So, it’s not a matter of sedition! Not a matter of the freedom of the press! It will bring no great praise, nor piles of golden guineas. It is merely the prosecution of a poor man who will swing from the gallows if convicted. You didn’t save me. Why would you save him?
Thomas dropped the page on his desk. His pulse was racing uncomfortably as he stared round the room. ‘Go away!’ he shouted. It was Farquhar’s voice.
The door opened and Bevan looked into the room. ‘Did you call, sir?’
‘No. No, I’m sorry. I burned my mouth.’ Thomas indicated the cup on his desk.
Bevan withdrew, closing the door softly behind him.
Thomas looked up. ‘Are you there? Why should I have tried to save you when you threatened me and mine and made our lives a misery?’
There was no reply.
He took a deep breath. ‘Besides, I’m being asked to appear for the prosecution.’ If the case was won, as was inevitable given the man’s obvious guilt, Farquhar was right, the man would die.
Suddenly Thomas’s hands were shaking. He was sitting again beside James Boswell, watching as the rope tightened round Andrew’s neck, seeing his eyes widen with terror and then slowly begin to bulge and glaze over as the breath was choked out of him and he saw again that final look of agony and hatred as he swung towards them and fixed in his dying moment his stony gaze on Thomas’s face.
‘Sir?’ Charles Bevan had reappeared, a bundle of papers under his arm. He looked at Thomas’s desk in horror and rushed to mop it with a cloth. Thomas hadn’t realised he had knocked over his cup and soaked the letter which was lying in front of him in a pool of coffee. ‘I will take this and reply for you.’
‘No!’ Thomas grabbed it. ‘No, Charles, I shall take this one.’
‘Sir? You can’t!’ His clerk looked scandalised.
‘Book it in. I shall take this case. This girl was scarcely more than a child. The same age as my daughter.’
But the nightmares that followed his decision were unceasing. In his dream, he could feel the rope around his own neck, he could feel his feet desperately trying to maintain contact with the cart, kicking reaching, stretching, even as the rope tightened.
‘Thomas!’ Fanny was standing by his bed in the dressing room, a candle in her hand. ‘My darling, you were shouting. You’ll wake the children.’ She sat down beside him and put her hand on his forehead. ‘Calm yourself. Don’t think about it.’ She had guessed the source of his agony and why he had insisted on taking on the case. A young girl, scarcely older than Frances, had been cruelly deprived of her maidenhood and her honour. Of course he wanted to take it.
‘I am to confirm this man’s guilt. I am to see him swing for what he has done. But you do see,’ Thomas repeated to Fanny as they sat near the fire in the library the next evening, ‘the trial must be fair. The evidence must be gone through. Even if he is ugly and she is pretty and young the presumption must not be that she is therefore telling the truth, until the evidence has been heard.’
While Thomas sipped his glass of brandy, Fanny went over the case again in her head. It seemed to her that there was no question as to his guilt. ‘My darling, you mustn’t be too zealous,’ she said cautiously. She looked up from her embroidery. ‘This child’s reputation is at stake. The least she can expect is some kind of retribution.’
‘But if the trial goes against him, he will die,’ he insisted. ‘We have to be sure. The locals are prejudiced against him.’ He looked at her, his face shadowed by the flickering firelight. ‘No one gave Farquhar that benefit of the doubt.’
‘No, because all knew him guilty.’ Fanny frowned. All at once she understood. He still felt he should have tried to defend Farquhar. ‘There were so many witnesses then, Tom, and one of them, though I was not called, would have been me!’
He was chewing his lip. ‘I have to see this man gets a fair trial.’
‘But you are to speak for the Crown.’ She put down her embroidery frame and sat forward in her chair. She was beginning to get angry. ‘If you can’t be committed to your side of the argument, you shouldn’t take this case. It may be a small village affair, but there will be so many eyes watching because it’s you. Your celebrity will have preceded you. You have to be clear about whose side you are on.’
He had grinned, the boyish grin she loved so much. ‘But supposing I manage to win for the defendant, though I seek to prosecute him. How cunning would that be?’
