A Breach of Promise

by Anne Perry

  But there remained in him something concealed, elusive. The core of the man was shielded and, to Rathbone at least, inaccessible. He had made no judgment within himself.

  He reached the house in which Wolff had rooms and pulled the bell at the door. A manservant showed him in and up the stairs to a very gracious hall opening into apartments which took up the whole of the front of the house.

  Isaac Wolff admitted him and led him to a sitting room which overlooked the street, but the windows were sufficiently well curtained that the sense of privacy was in no way marred. It was old-fashioned. There was nothing of the grace and imagination of Killian Melville’s architecture, but it was also restful and extremely pleasing. The furniture was dark and heavy, the walls lined with books, although there was no time to look and see what subjects they covered.

  Wolff stared at him levelly and with a cold intensity. It was not unfriendly, but it was guarded. He was anticipating attack. Rathbone wondered if it had happened before—suspicion, accusation, innuendo. It must be a wretched way to live.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Wolff.” Rathbone found himself apologetic. This was an intrusion any man would loathe. “I’m sorry, but I have to speak to you about today’s evidence. I have already consulted with Mr. Sacheverall, and it is possible he may persuade Mr. Lambert to settle without returning to court, but it is a very slender hope, and we certainly cannot count on it.”

  Wolff took a deep breath and let it out silently. A very slight smile touched his lips.

  “You must be extremely effective, Sir Oliver. What on earth did you say to him that he would even consider settling? He seems to have won outright. What he says is untrue, but there is no way I could prove it.”

  “No one can ever prove such things,” Rathbone agreed, coming a step or two farther into the room and taking the seat Wolff indicated to him. “That is the nature of slander. It works by innuendo, belief and imagination. It plays upon the ugliest sides of human nature, but so subtly there is no armor against it. It is the coward’s tool, and like most men, I despise it.” He looked at Wolff’s dark face with its brilliant eyes and curious, sensitive mouth. “But as I pointed out to Sacheverall, it is a weapon that fits almost any hand, mine as well as his, if need be.”

  “Yours?” Wolff looked surprised. He remained standing, his back now to the window, silhouetted against it. “Who could you slander, and how would it help? Would it not simply reduce Melville to the appearance of a viciousness born of desperation?”

  “Yes, probably. And it is not inconceivable he would refuse to do it anyway,” Rathbone conceded. “But Sacheverall does not know that, nor dare he rely upon it. He cannot be certain that if Melville is staring ruin in the face, he may not alter his hitherto honorable character and strike anywhere he can.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Wolff said simply. There was no doubt in his eyes, only a kind of bitter, powerful laughter.

  “I believe you,” Rathbone acknowledged, and he spoke honestly. He surprised himself, but he felt no uncertainty at all that Melville would accept complete destruction before he would sink to saying something of Zillah Lambert he knew to be untrue. He was a man whose behavior in the whole affair was a succession of acts which did not have any apparent logical or emotional line of connection. Rathbone was assailed again with an overwhelming conviction that there was something, one powerful, all-consuming fact, which he did not know but which would explain it all.

  Something eased in Wolff’s demeanor, something indefinable it was so slight. He was waiting for Rathbone to explain.

  “Sacheverall is risking his client’s well-being as well as his own, so he has to be certain.” Rathbone crossed his legs and smiled up at Wolff, not in humor or even comfort, but in a certain sense of communication that they were in alliance against an attitude, a set of beliefs which they both found repellent but that was too delicate to be given words. “And he may guess or judge that Melville will not react with attack, but he will not judge it of me. He knows better. I too will behave in the interests of my client, not necessarily having sought his permission first.”

  “Would you?” Wolff said quietly.

  “I don’t know.” Rathbone smiled at himself. It was true; he did not know what he would reveal were Monk to discover anything. What he did know, without doubt, was that he would drive Monk to learn every jot there was to know: about Zillah Lambert, her father, her mother, and anyone else who could conceivably have any bearing on the case. “I don’t know if there is anything, but then neither does Sacheverall.”

