A sudden, fearful death (58 page)

"Possibly," Rathbone said
between his teeth. "But you do not know
me,
Sir Herbert." He
looked at him with a hatred so intense his stomach ached, his breath was tight
in his chest, and his jaw throbbed with a pain where he had clenched it.
"But the trial is not over yet." And without waiting for Sir Herbert
to do or say anything else, to give any instructions, he turned on his heel and
marched out.

Chapter 12

They stood in Rathbone's office in
the early morning sun, Rathbone white-faced, Hester filled with confusion and
despair, Monk incredulous with fury.

"Damn it, don't stand
there!" Monk exploded. "What are you going to do? He's guilty!"

"I know he's guilty,"
Rathbone said between his teeth. "But he's also right—there is nothing I
can do. The letters are not proof, and anyway, we've already read them into
evidence once, we can't go back now and try to tell the court they mean
something else. It's only Hester's interpretation. It's the right one—but I
can't repeat anything Sir Herbert said to me in confidence—even if I didn't
care about being disbarred, which I do! They'd declare a mistrial anyway."

"But there must be
something," Hester protested, desperately clenching her fists, her body
rigid. "Even the law can't just let that happen."

"If you can think of
anything," Rathbone said with a bitter smile, "so help me God, I'll
do it. Apart from the monumental injustice of it, I can't think when I have
hated a man so much." He closed his eyes, the muscles in his cheeks and
jaws tight. "He stood there with that bloody smile on his face—he knows I
have to defend him, and he was laughing at me!"

Hester stared at him helplessly.

"I beg your pardon." He
apologized automatically for his language. She dismissed it with an impatient
gesture. It was totally unimportant.

Monk was lost in concentration, not
seeing the room around them but something far in his inner mind.

On the mahogany mantel the clock
ticked the seconds by. The sun shone in a bright pool on the polished floor between
the window and the edge of the carpet. Beyond in the street someone hailed a
cab. There were no clerks or juniors in the office yet.

Monk shifted position.

"What?" Hester and
Rathbone demanded in unison.

"Stanhope was performing
abortions," Monk said slowly.

"No proof," Rathbone
said, dismissing it. "Different nurse each time, and always women too
ignorant to know how to do anything but pass him the instruments he pointed at
and clean up after him. They would accept that the operation was whatever he
told them—removal of a tumor seems most obvious."

"How do you know?"

"Because he told me. He is
perfectly open about it, because he knows I can't testify to it!"

"His word," Monk pointed
out dryly. "But that isn't the point."

"It is," Rathbone
contradicted. "Apart from the fact that we don't know which nurses—and God
knows, there are enough ignorant ones in the hospital. They won't testify, and
the court wouldn't believe them above Sir Herbert even if they would. Can you
imagine one of them, ignorant, frightened, sullen, probably dirty and not
necessarily sober." His face twisted with a bitter, furious smile. "I
would rip her apart in moments."

He assumed a stance at once
graceful and satirical. "Now, Mrs. Moggs—how do you know that this
operation was an abortion and not the removal of a tumor, as the eminent
surgeon, Sir Herbert Stanhope, has sworn? What did you see—precisely?" He
raised his eyebrows. "And what is your medical expertise for saying such a
thing? I beg your pardon, where did you say you trained? How long had you been
on duty? All night? Doing what? Oh yes—emptying the slop pail, sweeping the
floor, stoking the fire. Are these your usual duties, Mrs. Moggs? Yes I see.
How many glasses of porter? The difference between a large tumor and a six-week
fetus? I don't know. Neither do you? Thank you, Mrs. Moggs—that will be
all."

Monk drew in his breath to speak,
but Rathbone cut him off.

"And you have absolutely no
chance at all of getting the patients to testify. Even if you could find them,
which you can't. They would simply support Sir Herbert and say it was a
tumor." He shook his head in tightly controlled fury. "Anyway it is
all immaterial! We can't call them. And Lovat-Smith doesn't know anything about
it! And his case is closed. He can't reopen it at this point without an exceptional
reason."

