A Breach of Promise

by Anne Perry

  “Yes, of course I did! Obviously she didn’t trust me.”

  “What was to prevent her trusting Zillah Lambert, regardless of you?”

  “Well … nothing, I suppose.”

  “But years of rejection,” Henry concluded. “Years of lying and concealing. You cannot know everything that went before which made her what she was.” He reached for his tobacco and pulled out a few shreds between his fingers and thumb, pushing them into the bowl of his pipe. “Perhaps you were unimaginative not to have guessed, perhaps not. Either way, there is nothing you can do now except cripple yourself with remorse. That will serve no one. It is self-indulgent … and perhaps you need a little indulgence, but do not let it persist for too long. It can become a habit—and an excuse.”

  “My God, you’re a harsh judge,” Oliver said, jerking his head up to glare at his father.

  Henry struck a match and lit his pipe. It went out again immediately. His mouth softened, but there was no equivocation in his mild blue eyes.

  “Do you want to be invalided out?”

  “No, of course I don’t. And I’d like a glass of sherry. Actually, I left before I drank more than a sip of the port.”

  “It’s behind you.” Henry made another attempt at lighting his pipe.

  The following morning a little before noon Rathbone was in his offices in Vere Street when his clerk told him the police surgeon had called with information.

  “Ask him in,” Rathbone said immediately.

  The surgeon came in, looking grave.

  “Well?” Rathbone asked as soon as the barest formalities were over.

  “Definitely belladonna,” the surgeon replied, sitting down in the chair opposite the desk. “Not very surprising. Easy to come by.” He stopped.

  “But …” Rathbone prompted, sitting a little straighter.

  The surgeon bit his lips, his eyes narrowing. “But the thing that I find hard to understand, and which brings me back to you rather than merely sending you a report, is that from the amount she took, and the time she died, she must have taken it while she was still in the courthouse.” He drew his brows together. “Which can only mean she had it with her, presumably against such an eventuality as … what? What happened that afternoon that suddenly became unbearable?”

  Rathbone tried to think back. It had been the day Sacheverall had put the witnesses on the stand and exposed what he thought was a homosexual affair. Had Melville known that was going to happen, or feared it? If so, why had she not told Rathbone to plead guilty and settle out of court? She would have saved Wolff’s reputation at least. And if she loved him, surely she would have done that?

  Had she carried belladonna all the time, just in case?

  “Do you know something?” the surgeon asked. “I would guess she took it after two in the afternoon, and well before five in the evening, probably before four.”

  “Yes, it probably makes as much sense as suicide ever does,” Rathbone answered wearily.

  “You do not sound entirely convinced.” The surgeon looked at him with a slight shake of his head. “Is there some fact I should know?”

  “No. No … I am afraid it was a tragedy which may well have been inevitable from the moment Sacheverall called Isaac Wolff to the stand, let alone that damned prostitute. Thank you for coming to let me know in person.”

  The surgeon stood up and offered his hand. Rathbone took it, and then saw him to the door. He returned to his chair, still with a vague sense of unease, as if there was something unexplained or incomplete, but he could not think what. Probably it was as his father had said, his own sense of guilt.

  Nevertheless that evening he went to see Monk at his rooms in Fitzroy Street. He found him brooding over a handful of letters. He seemed quite pleased to be interrupted.

  “Trivial case,” he said, putting them aside and rising to his feet as Rathbone came in. “You look awful. Still thinking about Keelin Melville?”

  “Aren’t you?” Rathbone continued, throwing himself into the large chair reserved for clients. “The police surgeon came to see me today. It was belladonna she took. Some time in the afternoon.”

  “But she was in court all afternoon,” Monk said with surprise. “You were with her.”

  “Well, he was quite sure,” Rathbone repeated. “Said it had to have been between two and five at the latest, more likely four.”

  “What time did she leave court?” Monk pressed. He was sitting upright on his chair. “Is she supposed to have swallowed the stuff?”