  Wolff let out his breath slowly.

  “But I must know what they can learn about Melville,” Rathbone went on reluctantly. “Not what is true or untrue … but what witnesses can he call and what will they say?”

  Wolff stiffened again and his voice was unnaturally steady. “That Melville and I are friends,” he replied without looking away. “That he has visited me here, sometimes during the day, sometimes in the evening.”

  “Overnight?”

  “No.”

  Rathbone was not sure if there had been a hesitation or if he had imagined it. He was not even sure how much it mattered. Once an idea was sown in someone’s mind, without realizing it, memory became slanted towards what was believed. No deception need be intended, nevertheless it was carried out, and when a thing had been put into words it assumed a kind of reality. No one wanted to go back upon testimony. It was embarrassing. The longer one clung to it and the more often it was repeated, the harder it was to alter.

  “Anything else?” Rathbone asked. “No more than that? Please tell me the truth, Mr. Wolff. I cannot defend Melville, or you, from what I do not know.”

  But Wolff was as stubborn as Melville. He gave the same blank stare and denied it again.

  “How long have you known Melville?” Rathbone pursued.

  Wolff thought for a moment. “About twelve years, I think, maybe a little less.”

  “Do you know why he changed his mind about marrying Miss Lambert?”

  Wolff was still standing with his back to the window, but the light was shining on the side of his face, and Rathbone could see his expression clearly. There was no change in it, no shadow.

  “He didn’t,” he replied. “He never intended to. He liked her. It was a friendship which he believed she shared in the same spirit. He was appalled when he realized both she and her family read something quite different into it.”

  Rathbone could see there was no point in attempting to learn anything more from Wolff. He considered asking neighbors himself, but Monk would be far more skilled at it, and he had other things to do. He rose to his feet and excused himself, thanking Wolff for his time and warning him that their hopes of settling without returning to court were still negligible. He left feeling angry and disappointed, although he could not have named what he had hoped to find.

  “What do you want me to discover?” Monk asked as they sat together over an excellent meal of roast saddle of mutton and spring vegetables. They were in one of Rathbone’s favorite hostelries; he had invited Monk to join him partly because it was a miserable case he was requesting him to follow, but largely because he felt like indulging himself in an undeniable pleasure, like good food, good drink, a roaring fire and someone to wait upon him with courtesy and a cheerful manner. This particular dining room offered all these things. It was bustling with life, and yet not overcrowded. They had been given a table out of the draft from the door and yet not too far into a corner and not near noisy companions.

  “The worst they can find for themselves, or create out of confused and prejudiced observations,” he answered Monk’s question as the serving girl left a tankard of ale for them and he acknowledged it with thanks.

  Monk helped himself to another crisp roasted potato. “I presume you have already spoken to this man Wolff and to Melville himself?”

  “Of course. They deny it, but add very little.”

  “Do you believe them?” Monk was curious, there was no decision or assumpti
on in his eyes.

  Rathbone thought for a moment or two, eating slowly. The mutton was excellent.

  “I don’t know,” he said at last. “They are both lying about something. I feel it in Wolff, and I am certain of it in Melville, but I don’t know what. I am not at all sure it is that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know!” Rathbone said sharply. “If I did, I wouldn’t need you!”

  Monk looked amused, even faintly satisfied.

  “And I need weapons against Lambert if Sacheverall doesn’t settle,” Rathbone continued. “And I don’t suppose he will. He’ll go to Lambert and ask if there is anything I can find. Lambert will swear there isn’t. If Sacheverall has any sense he’ll speak to Zillah alone and ask her. Whatever there is, or is not, I don’t know.”

  “But you need to,” Monk concluded for him, leaning across and taking the last potato.

  “Precisely.”

  “And if there is, would you use it?” Monk asked.

