The Changeling (55 page)

“I expect he was very frightened.”

“I am not sure. Perhaps people like that who take life lightly don’t overvalue their own. What do you think will happen to him?”

“He’ll be hanged if he’s proved guilty.”

“He is guilty. It’s rather a sobering thought. But for me, it might not have been proved against him.”

“He would probably have betrayed himself in some way. He must have been caught up in that sort of thing before. The police are very clever. After all, they suspected him and got their hands on him very quickly. They must have known what he was and probably had been watching him, for it seems he was not unknown to them. The fact that you recognized him has made it easier for them to bring this charge against him.”

“But if they do hang him … it will be because of me.”

“No. It will be because he is a murderer who must die so that he cannot murder others as he did Benedict. You’ve got to see it that way. If he were allowed to escape there could shortly be another death, and other bereaved relations suffering because of his wanton act.”

“That,” I said firmly, “is how I must see it.”

Celeste said, “When it is all over you will go to Rebecca’s, I suppose.”

“Perhaps for a short stay.”

“We shall have to decide what we are going to do. I hope you won’t go away altogether.”

“You should come to Cornwall with me, Celeste … for a while at least. Rebecca suggested it.”

“I don’t know. I feel lost … unable to make decisions. I am so lonely … without Benedict … although I know he never really cared for me. But he was always so much a part of my life.”

“He did care for you, Celeste. It was just that he did not show it.”

“He could not show it because it was not there. He showered his affection on you … and your mother.”

“But, Celeste, he did love you. He was grateful to you, I know.”

“Well,” she said ruefully, “that is all over now.”

“And there are the two of us left. Let us stay together.”

She put her arms about me.

I said, “You are a great comfort to me, Celeste.”

“And you to me,” she replied.

My father was buried with a certain amount of ceremony. We should have liked it to have been done quietly, but in view of the circumstances we had realized that that would be impossible.

His coffin was hidden by flowers and there had to be an extra carriage to accommodate them all. Many, I thought ironically, had been sent by those who had been his enemies in life; but those who had been envious need be so no longer. Who could be envious of a dead man? He could now be remembered for his brilliance, his wit, his shrewdness, his hopes of a high post in government now cut short. They were talking about the certainty of his becoming Prime Minister one day … if he had lived. It was a great career cut short by a senseless murder, they said. My father, by dying, had become a hero.

The eulogies in the press were almost embarrassing. There was no mention of that early scandal which had blighted his hopes, the resurrection of which he had always lived in fear. It would appear now that he had been loved and admired by all.

Such is the glory attained through death; and the more sudden and violent the death, the greater the glory.

I read these accounts. Celeste and Rebecca read them. We knew them for the clichés they were, but did we allow ourselves to be swept along on the tide of insincerity? I suppose we did a little. But there was no comfort for me. I had lost him forever and there was a terrible emptiness left.

When the will was read we realized how very rich he had been. He had rewarded all his faithful servants with substantial legacies. Celeste was well provided for; Rebecca was left a considerable sum. As for the rest of his fortune, there was to be some sort of trust. It was for me during my lifetime, and after me it would go to my children; and if I failed to have any it was to be for Rebecca or her children.

The house in London was left to Celeste; the one at Manorleigh to me.

I had never thought a great deal about money and at such a time, with so much else to occupy my thoughts, I did not fully realize what this would mean.

The solicitors said that when I had recovered a little they would talk with me and explain what had to be explained. There was really no hurry. I could hardly give my attention to such matters now.

Rebecca said, “When this is all over, you will have to start thinking what you want to do. There will be changes, no doubt. The best thing for you to do … and Celeste, too … is to come back to Cornwall with me … away from all this. Then you will be able to see everything more clearly.”

I had no doubt that she was right, yet I hesitated. Joel would be coming home soon. I clung to the thought that I should be able to talk with him.

I had been so stunned by my father’s death that I had been unable to think of anything else. Now memories of Joel were coming back. I would not be alone. Joel would return and when he did he would help me to recover from this terrible shock.

In a way I longed to leave London. I should feel better in Cornwall. I loved Cador, the old family home, and I was always happy to be with Rebecca.

But I must be in London for the trial, and until that was over there could be no peace for me. I was sure my presence would be required; I was a key witness. There would be no point in going to Cornwall with this ordeal hanging over me.

I am sure, for the rest of my life, I shall never be able to escape from the memories of that courtroom. I would never forget the sight of the man in the dock. I tried hard not to look at him, but I could not help myself; and every time it seemed that his eyes were on me, half-hating, half-amused, half-mocking.

His name was Fergus O’Neill. He had been involved in similar trouble before. It was, no doubt, how he had received the scar on his face. He had served a term in an Irish jail where he had been involved in a riot; he was a member of an organization which took the law into its own hands. He was a killer who served a cause; and he had no compunction in taking life to do so. The police had had him under surveillance; it was the reason why through my description they had been able to arrest him so quickly.

Mr. Thomas Carstairs, QC, Counsel for the Crown, opened for the Prosecution. He spoke for what seemed like a long time setting out what had happened. Benedict Lansdon, a well-known member of the Liberal Party, highly respected in the political world—and indeed destined for Cabinet rank—had been wantonly done to death outside his own house in the presence of his daughter.

He went on talking about my father’s openly stated opposition to Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill, and how Fergus O’Neill, already known to the police as an agitator, had waited on the night previous to the murder, with intent to kill. He had been foiled by the late sitting of the House of Commons on that night, for on these occasions, Mr. Lansdon stayed at the house of friends in Westminster and did not come home. He referred to the fact that I had seen Fergus O’Neill loitering outside the house. It had been a windy night. O’Neill’s opera hat had blown off, and, as there was a street lamp nearby, I had had a clear view of his face. The next time I had seen him was at the time of the murder and with a gun in his hand.

