The Accused
A/N Takes place between 3.3 and 3.5. Anthony is falsely accused of indecent assault and kept in custody. Edith knows he cannot have done it and so she presses Robert and Murray to help prove his innocence.
All legal and courtroom procedural inaccuracies are down to me alone. I don't own the characters apart from Jean Thompson, Mark Quinlan, Barry Nixon, Rhydian Rhys Evans, Dr John Cope and Right Honourable High Court Judge James Lister.
Chapter 1 Prelude
Anthony Strallan sat on the hard narrow bunk in the police cell. The austere grey walls were daubed with obscene graffiti and the air was rank with the odour of piss and stale vomit.
It was unbelievable that he should find himself here.
The young woman in the Grantham Arms had made not indiscreet sexual advances towards him which he had skilfully deflected. She was plain and had no personality or intellect to speak of. He would not normally have noticed her in a crowd had he not been so lonely and wretched. He regretted the fact he had brought her a drink because she seemed down on her luck; he hadn't considered that this would later count against him as it would be seen as an invitation which was exactly how she had taken it.
She could not have been any less like Lady Edith had she tried.
She had seemed interested in his war service but he had declined to talk. He wondered to begin with if she was an undercover journalist but quickly dismissed this idea; even undercover journalists had poise and grace which this woman lacked as well as the fact that her vocabulary seemed rather limited into the bargain.
In the end he had politely but firmly hissed at her, "Please leave me alone. I am having a quiet drink and not remotely interested in you. I have nothing to offer you."
That brush-off had been a red flag for her to push her luck even harder. He was very attractive after all; blonde hair, handsome face and lovely blue eyes quite unlike her normal conquests who were usually fat and balding. She had placed her hand on his left thigh and he had slapped it off with his good left hand and left.
Two days later the police had come and arrested him; telling him he had been accused or indecent assault against the woman Jean Thompson. He had protested his innocence; of course he had but no one had listened.
"Everyone's innocent Sir, "the burly constable who had locked him into the cell had sneered.
He gave a hollow laugh; she clearly had not taken that much notice of the fact that his right arm hung uselessly by his side for he had not been wearing a sling on that occasion for she had accused him of striking her across the face with his right hand. It was also alleged he had pulled up her skirts and touched her indecently pinning her to the wall. Like that was possible; even had it been he would not have done so for he had no interest sexual or otherwise in any woman other than Lady Edith Crawley whom he had lost forever. The way his brief, Mark Quinlan, described it could have come straight from the pages of a Penny Dreadful.
He had been to court that morning and entered his Not Guilty plea and been remanded in custody; now he sat waiting to be moved. Dread overwhelmed him. He forced himself to concentrate on the matter in hand but, try as he might, he could not stop thinking about Lady Edith.
Would she believe in his innocence if she read about this in the paper as she surely would? What if Lord Grantham read about it? Strallan shivered; knowing that his chances of ever being able to see, much less speak to, Lady Edith again would be less than nothing.
If he and Lady Edith had got married then they would have not even been in the same country as the Grantham Arms; they would have been in Europe on honeymoon. Why did everything seem to come down to how different things would have been had he gone through with the wedding? Anthony had regretted walking out on the wedding ever since but never did he rue it more than now.