Lady Rose wouldn't talk. She had said not one word since her collapse five days earlier, when she saw the photo of the dead man. She had sat still and silent through the questioning, her face abnormally pale so that the bruise stood out all the more. It was Dr. Treverton who had answered the detective's questions.
The man in the trunk, she had explained, was an escaped Italian POW named Nobili.
"No one else in the district knows him," Superintendent Lewis had said. "How is it that you do?"
"Rose spoke of him to me."
"Where did he live?" Lewis asked, holding his pencil ready to write down the address.
But when she paused too long and then finally told him about the greenhouse and Rose's intention to leave Kenya with Nobili, Lewis had seen the greater and clearer picture.
And now, here was final proof, according to Inspector Mitchell.
Three men had been put on the estate grounds to watch the comings and goings of the family, to question the staff, and to search for any possible clues. This morning one of the askaris had reported that rubbish was being burned in a pit not far from the house. It was routine work; the estate workers burned the trash on a regular basis, usually once a week. Lewis sent someone from Forensics to give a look through. This envelope contained the findings.
He opened it, and when he saw what was inside, he nodded in satisfaction. As far as Superintendent Lewis from the Criminal Investigations Division was concerned, the case was closed.
THEY STOOD BENEATH a dark gray sky, a handful of people with bowed heads around a hole in the ground. Reverend Michaelis, the minister from Grace's mission, read the eulogy as the coffin was lowered. There was sadness and bewilderment and shock in the hearts of the mourners. But one was full of bitterness and hatred; another, of grim satisfaction that the earl was dead.
James said a mental, heartfelt prayer and farewell to his friend, who, twenty-eight years before, had saved his life near the Tanganyika border and who, out of pride, had sworn James to secrecy. James knew that Grace thought it was he who had saved Valentine's life, but Valentine had made James promise never to tell of his extraordinary act of valor in which he had almost lost his life saving James.
Mona said good-bye to a stranger. The plantation was hers now.
Tim Hopkins, standing apart from the others, gazed down at the headstone of the only person he had ever loved. He prayed that Arthur, in heaven, could now look down upon his father in hell.
A short distance away, on the other side of the wrought-iron fence, stood a few Africans: the house staff, sincerely sad to see their bwana go; Njeri, who was mourning not for the man in the grave but for her poor sorrowing mistress; and David Mathenge, who thought with a cold heart: Adhabu ua kaburi ajua maiti, a Swahili proverb which meant, "Only the dead know the horrors of the grave."
As she threw a handful of dirt onto her brother's coffin, Grace was filled with a sense of his death's marking the end of an era. Change was in the air; she could feel it. An old familiar and beloved Kenya, she feared, was slipping away, and something new and frightening was coming to take its place.
Superintendent Lewis and Inspector Mitchell waited until the funeral was over and the mourners were returning to their cars. They approached Lady Rose, who walked between her sister-in-law and Sir James.
The detective from the CID apologized for the intrusion and held out something for her to see. "Can you identify this, Your Ladyship?"
Rose didn't look down. She stared at his face with unfocused eyes, like a woman walking in her sleep.
But Grace and James looked at what was in his hand: a piece of linen, scorched and bloody.
"Is this your monogram, Lady Rose?" the detective asked.
She stared past him.
"This handkerchief was found in your rubbish pit this morning, wrapped around a bloody dagger. Now, Lady Rose, do you have anything to tell me about the night of your husband's death?"
She gazed past him, out over the acres and acres of flowering coffee trees.
Lewis reached out and took from Lady Rose's hand the handkerchief she had been carrying. He held it next to the charred one, and the policemen compared them. The monograms were identical.
"Lady Rose Treverton," Superintendent Lewis said quietly; "I am arresting you in the name of the Crown for the murder of your husband, Valentine, the earl of Treverton."
