Page 54 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

She felt his breathing change, knew he had woken. After a moment he loosened his grasp a little so that he could look down at her, and she looked into his face properly for the first time since they had been married. How she loved him! She was the luckiest person in the world. She smiled.

The smile seemed to surprise him for the fraction of a second. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

She knew – she didn’t know how, some new womanly knowledge, she supposed – that he meant the thing they had done last night.

Mama had implied it was something a man did to a woman, that the woman had to put up with, but that was not true.

It was something they had done together; and she answered his question with a rapturous ‘Oh, yes !’

He looked at her quizzically and freed one hand to push the hair back from her face. ‘Really?’ he said.

‘Can we do it again?’ she asked.

For an instant he was shocked, then he laughed, not at her but in happiness.

Her nightgown was twisted up and rucked and he said diffidently, ‘Can we get rid of this, do you think?’ He helped her take it off, and now she experienced the new bliss of her naked skin against his.

It was astonishingly good. She thought he felt the same, because he started to breathe faster, and in a moment stretched his body over hers and—

No words for it.

Afterwards, she felt agreeably sleepy again. She wanted to ask him what time it was, but it didn’t seem terribly important. I’m married , she thought. Married to Giles . The idea impressed her as both impossible and wonderful.

‘Now, a lot depends on your demeanour,’ said the barrister, David Carson. ‘We’re lucky to get old Lewthwaite – he has a soft spot for the military.’

‘I’m glad somebody has,’ said Richard. He was feeling nervous. The prospect of prison was terrifying, and Carson’s brisk, cheerful demeanour somehow didn’t reassure him. It gave him the impression that he didn’t care much either way how Richard’s case went, that he was just enjoying himself.

‘What we want from you is modest and manly. Nothing cocky or care-for-nothing. Show respect, but not obsequiousness. Don’t smile – but don’t look nervous, either.’

‘Do you think I’m the Rubber-faced Man at the Alhambra?’ Richard grumbled.

‘And don’t make jokes,’ Carson said severely. ‘If you’re asked a question, answer directly and simply. Don’t elaborate. Don’t offer opinions or suppositions. In fact, don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.’

‘No, sir,’ Richard said facetiously. He glanced round. ‘I wish someone had come along to show me support. Doesn’t it look bad that they haven’t? I mean, isn’t there a thing about attesting to good character?’

‘I don’t think we’ll need that,’ said Carson.

‘I’ve an idea about how this is going to go.

What we’re showing Lewthwaite today is a simple soldier who served his country, returned wounded, and is facing up bravely to a false accusation, trusting in his own innocence to clear his name. He’ll love that.’

‘Innocence?’ Richard said, with a worried frown.

Carson gave him a stern look. ‘Were you driving the car at the time of the accident?’

‘I don’t remember,’ Richard said desperately.

‘Exactly. You have no recollection of driving the car. Say after me, “I have no recollection of driving the car.”’ Richard said it. Carson slapped his shoulder – the good one, fortunately. ‘And trust me,’ he concluded.

The police constable looked tired, and somehow vulnerable with his helmet off. He gave his evidence in the usual police sing-song, reading from his notebook.

Carson allowed an instant of silence at the end of it, during which the constable looked from him to Richard and back, as though wondering if that was all. Then he said, ‘The motor-car, you say, was travelling fast, and downhill.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So it must have passed you in a flash.’

‘That’s right, sir. Going like a bat out of hell, it was.’

‘Going too quickly, I think, for you to have more than a glimpse of the people in it.’

‘I saw the three young gentlemen, sir.’

‘I suggest you saw three male figures,’ Carson said, ‘but you would not have been able to discern their features. Not so as to recognise them again.’

The constable gave him a sturdy look. ‘I saw them when I reached the crashed motor-car, sir. I saw them all then, all right. Close up.’

‘Indeed, Constable. Tell me what you saw when you reached the site of the crash. What were the gentlemen doing?’

‘Well, sir, one was wandering about, walking in circles, like. Holding his elbow, and cursing. He said—’ He looked at his notebook and up again. ‘It was pretty ripe language, sir.’

There was laughter in court. ‘I’m sure it was,’ said Carson. ‘No need to repeat it. It was just general cursing, I take it? Nothing of substance?’

‘Just as you say, sir.’

‘And the others?’

‘One was being sick, sir. The other was lying crumpled up on the grass. I went over immediately to look at him, and ascertained that he was unconscious but alive.’

