An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER FIFTY

The spring passed into the summer then, the gentle pitch of the days and the particular pleasantness of the weather making it one of the finest seasons anyone could recall. In April there were a dozen engagements a day announced in the Times. By June half of the couples were newly married already.

In July the Godwins went to trial.

Neither had spoken more than a few words in the intervening months, and though they hadn’t seen each other neither believed for a moment, as Jenkins would pretend, that the other had betrayed them. Their bond was the stuff of newspaper natter; reporters had finally followed Dallington’s footsteps across the west toward Hampshire and discovered at least some of what he had, as well as paying local men and women for stories about the Godwins, which, as time passed, grew more outlandish in dimension.

A small amount of real information did trickle in. Jenkins went up with a warrant to investigate Raburn Lodge and found Archibald Godwin’s personal study suspiciously empty of papers and correspondence. Desperate, he brought in a team of constables who combed the house over — which they did with success. A locked wardrobe in the nursery proved to be, in fact, a concealed work desk, and it was evident that Godwin had used this place to plot his crimes. Among other things there were dossiers on several dozen members of the staff of Buckingham Palace: the footman who was having an affair, the cook who had stolen a chest of silver plate from his last employer and then concealed the fact, various points of pressure on the personal lives of people close to the Queen.

There was no file on Grace Ammons, unfortunately. Had he taken it with him, believing her to be the easiest member of the palace staff to compromise? Nor was there any link that Scotland Yard could find to Leonard Wintering. In the end it was impossible to charge Archibald Godwin with Wintering’s murder, with the blackmail of Grace Ammons (for which she was grateful, in fact), or even, realistically, with the murder of Joseph Thayer, the vagrant. True, he had been in Godwin’s room at the Graves; true, Arthur Whitstable would testify that he had seen Thayer in the company of Wintering and Godwin; true, Thayer was wearing a suit Godwin had ordered from Ede and Ravenscroft. None of this evidence was more than circumstantial.

They came to trial, therefore, upon weaker charges than Lenox would have liked. Archibald Godwin was charged with the offense of high treason, which had been defined by the Treason Act of 1351—he had “compassed or imagined” the death of the Queen. (To plot the death of the monarch’s spouse, eldest son, or chief heir was the only other time this charge could be leveled.) Treason was exceedingly hard to prove, even under the law that had been updated in 1848. Lenox would have preferred — as would have Jenkins — a plain old charge of murder. The crown also charged Godwin with attempted murder and a host of smaller offenses, all the way down to breaking and entering. His barrister made it clear that he would contest them vigorously.

Henrietta Godwin’s crimes were more vexing still to punish. What had she done? Had a mad brother? Carried a key that anyone might have placed in her purse? She had never been anywhere near Buckingham Palace. It wasn’t illegal to carry a small pistol, though it was unusual. Nothing at Raburn Lodge implicated her in her brother’s plans. Out of desperation the prosecutor charged her, too, with high treason. Jenkins wasn’t hopeful.

The first day of the trial was, as it could not help but be, in such circumstances, a circus, with crowded galleries, milling press outside the doors, and an unusually large contingent of guards and officers on behalf of the Queen. (The Queen herself was visiting Wales.) Parliament had risen for the summer, and Lenox was free to attend the trial; he and Dallington sat several rows behind the defendants. Lenox appreciated the company, which was by no means a foregone matter — for Polly Buchanan was there also, not on the face of it as an interested party, merely as a spectator, for her guise as Miss Strickland remained intact. At the recesses Dallington would excuse himself and speak to her when he could.

“She has a sharper eye for legal matters than I do,” he said once when he returned.

“Oh?”

“She told me what the word ‘malice’ means for the first time. It can be expressed or implied, do you know.”

“How interesting.”

Dallington missed the sarcasm in Lenox’s voice. “Yes, isn’t it! And then there’s mens rea. She has a great deal of material on that, yards of the stuff.”

Soon Lenox himself had the opportunity to know her better, too — for as the days passed, the ranks of the hot, dusty courtroom grew thinner, as fewer and fewer of the press and the public found themselves able to tolerate the lengthy disquisitions and inactions of a courtroom trial. Eventually the three — Polly, Dallington, Lenox — began to sit along the same particular bench each morning. Throughout the day messengers would come in with notes for Polly, which she would answer directly or fold into a pocket. Presumably they were to do with her detective agency. Though these notes represented a direct competition to his own business, Dallington thought them very funny.

By the second week of the trial the Godwins still had yet to speak, and there were only a few dozen consistent attendants at the court.

One of them was an old, stooped, white-haired man in a clerical collar, extremely thin. His vestments were of thick black cloth, but he always sat, motionless, in the very first row of the courtroom, never leaving his seat even during a recess. “Who do you think he is?” whispered Polly to them one morning before the proceedings began.

“Father Time,” said Dallington. “No, I’m not sure. Lenox?”

