Given the heightened state of our emotion, it was probably for the best that the following day involved visiting Shrewsbury to discuss with an architect my plans for Stammerton. Sadly the surveys in progress encompassing the whole of the United Kingdom had not taken in Shropshire yet, so I found the most detailed maps I could and all my sketches. We had a most productive day, including an excellent luncheon at the Lion. I also found time to do a little shopping, desperate, as you can imagine, to find a present for Harriet to celebrate our unofficial and unannounced betrothal. A ring or brooch would have been too obvious, in a sense perhaps premature in any case. But a gift she must have.
A bookshop called me – but I suspected she had books I’d never dreamed of. Nonetheless, I bought a beautiful edition of Northanger Abbey. I was tempted by a volume of poetry by Matthew Arnold. Would she find him too gloomy? How would she deal with the sentiments of ‘Dover Beach’? It went back on the shelf at once. What was I doing, looking in a haberdasher’s, of all things? I emerged the purchaser of a length of blue ribbon, the colour of her eyes; surely it might find a place on her best hat? And some fine chamois gloves.
Thence to a gentlemen’s outfitters for new shirts and two splendid bow ties; and a bootmaker – my riding boots were a disgrace. On impulse, I added Samuel and Beatrice to my shopping list. Gloves for Samuel to match some I might need myself, and a return to the haberdasher’s for gloves like Harriet’s for Beatrice. They were not imaginative, I had to admit, but at least none of us would suffer from cold hands later in the year.
I returned like a happy schoolboy. The fact that I did not know when I might find a moment of privacy to present the gifts added an almost enjoyable frisson.
Supper was devoted to a discussion of my plans for Stammerton, which I conceded could not go ahead until George declared the roof watertight and I had accorded Pounceman the courtesy of breaking the news myself.
‘Don’t hurry with that!’ Beatrice said with a huge and decidedly unladylike wink.
Harriet flushed deeply.
I was spared the necessity of replying by the bell summoning Samuel.
‘She’s in a funny mood today,’ he said, as he hauled himself to his feet. ‘I might have to water the dessert wine.’
‘Maybe it’s the change in the weather,’ Harriet said. ‘Look at it!’
‘All the better for testing George’s repairs,’ I said, watching the drops hurtle down the window. But my heart sank. There would be no gentle walk for the four of us – the two twos – tonight. ‘It looks as if it’s here to stay. It reminds me of when I was a child, praying it would be dry in time for the next day’s cricket match – and I find that child in me again! What if I can’t try out my new grip tomorrow?’
The rain drenched down all morning. George and I conducted a tour of the attics, finding only one leak in all the work he had organized.
To celebrate – and to save him another soaking – I invited him back to my office to share coffee and Eccles cakes, some of Beatrice’s best handiwork. When we were done, I reached out the plans I had taken to Shrewsbury. ‘I would rather not start without his lordship’s approval,’ I admitted, ‘and meanwhile there is plenty of work left to occupy you and your team in the House.’
‘Ah, it’d be good to catch some of that dry rot before it spreads through the plaster and brick. Have you thought any more about all those paintings and such in the attics?’
‘They’re not mine to think about – nor, in fact, her ladyship’s.’
‘But some are really nice – and it can’t be good to keep them up there, getting hot or cold according to the season. They’d be better off in some of the bedrooms, surely. Which reminds me, gaffer, do you still need me to tackle the door in that locked room? It’s just the weather for an indoor job today.’
‘So it is. But we found the key for it. There are just odds and ends in there.’ I hoped he wouldn’t have occasion to find it was still locked. ‘Anyway, here are the plans.’ I unrolled them. ‘The church here, a school here …’
He peered. ‘It’s a bit too dark to see, isn’t it?’
I rang for Thatcher, asking for more lamps. ‘And could you ask Mr Bowman for a considerable favour, please – the loan of his spectacles?’
I could not understand the tension. Something was simmering, I knew not what: it had been throughout the silent meal in the servants’ hall. At first I put it down to my imagination; I was as sulky as a bear at losing my game of cricket; I could not argue with the captains’ joint decision, conveyed to me in a brief note, but I could wish it had not been necessary.
At last, adjourning to the Room, I saw yesterday’s beautifully ironed newspapers in a pile on the table usually occupied by Harriet’s reading matter. Why would anyone put them there?
Samuel’s voice was unusually solemn – the point of pomposity, in fact. ‘It is a matter of great good fortune that I managed to prevent her ladyship from seeing these,’ he said, touching the pile before we sat down. ‘My dear Matthew, what are you doing?’
‘Forgive me if I tell you I do not have any idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Your name involved in a murder case. The Oxford Murder Case.’
Flummoxed, I stared. At last I clicked my fingers. ‘Oh, the trial of the little girl alleged to have murdered her lover. But what does it have to do with me?’
‘What indeed? Your name is here, clear as day.’ He jabbed a finger at me. ‘I have to tell you that you are sailing very close to the wind, Matthew.’
‘Let me see,’ I said. ‘Oh, my apologies and thanks for these.’ I returned his spectacles. ‘Poor George is sadly in need of his own pair.’ Taking the top newspaper, I made my way to the window, to catch the little light available. ‘Thank goodness! My cousin has agreed to defend her! Mark Rowsley, Samuel, not Matthew! He is my cousin.’ The clever cousin, who drew up my contract. Criminal law was not his forte, but even I would have been able to make inroads into the prosecution case.
