Green City in the Sun (66 page)

     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.

     T
HEY 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."

T
HE SENSATIONAL TRIAL OF THE COUNTESS OF
T
REVERTON
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.

     "Y
OUR 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 opening 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."

     I
T 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.