Monk looked bleak.

"I know all that. I wasn't
thinking of the women. Of course they won't testify. But how did they know that
Sir Herbert would perform abortions?"

"What?"

"How did—" Monk began.

"Yes! Yes I heard you!"
Rathbone cut across him again. "Yes, that is certainly an excellent
question, but I don't see how the answer could help us, even if we knew it. It
is not a thing one advertises. It must be word of mouth in some way." He
turned to Hester. "Where does one go if one wishes to obtain an
abortion?"

"I don't know," she said
indignantly. Then, the moment after, she frowned. "But perhaps we could
find out?'

"Don't bother." Rathbone
dismissed it with a sharp return of misery. "Even if you found out, with
proof, we couldn't call a witness, nor could we tell Lovat-Smith. Our hands are
tied."

Monk stood near the window, the
clarity of the sunlight only emphasizing the hard lines of his face, the smooth
skin over his cheeks, and the power of his nose and mouth.

"Maybe," he conceded.
"But it won't stop me looking. He killed her, and I'm going to see that
sod hang for it if I can." And without waiting to see what either of them
thought, he turned on his heel and went out, leaving the door swinging behind
him.

Rathbone looked at Hester standing
in the center of the floor.

"I don't know what I'm going
to do," she said quietly. "But I'm going to do something. What
you
must do"—she smiled very slightly to soften the arrogance of what she
was saying—"is keep the trial going as long as you can."

"How?" His eyebrows shot
up. "I've finished!"

"I don't know! Call more
character witnesses to say what a fine man he is."

"I don't need them," he
protested.

"I know you don't. Call them
anyway." She waved a hand wildly. "Do something, anything—just don't
let the jury bring in a verdict yet."

"There's no point—"

"Do it!" she exploded,
her voice tight with fury and exasperation. "Just don't give up."

He smiled very slightly, merely a
touch at the corners of his lips, but there was a shining admiration in his
eyes, even if there was no hope at all.

"For a while," he
conceded. "But there isn't any point."

* * * * *

Callandra knew how the trial was progressing. She had
been there on that last afternoon, and she saw Sir Herbert's face, and the way
he stood in the dock, calm-eyed and straight-backed, and she saw that the
jurors were quite happy to look at him. There was not one who avoided his
glance or whose cheeks colored when he looked toward them. It was plain they
believed him not guilty.

So someone else was—someone else
had murdered Prudence Barrymore.

Kristian Beck? Because he perfonned
abortions and she knew it, and had threatened to tell the authorities?

The thought was so sickening she
could no longer keep it at the back of her mind. It poisoned everything. She
tossed and turned in bed until long after midnight, then finally sat up
hunched over with her hands around her knees, trying to find the courage to
force the issue at last. She visualized facing him, telling him what she had
seen. Over and over again she worded it and reworded it to find a way that
sounded bearable. None did.

She played in her mind all the
possible answers he might give. He might simply lie—and she would know it was a
he and be heartsick. The hot tears filled her eyes and her throat at the
thought of it. Or he might confess it and make some pathetic, self-serving
excuse. And that would be almost worse. She thrust that thought away without
finishing it.

She was cold; she sat shivering on
the bed with the covers tangled uselessly beside her.

Or he might be angry and tell her
to mind her own business, order her to get out. It might be a quarrel she
could never heal—perhaps never really want to. That would be horrible—but
better than either of the other two. It would be violent, ugly, but at least
there would be a certain kind of honestly in it.

Or there was a last possibility:
that he would give her some explanation of what she had seen which was not
abortion at all but some other operation—perhaps trying to save Marianne after
a back-street butchery? That would be the best of all and he would have kept it
secret for her sake.

But was that really possible? Was
she not deluding herself? And if he did tell her such a thing, would she
believe it? Or would it simply return her to where she was now— full of doubt
and fear, and with the awful suspicion of a crime far worse.

She bent her head to her knees and
sat crumpled without knowledge of time.

Gradually she came to an
understanding that was inescapable. She must face him and live with whatever
followed. There was no other course which was tolerable.