‘It is your doing, then?’ Samuel spluttered.
‘My doing? I wrote to him alerting him to the case, of course I did, when I saw it.’
‘But he shares your name. Consider the affront to the Family that he should take on such a case!’
Had he gone mad? Mark was a lawyer. What would anyone expect him to do but take on a case? ‘Let us sit down and talk like the friends we are,’ I said, desperate not to lose my temper.
Harriet said firmly, ‘The tea will be stewed if we do not drink it. Beatrice? Samuel? Matthew?’ The smile she awarded me as she passed my cup was so intense it seemed her face glowed. ‘Perhaps, Matthew, you could tell Beatrice and me why the case so outrages Samuel?’
What a strange way of putting it. But I thought I understood.
‘The case is likely to become a cause celebre.’ Samuel and Beatrice would just have to keep up. ‘I read about it in a paper the other day, and’ – I must choose my words carefully – ‘and I knew at once it would be hard for the defendant to get a fair trial. In brief, a girl had sexual relations with him in a back alley of the town. She stabbed him. The defence is that … I don’t know what angle Mark is taking. Ah! Here we are: he’s spoken to the press about his plans for Monday. “Eleven years old … small for her age … evidence that she was a virgin … drunken jape … night out with six friends, all witnesses … eight o’clock the following morning … ” Well done, Mark. Just the line I’d have taken!’
Samuel was still blustering. ‘You are proud that your cousin is defending a murderer!’
‘I am very proud that he is acting as a defence lawyer. At such short notice, too.’ I spoke with the most naïve enthusiasm I could, as if I knew that they all really shared my beliefs, and that Samuel was merely acting as devil’s advocate. ‘I couldn’t believe that the poor little girl had no proper legal representation so I brought the trial to Mark’s attention. I told him I’d only pay his fee if he won, too,’ I added with a smile.
‘You are paying for this – this scandalous behaviour!’
‘I am paying for a child of eleven to have a defence lawyer. In the interests of fairness, since I should imagine the witnesses, the sort of young men I came across at university, will have prepared their story beforehand to make themselves look good. You see, not all students behave like the gentlemen they eventually become. Not when they are drunk. I have seen – no, I will spare you since many of their little amusements are not fit for any sober person’s ears, man’s or woman’s. One of the least bad – and even telling you this disgusts me – was playing football in their college quadrangle. The football was a hedgehog.’
‘A hedgehog? In my last place we had to invite the sweet little things into the kitchen to deal with the beetles!’ Beatrice said. ‘Shame on them.’
‘Did these students inflict similar harm on humans?’ Harriet asked quietly.
For answer I touched the newspaper. ‘Can you imagine otherwise? I am sorry – the men I knew were foolish boys thinking they were unfettered by the law and even by the laws of common decency. Yet at least three are now barristers, and two are clergy-men. When those louts grow up,’ I added, touching the newspaper, ‘they will blush with shame for their part in this.’
‘If they have committed perjury, they may blush before that,’ Harriet said.
‘Sadly I doubt if it will come to that. It’s one thing to find what a lot of people will still see as a guttersnipe walk free, quite another to send a group of “young gentlemen” to jail for lying.’
‘Of course.’ Her anger sizzled.
‘And quite wrong, I agree. Remember, the law is made and enforced by the same sort of person.’ I stopped abruptly. I was in the right, of course, but there was no point in upsetting Samuel further, when I knew I had the one person who truly mattered on my side. Truly, I think that everything I said had been directed at her.
‘So had Maggie taken a knife to her villainous seducer, would you have condoned that?’ Samuel persisted.
‘I do not wish anyone ever to take another’s life. “Thou shalt not kill.” But sometimes, just sometimes, there may be extenuating circumstances. And justice must always be combined with mercy.’
‘Would that mean letting her get off scot-free?’
‘A young man seduces a very young woman and gets her with child. She will walk to Wolverhampton on her own. She will give birth in absolute poverty. If she had struck him with a weapon and hurt him, would she not have been justified? I am not a judge, thank goodness.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I have shocked you, my friends, and I am sorry. But sometimes friends have to agree to differ on certain subjects, for the sake of their other friends, if for no other reason. To be frank with you, when I read about the trial, I saw not an anonymous child in the dock, but yes, I saw little Maggie. That’s why I acted as I did.’
‘And I honour you for it,’ Beatrice declared. ‘Kicking a hedgehog, indeed … I think we could all do with another cup of tea, don’t you?’ She bustled off.
‘Can we shake hands and remain the friends we are?’ I asked Samuel.
He hesitated – a moment too long, I feared. But Harriet stepped forward and put our hands together.
I knew that something of immense importance was happening, and that anything that followed would be bathos. If only I could be alone with her, for even a few minutes.
Beatrice opened the door, holding it for the maid carrying the tea tray, which she set on the table. She bobbed her way out.
‘Would you all excuse me for a moment?’ I was about to retrieve the little gifts from my office in the hope that they would lighten the mood. But even as I stood, we heard raised voices outside.
The door flew open.