  “That is not your concern. Unless, of course, you are telling me you will not look for it if I would.”

  Monk laughed. “I have often wondered just how hard you would fight if you were tested, which weapon you might decide to use. I was simply interested. I’ll learn what I can.”

  “And tell me what you wish to?” Rathbone said dryly.

  “Of course. I presume you are accepting the bill yourself?”

  At the nearest table a man roared with laughter.

  “Of course. Will you please pass me the horseradish sauce?” Monk obliged, smiling widely.

  Sacheverall sent Rathbone a very clear and tersely worded message that his client would not settle, and Thursday morning saw them back in court, Sacheverall standing in the open space before the high witness-box and facing first the judge, then the jury. He affected to ignore the public benches, now far more crowded again.

  “I call Major Albert Hillman.”

  Major Hillman duly appeared, walking with a decided limp. He stared straight ahead of him, refusing to look at Rathbone or Melville where they sat, or at Sacheverall himself standing feet a little apart, back straight, like a circus ringmaster with his arms a trifle lifted. Major Hillman climbed the steps with difficulty and took the oath.

  “I’m sorry to call you on this distressing matter, sir,” Sacheverall apologized. “I hope your injury does not pain you too much?”

  Rathbone sighed. Obviously it was going to prove to be a war wound, nobly obtained, which was why Sacheverall had drawn attention to it. It was all predictable, but nonetheless effective for that.

  “My duty, sir,” the major replied stiffly. His distaste was plain in his face and in the downward dropping of his voice.

  “Of course.” Sacheverall nodded. “I shall be as brief as possible. I would not do this at all … had Mr. Melville been prepared to concede the case”—he glanced at Rathbone briefly, and away again—“and admit his fault without necessitating this unpleasant disclosure.”

  The judge leaned forward. “You have made sufficient apology, Mr. Sacheverall. Please proceed to your evidence.”

  “My lord.” Sacheverall bowed.

  McKeever’s wide blue eyes did not seem to change at all, and yet even from where Rathbone was sitting, he could see a coldness in the judge. This should not have been a criminal matter, not even a legal one. A domestic sadness, a misunderstanding of emotions, had escalated into something which was now going to ruin lives and perhaps deprive the world of one of its most brilliant and creative talents. One young woman had had her marriage hopes blighted, and no doubt she had suffered a deep and extremely powerful sense of rejection. But she was young, extremely handsome, wealthy and of a charming disposition. She would recover, as everyone does. She could simply have said that they quarreled and she had broken the betrothal. It would have raised a few eyebrows. In a month it would have become uninteresting. In a year it would have been forgotten.

  This was ridiculous. Without thinking, Rathbone was on his feet.

  “My lord! Before we proceed to drag two men’s private lives before the public and suggest matters which cannot be proved, and should not be our concern, over the—”

  Sacheverall had swung around, staring with exaggerated amazement at Rathbone.

  “My lord! Is Sir Oliver saying that acts of sexual perversion and depravity are not of public concern simply because they do not happen in the middle of the street?” He flung out his arm dramatically. “Is a crime not a crime because it occurs behind closed doors? Is that his view of morality? I hope he cannot mean what he says.”

  Rathbone was furious. He could feel the heat burn up his face.

  “Mr. Sacheverall knows I suggest nothing of the sort!” he snapped. “I ask that we not descend into the realms of prurient unprovable speculation into men’s personal lives in an effort to justify acts of misunderstanding, carelessness or at worst irresponsibility. This cannot help anyone! All parties will be hurt, perhaps quite wrongly. They will learn to hate, where before there was merely sadness. They—”

  “In other words, my lord,” Sacheverall said jeeringly, glancing at the gallery and back at McKeever, “Sir Oliver would like my client to forgive his client and simply abandon the case, with Miss Lambert’s reputation still in question and her feelings ravaged as if all that were of no importance whatever. I fear Sir Oliver betrays all too scant a regard for the purity, the sensibilities, and the true and precious value of women! In deference to his dislike for scandalous suppositions which cannot be proved, I will make no suggestions as to why.”

