A sudden, fearful death (49 page)

She considered only a moment before
replying. For the first time she looked across at Sir Herbert, just a glance,
and away again.

"No—he was always as
usual," she said to Rathbone. "Correct, dedicated to his work, and
with little attention to people other than the patients, and of course the
teaching of student doctors."

Rathbone smiled at her. He knew his
smile was beautiful.

"I imagine men have been in
love with you, possibly many men?"

She shrugged very slightly, a
delicate gesture of amusement and concurrence.

"Had Sir Herbert treated you
as he treated Prudence Barrymore, would you have supposed that he was in love
with you? Or that he considered abandoning his wife and family, his home and
reputation, in order to ask you to marry him?"

Her face lit with amusement.

"Good Heavens, no! It would be
totally absurd. Of course not."

"Then for Prudence to imagine
that he was in love with her was unrealistic, was it not? It was the belief of
a woman who could not tell her dreams from reality?"

A shadow crossed her face, but it
was impossible to read it.

"Yes—yes it was."

He had to press home the point.

"You said she had some medical
skill, ma'am. Do you have any evidence that it was surgical skill of a degree
where she was capable of performing amputations herself, unaided and
successfully? Was she indeed not a mere nurse, but a surgeon?"

There was an unhappy murmur around
the room and a confusion of emotions.

Berenice's eyebrows shot up.

"Good Heavens. Of course not!
If you forgive me, Mr. Rathbone, you have no knowledge whatever of the medical
world if you can ask such a question. A woman surgeon is absurd."

"Then in that respect also,
she had lost the ability to distinguish between daydreams and reality?"

"If that is what she said,
then most certainly she had. She was a nurse, a very good one, but certainly
not a doctor of any sort. Poor creature, the war must have unhinged her.
Perhaps we are at fault if we did not see it." She looked suitably
remorseful.

"Perhaps the hardships she
endured and the suffering she saw unbalanced her mind," Rathbone agreed.
"And her wish to be able to help led her to imagine she could. We may
never know." He shook his head. "It is a tragedy that such a fine and
compassionate woman, with so intense a desire to heal, should have been
strained beyond the point she could endure with safety to her own nature; and
above all that she should end her life by such a means." He said that for
the jury, not that it had any relevance to the evidence, but it was imperative
to keep their sympathy. He had destroyed Prudence's reputation as a heroine; he
must not take from her even the role of honorable victim.

Lovat-Smith's last witness was
Monk.

He climbed the steps of the witness
box stone-faced and turned to the court coldly. As before, he had caught
snatches of what Rathbone had drawn from Berenice Ross Gilbert from those who
were coming and going from the courtroom: press reporters, clerks, idlers. He
was furious even before the first question.

"Mr. Monk," Lovat-Smith
began carefully. He knew he had a hostile witness, but he also knew his
evidence was incontestable. "You are no longer with the police force but
undertake private inquiries, is that correct?"

"It is."

"Were you employed to inquire
into the murder of Prudence Barrymore?"

"I was." Monk was not
going to volunteer anything. Far from it losing the public's interest, they
sensed antagonism and sat a little more upright in order not to miss a word or
a look.

"By whom? Miss Barrymore's
family?"

"By Lady Callandra
Daviot."

In the dock Sir Herbert sat
forward, his expression suddenly tense, a small vertical line between his
brows.

"Was it in that capacity that
you attended the funeral of Miss Barrymore?" Lovat-Smith pursued.

"No," Monk said tersely.

If Monk had hoped to disconcert
Lovat-Smith, he succeeded only slightly. Some instinct, or some steel in
Monk's face, warned him not to ask what his reason had been. He could not
guarantee the answer. "But you were there?" he said instead,
sidestepping the issue.

"I was."

"And Miss Barrymore's family
knew your connection with the case?"

"Yes."

There was not a sound in the room
now. Something of the rage in Monk, some power in his face, held the attention
without a whisper or a movement.

"Did Miss Barrymore's sister,
Mrs. Faith Barker, offer you some letters?" Lovat-Smith asked.

"Yes."

Lovat-Smith kept his evenness of
expression and voice with difficulty.

"And you accepted them. What
were they, Mr. Monk?"

"Letters from Prudence
Barrymore to her sister," Monk replied. "In a form close to a diary,
and written almost every day for the last three and a half months of her
life."

"Did you read them?"

"Naturally."

Lovat-Smith produced a sheaf of
papers and handed them up to Monk.

"Are these the letters Mrs.
Barker gave you?"

Monk looked at them, although there
was no need. He knew them immediately.

"They are."

"Would you read to the court
the first one I have marked with a red ribbon, if you please?"

Obediently, in a tight hard voice,
Monk read:

"My dearest
Faith,

"What a marvelous day I have had! Sir Herbert performed
splendidly. I could not take my eyes from his hands. Such skill is a thing of
beauty in itself. And his explanations are so lucid I had not the slightest
difficulty in following him and appreciating every point.

"He has said
such things to me, I am singing inside with the sheer happiness of it All my
dreams hang in the balance, and he has it all in his power. I never thought I
should find anyone with the courage. Faith, he truly is a wonderful man—a
visionary—a hero in the best sense—not rushing around conquering other peoples
who should be left alone, or battling to discover the source of some river or
other—but crusading here at home for the great principles which will help tens
of thousands. I cannot tell you how happy and privileged I am that he has
chosen me!

"Until next
time, your loving sister,

Prudence."