40
T
HE SENSATIONAL TRIAL OF THE COUNTESS OF TREVERTON began on August 12,1945, four months after her arrest. It took the prosecution that long to prepare its case against her. In the meantime, she was incarcerated in a special cell in the Nairobi jail, where, after appealing to the judge and prison authorities on her behalf, Rose's attorney obtained permission for her to be allowed to work on her tapestry.
It was the second of only two requests Rose made.
The first had come immediately upon her entering the prison. Rose had not uttered a word since seeing the photograph of Carlo's body; now she asked that Morgan Acres, the family lawyer, be summoned. The two spent three hours alone together in her cell, during which time Rose gave Mr. Acres explicit instructions on what to do with General Nobili's body. Mr. Acres was not at liberty to discuss the plans with the rest of the family, at Lady Rose's request, but when, a week later, Grace and Mona saw a work force from Nairobi arrive at the eucalyptus glade with trucks and tractors and building materials, they knew it was Rose's doing. The body of her beloved Carlo, in the meantime, was kept in a Nairobi mortuary.
The second request, for her tapestry, had come a week after that, and she had made the request of Grace.
"It isn't finished," Rose said as she sat on the iron bed with her hands folded in her lap, gazing through the bars of her window at the distant Athi Plains.
"Rose," Grace said, sitting in the one chair of the plain cell, "listen to me. This whole thing is trumped up. That detective from CID doesn't care if he's got the right person or not; he just wants to close his file! He's basing his case against you on purely circumstantial evidence. Why won't you speak up? Tell them Valentine knocked you out and that you were incapable of riding a bicycle in the middle of the night on a muddy road! Rose, your silence looks like an admission of guilt. For goodness' sake, defend yourself!"
Rose kept her blue eyes on the African vista far beyond the stone prison and said softly, "I stopped working on the tapestry the day I met Carlo. Now I must finish it."
"Listen to me, Rose! While you're letting them crucify you, you're letting Valentine's murderer go free! That handkerchief was stolen from your bedroom, and you know it!"
But Rose would speak no more. So Grace and Rose's defense attorney, Mr. Barrows, King's Counsel, brought up specially from South Africa, had presented Lady Rose's request to the chief warder, pointing out the extraordinary circumstances of her situation—that there were thirteen hundred prisoners in the Nairobi jail, only eight of whom were Europeans, and Rose was the only white woman. Exceptions were made, granting the countess the right to her tapestry, food brought in from the Norfolk Hotel, where it was prepared personally by the head chef, chocolates, and bedding, a rug on the cold stone floor, and, as prisoners were required to keep their own cells clean, the daily visit of Njeri, Lady Rose's personal maid, who took care of her mistress during the entire ordeal.
"YOUR SISTER-IN-LAW IS making my job very difficult, Dr. Treverton," said Mr. Barrows, the barrister from South Africa. "She won't talk to me. She won't even look at me. Her silence is quite damning for her, you know."
"If they find her guilty, then what?"
"As a colony Kenya has the English system of jury trial. And the same punishments. If Lady Rose is found guilty of murder, she will hang." The barrister rose from the couch and strode to the edge of the veranda, where he lapsed into deep thought.
For the duration of the trial Grace and James, Mona, and Tim Hopkins all had come down to Nairobi and taken rooms at the club, which was not far from the courthouse. They now sat on the eve of the trial openin
g in a private members' room, which was all leather and rattan, zebraskins and animal heads.
"You know, Doctor," Barrows said softly, "the Crown has a strong case against your sister-in-law. First, there is the motive. These love triangles are always such a messy business. Lady Rose admitted to four people—yourselves—in front of house servants, that she was going to leave her husband for another man. Jury sympathy is going to go to Valentine, Doctor, not to your sister-in-law. Secondly, there is the knife, which the pathologist has determined beyond a doubt is the same as that which killed the earl. It is a knife that your sister-in-law used for years in her greenhouse, to prune her plants, and it was found in one of her own handkerchiefs."
Mona said, "Anyone could have taken that knife from the greenhouse and stolen a handkerchief from my mother's room."
