“This” was an antique brooch, set with pearls, a really exquisite piece of workmanship.
“It’s lovely, and suits you perfectly in that lace fichu.”
“Yes. James always had excellent taste, and I really was very pleased, and very surprised. But do you know, dear Mrs. Carling, I see a great difference in him—naturally perhaps after all these years; but—oh, I don’t know what it is, something I cannot fathom! And Dear Brutus did behave so badly, spat and swore—swore at Mr. Thomson, till I actually had to take him out to the kitchen and shut him up there. It was quite upsetting!”
CHAPTER XXIV THE SHADOW OF DOOM
The trial of Roger Carling for the murder of Lady Rawson was drawing to an end. No case heard in the Central Criminal Court had ever created greater public interest, by reason of the sensational and unique circumstances of the crime, and the social status of the victim and of several of the persons involved.
Also, many of the callous and curious spectators, most of them fashionably dressed women, who waited for hours in the bitter cold of those grey winter mornings to gain admission to the court, fully expected a series of scandalous revelations; for rumours had been rife of some passionate intrigue between the murdered woman and Roger Carling, or Boris Melikoff, or both men; and circumstantial lies, invented by salacious minds, were broadcasted by malicious tongues from Mayfair and Belgravia to the far suburbs.
Those prurient anticipations were never satisfied. No fresh evidence was forthcoming; but as the case developed so the tension increased, the interest became cumulatively more poignant, more painful, concentrated on the prisoner, pale and worn but perfectly self-possessed, and his girl-wife, whose eyes never left his face, and who seemed utterly oblivious of every one and everything else in the world except during the brief interval when, in the witness-box, she gave evidence on the important episode of the sudden change of their honeymoon plans.
The opening indictment by counsel for the Crown seemed flawless. Inexorably, with consummate skill, and in absolutely passionless tones, he reconstructed and related the story of the crime, from the discovery of the theft of the secret papers to the arrest of the prisoner on the fourth day of his honeymoon. Calmly, relentlessly he wove the threads of circumstantial evidence and presented it as a complete web.