Midnight at Marble Arch - By Anne Perry Page 0,138

Neville. Just as it was he who raped both Angeles Castelbranco and Alice Townley, and possibly others.”

“And the laudanum?” she persisted.

“Quixwood surely put it there, knowing she would drink it. If she didn’t he could always give it to her when he got home. It wouldn’t have been as safe for him, but it could still have worked.”

“What are we going to do about it?” she asked.

He smiled. “I hope we are going to get a verdict in Alban Hythe’s favor. Then we will consider proving Quixwood lied to protect Neville Forsbrook from being prosecuted for Angeles’s rape. I still want to see that young man pay for all he has done.” His voice caught.

The jury returned after two long hours, every minute of which dragged by at a leaden pace.

The courtroom was packed. There were even people standing in the aisle and at the back.

The proceedings were enacted at the majestic pace of the law. No one stirred. No one coughed.

The foreman of the jury answered in a calm, level voice.

“We find the prisoner, Alban Hythe, guilty as charged, my lord.”

In the dock Hythe bent forward, utterly beaten.

Maris Hythe looked as if she was about to faint.

Vespasia was stunned. She had truly hoped they had managed to cobble together enough information to create the required doubt, and the tide of despair that washed over her momentarily robbed her of thought. It was seconds, even a full minute before she could think of what to do next.

She took a long, slow breath and turned to Narraway. “This is not right,” she said quietly. “We have three weeks until he goes to the gallows. We must do something more.”

CHAPTER

20

PITT REFUSED TO ACCEPT defeat. It was intolerable. Alban Hythe had neither raped nor killed Catherine Quixwood, and yet he had sat in court and watched the judge put on a black cap and sentence him to death. As always, three Sundays were allowed before the hanging, a period of grace—hardly much time in which to mount an appeal, even if they could find new evidence.

They needed more time. The only way to get that would be to have the Home Secretary grant a reprieve, and there were no grounds for it. Pitt had spent long hours at his office, wanting to be alone, at least away from those closest to him. Their pain distracted his mind, and he needed to be absolutely undivided in his concentration. He had no emotional strength to spare for comfort.

He paced back and forth across his office floor, shoulders hunched, muscles knotted. He went over it in his mind again and again, but there was nothing on which to appeal. Symington, crushed and miserable, had already said as much.

He was convinced that the answer they had found, and in part concocted out of fragments of evidence, was the truth. The unimaginative, pedestrian-minded jury had not believed them. Why not? What had they missed, done wrongly? Had it all rested on Bower’s stirring of rage and fear in them so passionate they could not think? Did they simply not believe that Catherine could have been as intelligent or brave as they had shown her to be? Did they need so intensely to punish someone that they could not wait for the right man?

Surely Symington had stirred their pity and their anger with Hythe’s willingness to sacrifice his own life to save Maris? But perhaps they were more taken in by Quixwood’s feigned grief.

He pulled himself up abruptly. The reason didn’t matter now. He needed to get Hythe a reprieve from the Home Secretary, a stay of execution long enough to find grounds for an appeal. They must not allow it to be over. Proof of Hythe’s innocence after he was dead was of no use at all—and also once the execution had taken place it would be twice as hard to convince anyone that the Court had made an irretrievable mistake, judicially murdered a totally innocent man.

What argument did he have to take to the Home Secretary? It was there in the shadows at the back of his mind, knowledge crowding the darkness. That was the power of his position.

He snatched his hat off the rack at the door, jammed it on his head, and left his office.

On the street he hailed a hansom and gave the driver the Home Secretary’s private address. He hated doing this, but there was no other way to save Alban Hythe’s life.

He sat in the cab rattling over the cobbles, oblivious of