Page 73 of The Stranger in Room Six
‘He was until the trouble started,’ her aunt snapped. ‘Now they have come to gloat.’
Someone slammed a gavel. The trial was beginning.
It was hard to know what was being said and who was saying it. At times, the lawyers’ voices were drowned out by shouts from the gallery.
When the Colonel was called to give evidence, the crowd hissed and booed. Mabel could hardly hear what he was saying. He seemed to be mumbling. It didn’t even look likehim. This man had had his head shaved. Gone was the moustache. He slouched, too, as if he had already been condemned.
‘What have they done to him?’ wept her aunt, clutching the locket round her neck in distress.
Eventually the jury was sent out, only to return a few minutes later.
‘Guilty.’ The word resounded round the court amidst gasps and applause.
The judge was putting on a black cloth square on top of his wig. ‘Lord Dashland, you will be taken from this place and hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.’
Clarissa let out such a terrible wail that every head turned towards them. ‘Jonty!’ she called out. ‘Let me talk to him. Please, before you take him from me.’
But the Colonel looked right through her aunt as if he didn’t know her.
‘He doesn’t want us to be implicated,’ she sobbed.
But they weren’t involved. Were they?
‘What will happen now?’ Mabel called out, frightened, as the crowd went crazy around them.
‘No doubt the traitor will try to appeal,’ said a man in front, turning round. ‘But he won’t get off. Not if there’s any fairness. He deserves to be hung, drawn and quartered if you ask me. Sounds like most of the folk here feel the same.’
Then suddenly there was the sound of a blood-curdling scream. It was the Colonel.
‘Oh my God,’ gasped her aunt. ‘Someone’s stabbed him!’
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Desperately, Mabel tried to follow Clarissa who was fighting her way through the crowd. But she could see they were too late. The Colonel was lying on the floor of the court, blood gushing out of his neck, his eyes open.
A man was wrestling with the police, a dripping knife in his hands. ‘Traitors like that deserve to die,’ he was shouting.
Clarissa was screaming hysterically. ‘Jonty! He’s killed my Jonty.’
Everywhere, there was panic. Some people were screaming. Others were shouting ‘Good riddance’ and ‘Now he can’t appeal against his sentence’.
‘Stand clear everyone, please,’ called out another policeman.
‘Let’s get his bitch next,’ shouted someone. ‘Where is she?’
‘Quickly,’ said Mabel. ‘We need to get you away from here.’
Why was no one helping them? ‘Lean on me,’ said Mabel urgently. Somehow she managed to get her still-hysterical aunt back to the car.
‘Are you able to drive?’ she ventured nervously. ‘If we don’t get moving, they might do the same to us.’
Her words must have sunk in because Clarissa stopped screaming and got into the driving seat.
The gear stick made a strange noise but they were moving. ‘Please don’t go so fast,’ begged Mabel sliding down the seat, too scared to look.
Finally, they roared up the drive of the Old Rectory, screeching to a halt. Clarissa opened the driver’s door and slumped out, half-mad with exhaustion, half-mad with grief.
‘I’ll help you get her upstairs,’ said Cook rushing to Mabel’s side.