She stared at him, appalled. ‘You can’t, Tom. You absolutely mustn’t! This poor girl will be vilified forever if the jury find for him and say that she has lied.’
‘You are right. I mustn’t do it.’ He looked quite forlorn for a moment then he climbed to his feet. ‘I must go to my study and read through my speech once more. There are alterations I must make.’
She did not try to dissuade him. What was the point? Once he had made a decision he would stand by it.
He called for candles and a fire to be lit in his study, then as the door closed and he was alone, he went over to the window and stared out across the garden. The owl was there again. He saw the dark shape take off from the tall pine beside the gate, glide across the high wall in the moonlight and swoop down into the moonlit gardens of Kenwood.
So, you think that getting this man off will prove how clever you are and make up for your betrayal of a fellow shipmate.
The voice was quiet, in his ear, almost at his shoulder. Insidious. Persistent.
You’re doing this to assuage your conscience. About me. Do you really think you can do it? I’ll bet you can’t. Would you like a wager? Can you wager with a ghost?
* * *
‘I’ve changed my mind.’ Timothy was sitting opposite the driver of the lorry at a truck stop somewhere between Scotch Corner and Darlington. He was hanging onto the last of his change, just in case, so he could only afford coffee. The other man had not offered to sub him – and why should he? – so he’d had to sit for the last twenty minutes, watching the guy stuffing bacon and eggs, sausages, black pudding and baked beans into his mouth, drenching his plate with sauce and wiping it clean with one of the extra slabs of toast he had ordered on the side.
‘Changed your mind?’ The guy looked up briefly then turned back to his plate.
‘Yup. I’m going back north.’ Tim stood up. ‘Thanks for the lift, mate. Appreciated. It’s given me the chance to think.’
It took him an hour to find a lift back up north and it was nearly dark when he found himself standing in the rain staring at the burned-out shell of the house they had so briefly tried to make into a home. What was left of the car was still there, the paintwork blistered, the seats destroyed, the windscreen and windows shattered. The pylon above it seemed to have escaped the fire unscathed. The place was deserted.
What had happened? Where was April? He bit back the lump in his throat.
A forlorn length of blue-and-white police tape fluttered along the road’s edge, knotted to the telegraph pole one end and to the broken gatepost the other. Someone had designated it a crime scene. Did that mean she was dead?
He stood there, unable to move, overwhelmed by utter misery. There was no one to ask, nowhere to go, no one to talk to unless he went to the police and that wasn’t going to happen. A car drove up the road behind him, its wheels swishing on the wet road. It threw up a curtain of spray as it swept round the corner and out of sight, leaving him wetter than before. The sudden cold of the water finally galvanised him into movement. He turned away from the ruin and began to walk slowly up the long road towards town, groping in his pocket to see how much money he had. He had his phone but the battery was flat, he had the clothes he stood up in, now soaked, and he was alone, genuinely, absolutely alone.
58
Fanny was waiting for him in Hampstead when he returned from the Sussex Assizes and seeing her standing there by the fireplace in the drawing room, her face alight with pleasure at the sight of him, Thomas quailed.
‘So, what happened?’ She
ran to plant a kiss on his lips.
‘The prisoner was acquitted,’ he said.
She pulled away and looked up into his face. ‘Tom?’
He shrugged his shoulders and turned away. ‘I cannot win every case, my darling.’
She ran after him and caught his hand, forcing him to turn and face her. ‘But this case, you should have won. You told me that the man was guilty!’
‘The jury did not find him so.’
‘And the girl? The girl who was attacked?’
‘The feeling was that she was mistaken in what happened. Her virtue was preserved, I made sure they understood that.’ He looked downright shifty. ‘Her story was not sufficiently convincing for them to find the man guilty. She was young and inexperienced and perhaps a little foolish. A girl with much imagination, who had no knowledge of the world of men. Her reputation was intact, as was she, as far as we know.’ His voice tailed away.
‘Thomas Erskine, you are being disingenuous!’ Fanny cried. ‘How could you?’ She stamped her foot.
He looked down at her sheepishly. ‘The judge did not question my address, my darling. He found it proper.’
‘And did her father find it proper, as you call it?’ Her eyes were blazing.
