Читать книгу Silence in Court - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 3

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She was so rigidly controlled as she came into the dock that she wasn’t Carey Silence any more, or a girl, or young, but just a will to walk straight and seemly, to hold a proud head high, to bar sight and hearing against all these people who had come to see her tried for her life. There was a moment when the grip she had of herself wavered giddily. Long ago when she was a child she had been taken up the winding stair of a castle and brought suddenly out upon the open top of the keep to see a river diamond-bright like a twisted thread among tiny fields a long way down, roofs like the roofs of a toy village, a clockwork car small as a beetle in the dust. A frightful giddiness had rushed in upon her then, because all the things she had ever known were gone away to little specks, and she was wrenched from them to this horrible height. The day had ended in complete disgrace because she had thrown herself down flat upon her face and refused to move.

Out of all the things that had ever happened to her this moment came back now—not in words, scarcely even in a picture, but with the memory of that sick moment when all familiar things had dwindled to a vanishing point. She beat it off. There was enough strength in her for that. The wardress who had come into the dock with her touched her on the shoulder and told her to sit down. She sat holding her hands in her lap and looking straight before her. After a moment or two it was not so bad. The worst of it was coming out into the dock and feeling all those eyes upon her as if she had been stripped naked and set there to be looked at. Well, they were looking. She held herself against them. The giddy moment was over, she could go on holding now.

She drew a long, steady breath, and then the wardress touched her again and she stood up whilst the Clerk read the indictment. The words went by her—odd cumbersome words, as out of date and curiously impressive as the crimson of the Judge’s robes and the harsh iron-grey of his eighteenth-century wig. He had a little alert face like a squirrel, with bitten-in lips and small bright eyes. She found that she wasn’t attending to the words. They went by, and she knew it all so well. That is to say, she knew the meaning, but the words were cumbersome and difficult. They set forth that on the sixteenth day of November Honoria Maquisten had died of an overdose of a sleeping-draught, and that the said overdose had been feloniously administered by the accused with intent to cause the death of the said Honoria Maquisten.

The indictment was over. She sat down again.

Sir Wilbury Fossett, counsel for the Crown, rose to open the case. She saw him get to his feet, large, bland, unhurried, and a wave of fear came over her. It was like seeing someone stand up to shoot at you—someone quite calm and at his ease, quite terribly practised in the weapon he was going to use. Her heart thudded hard against her side, and she lost what he was saying. Then, as she steadied again, Cousin Honoria’s name came through.

“The accused is a relative of the deceased Mrs. Maquisten. She is the granddaughter of a cousin who was her greatest friend when they were girls together. Death robbed Mrs. Maquisten of her friend, and circumstances separated her from that friend’s daughter. A long estrangement ensued. Then one day Mrs. Maquisten saw in the papers that a young girl had been involved in a railway accident due to enemy action. This girl’s name attracted her attention. She rang up the hospital, made inquiries, and discovered that Miss Carey Silence was indeed the granddaughter of her cousin and early friend. A correspondence followed, and when it transpired that Miss Silence had been ordered a three months’ rest, Mrs. Maquisten wrote and offered her a home. This offer was gratefully accepted. On November 2nd, therefore, the accused entered Mrs. Maquisten’s household....”