And so on.

Then began the evidence for the Prosecution. Several people were called. There was the landlady in the house where Fergus O’Neill was lodging. He had come over from Ireland a week before the murder and had apparently spent the intervening time preparing for it.

There were two people who had rented rooms in the house; there were the pathologists and the doctor who had attended to my father; and a few others. I was to be the most important witness because I had actually been present at the time of the murder and had seen and identified the assassin. It was clear, even to myself—and I knew little of court procedure—that it was my evidence which would prove the case against Fergus O’Neill.

After the first day I arrived home exhausted. Rebecca and Celeste sat by my bedside and talked to me until I fell asleep.

But even in sleep I was haunted by that man. I knew that I had had to do what I did. I could not have withheld anything. I was as certain as I could be of anything that the man was my father’s murderer; but I kept imagining the rope about his neck, and I could not stop telling myself that I was the one who would put it there.

When I told Rebecca this, she said, “That’s nonsense. He has put it there himself. The man’s a murderer and if he is guilty he must be punished. You cannot allow people to go free so that they can go round killing people just because they disagree with them.”

She was right, I knew, but how could one drive morbid fancies out of one’s mind?

“As soon as this is all over,” announced Rebecca, “I am definitely going to take you to Cornwall. And you are coming with us, Celeste. You need a break. You need to get away from all this. And it is no use saying you cannot come, because I am going to insist.”

“I think I should be here,” said Celeste.

“And I think you should not,” replied Rebecca firmly. “You need not stay long, but it is necessary for both of you to get away from here for a while. It has been a great shock to you both. You need a break … right away.”

We both knew that she was right and I must say that, for me, the prospect of getting away was enticing.

But the trial was not yet over. I should have to return to the courtroom. Mr. Thomas Carstairs thought that the Defense might want to put me in the witness box and endeavor to discredit my evidence.

And so it had to be. The solemn atmosphere of the courtroom was awe-inspiring with the judge sternly presiding over the barristers and the jury; but the one I was constantly aware of was Fergus O’Neill, the memory of whose face would, I began to fear, haunt me for the rest of my life.

The Defense, after all, did not call me. I suppose they thought that anything I could say would only be damning against the prisoner.

The Prosecution, however, put me briefly in the box. I was asked to look at the prisoner and tell the court whether I had seen him before.

I answered that I had seen him the night before my father died and at the time of the shooting. I told how I recognized him.

It was over very quickly, but it was the deciding factor.

The judge gave his summing up. The verdict was inevitable, he said. The case had been proved (not only, I kept telling myself, by me). The man was a fanatical terrorist and anarchist. He had very likely killed before. He was a man already wanted by the police.

I wished I was anywhere but in the courtroom when the jury came back and gave the verdict of guilty and the judge put on the black cap.

I shall never forget his voice. “Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted by a jury, and the law leaves me no discretion and I must pass onto you the sentence of the law and this sentence of the law is: This Court doth ordain you to be taken from hence to the place of execution; and that your body there be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and that your body be afterward buried within the precincts of the prison in which you have been confined after your conviction and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

I took one last fearful look at him. His eyes were fixed on me—venomous, revengeful and mocking.

Rebecca wanted us to leave at once, but I could not go. I had to stay.

“Sometimes there is a reprieve,” I said. “I want to be here … so that I know.”

“There would not be a reprieve in a case like this,” said Rebecca. “For Heaven’s sake, Lucie, the man deserves to die. He murdered your father.”

“It was for a cause. It wasn’t for personal gain. It’s different somehow.”

“Murder is murder,” said Rebecca firmly.” And the punishment for murder is death. Let’s leave soon. The children and Pedrek think I have been away too long.”

“You go back, Rebecca. Celeste and I will come when this is all over.”

Rebecca shook her head. “I have to stay with you, Lucie. Pedrek understands.”

Three weeks had passed since the judge uttered that sentence and the day for the execution came. There had, of course, been no reprieve; in my heart I had known there could not be.

I sat in my room. Rebecca and Celeste wanted to be with me. But they understood my feelings. I wanted to be alone, and they respected that.

So I sat there while it was happening. This man … this Fergus O’Neill, a man to whom I had never spoken, was dying and I was the one who, figuratively, had put the rope round his neck.

Rebecca was right. I was being foolish to think that. Her calm common sense should be like a douche of cold water to my fevered fantasies. And so it was … at times. Yet at others these thoughts would come back to me.

Who would have believed this time last year that I, a simple girl, happy in the life she shared with her brilliant father, had lost him and gained a terrible burden of guilt?

How could it be possible for life to change so drastically in such a short time!

“There is nothing to detain us,” said Rebecca. “What we must do now is plan for the future. And you will do this better away from here. You will be able to think more clearly in Cornwall.”

I knew that she was right.

“So pack what you need,” she went on. “We’ll catch tomorrow morning’s train.”

“There is something I have to tell you, Rebecca,” I said. “It’s about Joel Greenham.”

She smiled and I saw the understanding in her eyes.

“Before he went away,” I added, “we became engaged … secretly.”

She turned to me, smiling. I had not seen her look so happy since the tragedy.

“Oh, Lucie,” she said, “I am so pleased. This is wonderful. Of course, I knew there was something between you and Joel. He will take care of you. When is he coming home?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything yet.”

“These missions don’t usually last very long and he has been away some time. I wonder whether he will have heard … he can’t have done so. If he had I am sure he would have come home right away.”

“It seems so long since he went away,” I said.

“As soon as he comes home you can go back to London … or he could come down to us. Oh, Lucie, I can’t tell you how happy this has made me.”