where itbelonged: what if the old gent really did do it? What if hisplausible explanations were just that – mere plausibilities? Marcwas grateful that there were no recriminations, but it was coldcomfort. He ached for the Baldwins, all of them.
Finally it was decided that they would haveto move directly to closing arguments. Marc was sent home tocompose the best speech he could devise under the circumstances. Itwas a dispirited advocate who made his way back to Briar cottage.Beth was waiting for him.
“You did what you could,” she saidsympathetically. “And you had no way of knowin’ what was tocome.”
“The only inkling I had, love, was the oddreaction of Dr. Baldwin back when I first suggested he appear as acharacter witness. He must have been torn up inside.”
“He knew, of course, what his brother’d beenup to back in Ireland.”
“Well, that sordid episode does help toexplain the old gent’s depression and his inordinate attraction toEdie and Betsy, doesn’t it?”
“He was lookin’ to replace a hole in hisheart, I’d say. But that still don’t make him a corruptor ofminors. He was good to those girls. Still, it looks awful fer him,doesn’t’ it? So the best thing I can do is get the kids out of yourway so you can sit down and write the greatest speech of yerlife.”
But the best and most loving thing she didwas not raise the question of Uncle Seamus’s possible guilt, for hehonestly did not know how he might answer her. He realized, toolate, that he really knew very little, first-hand, about UncleSeamus. He had spent a mere twenty minutes with him. He should havereturned and questioned the man more closely, got some idea of hisown what made the fellow tick. But he had been too much in lovewith the image of Doubtful Dick Dougherty, who had never lost acapital case. His mind was in a turmoil as he went into his study -alone.
Small wonder, then, that he was on his thirdversion of the opening paragraph when, about eight o’clock, therecame a knock at the front door. He tossed his pen aside and decidedto answer it for himself. He went to the vestibule and opened thedoor.
It was Cobb – with news.
Everyone was taken by surprise on Thursday morningwhen the defense – widely expected to move to closing arguments -asked Justice Powell for permission to call an unscheduled witness.The judge, recalling the Crown’s manoeuvre yesterday afternoon withDr. Baldwin, glanced over at a puzzled Neville Cambridge and said,“Granted, Mr. Edwards. And if Mr. Cambridge requires time toprepare a cross-examination, he will be allowed it.”
All eyes now turned to the door of thewitness-room where a strange woman was being ushered in. She was ofmedium height and walked awkwardly, not quite with a limp buttenderly, as if her feet might have wished they did not have totouch the floor. Her dull auburn tresses were bound up behind herin a tidy bun. She wore a freshly washed, plain black dress. Herboots were scuffed and unpolished. When she stood in thewitness-box and turned her face to the benches and the galleries,there was from the latter a sharp cry. Mrs. Auleen Thurgood hadcried out and then fainted in her husband’s arms. He himself satstaring at the witness, open-mouthed, incredulous, barely consciousof his wife’s collapse.
The woman, who was in reality onlytwenty-six, looked fifty. Her face was pallid, tubercular, haunted.As she accepted the oath, her voice was fragile, as if, oncebroken, it would be irreparable. She stated her name as LorettaThurgood. From the galleries there was as much puzzlement ascuriosity.
Marc began, fully aware of the focussedintensity around him. “Miss Thurgood, you are the elder daughter ofBurton and Auleen Thurgood and sister to the deceased, BetsyThurgood.”
“I am.” Lottie Thurgood sat perfectly stilland looked straight ahead. Not once did she glance to her leftwhere her parents were sitting – mesmerized, as if watching aghost.
“And you have come here voluntarily to tellus your story, a story that has great pertinence to the case beforeus?”
“I have.”
“Tell us where you have been living since youleft home nine years ago.”
“Mostly in Montreal.”
“What were you doing there to earn yourliving?”
“I worked in a brothel. I was a whore.”Lottie did not change her tone or raise or lower the volume of hervoice when making a declaration that drew gasps of surprise anddisapproval from the spectators.
“And how have you managed to return to theToronto area?”
Marc glanced at Neville Cambridge, but helooked more baffled than concerned.
“My brother Timothy came and got me a monthago. I used to write him letters sometimes and send them to theToronto post office.”