A sudden, fearful death (57 page)

Reference to Sir Herbert Stanhope
was of a very objective nature, entirely to do with his medical skills.
Several times she praised him, but it was for his courage in adapting new
techniques, for his diagnostic perception, or for the clarity with which he
instructed his students. Then she praised his generosity in sharing his
knowledge with her. Conceivably it might have sounded like praise for the man,
and a warmer feeling than professional gratitude, but to Hester, who found the
medical details both comprehensible and interesting, it was Prudence's
enthusiasm for the increase in her own knowledge that came through, and she
would have felt the same for any surgeon who treated her so. The man himself
was incidental.

In every paragraph her love of
medicine shone through, her excitement at its achievements, her boundless hope
for its possibilities in the future. People were there to be helped; she cared
about their pain and their fear—but always it was medicine itself which
quickened her heart and lifted her soul.

"She should really have been a
doctor," Hester said again, smiling at her own memories. "She would
have been so gifted!"

'That is why being so desperate to
marry just isn't like her," Faith replied. "If it had been to be
accepted into medical training, I would have believed it. I think she would
have done anything for that. Although it was impossible—of course. I know that.
No school anywhere takes women."

"I wonder if they ever would
..." Hester said very slowly. "If an important enough surgeon—say,
someone like Sir Herbert—were to recommend it?"

"Never!" Faith denied it
even while the thought lit her eyes.

"Are you sure?" Hester
said urgently, leaning forward. "Are you sure Prudence might not have
believed they would?"

"You mean that was what she
was trying to force Sir Herbert to do?" Faith's eyes widened in dawning
belief. "Nothing at all to do with marriage, but to help her receive
medical training—not as a nurse but as a doctor? Yes— yes—that is possible.
That would be Prudence. She would do that." Her face was twisted with
emotion. "But how? Sir Herbert would laugh at her and tell her not to be
so absurd."

"I don't know how,"
Hester confessed. "But that is something she would do—isn't it?"

"Yes—yes she would."

Hester bent to the letters again,
reading them in a new light—understanding why the operations were so detailed,
every procedure, every patient's reaction noted so precisely.

She read several more letters
describing operations written out in technical detail. Faith sat silently,
waiting.

Then quite suddenly Hester froze.
She had read three operations for which the procedure was exactly the same.
There was no diagnosis mentioned, no disease, no symptoms of pain or
dysfunction at all. She went back and reread them very carefully. All three
patients were women.

Then she knew what had caught her
attention: they were three abortions—not because the mother's life was endangered,
simply because for whatever personal reason she did not wish to bear the child.
In each case Prudence had used exactly the same wording and recording of
it—like a ritual.

Hesjer raced through the rest of
the letters, coming closer to the present. She found seven more operations
detailed in exactly the same way, word for word, and each time the patient's
initials were given but not her name, and no physical description. That also
was different from all other cases she had written up: in others she had
described the patient in some detail, often with personal opinion added—such
as: "an attractive woman" or "an overbearing man."

There was one obvious conclusion:
Prudence knew of these operations, but she had not attended them herself. She
had been told only sufficient to nurse them for the first few hours afterwards.
She was keeping her notes for some other reason.

Blackmail! It was a cold, sick
thought—but it was inescapable. This was her hold over Sir Herbert. This was
why Sir Herbert had murdered her. She had tried to use her power, had tried
once too hard, and he had stretched out his strong beautiful hands and put them
around her neck—and tightened his hold until there was no breath in her!

Hester sat still in the small room
with the light fading outside. She was suddenly completely cold, as if she had
swallowed ice. No wonder he had looked dumbfounded when he had been accused of
having an affair with Prudence. How ridiculously, absurdly far from the truth.

She had wanted him to help her
study medicine, and had used her knowledge of his illegal operations to try to
force him—and paid for it with her life.

She looked up at Faith.

Faith was watching her, her eyes
intent on Hester's face.

"You know," she said
simply. "What is it?"

Carefully and in detail Hester
explained what she knew.

Faith sat ashen-faced, her eyes
dark with horror.

"What are you going to
do?" she said when Hester finished.

"Go to Oliver Rathbone and
tell him," Hester answered.

"But he is defending Sir
Herbert!" Faith was aghast. "He is on Sir Herbert's side. Why don't
you go to Mr. Lovat-Smith?"

"With what?" Hester
demanded. "This is not proof. We understand this only because we knew
Prudence. Anyway, Lovat-Smith's case is closed. This isn't a new witness, or
new evidence—it is only a new understanding of what the court has already
heard. No, I'll go to Oliver. He may know what to do—please God!"

"He'll get away with it,"
Faith said desperately. "Do you—do you really think we are right?"

"Yes, I do. But I'm going to
Oliver tonight. I suppose we could be mistaken—but ... no—we are not. We are
right" She was on her feet, scrambling to pick up her wrap, chosen during
the warmth of the day and too thin for the chiller evening air.

"You can't go alone,"
Faith protested. "Where does he live?"

"Yes I can. This is no
occasion for propriety. I must find a hansom. There is no time to lose. Thank
you so much for letting me have these. I'll return them, I promise." And
without waiting any longer she stuffed the letters in her rather large bag,
hugged Faith Barker, and bolted out of the sitting room down the stairs and out
into the cool, bustling street.

* * * * *

“I suppose so," Rathbone said
dubiously, holding the sheaf of letters in his hand. "But medical school?
A woman! Can she really have imagined that was possible?"

"Why not?" Hester said
furiously. "She had all the skill and the brains, and a great deal more
experience than most students when they start. In fact, than most when they finish!"