Thomas looked uncomfortable. ‘The case was dismissed, Fanny. I did not see her father afterwards. My carriage was at the door of the court and I came straight home.’
‘Did you realise you were holding your cross?’ Mal and Ruth were walking back from the chapel.
‘It’s not my cross.’ She was embarrassed. ‘I found it in Mummy’s jewel box.’ He was right, though. Instinctively her hand had flown to her throat when she heard Farquhar’s voice. And in that moment of terror, she had hung onto it as though her life depended on it.
He grinned. ‘Whoever it belonged to, it worked.’ The voice had not returned.
‘The cross is only because I can’t carry my teddy bear everywhere,’ she said, half laughing.
He nodded. ‘Fair point.’
‘I think I might keep wearing it.’
‘I sense a touch of defiance there.’ He smiled at her. ‘That can only be good.’
Later, Ruth went back to her bedroom. Somewhere there, in all those letters and journals, must lie the answer to how to deal with the problem that was Farquhar. She picked up the letter she had been reading. She would continue from where she left off. She didn’t want to miss anything.
Half an hour later, she laid the letter down again and sat staring into space. Why had Thomas told his daughter, even many years later, this complicated story about the Sussex rape? It obviously made him uncomfortable to remember it. It was a misjudgement, in his own mind a terrible miscarriage of justice, so why had he done it? Had it been a challenge just to prove how clever he was? The guilty man had got off scot-free and the young woman had been left with doubt hanging over her. What had happened to her after the case? The poor girl had presumably gone home with her parents, mortified, accused of being a fantasist, her reputation gone, her father left without recompense, perhaps never able to hold up his head in public again, perhaps never able now to find the husband he had dreamed of for his daughter.
‘But, as you had won the point, did Farquhar pay you the wager?’ Ruth wasn’t aware that she had spoken out loud, that she was addressing the figure standing looking out of the window of her tower bedroom, leaning on his elbow on the sill.
‘Of course not. He was a ghost!’ The response was sharp.
She was tempted to strike her forehead with her fist. ‘Duh!’
He turned towards her with a smile. ‘I am not proud of that day’s work.’
‘And am I supposed to write that down in my notes?’
‘It’s the truth,’ he sighed.
Behind her the door opened a crack and one of the dogs nosed his way in. When Ruth glanced back at the window the figure had gone. She bent to fondle the dog’s ears. ‘Are you Pol?’ she said quietly. ‘I still can’t tell the difference between you. Did you see him, Pol? He was my imagination, wasn’t he?’
The dog sat down, panting, then turned and ran back to the door. He had obviously come to fetch her.
Malcolm was in the sitting room, lighting the fire. ‘Are you OK working up there?’ he asked as she appeared. ‘Do you have everything you need?’
‘It’s perfect.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Malcolm went on, scrabbling in his pocket for his matches. ‘We have to resolve this situation.’
‘I’m sorry. I know it’s inconvenient having me here. Fin will be back—’
‘No! That’s not what I meant.’ He lit the kindling, paused to make sure the flame was steady and turned to face her. ‘I’m very happy for you to stay as long as you like. And I hope you will. It’s nice having some company.’ He smiled a little wistfully. ‘No, I was referring to your foul-mouthed ghost and also to the evil Bradfords. It’s a nonsense that they’re all stalking you like this. The whole thing has to be sorted.’
‘At least Timothy doesn’t know where I am now.’
‘True.’
‘As far as he’s concerned, I’m a bit like Rapunzel at the top of her tower. Unreachable.’
‘Unless you let down your hair.’
‘Oh, I won’t be letting my hair down, I assure you.’ She shook her head.
He laughed out loud. ‘Pity. I was quite hoping you would at some stage.’ He saw her sudden embarrassment as she realised what she had said and shook his head ruefully. ‘Quick change of subject.’ He reached for a log and placed it in the hearth. ‘We need a plan. We have to assume that the police are still trying to find the Bradfords and that you’re safe from them for now. Unfortunately, the police can’t help us with the other matter.’
‘Will Fin be safe when he gets back?’ Ruth put in. ‘The Bradfords don’t know I’ve left the Mill House.’
