Page 98 of Cain His Brother (William Monk 6)

Now there was total silence in the room.

“At the Folly House Tavern,” she said sullenly.

“What was he doing?”

“Nuffink.”

“Nothing?”

“ ’E were standin’ around, waitin’ fer Caleb, I s’pose. That’s w’ere I told ’im ter be.”

“Did you see Caleb arrive also?”

“No.”

“But he told you earlier that he intended to be there?”

“Not that time special. That’s where ’e said Angus were to go for ’im always. Same place. I didn’t even see ’em together, an’ I never saw ’em quarrel, an’ that’s the truth, whether yer believe me or not!”

“I do believe you, ma’am,” Rathbone conceded. “But did you see Caleb later on that day?”

“No, I didn’t.”

One of the jurors shook his head, another coughed into his handkerchief. There was a rustling in the public benches.

Rathbone turned away from the witness stand, and his glance caught Ebenezer Goode’s and saw him smile ruefully. The case still hovered on the knife’s edge, but however unwillingly, Selina’s evidence might be all it needed to topple it against Caleb. Goode had very little with which to fight, and they both knew it. It would be a desperate gamble to call Caleb himself. Even Goode could not know what he might say. There was a recklessness in the man, a well of emotion too dangerous to tap.

Rathbone turned the full circle before he faced Selina again. His eye caught Hester, near the front of the crowd, and beside her, Enid Ravensbrook, looking pale and tense. Her face was strained with pity and the terrible waiting for the evidence to unfold as they came nearer and nearer to the moment when the hatred and jealousy of years must finally explode in murder. Caleb had already left home when she had married Ravensbrook, but she must still have inherited some feeling for him, sensitive to her husband’s long involvement, to all he had given, the years of struggle and finally the failure.

Certainly she knew both Angus and Genevieve, and was only too familiar with their loss.

Milo Ravensbrook sat on the other side of her, his face so pale he seemed bloodless, his dark eyes and level brows like black gashes on gray-white wax. Could a man see a more hideously painful revelation than that one child had killed the other? He would be left with nothing.

And yet from the moment that Angus’s bloodstained clothes had been identified, was there anything else they could have done, any other course to follow?

Enid turned to him, her expression a mixture of anguish and almost an expectation of hurt, as if she already knew he would reject such intimacy, yet she could not help offering herself. She put her hand on his arm. Even from where Rathbone stood, he could see how thin her fingers were. It was only three and a half weeks since she had passed the crisis of her illness.

Ravensbrook remained frozen, as if he was not even aware of her.

There was silence in the room.

Rathbone looked again at Selina.

“Miss Herries, when did you see Caleb again? Consider your answer very carefully. An error in judgment now could cost you very dearly.”

Ebenezer Goode half rose to his feet, then decided an objection would achieve nothing. The question had been too carefully worded to be considered a threat. He sank back.

In the crowd someone dropped an umbrella, rustled for an instant, then left it where it lay.

“Miss Herries?”

Selina stared at Rathbone and he remained fixed on her gaze, as if he could see into her brain, read her fears and weigh them one against another.

The judge moved his hands, then refolded them.

“Next day,” Selina said almost inaudibly.

“Did he mention Angus?”