"But then ..." he began,
then met her eyes and stopped. Possibly he thought better of his argument, or
more likely he saw the expression on her face and decided discretion was the
better part of valor.

"Yes?" she demanded.
"But what?"

"But did she have the
intellectual stamina and the physical stomach to carry it through," he
finished, looking at her warily.

"Oh I doubt that!" Her
voice was scalding with sarcasm. "She was only a mere woman, after all.
She managed to study on her own in the British Museum library, get out to the
Crimea and survive there, on the battlefield and in the hospital. She remained
and worked amid the carnage and mutilation, epidemic disease, filth, vermin,
exhaustion, hunger, freezing cold, and obstructive army authority. I doubt she
could manage a medical course at a university!"

"All right," he conceded.
"It was a foolish thing to have said. I beg your pardon. But you are
looking at it from her point of view. I am trying to see it, however mistaken
they are, from that of the authorities who would—or would not—have allowed her
in. And honestly, however unjust, I believe there is no chance whatsoever that
they would."

"They might have," she
said passionately, "if Sir Herbert had argued for her."

"We'll never know." He
pursed his lips. "But it does shed a different light on it. It explains
how he had no idea why she appeared to be in love with him." He frowned.
"It also means he was less than honest with me. He must have known what
she referred to."

"Less than honest!" she
exploded, waving her hands in the air.

"Well, he should have told me
he gave her some hope, however false, of being admitted to study
medicine," he replied reasonably. "But perhaps he thought the jury
would be less likely to believe that." He looked confused. "Which
would make less of a motive for him. It is curious. I don't understand
it."

"Dear God! I do!" She
almost choked over the words. She wanted to shake him till his teeth rattled.
"I read the rest of the letters myself—carefully. I know what they mean. I
know what hold she had over him! He was performing abortions, and she had
detailed notes of them— names of the patients and days, treatments—everything!
He killed her, Oliver. He's guilty!"

He held out his hand, his face
pale.

She pulled the letters out of her
bag and gave them to him.

"It's not proof," she
conceded. "If it had been, I'd have given them to Lovat-Smith. But once
you know what it means, you understand it—and what must have happened. Faith
Barker knows it's true. The chance to study and qualify properly is the only
thing Prudence would have cared about enough to use her knowledge like
that."

Without answering he read silently
all the letters she had given him. It was nearly ten minutes before he looked
up.

"You're right," he
agreed. "It isn't proof."

"But he did it! He murdered
her."

"Yes—I agree."

"What are you going to
do?" she demanded furiously.

"I don't know."

"But you know he's
guilty!"

"Yes ... yes I do. But I am
his advocate."

"But—" She stopped. There
was finality in his face, and she accepted it, even though she did not
understand. She nodded. "Yes—all right."

He smiled at her bleakly.
"Thank you. Now I wish to think."

He called her a hansom, handed her
up into it, and she rode home in wordless turmoil.

* * * * *

As Rathbone came into the cell Sir
Herbert rose from the chair where he had been sitting. He looked calm, as if he
had slept well and expected the day to bring him vindication at last. He
looked at Rathbone apparently without seeing the total change in his manner.

"I have reread Prudence's
letters," Rathbone said without waiting for him to speak. His voice
sounded brittle and sharp.

Sir Herbert heard the tone in it
and his eyes narrowed.

"Indeed? Does that have
significance?"

"They have also been read by someone
who knew Prudence Barrymore and herself had nursing experience."

Sir Herbert's expression did not
alter, nor did he say anything.

"She writes in very precise
detail of a series of operations you performed on women, mostly young women.
It is apparent from what she wrote that those operations were abortions."

Sir Herbert's eyebrows rose.

"Precisely," he agreed.
"But Prudence never attended any of them except before and afterwards. I
performed the actual surgery with the assistance of nurses who had not sufficient
knowledge to have any idea of what I was doing. I told them it was for
tumors—and they knew no differently. Prudence's writings of her opinions are
proof of nothing at all."

"But she knew it,"
Rathbone said harshly. "And that was the pressure she exerted over you:
not for marriage—she would probably not have married you if you had begged
her—but for your professional weight behind her application to attend a
medical school."

"That was absurd." Sir
Herbert dismissed the very idea with a wave of his hand. "No woman has
ever studied medicine. She was a good nurse, but she could never have been
more. Women are not suitable." He smiled at the idea, derision plain in
his face. "It requires a man's intellectual fortitude and physical
stamina—not to mention emotional balance."

"And moral integrity—you
missed that," Rathbone said with scalding sarcasm. "Was that when you
killed her— when she threatened to expose you for performing illegal operations
if you did not at least put in a recommendation for her?"

"Yes," Sir Herbert said
with total candor, meeting Rathbone's eyes. "She would have done it. She
would have ruined me. I was not going to permit that."

Rathbone stared at him. The man was
actually smiling.

"There is nothing you can do
about it," Sir Herbert said irery calmly. "You cannot say anything,
and you cannot withdraw from the case. It would prejudice my defense totally.
You would be disbarred, and they would probably declare a mistrial anyway. You
still would not succeed."

He was right, and Rathbone knew
it—and looking at Sir Herbert's smooth, comfortable face, he knew he knew it
also.

"You are a brilliant
barrister." Sir Herbert smiled quite openly. He put his hands in his pockets.
"You have defended me almost certainly successfully. You do not need to
do anything more now except give a closing speech— which you will do perfectly,
because you cannot do anything else. I know the law, Mr. Rathbone."