“Yes, they do,” he agreed candidly. He saw the pain in her eyes, the trace of unreasonable hope that she was wrong die away. “I am sorry, but it is inescapable, and I would not be helping your cause if I were to pretend otherwise.”
She bit her lip. “I know.” Her voice was hoarse. “They are so mistaken in him. He would never do anything so vile … but even if they could not understand that, surely they can be made to see that there was no cause to? He received a note that my father had changed his mind and would sell the guns to him after all. He had found a way of escaping his commitment to Mr. Trace and was free to offer them to the more honorable cause. They were there at Euston Square Station. There was even a special train just to transport them.”
“I believe I can prove that he could not have fired the shots himself,” he agreed, allowing no lift of hope into his voice. He must not mislead her, even by implication. “What I cannot prove is that whoever did it was not paid to by Mr. Breeland. And that is just as serious a crime. Since you and he left England with the guns, you are accomplices in robbery and murder.…” He held up his hand as she began to protest. “I can make a good argument that you were unaware of what had happened, and therefore innocent—”
“But Lyman is innocent too!” she cut in, leaning forward urgently, her eyes bright. “He had no idea anyone had killed to get the guns!”
“How do you know that?” he asked very gently. It was not a challenge. There was no confrontation.
“I …” she started to answer. Then she blinked, her face puckering with dismay. “You mean how can I prove it to them? Surely …” Again she stopped.
“Yes, you do have to,” he answered the question he thought had been in her mind. “In law one is presumed innocent unless you can be proved to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Consider the word reasonable. Do you believe, after listening to the evidence so far, that the men in the jury box will have the same idea of what is true as you will have? We lose reason in emotion. When you think of issues like war, injustice, slavery, the love of your family or your country, your way of life, are any of us guided purely by reason?”
She shook her head minutely. “No,” she whispered. “I suppose not.” She took a deep breath. “But I know Lyman! He would not stoop to anything dishonorable. Honor, what is right, is dearer to him than anything. That is part of the reason I love him so much. Can’t you make them see that?”
“And are you absolutely certain that what is right would not include sacrificing three men to the cause of obtaining guns for the Union?” he asked.
She was very pale. “Not by murder!” But her voice shook. Her eyes filled with tears. “I know he was not in the warehouse yard that evening, Sir Oliver, because I was with him all the time, and I was not there. I swear that!”
He believed her. “And how did the watch come to be there? How do I explain that to the jury?”
Fear rippled through her. He could not mistake it.
“I don’t know! It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t explain it.”
“When did you last see the watch?”
“I’ve been trying to think, but my mind is in such turmoil the harder I try the less clear it becomes. I remember showing it to Mrs. Monk, and I had it the day after that, because that was when Dorothea admired it, so of course I told her about it.” She flushed very faintly, hardly more than a suspicion of color in her pale face. “After that … I’m not certain. Times get muddled in my memory. So much happened, and I was furious with my father.…” The tears spilled over her eyes and she fought for self-control.
Rathbone did not interrupt her or try to offer words they both knew he could not mean.
“Could you have lost it, or left it on a garment you were not wearing?” he asked at length.
“I suppose so.” She seized the explanation. “I must have. But Lyman would never have left it in the yard, and who else could?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I shall have Monk investigate it. It may now be possible your father took it with him.”
“Oh, yes! That could be, couldn’t it?” At last there was a lift of hope in her voice. “Sir Oliver, who was it that killed him? Was it Mr. Shearer? That is very dreadful. I know my father trusted him. They had worked together for years. I only met him once. He was rather grim, sort of … I’m not sure … angry. At least I thought he was.” She searched his face to see if he understood what she found so difficult to say. “Was it for money?”
“It seems as if it was.”
“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.”