“Quite correct,” Hargrave replied with a flicker of a smile across his rakish, rather elegant sandy face. “I presume he phrased it that way because he did not want to alarm people or cause more distress than necessary.”
“Why do you say that, Doctor?”
“Because as soon as I went into the hallway myself and saw the body it was perfectly apparent that he was dead. Even a person with no medical training at all must have been aware of it.”
“Could you describe his injuries-in full, please, Dr. Hargrave?”
The jury all shifted fractionally in their seats, attention and unhappiness vying in their expressions.
A shadow crossed Hargrave's face, but he was too practiced to need any explanation as to the necessity for such a thing.
“Of course,” he agreed. “At the time I found him he was lying on his back with his left arm flung out, more or less level with one shoulder, but bent at the elbow. The right arm was only a short distance from his side, the hand twelve or fourteen inches from his hip. His legs were bent, the right folded awkwardly under him, and I judged it to be broken below the knee, his left leg severely twisted. These guesses later turned out to be correct.” An expression crossed his face it was impossible to name, but it did not seem to be complacency. His eyes remained always on Lovat-Smith, never once straying upwards towards Alexandra in the dock opposite him.
“The injuries?” Lovat-Smith prompted.
“At the time all that was visible was bruising to the bead, bleeding from the scalp at the left temple where he had struck the ground. There was a certain amount of blood, but not a great deal.”
People in the gallery were craning their necks to stare up at Alexandra. There was a hiss of indrawn breath and a muttering.
“Let me understand you, Doctor.” Lovat-Smith held up his hand, strong, short-fingered and slender. “There was only one injury to the head that you could see?”
“That is correct.”
“As a medical man, what do you deduce from that?”
Hargrave lifted his wide shoulders very slightly. “That he fell straight over the banister and struck his head only once.”
Lovat-Smith touched his left temple. “Here?”
“Yes, within an inch or so.”
“And yet he was lying on his back, did you not say?”
“I did,” Hargrave said very quietly.
“Dr. Hargrave, Mr. Furnival has told us that the halberd was protruding from his chest.” Lovat-Smith paced across the floor and swung around, staring up at Hargrave on the witness box, his face creased in concentration. “How could a man fall from a balcony onto a weapon held upright in the hands of a suit of armour, piercing his chest, and land in such a way as to bruise himself on the front of his temple?”
The judge glanced at Rathbone.
Rathbone pursed his lips. He had no objections. He did not contest that Alexandra had murdered the general. This was all necessary, but beside the point of the real issue.
Lovat-Smith seemed surprised there was no interruption. Far from making it easier for him, it seemed to throw him a trifle off his stride.
“Dr. Hargrave,” he said, shifting his balance from one foot to the other.
A juror fidgeted. Another scratched his nose and frowned.
“I have no idea,” Hargrave replied. “It would seem to me as if the only explanation must be that he fell backwards, as one would naturally, and in some way twisted in the air after-” He stopped.
Lovat-Smith's black eyebrows rose curiously.
“You were saying, Doctor?” He spread his arms out. “He fell over backwards, turned in the air to allow the halberd to pierce his chest, and then somehow turned again so he could strike the floor with his temple? All without breaking the halberd or tearing it out of the wound. And then he rolled over to lie on his back with one leg folded under the other? You amaze me.”
“Of course not,” Hargrave said seriously, his temper unruffled, only a deep concern reflected in his face.
Rathbone glanced at the jury and knew they liked Hargrave, and Lovat-Smith had annoyed them. He also knew it was intentional. Hargrave was his witness, he wished him to be not only liked but profoundly believed.
“Then what are you saying, Dr. Hargrave?”
Hargrave was very serious. He looked at no one but Lovat-Smith, as if the two of them were discussing some tragedy in their gentlemen's club. There were feint mutters of approval from the crowd.
“That he must have fallen and struck his head, and then spun, the halberd been driven into his body when he was lying on the ground. Perhaps he was moved, but not necessarily. He could quite naturally have struck his head and then rolled a little to lie on his back. His head was at an odd angle-but his neck was not broken. I looked for that, and I am sure it was not so.”
“You are saying it could not have been an accident, Dr. Hargrave?”
Hargrave's face tightened. “I am.”
“How long did it take you to come to this tragic conclusion?”
“From the time I first saw the body, about-about one or two minutes, I imagine.” A ghost of a smile moved his lips. “Time is a peculiar commodity on such an occasion. It seems both to stretch out endlessly, like a road before and behind with no turning, and at the same time to crush in on you and have no size at all. To say one or two minutes is only a guess, made afterwards using intelligence. It was one of the most dreadful moments I can recall.”
“Why? Because you knew someone in that house, one of your personal friends, had murdered General Thaddeus Carlyon?”
Again the judge glanced at Rathbone, and Rathbone made no move. A frown crossed the judge's face, and still Rathbone did not object.
“Yes,” Hargrave said almost inaudibly. “I regret it, but it was inescapable. I am sorry.” For the first and only time he looked up at Alexandra.
“Just so,” Lovat-Smith agreed solemnly. “And accordingly you informed the police?”
“I did.”
“Thank you.”
Rathbone looked at the jury again. Not one of them looked at the dock. She sat there motionless, her blue eyes on Rathbone, without anger, without surprise, and without hope.
He smiled at her, and felt ridiculous.
Chapter 10
Monk listened to Lovat-Smith questioning Charles Hargrave with a mounting anxiety. Haigrave was creating an excellent impression with the jury; he could see their grave, attentive faces. He not only had their respect but their belief. Whatever he said about the Carlyons they would accept.
There was nothing Rathbone could do yet, and Monk's intelligence knew it; nevertheless he fretted at the helplessness and the anger rose in him, clenching his hands and hardening the muscles of his body.
Lovat-Smith stood in front of the witness box, not elegantly (it was not in him), but with a vitality that held attention more effectively, and his voice was fine, resonant and individual, an actor's instrument.
“Dr. Hargrave, you have known the Carlyon family for many years, and indeed been their medical adviser for most of that time, is that not so?”
“It is.”
“You must be in a position to have observed their characters, their relationships with one another.”
Rathbone stiffened, but did not yet interrupt.
Lovat-Smith smiled, glanced at Rathbone, then back up at Hargrave.
“Please be careful to answer only from your own observation,” he warned. “Nothing that you were told by someone else, unless it is to account for their own behavior; and please do not give us your personal judgment, only the grounds upon which you base it.”
“I understand,” Hargrave acknowledged with the bleakest of smiles. “I have given evidence before, Mr. Lovat-Smith. What is it you wish to know?”
With extreme care as to the rules of evidence, all morning and well into the afternoon Lovat-Smith drew from Hargrave a picture of Thaddeus Carlyon as honorable and upright, a military hero, a fine leader to his men, an example to that youth which looked to courage, discipline and honor as their goals. He had been an excellent husband who had never ill-used his wife with physical violence or cruelty, nor made excessive demands of her in the marriage bed, but on the other hand had given her three fine children, to whom he had been a father of devotion beyond the normal. His son adored him, and rightly so, since he had spent much time with the boy and taken great care in the determination of his future. There was no evidence whatsoever that he had ever been unfaithful to his wife, nor drunk to excess, gambled, kept her short of money, insulted her, slighted her in public, or in any other way treated her less than extremely well.