A Loveless Marriage

Chapter 35: William

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if Mary Wilkes was in distress, William Chorley would come to her rescue, or so the wags at my club said. It might have caused some titters in our social circle but so be it. When Mary needed me, I was there for her. A loving brother and nothing more, at least in her eyes. It was enough.

Mary needed all the support she could get. The inquest had been a disaster.

Fred was a mixture of arrogance and evasiveness that infuriated the coroner, and had doggedly stuck to his opinion that Daniel Mordaunt had killed himself. The biggest barrier to his masterful theory was the fact the gun was missing, something that Fred dismissively blamed on the police. Mordaunt's widow recounted the vicious beating that Fred had given her husband and the fact he had threatened to kill Daniel Mordaunt, which shocked the room and it was all a bit bleak. There was a sensation in the inquest was when a note allegedly written by Mary was produced. She vehemently denied she had written to invite Daniel Mordaunt to visit in secret and no less than three experts agreed that the note had been a clumsy forgery. The note bothered her almost more than the murder.

The gutter press talked of nothing elss than this shocking murder, especially the illustrated papers whose artists seemed to be almost wholly absorbed with sketching Mary. Beautiful women sold newspapers and she was at the centre of every front page, even though it was Fred who was under scrutiny. The evidence mounted up and could not be arrogantly shrugged off. Only Fred Wilkes was shocked that the coroner's verdict was murder and that Fred was to stand trial for Mordaunt's murder. My darling Mary was devastated but not I think, surprised. She sobbed on Cornelia Glanville's shoulder when it was announced, her light-hearted American friend looking serious for the first time ever. As the police approached to cart him off to Pentonville, he took my hand as if to shake it then pulled me closer.

"Take care of her while I am away," he said. "Protect her from these vultures as much as you can."

Whilst I found it hard to find much sympathy for Wilkes, I had even less for the dead man. I'd had chance to observe Daniel Mordaunt when he's stayed at Loseley Court, how his eyes had followed Mary silently, how he treated his wife with a cold, indifference and most worrying of all, how scared Mary was of him. Only a keen observer of Mary Wilkes would have noticed the signs, how she paled when he spoke to her, how she looked relieved when he left the room or how she reached for her husband to silently protect her. I noticed of course. Blackmail, I had supposed, the Mordaunts needed money from her.

Whatever was the cause of her fear, I felt a strange sort of envy when Fred had given him a beating. There was a sense of brutal justice about it and yet again, Fred had stood in to be Mary's champion while I silently watched. Granted he had gone too far, but I knew somehow Mordaunt had deserved it. Battered and bleeding, Mordaunt had begged Mary for forgiveness and she had refused. What hideous crime he must had done for her to refuse? The girl who would forgive any sin against her. Who had forgiven my aunt Agatha, her errant husband and myself on so many occasions. Daniel Mordaunt must have done something very dark indeed.

All eyes in London was fixed on the Old Bailey as Fred prepared to go on trial. Gossip and speculation had driven Mary into a reclusive state, only Cornelia Glanville and myself were her companions through it all.

"Do you think he did it?" Cornelia asked me in a low voice, as she watched Mary sew by the fire. "Do you really think Frederick Wilkes is a murderer?"

Americans were so direct, even when they became a Marchioness it appeared. I shrugged.

"It does not matter what I think," I said.

"I think he is capable of killing someone who hurt Mary," she said.