William Monk 06 - Cain His Brother

bear to see his face with its mirrorlike resemblance to the husband she had loved.
    “Mrs. Stonefield,” Rathbone proceeded, “has your husband ever been away from home overnight before?”
    “Oh, yes, quite often. His business necessitated traveling now and then.”
    “Any other purpose that you are aware of?”
    “Yes …” She stared at him fixedly, her body rigid in its navy and gray wool and trimming silk. “He went quite regularly to the East End of the city, to the Limehouse area, to see his brother. He was …” She seemed lost for words.
    Caleb stared as if he would force her to look at him, but she did not.
    Several of the jurors were more attentive.
    “Fond of him?” Rathbone suggested.
    Ebenezer Goode stirred in his seat. Rathbone was leading the witness, but this time he did not object.
    “In a way he loved him,” Genevieve said with a frown, still keeping her head turned away from the dock. “I think also he felt a kind of pity, because—”
    This time Ebenezer Goode did rise.
    “Yes, yes.” The judge waved his hand in a swift motion of dismissal. “Mrs. Stonefield, what you think is not evidence, unless you give us the reasons for your belief. Did your husband express such a sentiment?”
    She looked at him with a frown. “No, my lord. It was my impression. Why else would he keep on going to see Caleb, in spite of the way Caleb treated him, unless it was loyalty, and a sort of pity? He defended him to me, even when he was most hurt.”
    The judge, a small, lean man with a face so weary he looked as if he could not have slept well in years, regarded her with patient intelligence.
    “Do you mean his feelings were wounded, ma’am, or his person?”
    “Both, my lord. But if I cannot say what I know by instinct, and because I knew my husband, but only what I can prove by evidence, then I shall say only that he was injured in his person. He had sustained bruises, abrasions, and more than once shallow knife wounds, or some other such sharp instrument.”
    Rathbone could not have planned it better. Now there was not a man or woman in the whole courtroom whose attention was not held. All the jurors were sitting bolt upright and facing the witness stand. The judge’s lugubrious face was sharp. In the crowd Rathbone saw Hester Latterly sitting beside Lady Ravensbrook, who was ashen-skinned and looked as if she had aged ten years in the last weeks. Monk had said she’d had typhoid fever. It had certainly taken its toll. Even so, she was a remarkable woman and nothing could rob her features of their character.
    Ebenezer Goode bit his lip and rolled his eyes very slightly.
    In the dock, Caleb Stone gave a short burst of laughter, and the guards on either side of him inched closer, their disgust plain.
    The judge glanced at Rathbone.
    “Do we understand, Mrs. Stonefield,” Rathbone picked up the thread again, “that your husband returned from these trips to see his brother, with injuries, sometimes quite serious and painful, and yet he still continued to make these journeys?”
    “Yes,” she said steadily.
    “What explanation did he offer you for this unusual behavior?” Rathbone inquired.
    “That Caleb was his brother,” she answered, “and he could not desert him. Caleb had no one else. They were twins, and it was a bond which could not be broken, even by Caleb’s hatred and his jealousy.”
    In the dock, Caleb’s manacled hands, strong and slender, grasped the railing till his knuckles shone white.
    Rathbone prayed she would remember precisely what they had discussed and agreed. So far it was going perfectly.
    “Were you not afraid that one day the injuries might be more serious?” he asked. “Perhaps he might be crippled or maimed for life?”
    Her face was pale and tense, and still she stared straight ahead of her.
    “Yes—I was terrified of it. I implored him not to go again.”
    “But your pleas did not change his mind?”
    “No. He said he could not abandon Caleb.” She ignored Caleb’s snort of derision, almost anguish. “He could always remember the boy he had been,” she said chokingly. “And all that they had shared as children, the grief of their parents’ death …” She blinked several times and her effort to maintain control was apparent.
    Rathbone restrained himself from looking at the jury, but he could almost feel their sympathy like a warm tide across the room.
    In the crowd, Enid Ravensbrook’s haggard face was softened with pity for the