"I quite agree, Lady Mona. But unfortunately your mother will not testify to such. She doesn't deny wrapping the knife in the handkerchief and trying to dispose of it in the weekly rubbish fire. In fact, Lady Mona, your mother has not once, so far, denied committing the murder! Now then, thirdly, there is the fact that she cannot account for her whereabouts at the time of the murder, nor has she any witnesses who can. You all were fast asleep, you say."
Mr. Barrows came back to the sofa and settled his lanky frame into it. "I'm afraid cases of this sort are decided upon emotions rather than upon cold facts. The Crown is going to try to make Lady Rose look like a hard, cruel, and callous woman. They'll drag out the whole sordid love affair in the greenhouse and paint Valentine as the ultimate cuckolded husband. Bear in mind, Miss Treverton, that the jury will be all male. And they will hang Lady Rose for her adultery, I can assure you of that."
"But we can't let that happen!" said James.
"No, we can't. And I'm going to try my damnedest to get the jury to sympathize with us."
"In the meantime," said Tim quietly, "the real murderer goes free."
"That is not our concern right now, Mr. Hopkins. We must concentrate on bringing in a verdict of not guilty for Lady Rose."
Mr. Barrows peered at his companions from under reddish brows. Hard little green eyes that betrayed the genius of the South African barrister, who was known for winning difficult and sensational cases, fixed upon each of them. And then he said, "Before I walk into that courtroom tomorrow, I want to be certain that I have all the facts of this case. I want no surprises. If any of you now, has something he or she is not telling me, or if any one of you has thoughts heretofore unexpressed regarding this case, any suspicions, anything at all, then tell me now."
IT WAS IN an almost festive atmosphere that the trial opened the next morning. Nairobi's Central Court had become the focus of the war-weary colonists, who, anxious for a good show, crammed into the Edwardian sobriety of the courtroom, lined the walls three people deep, and packed themselves into the public galleries. The glass dome overhead shed diffuse light upon settlers who had come from as far away as Moyale, upon ranchers and farmers, upon men in uniform, upon women in their best dress normally reserved for Race Week. The roar was deafening as everyone eagerly awaited the commencement of what promised to be a spectacle. All the ordinary, hardworking Kenya folk, who had entertained themselves these past four months with rumor and gossip and speculation, latching upon newspaper reports of the "greenhouse love nest," and exhausted from six years of war and sacrifice, had come in hopes of glimpsing the sordid, intimate lives of their aristocracy.
Shortly before the prisoner was brought in, the entrance of one more spectator caused at first a stir and then a shocked silence as she made her way through the crowded African gallery, where the people stepped aside for her. By the time Wachera, the medicine woman, reached the railing and looked down over the courtroom, the Europeans in the surrounding galleries and those down below all looked at her in astonishment.
There wasn't a person in the courtroom who had not heard of the legendary Kikuyu woman who continued to defy European authority and who was a spiritual force behind the largest tribe in Kenya. She stood at the railing like an empress surveying her subjects. At any other time the white men and women might have found her costume quaint and amusing, or tasteless and out of place here, but there was something, this morning, about the tall, strong body dressed in hides and covered head to toe in beads and shells, her head smoothly shaved and crisscrossed with beaded bands, that struck a wrong note in the minds of the Europeans. Wachera reminded them of something they preferred not to think about: that this had once been her land, and they were the latecomers.
Stories of an old thahu, pronounced at a Christmas party long ago, had also made their way into the gossip columns. The Europeans thought of it now, as they stared at the medicine woman, and wondered if she had come to see the fruits of that curse.
Two Trevertons dead, they thought. Three to go ...
The Lord Chief Justice, Sir Hugh Roper, in black robes and white wig, entered the court and took his place on the bench. And then Lady Rose was brought in from the cells. She walked to the dock like a woman in a trance and seemed not to hear a court official read the indictment. She stood like a statue, her eyes glazed and barely blinking. The courtroom was silent as everyone stared at the pale, slight figure. Many were mildly disappointed; she didn't look like an adulteress or murderess at all.
