Never Land the First Fish

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Part 1

Julia walked into the courtroom, and stopped so suddenly that the grim warder a pace from her heels bumped into her, and growled for her to keep moving. There were so many people. She'd heard that the case had caught the public interest. Lady Coventon had made it clear that everyone in England knew her for a woman who had run off from her husband with two other men, even if she was not a murderer.

She had not expected the courtroom to be so large and so crowded, with at least six tiers of temporary seating around the walls and the centre of the room solid with chairs. She allowed the warder to push her by her arm into a box containing a seat. The dock, Sir Thomas had called it.

The docks, she supposed, since Gills was shut into an identical box alongside. To her right, the judge's bench rose on a dais above the rest of the room, the grand jury in a double row of seats alongside.

Gills smiled and waved to someone beyond her, and she turned to see Emily and Maddox, no more than ten feet away, at the top of the nearest tier of seats. Maddox waved, and Emily put both hands over her heart, which warmed her enough for a small smile.

"All stand for the Judges," a little man in a wig called in a loud voice, and she turned back to watch three men in wigs and robes process from behind the dias that dominated the room as the little man called their names.

The clerk read the indictment against each of them. Murder for Gills, and murder, conspiracy to murder, and little treason for her. Julia did her best to obey Sir Thomas's instructions—to sit quietly and neither frown and smile. Her lips wanted to turn up when Sir Thomas stood up to appeal for her to be addressed as Lady Julia, repeating the argument that she should not be forced to answer to the name of her persecutor.

The prosecuting barrister objected and the judges consulted briefly and ordered that each barrister use the form of address he was most comfortable with. Ah well. At least Sir Thomas tried.

The barrister had told Julia to try not to listen to the prosecutor's opening statements, but she could not help herself, and it was hard to maintain her pleasant neutral expression. He painted a picture of a dissolute couple who indulged in heavy drinking and wild living, and who had been cast out of Society and disinherited by their families for plotting to destroy innocent people by spreading lies about them.

He suggested that Athol had been a weak character lead astray by a jealous and manipulative wife, who had tired of him when he no longer had family money and when they were barred from the house parties where—or so he implied—she used to meet her lovers.

"The prosecution will prove, Your Honours, that Lady Athol Soddenfield, determined to rid herself of a husband who had become a burden, resolved to take another weak-willed man as a lover; someone she could persuade to rid her of her husband." He flung out his hand to point to Gills.

"Enter Lord Joseph Gildeforte. Lord Joseph is well known in London for making his living by 'escorting' wealthy ladies. It would be inappropriate, Your Honours, for me to speculate on the services that he provides such ladies, if the word 'lady' applies under the circumstances."

The prosecutor dropped his voice, though it was still loud enough to be heard clearly here at the front of the hall. "It proved to be a diabolical liaison, as we shall show. A man and a woman, each with a proven lack of moral fibre, and only one person standing in the way of them enjoying one another in freedom."

There was a lot more. Julia stopped listening, instead allowing her mind to drift to Brickdale. She had beguiled many a boring or unpleasant hour in the last few years by imagining how she would redecorate rooms and lay out gardens, and Brickdale was ripe for renovation.

She had decided on a main colour for the drawing room, a furniture style, and the key items needed for the room by the time the prosecutor finished his preamble and called his first witness.

She moved on to wallpaper and drapes for the ladies withdrawing room while the prosecutor questioned a neighbour about his observations of the Soddenfield house on the day that Athol died. The neighbour had heard her and Athol shouting, had seen Gills arrive, had witnessed her and Gills leave together.

Julia couldn't block it all out, but the mental debate over drape colour helped to shield her from the sour man's interpretations of what he had seen. Sir Thomas, in his cross examination, elicited the information that Lord Athol had been shouting that he would kill her. "Did you hear why?" Sir Thomas asked.

"Her wouldn't do sommat. Kept saying no, she did. Husband has to have obedience doesn't he?"

Sir Thomas, who knew precisely the degradation Athol planned to heap on her, asked no further questions, to Julia's relief.

The prosecutor stood and asked a few more questions to confirm that yes, he was certain it was Lady Athol in the gig with Lord Joseph, and yes, he recognised Lord Joseph. "Wouldn't 'a rekernised 'Er liddyship though," he offered. "Looks like a right proper lady now. No bruises."

The prosecutor hustled his witness off the stand as quickly as possible, and repeated the exercise with several other neighbours. The prosecutor kept pushing the idea that Julia was a disobedient wife who left the house with her lover after Athol was dead. Thanks to Sir Thomas, the jury also heard that Athol was violent, belligerent, and frequently drunk.