Lenox smiled sadly. “I’ve wondered myself for some days. I think if we introduced ourselves we might find that he is Wintering’s father.”

Dallington and Polly, both struck by the idea, in unison turned their heads to look at the man again. Then Polly stood up. “I’m going to speak to him,” she said.

Before either man could respond she was walking toward the front row. “She’s an unorthodox young woman,” said Lenox.

“Yes, it’s wonderful,” said Dallington, his eyes following her. “Yesterday she told me women should be allowed to vote. Who knows, perhaps she’s right.”

“It won’t happen in our lifetimes,” said Lenox.

Polly had sat now beside the old man and was speaking with him, a hand upon his forearm. At one point she looked back toward them and nodded almost imperceptibly: Yes, it was Wintering. Lenox considered the curate’s back, his small church near Stoke, his white hair. What pain fatherhood could bring! Families were so strange — the Godwins, with their gnarled sense of duty to one another, or the Winterings, a thousand winters upon the same land and now brought to this, their last heir dead, his father alone in a London courtroom.

Upon her return, Polly said, “He has agreed to have lunch with us.” Then she added, whispering, “I think he is very poor, however. He is staying at a hostelry the Church of England owns in Camden and walks to the court each morning.”

He was a funny old soul, exceedingly gentle, with a pleasure in anything mildly funny. Forty years before he himself had been to Wadham, and he and Lenox reminisced about Oxford together. When the subject turned to the trial, however, he was, while polite, almost wholly silent — impenetrable. Soon, uncomfortable, they directed the conversation elsewhere.

Most days thereafter they took him to lunch, always at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, so that no bill would appear; they told the elder Wintering that Scotland Yard paid for these entertainments, an explanation he seemed to accept.

What brought him to court each day? They wondered to each other. Even after Polly befriended him, Wintering sat alone in the front row. Was it forgiveness? Dallington speculated. Curiosity? Lenox, the only father in the group of three, thought he understood: It was, no matter how unhappy a situation, the curate’s final chance of closeness to his son.

Somehow the old man’s presence lent a moral force to the trial that it might not otherwise have had, if it were just about the attempt upon the life of the Queen. After all, she was alive, and Leonard Wintering had involved himself in the matter, taken his own risks. It was on the curate’s behalf, more and more, that Lenox felt himself hoping that the Godwins be found guilty.

On the day when the verdicts came in, the courtroom again filled to capacity. The judge very quickly handed down his first ruling: Henrietta Godwin was innocent, and free to go.

There was a murmuring at this. It was expected, but still newsworthy. She had almost certainly been intending to murder the Queen, after all. The judge added that he could not reasonably preclude Miss Godwin from remaining in London, but that he advised close police observation of her comings and goings until such time as she returned to Hampshire.

Finally, at this, she stood and spoke. “I will return to Hampshire this afternoon, my lord,” she said. “With my brother, if God is good.”

God was not good — not by the lights of Hetty Godwin — for the next news that the judge delivered was of Archibald Godwin’s guilt.

This, too, had seemed the most likely outcome. He had offered no plausible defense for his presence in the Queen’s bedchamber, or for firing a gun at her. It was the sentencing that interested the pushing multitude of newspaper writers at the doors of the courtroom. The judge sighed and then spoke.

“The court views crimes such as Mr. Godwin’s in a very, very grave light — yet we find, regrettably, that there is little precedent for harsh sentencing in cases such as this one. Mr. Rhodes, in ’58, received just five years in prison. The majority of Her Majesty’s would-be assassins have begged off of their charges on the plea of mental illness.

“We considered placing you into prison, Mr. Godwin, for a term of ten years.” Henrietta Godwin made a terrified, involuntary little cry at this. “But that won’t do — you are too well situated, too financially secure, for prison to be an uncomfortable experience. Sadly, in this country money can buy comfort even for those guilty of very heinous crimes. Nor can we transport you to Australia, as we might have chosen to do in older — some would say better — days.

“Fortunately, because the target of your attempted murder was no less a personage than Her Majesty, the Queen, we have other options, rooted in deeper, less usual law. Therefore the crown elects to mulct, from you, the house of your ancestors, Raburn Lodge, along with all of its associated lands, which will henceforth be the property of the Queen, to dispose of as she pleases. In consideration of her safety you will also be imprisoned for a term of no less than ten years — no matter how comfortable such an interment may prove. That is my ruling. Consider it final.”

The judge — face impassive, as if he were unaware of the sensation his speech had caused in the courtroom, the rising voices — smacked his gavel and stood to walk away.

Polly’s hand found Dallington’s forearm, and she gripped it tight, shocked; Lenox kept his eyes fixed on Archibald Godwin, whose face had gone white as a ghost. There was a moment of strange silence, and then Henrietta Godwin, weeping and screaming, threw herself toward her brother. The bailiff of the court separated them as gently as he could and led Archie Godwin away, and Henrietta chased through the doors after them, stricken with grief.