As the counsel for the Crown stood to make his opening address, Rose suddenly turned in her seat and looked up, over her shoulder, at the African gallery.
Wachera's eyes met hers.
Rose was taken back twenty-six years; she was standing again on the ridge, holding baby Mona in her arms and looking down upon an African girl with a baby on her back.
Wachera was also remembering, as she now looked down upon the mzunga, that day of fifty-two harvests ago when she had looked up at the ridge and had seen the vision in white, wondering what it could mean.
And then the trial began.
It was eventually to run for ten weeks, in which time witness after witness was called, from the most obscure worker on the Treverton Estate who had never even laid eyes on his employer, to members of the family themselves. Specialists were brought in. They included Dr. Forsythe, the pathologist, who demonstrated by matching a flaw in the knife blade to a groove in Lord Treverton's rib, that this was indeed the murder weapon, and who had determined upon autopsy that the earl was already dead from massive internal bleeding when the bullet was put through his skull.
Servants were questioned. "Are you an askari on the Treverton Estate?"
"Yes, bwana."
"Do you know during which hours you were patrolling the grounds on the night of April the fifteenth?"
"Yes, bwana."
"Can you tell time?"
"Yes, bwana."
"Please look at the courtroom clock on that wall over there and tell us what time it is."
The askari squinted at the clock and said, "It is lunchtime, bwana."
So much of the questioning, on both sides, seemed tedious and irrelevant.
"You are Lady Rose's dressmaker?"
"I am."
"Was Lady Rose in the habit of coming to Nairobi for fittings or did you go up to the house?"
"We worked it both ways, depending on the rains."
On days when gardeners were questioned, or when the most insignificant of evidence, such as the earl's letters to his wife from his post on the northern border, was studied to the point of madness, the spectators thinned out, and there were even empty seats. But as the barristers slowly worked their way to the crux of the trial—the love affair and the murder itself—the audience grew in size again.
Njeri Mathenge, the countess's personal maid, was called to testify. While she was being questioned, her eyes moved nervously from Lady Rose to Wachera up in the gallery back to Lady Rose.
"Were you with your mistress when she found the escaped prisoner in the greenhouse?"
"Yes."
"Speak up, please."
"Yes."
"How often did the memsaab visit
the man in the greenhouse?"
"Every day."
"At night as well?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever observe them while they were in the greenhouse?"
Njeri looked at Lady Rose.
"Please answer the question."
"I looked through the window."
"And what did you see?"
Njeri's eyes shifted to her mother's co-wife, Wachera, in the gallery. Then she looked at David. And back to Rose.
"What did you see, Miss Mathenge?"
"They were sleeping."
"Together?"
"Yes."
"In the same bed?"
"Yes."
"Were they wearing clothes?"
Njeri started to cry.
"Please answer the question, Miss Mathenge. Were Lady Rose and Carlo Nobili naked in bed together?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever observe them to do anything other than sleep?"
"They ate supper together."
"Did you ever observe acts of a sexual nature between them?"
Njeri bowed her head, and tears fell onto her hands.
"Miss Mathenge, did you ever see Lady Rose and Carlo Nobili engage in sexual intercourse?"
"Yes."
"How many times?"
"Many..."
Through it all, Rose sat pale and silent in the dock, as though far removed from the courtroom. She never spoke, never looked at the witnesses, seemed not even to be aware of what was going on. If she was innocent, people started to ask themselves, then why didn't she speak up?
"SHE WON'T TALK to me," Mona said when she joined the others in the small, private members' room at the club. A plate of sandwiches sat untouched in the middle of the table, but the whiskey and gin were being paid earnest attention to.
The strain of the trial was starting to show on the young woman. Her dark eyes stood out on her pale face. "I said to her, 'Mother, you have to speak up and defend yourself.' But she just kept stitching that blasted tapestry."
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