A look of distaste passed across the judge’s face, but Tobias’s point was unarguable and he knew it.

"Sir Oliver?" he said questioningly. "It does seem that you have done more to advance Mr. Tobias’s case than your own. Have you further points to put to your client?"

Rathbone had no idea what to say. He was desperate.

"Yes, my lord, if you please."

"Then proceed, but make it pertinent to the events we are here to try."

"Yes, my lord." He turned to Cleo. "Did you believe that she had been raped, Mrs. Anderson? Or do you perhaps think she was no better than she should be and..."

"She was thirteen," Cleo said furiously. "Twelve when it happened. Of course, I believed she had been raped! She was half out of her mind with terror!"

"Of whom? The man who raped her—then, nine months afterwards? Why?"

"Because he tried to kill her!" Cleo shouted.

Rathbone feigned surprise. "She told you that?"

"Yes!"

"And what did you do about it? There was a man somewhere near the Heath who had raped this girl you took in and treated as your own, and then he subsequently tried to murder her—and you never found him? In God’s name, why not?"

Cleo was shaking, gasping for breath, and Rathbone was afraid he had driven her too far.

"I believed she’d been raped—or seduced," Cleo said in a whisper. "But God forgive me, I thought the attack was all jumbled up in her mind because of having a dead baby, poor little thing."

"Until ... ?" Rathbone said urgently, raising his voice. "Until she came running to you again, close to hysteria and terrified. And there was really a dead body on the Heath this time—James Treadwell! Who was she running from, Mrs. Anderson?"

The silence was total.

A juror coughed, and it sounded like an explosion.

"Was it James Treadwell?" Rathbone threw the question down like a challenge.

"No!"

"Then whom?"

Silence.

The judge leaned forward. "If you wish us to believe that it was not James Treadwell, Mrs. Anderson, then you must tell us who it was."

Cleo swallowed convulsively. "Aiden Campbell."

If she had set off a bomb it could not have had more effect.

Rathbone was momentarily paralyzed.

There was a roar from the gallery.

The jurors turned to each other, exclaiming, gasping.

The judge banged his gavel and demanded order.

"My lord!" Rathbone said, raising his voice. "May I ask for the luncheon adjournment so I can speak with my client?"

"You may," the judge agreed, and banged the gavel again. "The court will reconvene at two o’clock."

Rathbone left the courtroom in a daze and walked like a man half blind down to the room where Miriam Gardiner was permitted to speak with him.

She did not even turn her head when the door opened and he came in, the jailer remaining on the outside.

"Was it Aiden Campbell you were running from?" he asked.

She said nothing, sitting motionless, head turned away.