  Rathbone took a step forward. “I regard Miss Lambert’s reputation as of great importance,” he said gratingly, almost between his teeth. “The difference between us is that I regard Mr. Melville’s reputation also … and Mr. Wolff’s. He is no party to this case, and yet he stands to lose a great deal, without proof of guilt, having harmed no one.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Sacheverall retorted. “And as to whether such acts are wrong—or not—that will depend upon another court. But I know what the public thinks!” He all but laughed as he said it, again inclining his head toward the gallery as if he spoke for them and with their approval.

  McKeever sighed. He looked at Sacheverall with dislike.

  “No doubt you do,” he said quietly. “But this is a court of law, Mr. Sacheverall, not a place of public speculation and gossip.” He looked at Rathbone. “I regret, Sir Oliver, but passionate as your plea is, it is not an argument in law. If Mr. Sacheverall’s client wishes to pursue this line of testimony, I am obliged to allow it.”

  Rathbone swiveled around to look where Barton Lambert was sitting a little behind Sacheverall, his wife beside him. Her pretty face with its unusual brow was set in extraordinary determination. He had not realized earlier, when she was full of charm and elegance, what power there was in her. He felt certain she was the driving force behind this suit. It was she who understood precisely what damage could be done her daughter if the word was whispered around that a young man who had been in love with her had at the last moment broken his betrothal. Zillah was lovely, wealthy, of perfectly adequate social standing. Whatever fault she had was not a visible one, therefore it could only be invisible, leaving the imagination to rise—or sink—to any level. Barton Lambert might have some pity for Melville. Delphine had none.

  Rathbone returned to his seat and awaited the worst.

  It came. Sacheverall began to question the major as to his residence, which was the same gracious building as Isaac Wolff, and then took him step by reluctant, unpleasant step through his observations of Killian Melville’s visits, the time of day or evening, as far as he could remember them, what he was wearing, his general air and demeanor. He obliged the major to describe Wolff’s greeting Melville at the door, their evident pleasure in seeing each other. It was all done with some subtlety. There was nothing whatever to which Rathbone could object. He caught McKeever’s eye a number of times, and saw his dislike of the pattern the question
ing was following, but an equal resolve to abide by the law.

  An hour later, when Sacheverall was finished and turned with a smile of invitation to Rathbone, he had established a regular pattern of visits between the two men and that they frequently lasted for several hours. He could not and would not guess as to what happened within Wolff’s rooms once the outer door was closed, but the pinkness of his cheeks and his evident embarrassment and rising anger made his thoughts transparent.

  Rathbone rose with his mind in turmoil. He had seldom felt so inadequate to a case or so angry with his adversary. He had often fought hard, and lost more than he wished, but to a better case, and to a man he respected. Indeed, Ebenezer Goode, a man he had often faced, was also a personal friend.

  He loathed Wystan Sacheverall, and it was more than just the fact he was winning easily. There was a prurience in the man which repelled him.

  “Major Hillman,” Rathbone began courteously, walking forward towards the witness stand, “I am sure you would rather not be here on this matter, and I should not press you were there not absolute necessity.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the major said stiffly. He did not know what to make of Rathbone, and it was clear in the expression in his rather plain face.

  “Are you acquainted with Mr. Wolff? Do you speak to him if you should meet on the landing or stairs?”

  “Yes—yes, I have until now.” Hillman was obviously nonplussed.

  “But something here has changed your mind?” Rathbone suggested helpfully. “Something that has been said today?”

  Hillman looked acutely, unhappy. He stood as if to attention, shoulders square, back stiff, eyes straight ahead.

  “Perhaps I can assist you,” Rathbone offered. “Mr. Sacheverall has suggested a relationship which would be quite improper, and you might find that repugnant to you?”