The Sins of the Wolf

But she could not deny the intelligence in his face with its hooded eyes, nervous mouth and slightly receding hair.

“Mr. Murdoch,” Gilfeather began with an amiable air. “Allow me to take you through the events of that tragic day, as you are aware of them. You and your wife were expecting to meet Mrs. Farraline on the overnight train from Edinburgh?”

Murdoch looked grim and nodded slightly as he replied.

“Was it Mrs. Farraline herself who wrote to you of her visit?”

“Yes.” Murdoch looked a trifle surprised, although presumably Gilfeather had taken him through the questions before the session began.

“Was there any indication in her letters that she was anxious or concerned for her safety?”

“Of course not.”

“No mention of a family difficulty, a quarrel of any sort, any kind of ill feeling whatsoever?”

“None at all!” Murdoch’s voice was growing sharper. The idea was repellent to him and the fact that Gilfeather had raised it clearly displeased him.

“So you had no sense of foreboding as you traveled to the station to meet her, no thought whatever that there could be anything wrong?”

“No sir, I have said not.”

“What was the first intimation you received that all was not well?”

There was a stir in the room. Interest was awoken at last.

In spite of herself Hester looked at Oonagh and saw her pale face with its lovely hair. She was sitting next to Alastair again, their shoulders almost touching. For a moment Hester felt sorry for her. Absurdly she remembered quite clearly opening the letter from Charles which told her of her own mother’s death. She had been standing in the sharp sunlight on the quayside at Scutari. The mail boat had come in while she had a few hours off duty, and she and another nurse had walked down to the shore. Many of the men were already embarking on the homeward journey. The war was all but over. The heat had gone out of the battle. It was the time when the cost could so clearly be seen, the wounded and the dead counted, the victory shabby and the whole fiasco pointless. One day the heroism would be remembered, but then it had all seemed only a matter of pain.

England had been a dream of such strangely mixed values: all the calm of old culture, a land at peace, quiet lanes and rich fields with trees bending low, people going quietly about their undoubting business. And at the same time old buildings of ineffable grace housing men whose bland, entrenched stupidity had sent untold young men to their deaths with a complacency that was still without the guilt she felt it should have had.

She had torn the letter open eagerly, and then stood with the black words dazzling on the white paper, reading them over and over as if each time there were some hope they might change and say something different. She had grown cold in the wind without realizing it.

Was that how Oonagh Mclvor had felt when the letter had come telling her that Mary was dead?

From her face now it was impossible to tell. All her concentration seemed to be on supporting Alastair, who looked ashen pale. They were the two eldest. Had they been peculiarly close to Mary? She remembered Mary saying how they had comforted each other in childhood.

Co

Hester looked for Ke

Would Oonagh conceal it for him?

Hester stared at her strange powerful face and could not even guess.

Co

“Oh certainly,” he was saying. “She appeared very pale, but quite composed. Of course we had no idea then that she herself was responsible for Mother-in-law’s death.”

Argyll rose to his feet.

“Yes, yes, Mr. Argyll,” the judge said impatiently. He turned to the witness stand. “Mr. Murdoch, whatever your own convictions, we in the court presume a person is i

Murdoch looked taken aback.

Argyll was obviously aching to put the criticism in his own words, far more decisively than the judge, and he was not to be permitted. Behind him Oliver Rathbone was sitting rigidly, motionless except for the fingers of his left hand, drumming on a sheaf of notes.

Hester looked at the rest of the Farralines. One of them had killed Mary. It was absurd that she should stand here fighting for her life, and be able to stare at their faces one after another, and not know which one it was, even now.

Did they know, all of them-or only the one who had done it?

Old Hector was not there. Did that mean he was drunk as usual, or that Argyll intended to call him? He had not told her.

Sometimes it was better to have someone else plan toe defense and conduct the battle. And there were other tunes she felt so agonizingly helpless she would have given anything at all to be able to stand up and tell them herself, question people, force the truth out of them. And even while the thought raced through her mind, she knew it would be totally futile.

Gilfeather concluded his questions and sat down with a smile. He looked comfortable, well satisfied with his position, and so he should. The jury was sitting in solemn and disapproving silence, their faces closed, their minds already set. Not one of them looked towards the dock.

Argyll rose to his feet, but there was little he could say and nothing at all to contest.

Behind him Oliver Rathbone was fuming with impatience. The longer this evidence took, the more firmly entrenched in the jurors’ minds was Hester’s guilt. Men were reluctant to change a decision once made. Gilfeather knew (hat as well as he did. Clever swine.

The judge’s face also was narrow and hard. His words might be full of legally correct indecision, but one had only to see him to know what his own verdict was.

Argyll sat down again almost immediately, and Rathbone breathed a sigh of relief.

The next person to be called was Griselda Murdoch. It was a piece of emotional manipulation. She had recently given birth and she looked pale and very tired, as if she had traveled only with difficulty for so tragic an event. The sympathy from the crowd was palpable in the air. The hatred for Hester increased with a bound till it hung thick like a bad smell in a closed space.

For Rathbone it was a nightmare. He did not know whether he would have attempted to tear her apart rather than allow the sympathy to build, or whether it would only make matters immeasurably worse. He was almost glad it was not his decision to make.

And yet to sit there helplessly was almost beyond bearing. He looked at Argyll, and could not read his face. He was staring through furrowed brows at Griselda Murdoch, but he could have been merely listening to her with concentration, or he could have been pla

“Mrs. Murdoch,” Gilfeather said softly, as if he were addressing an invalid or a child. “We are deeply sensible of your courage in coming to testify in this tragic matter, and of the cost it must have been for you to travel this distance in your present state of health.”