* * * * *

"Come in."

She pushed the door open firmly and
entered. She, was shaking, and there was no strength in her limbs, but neither
was there indecision, that had been resolved and there was no thought of escape
now.

Kristian was sitting at his desk.
He rose as soon as he saw her, a smile of pleasure on his face in spite of very
obvious tiredness. Was that the sleeplessness of guilt? She swallowed, and her
breath caught in her throat, almost choking her.

"Callandra? Are you all
right?" He pulled out the other chair for her and held it while she sat
down. She had intended to stand, but found herself accepting, perhaps because
it put off the moment fractionally.

"No." She launched into
the attack without prevarication as he returned to his own seat. "I am
extremely worried, and I have decided to consult you about it at last. I cannot
evade it any longer."

The blood drained from his face,
leaving him ashen. The dark circles around his eyes stood out like bruises. His
voice when he spoke was very quiet and the strain was naked in it.

'Tell me."

This was even worse than she had
thought. He looked so stricken, like a man facing sentence.

"You look very tired ..."
she began, then was furious with herself. It was a stupid observation, and
pointless.

The sad ghost of a smile touched
his mouth.

"Sir Herbert has been absent
some time. I am doing what I can to care for his patients, but with them as
well as my own it is hard." He shook his head minutely. "But that is
unimportant. Tell me what you can of your health. What pain do you have? What
signs that disturb you?"

How stupid of her. Of course he was
tired—he must be exhausted, trying to do Sir Herbert's job as well as his own.

She had not even thought of that.
Neither had any of the other governors, so far as she knew. What a group of incompetents
they were! All they had spoken of when they met was the hospital's reputation.

And he had assumed she was
ill—naturally. Why else would she consult him with trembling body and husky
voice?

"I am not ill," she said,
meeting his eyes with apology and pain. "I am troubled by fear and
conscience." At last it was said, and it was the truth, no evasions. She
loved him. It eased her to admit it in words, without evasion at last She
stared at his face with all its intelligence, passion, humor, and sensuality.
Whatever he had done, that could not suddenly be torn out. If it came out at
all, it would leave a raw wound, like the roots of a giant tree ripping out of
the soil, upheaving all the land around it.

"By what?" he asked,
staring at her. "Do you know something about Prudence Barrymore's
death?"

"I don't think so—I hope
not...."

"Then what?"

This was the moment.

"A short while ago," she
began, "I accidentally intruded on you while you were performing an
operation. You did not see or hear me, and I left without speaking." He
was watching her with a small pucker of concern between his brows. "I
recognized the patient," she went on. "It was Marianne Gillespie, and
I fear that the operation was to abort the child she was carrying." She
did not need to go on. She knew from his face, the total lack of surprise or
horror in it, that it was true. She tried to numb herself so she would not feel
the pain inside. She must distance herself from him, realize that she could
not love a man who had done such things, not possibly. This abominable hurt
would not last!

"Yes it was," he said,
and there was neither guilt nor fear in his eyes. "She was with child as a
result of rape by her brother-in-law. She was in the very early stages, less
than six weeks." He looked sad and tired, and there was fear of hurt in
his face, but not shame. "I have performed abortions on several occasions before,"
he said quietly, "when I have been consulted early enough, in the first
eight or ten weeks, and the child is a result of violence or the woman is very
young indeed, sometimes even less than twelve years old"—or if she is in
such a state of ill health that to bear the child would, in my judgment, cost
her her own life. Not in any other circumstances and not ever for
payment." She wanted to interrupt him and say something, but her throat
was too tight, her lips stiff. "I am sorry if that is abhorrent to
you." A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. "Very sorry indeed. You
must know how deeply I care for you, although it has never been right that I
should tell you, since I am not free to offer you anything honorable—but whatever
you feel about it, I have thought long and deeply. I have even prayed."
Again the self-mocking humor flashed and disappeared. "And I believe it to
be right—acceptable before God. I believe in those cases a woman has the right
to choose. I cannot change that, even for you."