‘And is that particular young gentleman in court today?’

The constable indicated Richard. ‘That’s him there, sir.’

Carson settled his weight comfortably. ‘One smashed motor-car. Three young gentlemen, all of them out of the car, one way and another. One walking about, one unconscious, one being sick. What made you conclude, Constable, that it was this gentleman here who had been driving the vehicle?’

The policeman looked puzzled for a moment. He opened and shut his mouth. Then he referred to his notes again, and his brow cleared. ‘When I questioned them, sir, the other two gentlemen said they hadn’t been driving.’

‘Just to be clear, Constable, you asked each of them in turn, “Were you the driver?” or words to that effect. Is that the case?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And each of them said … ?’

The notes were consulted. ‘Mr Keenswell said, “Go away, I’m dying. Oh, my God! No, it wasn’t bloody well me.” He was the gentleman being sick, sir. And the other one, Captain Bracegirdle, said, “Not me. Don’t just stand there, you bloody clown, do something. I’m not responsible for this mess.”’

‘And what did Mr Tallant say?’

‘He was unconscious, sir.’

‘So you couldn’t ask him.’ Carson smiled encouragingly. ‘Tell me, Constable – you are an officer of some experience, I believe?’

‘Twenty-three years, sir. And four months.’

‘Indeed. And you must on many occasions have confronted people on the scene of some misdemeanour or felony. Let us say, for example, a man climbing out of a window with a sack full of silver. If you confronted him and asked, “Did you just steal those things, my man?” would you expect him to say, “Yes, indeed, Constable, I did”? Or would he be more likely to say, “Not me. I didn’t do it”? ’

More laughter. The magistrate said, ‘The officer is not required to speculate on hypothetical cases, Mr Carson.’

‘Indeed, Your Honour. I withdraw the question. Constable, in your experience, is it usual for people, when you question them, to say they are innocent, whether they are or not?’

‘More often than not, sir,’ the constable admitted.

‘So if Mr Tallant had been conscious, he would probably also have said, “It wasn’t me”?’

‘Speculation again, Mr Carson,’ said the magistrate.

But the constable answered anyway. ‘Young gentlemen always say it wasn’t them,’ he said sourly. ‘Especially when they’ve had a few. I had one last week snatched my helmet off, told me to my face he hadn’t got it when I could see it there in his hand—’

‘Thank you, Constable,’ Carson stopped him. ‘To sum up, then, you concluded that Mr Tallant must have been the driver simply because the other two gentlemen denied it was them?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the constable, sulkily. He could see where this was going.

‘But you had no opportunity to question Mr Tallant because he was unconscious.’

‘No, sir.’

‘And when the motor-car passed you earlier, it was going too fast for you to recognise the faces.’

‘I bet it was him, all the same,’ the constable muttered.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Carson said exquisitely. The constable said nothing. ‘Please look at Mr Tallant, Constable, and tell me categorically whether you can swear on your oath that he was driving the motor-car as it passed you.’

The policeman looked at Richard with loathing, but was obliged to say, ‘No, sir. I can’t swear it was him.’

Carson looked at the magistrate. ‘Your honour, we have all heard Mr Tallant say that he has no recollection of driving the motor-car. Indeed, he had never driven one prior to that day and so had no knowledge of how to go about it.’

Outside, Richard blinked gratefully in the sunlight of freedom, and thanked Carson. ‘Nothing to it,’ Carson said. ‘Lewthwaite was right to dismiss the case. Always a pleasure to see an innocent man walk free.’

‘But—’

‘You have no recollection of driving the car, have you?’

‘No,’ said Richard.

‘There you are, then.’

‘I do wonder, though,’ Richard said a little peevishly, ‘that neither of them – Keenswell and Bracegirdle – has come near me since the accident. Not a note, not so much as a grape. They might at least have come today and given me moral support in court.’

‘Possibly just as well for you that they didn’t,’ Carson said, with a cheerful grin, and scuttled off to another case.

James and Marie had a compartment to themselves on the train to Paris.

Marie, to his surprise, was reading a book.

He had never seen a servant, least of all a lady’s maid, read a book, though he supposed, generously, that the odd one might do so in private.

He had nothing to read, and crossed and recrossed his legs restlessly, until he realised it might make it seem as though he was uneasy.

He didn’t want Marie to think he had never been abroad before.

So he made himself sit still and look out of the window.

The scenery, he thought, was nothing special – very like England, really, except a bit flatter. And strangely empty of people.