‘Fin has burglar alarms and bolts.’
‘And he’s put in a couple of cameras. But it’s such an isolated place.’
‘You mean compared to here.’
It was her turn to laugh. ‘No, not compared to here.’
‘I think you have to let Fin manage his own security, Ruth. Let’s worry about you. Let’s work out a way of getting rid of Andrew Farquhar for good. I think I might have thought of something.’
She sat down.
‘The facts seem to be that he’s working out a long-term grudge against Thomas. So, we have a vicious, vengeful, unshriven soul—’
‘All this depends on what one believes happens after death,’ Ruth interrupted. ‘If one believes anything happens at all.’
‘You still have doubts?’ He looked at her, askance. ‘After everything you’ve been through?’
She hesitated. ‘I suppose I’m prepared to believe that some do not rest in peace,’ she conceded.
He acknowledged the remark with a quizzical nod. ‘That’s a start.’
‘I’m sorry to be so perverse.’ She was cross with herself. ‘I can see something is going on; my surroundings seem to be crawling with ghosts at the moment so how could I deny it? And yet there’s still a part of me that says, no, this is not logical, and I am denying the evidence of my own eyes because I can’t get past that stupid rational glitch.’
Malcolm chuckled. ‘It is fascinating, isn’t it. Your father must have been some powerful personality! Someone should write a thesis on your dilemma. OK, we’ll just have to go back to the pretending bit, pretend you believe, pretend you can accept the evidence of your own eyes, pretend this is all quite normal and pretend, above all, that this peculiar man you are staying with can fix it.’
‘OK.’ She grinned at him, surprised at the warmth that engulfed her. ‘So how is he going to do it?’
‘Consult Dion Fortune.’
She frowned. ‘In a séance, you mean? That was how we allowed Farquhar in in the first place!’
‘No, not a séance. In the first instance, we read her book. Both of us. Carefully.’
‘We are
talking about Psychic Self-Defence?’
‘Indeed, and perhaps some of her others. Don’t forget, we’re going to assume that Thomas was one of her teachers. He must have believed in her skill, knowledge, powers, whatever you like to call it. Now, what is Farquhar trying to do? For now, he seems to be concentrating all his energies, in so far as they exist, on a single-minded pursuit of physical gratification and intimidation.’
‘Of me and Harriet?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘So a pair of middle-aged women, dotting about the house and playing at spooks, were fair game?’
He looked up, appalled. ‘Is that how you see Harriet and yourself?’
‘It might be how he sees me.’
‘OK, let’s drop the middle-aged bit and you could be right.’
She laughed. ‘Thank you, kind sir.’
‘And now, a middle-aged man and a beautiful woman are going to play spooks again but this time with a lot more knowledge and hopefully a few carefully aimed weapons.’
She looked away, afraid she was blushing. ‘Not so much of the beautiful.’
‘Sorry.’
She glanced up at him. ‘You aren’t sorry at all. You’re laughing at me.’
‘No, I’m not. Truly. This is not actually a funny situation, but maybe keeping it in perspective will help us to fight this bastard. And I’m not sure Harriet is part of this. It might be that he wants to humiliate and threaten you specifically as Thomas’s descendant and representative. Whichever it is,’ he looked at her solemnly, ‘we have to deal with it. You haven’t asked me what the weapons are.’
‘Prayers?’
‘Not for you, no.’
‘Sonic screwdrivers?’
‘Be serious.’
‘Sorry. So, tell me what my weapon of choice will be.’
‘Courage. The ability to hold your own when he tries to scare you. Refusal to be spooked. Both of which you’ve demonstrated. Think about it, Ruth. We’re not talking about a physical body here. He’s nothing but energy. His psychic presence is strong, we have established that, but in some ways he is nothing but air, hot air, if you like. He’s the uncomfortable feeling you’re left with when you walk into a room after two people have had a quarrel. Bombast. Emotion. That’s what spooking is about. Fear. He loves the energy of your fear. It feeds his lust. So, instead of running away and fending him off, you go for confrontation. You’ve proved it works. I very much doubt if he can cope with a strong woman.’