Maggie Read Online Free Page B

cream lace and silk and cord tassels was a shade too elaborate for a court appearance. But the golden-brown velvet bonnet was neat and modest and framed Maggie’s pale face very prettily.
    They made their way along dark passages, up a narrow flight of stone stairs and through a trapdoor which led directly into the dock. Maggie blinked in the yellow foggy light of the court and then winced as she felt hundreds of eyes avidly scanning her face.
    Had Maggie had any hope of an acquittal left in her tired brain, then surely the sight of the judge would have dashed it.
    The trumpeters in their green and gold livery sounded a fanfare and everyone rose as Lord Dancer strolled into court, his white silk robes with their scarlet crosses billowing about his willowy body. His face under his wig was handsome in a cold, high-nosed way, but his strong belief in capital punishment had earned him the name of ‘The Grim Reaper’.
    Every neck was craned as Maggie—or the panel as the accused is called in Scotland—was placed at the bar. Mr. IanMacduff, Advocate-Depute conducting the prosecution, put the tips of his fingers together and peered over the steeple made by them at Maggie who was on the other side of the well of the foggy court. The sonorous voice of the clergyman raised in the opening prayer sounded in the sudden tense silence.
    Mr. Macduff found himself puzzled. Maggie Macleod was not what he expected.
    One enterprising photographer had been on the spot when Maggie had been taken from her home after being charged with murder. His second cousin worked as a nurse in the office of the doctor who had refused to sign the death certificate and so he had learned that something was afoot.
    When Maggie had been led from the house the morning had been dark, the pavements and roads gleaming faintly under a coating of frost. The photographer had lit the magnesium powder and had taken a flash picture with his plate camera.
    This picture had been sold to all the newspapers. The magnesium flash had made Maggie’s face appear a dead-white oval with two black pits for eyes and a shadow distorting her mouth. She had looked decidedly sinister.
    But the girl in the dock was beautiful. Thick black curls rioted under a sober bonnet, and her eyes were large and brown in her white and flawless face. Macduff decided all at once that she looked the very picture of innocent innocence, resigned to a malign fate, and felt the first stirrings of unease.
    She exuded an air of soft and virginal femininity, although the girl could hardly be a virgin after being married to a brute like Macleod, reflected Macduff. He glanced up and took a look at Lord Dancer and knew instinctively that the judge had taken a dislike to the girl and, also, that anyone as feminine and appealing as Mrs. Macleod would always bring out the cruel side of the judge’s nature.
    The jury of fifteen men sat very sober and silent, fifteenpairs of eyes riveted on the accused.
    Macduff gave a weary shrug and hitched his gown around his shoulders. He was acting for the Crown and the evidence against Mrs. Macleod was damning. She would hang. The trial was a charade. Nothing more.
    Maggie heard the Advocate-Depute’s voice begin to read out the indictment. It seemed to come from very far away until all at once her mind grasped what he was saying.
    “That albeit, by the laws of this and of every other well-governed realm, the wickedly and feloniously administering of arsenic, or other poison, to any of the lieges, with intent to murder; as also, murder, are crimes of a heinous nature, and severely punishable: yet true it is and of verity, that you, the said Margaret Macleod, or Margaret Fraser Macleod, are guilty of the said crime…”
    Maggie began to feel faint. Mr. Macduff’s voice went inexorably on. “… you, the said Margaret Macleod, or Margaret Fraser Macleod, ought to be punished with the pains of law, to deter others from committing the like crimes in all times