  “Yes, of course! What else? Pulled out a syringe and put a needle into her arm?” Rathbone said tartly, but his attention was suddenly focused.

  “In what form?” Monk asked.

  “What?”

  “What form was the belladonna?” Monk clarified. “Pills? Drops? Powder? A mixture?”

  “I’ve no idea. I didn’t ask. What does it matter now?”

  Monk was frowning. “Well, didn’t you notice if she swallowed pills, took a drink of water, or had a flask? Someone must have seen. It was about as public a place as you can have, dammit! Why on earth would she do it there anyway? Why not wait until she got home with a little privacy?”

  “I don’t know.” Rathbone was thinking frantically now. “I can’t imagine what must have been on her mind. She panicked when Sacheverall put that prostitute on the stand. She realized her evidence would be unarguable, interpretable only one way.”

  “Then she didn’t know Sacheverall would call her until she saw her there?” Monk said quickly.

  Rathbone thought back. “No. I don’t think she did. I can’t be sure, of course, but insofar as I am any judge at all, she had no idea.”

  “Then why would she have taken belladonna with her … in a lethal dose?” Monk was leaning farther forward, his eyes still on Rathbone’s face. “And if she did know, why didn’t she take it before, and save Wolff’s reputation, at least? If she loved him at all, she would surely have done that. It doesn’t make sense, Rathbone, not as it is.”

  “Then find sense to it!” Rathbone said urgently. “I’m engaging you to do it—for me!” He cast aside his personal feelings, even his awareness that Monk must consider him incompetent at best for having allowed the case to come to this tragic end. He refused to think what Hester’s judgment would be. He hated asking for favors. The hard edge of his feeling was in his voice, and his awareness of vulnerability in front of Monk, of all people. “I want to know what it was that drove her to kill herself instead of fighting on. Couldn’t she have left England, gone to Italy or even the Middle East, or somewhere? With genius like hers she could surely have started again. Anything rather than death. And what about Wolff? She loved him …”

  Monk was looking at him for once without mockery. Only the faintest spark lit the backs of his eyes.

  “I’ll find out what I can.” Then he did smile. “My rates are very reasonable.”

  “Thank you,” Rathbone accepted stiffly. He felt awkward now, more than a little self-conscious. He stood up, straightening his jacket. It was nearly midnight. He had not realized how long it had taken him to travel to Primrose Hill and back. “I’m sorry to have kept you so late.”

  Monk stood up also. He hesitated, as if about to offer his hand. It was a peculiarly formal gesture, and at the last moment he changed his mind. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything,” he promised instead, and his face was very grave. Rathbone realized with warmth that he too felt angry and hurt and more than a little guilty.

  In the morning Monk abandoned the rather tedious letters in which he had been trying to find evidence of duplicity for a woman who felt her sister-in-law was behaving immorally, and set out for the Old Bailey.

  He passed several paperboys. Keelin Melville’s death was not on the front pages anymore. A fresh political event in France had superseded her, and there were whispers of a financial scandal in the city.

  At the courthouse he went up the steps two at a time and out of a surprisingly sharp wind. The wea
ther had changed and there was a hint of frost in the air. He had been there often enough to know several of the clerks and ushers, too well to deceive them as to his identity or his purpose for being there.

  “Good morning, Mr. Monk,” an elderly usher said to him before he was a dozen yards inside.

  “Good morning, Mr. Pearson,” he replied, coming to a stop. “Just the man I was hoping to see.”

  Pearson looked interested. “Oh, yes sir? Why would that be?” Monk was one of the more colorful people to enter his world, and his arrival heralded a break in routine. Added to which, if Monk was seeking him, then for a little while at least, Pearson would be more important than merely the efficient, almost invisible functionary he usually was.

  “I need to know a good deal more about the last day of the Melville trial. You are very observant of people …”

  “My job, sir,” Pearson answered with suitable gravity, but he stood a little straighter for the compliment. “Times there’s little else to do but notice people. What is it you need to know, Mr. Monk?”