"And the second one I have
marked, if you will?" Lovat-Smith continued.

Again Monk read, and then looked
up, no emotion in his eyes or his features. Only Rathbone knew him well enough
to be aware of the revulsion inside him for the intrusion into the innermost
thoughts of a woman he admired.

The room was in silence, every ear
strained. The jury stared at Sir Herbert with undisguised distaste.

"Are the others in a similar
vein, Mr. Monk?" Lovat-Smith asked.

"Some are," Monk replied.
"Some are not."

"Finally, Mr. Monk, would you
read the letter I have marked with a yellow ribbon."

In a low hard voice, Monk read:

"Dear Faith,

"Just a note.
I feel too devastated to write more, and so weary I could sleep with no desire
to wake. It was all a sham. I can scarcely believe it even now, when he has
told me face to face. Sir Herbert has betrayed me completely. It was all a
lie—he only wished to use me—all his promises meant nothing. But I shall not
let it rest at that. I have power, and I shall use it!

Prudence."

There was a sigh of breath, a
rustle as heads turned from Monk to stare up at the dock. Sir Herbert looked
strained; his face showed the lines of tiredness and confusion. He did not look
frightened so much as lost in a nightmare which made no sense to him. His eyes
rested on Rathbone with something close to desperation.

Lovat-Smith hesitated, looking at
Monk for several moments, then decided against asking him anything further.
Again, he was not sufficiently certain of the answer.

"Thank you," he said, looking
toward Rathbone.

Rathbone racked his brains for
something to say to mitigate what they had all just heard. He did not need to
see Sir Herbert's white face as at last fear overtook the benign puzzlement he
had shown so long. Whether he understood the letters or not, he was not naive
enough to miss their impact on the jury.

Rathbone forced himself not to look
at the jurors, but he knew from the nature of the silence, the reflected light
on the pallor of their faces as they turned sideways to look up at the dock,
that there was condemnation already in their minds.

What could he ask Monk? What could
he possibly say to mitigate this? Nothing whatever came to him. He did not even
trust Monk. Might his anger against Sir Herbert for having betrayed Prudence,
however unintentionally, blind him now to any kinder interpretation? Even if it
did not, what was his opinion worth?

"Mr. Rathbone?" Judge
Hardie looked at him with pursed lips.

"I have no questions of this
witness, thank you, my lord."

"That is the case for the
prosecution, if you please, my lord," Lovat-Smith said with a faint,
complacent smile.

"In that case, since it is
growing late we will adjourn, and the defense may begin its case
tomorrow."

* * * * *

Callandra had not remained in court after her testimony.
Part of her wished to. She hoped desperately that Sir Herbert was guilty and
would be proved so beyond any doubt whatsoever, reasonable or unreasonable. The
terror inside her that it had been Kristian was like a physical pain filling
her body. During the day she sought every possible duty to absorb her time and
deny her mind the opportunity to return to gnaw at the anxiety, turn over the
arguments again and again, trying uselessly to find the solution she wanted.

At night she fell into bed,
believing herself exhausted, but after an hour or so of sleep she woke, filled
with dread, and the slow hours of the morning found her tossing and turning,
longing for sleep, afraid of dreams, and even more afraid of waking.

She wanted to see Kristian, and yet
she did not know what to say to him. She had seen him so often in the hospital,
shared all kinds of crises in other peoples' lives—and deaths—and yet she was
now achingly aware how little she knew of him beyond the life of healing,
labor, comfort, and loss. Of course she knew he was married, and that his wife
was a chilly remote woman with whom he shared little tenderness or laughter,
and none of the work into which he poured so much passion, none of the precious
things of humor and understanding, small personal likes and dislikes such as
the love of flowers, voices singing, the play of light on grass, early morning.

But how much else was there unknown
to her? Sometimes in the long hours when they had sat, talking far longer than
there was any need, he had told her of his youth, his struggle in his native
Bohemia, the joy he had felt as the miraculous workings of the human physiology
had been revealed in his studies. He had spoken of the people he had known and
with whom he had shared all manner of experiences. They had laughed together,
sat in sudden sweet melancholy remembering past losses, made bearable in the
certain knowledge that the other understood.

In time she had told him of her
husband, how fiercely alive he had been, full of hot temper, arbitrary
opinions, sudden insights, uproarious wit, and such a wild vigor for life.

But what of Kristian's present? All
he had shared with her stopped fifteen or twenty years ago, as if the years
from then until now were lost, not to be spoken of. When had the idealism of
his youth been soured? When had he first betrayed the best in himself and then
tarnished everything else by performing abortions? Did he really need more
money so desperately?

No. That was unfair. She was doing
it again, torturing herself by beginning that dreadful train of thought that
led her eventually to Prudence Barrymore, and murder. The man she knew could
not have done that. Everything she knew of him could not be an illusion. Perhaps
what she had seen that day had not been what she thought? Maybe Marianne
Gillespie had been suffering some complication? After all, the child within her
was the result of rape. Perhaps she had been injured internally in some way,
and Kristian had been repairing it—and not destroying the child at all.

Of course. That was a very possible
solution. She must find out—and set all her fears at rest forever.

But how? If she were to ask him she
would have to admit she had interrupted—and he would know she had suspected
and indeed believed the worst.

And why should he tell her the
truth? She could hardly ask him to prove it. But the very act of asking would
damage forever the closeness they shared—and however fragile that was, however
without hope of ever being more, it was unreasonably precious to her.