  “Did Melville leave the courtroom at any time before the hearing ended?”

  “No sir.”

  “Are you sure? Not for any reason?”

  “No sir. They’d have had to halt the trial if he’d excused himself. Sir Oliver’ll have told you that.”

  Monk sighed. “I thought not, but he could have forgotten. He is very disturbed at the outcome.”

  Pearson shook his head. “Nobody likes to lose a case, but for the poor soul to have taken her life is truly terrible. I was very sorry to hear about that. He always seemed like a nice gentleman to me—or I suppose I should say lady, now. I never guessed. Never came into my mind.” He looked at Monk curiously, searching his face to see if he felt the same.

  “Nor mine,” Monk admitted. “The surgeon says she took the poison while she was here in the court, some time during that afternoon.”

  Pearson frowned. “I don’t rightly see how that could be, Mr. Monk. Was she supposed to have swallowed it like?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know where. She wouldn’t have eaten nor drunk anything in the courtroom. Judge wouldn’t allow it. And if she had, anyone would have seen. There’s always people looking at the accused, and that’s what it amounted to in this case, poor soul. Mr. Sacheverall went after him something fierce. I mean her. Still can’t get it into my head that she was a woman.”

  A group of junior counsel passed by, glancing at Monk, and one nodded as if he thought for a moment he knew him, then continued on his way.

  “Was there an adjournment for any reason?”

  “Yes! Yes … Sir Oliver tried again with Mr. Sacheverall. I remember that. It must have been then!” Memory quickened Pearson’s face. “Must have! No other time. I’m almost sure when Miss Melville left at the end of the day, she went straight out the back way, before the crowds could get at her. Sir Oliver went with her, then came out the front. If she really did take it here, and not after she left, then it must have been during the adjournment.”

  “Curious,” Monk said slowly.

  “Sir?”

  “Why didn’t she wait until she knew the result of Rathbone’s talk with Sacheverall? There might have been some better resolution.”

  “I don’t know, sir, I really don’t.” Pearson shook his head in agreement. “Don’t make a lot of sense, does it? Poor creature must have been out of her wits … afraid for Mr. Wolff, maybe?”

  Monk was not satisfied.

  “Do you want to speak with the usher around the corner when everyone left at that adjournment?” Pearson enquired helpfully. “He might have noticed if Miss Melville was given a drink, and maybe took a pill or a powder with it.”

  “Yes, please,” Monk accepted. “I can’t think what difference it makes now, but it seems such a pointless time to have begun the process of ending her own life … with a poison which acts over three or four hours.”

  “She was very distressed,” Pearson pointed out. “I remember her face. She looked like a person who has seen her whole world come to an end … more pain than she can endure.” His voice sank and the weight of sadness seemed to droop in his shoulders. He led the way up the wide hallway, stopping twice to ask other people where Mr. Sutton was, and in one of the side rooms eventually found a small man with a narrow chest and bright, dark eyes.

  “Oh … Mr. Sutton,” he said quickly. “This is Mr. Monk. He’s looking into how poor Miss Melville managed to take poison without anyone noticing. Seems it must have happened while she was here. Some time in the afternoon. Since they were in court all the time except for the adjournment, it looks like it was then.”

  “Wasn’t then,” Sutton said immediately, pursing his lips and looking beyond Pearson to Monk. “Sorry, sir, but I was outside the court all the time and Miss Melville never left the hallway.”

  “Did anyone bring her a glass of water, or perhaps offer her a flask?” Monk suggested.

  “No sir.” Sutton was quite firm. “She sat by herself until Mrs. Lambert went over to her and gave her back the gifts she’d given Miss Lambert. I saw a pair of earrings, a gold fob an’ a real pretty miniature painting o’ trees and such. Had them in a packet. Just opened it up and tipped them all out into Miss Melville’s hands. They were dusty as if they had been pushed to the back of a drawer. I hardly think she knew what was going on, that distracted she was.”

  “Are you certain Miss Melville didn’t eat or drink anything?” Monk pressed. It would be easy enough to understand if at this point she had taken a stiff brandy, if nothing else. Any normal person would have waited for the privacy of her own home to take poison. But Melville was a woman. Did women think or feel differently?

  He could imagine no reason why they should. Surely agony such as this knew no boundaries of sex!

  “What I don’t understand,” Pearson said, scratching the back of his neck, “is why she did it then. If it was me, I’d have done it the day before, when Mr. Sacheverall brought Mr. Wolff in—that is, if I were going to do it at all … which I can’t say I would. Although I can’t say I wouldn’t, not until I’d been there.”

  “No,” Monk agreed, staring at Sutton. “But you saw Melville all the time, and she didn’t eat or drink anything? Are you certain?”

  “If she had done, she didn’t drink from it in that adjournment, sir. I’d take an oath on that myself. She must’ve took the poison some other way, or more like some other time. I don’t want to overstep my place, sir, but maybe the doc got it wrong?”

  “Maybe …” Monk said, but he did not believe it. “Thank you, Mr. Sutton. You have been very helpful.” And with a word of thanks to Pearson as well, he walked back down the hallway.

  He spent several more hours confirming what he had been told, but he could find no variation in accounts. Melville had spoken to few people. She had been white-faced, her body rigid, her eyes reflecting the pain she must have felt, but she had neither eaten nor drunk anything.

  How had she taken the belladonna which had killed her? And why had she chosen to do it at such a time, instead of either the night before, after Wolff had testified, or that evening, after the prostitute had finally sealed Sacheverall’s case?

  Any answer he could think of was unsatisfactory, leaving questions in his mind, a darkness unresolved.

  10

  MONK SPENT a miserable, agitated evening. It would be ridiculous to expect every case to resolve into a solution so absolute there could be no doubt about any part of it. None ever did. There were always unknowns, thoughts he could not fathom. One had to let go once sufficient answers were found to be certain of the truth of the verdict.

  But this one troubled him more deeply than most. It was not only the tragedy of it, it was the feeling, the almost certainty, that Keelin Melville had some last secret she had taken to the grave with her, which would make sense of her behavior.

  He paced back and forth across his sitting room, ignoring the dying embers of the fire and the rai
n spattering against the windows, loud because he had forgotten to draw the curtains.

  He could understand why Melville had not told Zillah she was really a woman. She had kept the secret so long she could not trust anyone at all, except Wolff, not to reveal it. Perhaps it would only have been a confidence to a girl friend, whispered in exchange for some other romantic secret or dream, a moment’s hurt and loneliness eased by sharing. But then what would bind the friend to keep total silence? The chance to share such a dramatic piece of information could be a temptation too great.

  No, she was wiser to trust no one. Too much depended on it. And once the case had gone so far, it was too late to hope Barton Lambert would keep silent. If he had told anyone in anger, no matter how much he had regretted it, it would be too late to take it back. Knowledge can never be withdrawn.

  Before it all happened, Monk would have thought it trivial. What did it matter whether a person was a man or a woman, except to those who knew that person? The works of art were the same. Why not let it be known, and if there were no more commissions, then leave! Go to Italy, or France, or anywhere one liked.

  But Melville had spent twelve years in England, had designed some of the loveliest buildings in the country. She did not want to see them belittled for a reason that had nothing to do with their value. And she had been right. It was happening already, the derisory remarks, the suddenly altered perception when nothing in the reality was changed. She had been prepared to take the chance, and fought to survive in England.

  And, of course, once the trial had begun she could not leave. And it seemed she really had believed it would turn out differently.

  So what had made her change her mind and take belladonna poison … in the middle of the afternoon?

  He stopped at the window and stared out of it, seeing only the blur of the rain. Nobody else cared now, except Rathbone, of course, and that was for emotional reasons. He hated failure, and he was not used to guilt. Monk smiled to himself. He was much more used to it, but he liked it no better. The only difference was that for him it was a familiar pain, for Rathbone it had all the shock of the new.