by Anne Perry
Callandra bit her lip. “I was not sure they would find the right solution. They do not always.”
“Indeed they do not,” Rathbone agreed. “Thank you, Lady Callandra. I have no further questions for you.”
Before the judge could instruct her, Lovat-Smith rose to his feet again.
“Lady Callandra, do you believe they have found the correct answer in this instance?”
“Objection!” Rathbone said instantly. “Lady Callandra’s opinion, for all her excellence, is neither professional nor relevant to these proceedings.”
“Mr. Lovat-Smith,” Judge Hardie said with a little shake of his head, “if that is all you have to say, Lady Callandra is excused, with the court’s thanks.”
Lovat-Smith sat down again, his mouth tight, avoiding Rathbone’s glance.
Rathbone smiled, but with no satisfaction.
Lovat-Smith called Jeavis to the stand. He must have testified in court many times before, far more frequently than anyone else present, and yet he looked oddly out of place. His high, white collar seemed too tight for him, his sleeves an inch too short.
He gave evidence of the bare facts as he knew them, adding no emotion or opinion whatever. Even so, the jury drank in every word and only once or twice did any one of them look away from him and up at Sir Herbert in the dock.
Rathbone had debated with himself whether to cross-examine or not. He must not permit Lovat-Smith to goad him into making a mistake. There was nothing in Jeavis’s evidence to challenge, nothing further to draw out.
“No questions, my lord,” he said. He saw the flicker of amusement cross Lovat-Smith’s face.
The next prosecution witness was the police surgeon, who testified as to the time and cause of death. It was a very formal affair and Rathbone had nothing to ask of him either. His attention wandered. First he studied the jurors one by one. They were still fresh-faced, concentration sharp, catching every word. After two or three days they would look quite different; their eyes would be tired, muscles cramped. They would begin to fidget and grow impatient. They would no longer watch whoever was speaking but would stare around, as he was doing now. And quite possibly they would already have made up their minds whether Sir Herbert was guilty or not.
Lastly before luncheon adjournment Lovat-Smith called Mrs. Flaherty. She mounted the witness box steps very carefully, face white with concentration, black skirts brushing against the railings on either side. She looked exactly like an elderly housekeeper in dusty bombazine. Rathbone almost expected to see a chain of keys hanging from her waist and an expense ledger in her hand.
She faced the court with offense and disapproval in every pinched line of her features. She was affronted at the necessity of attending such a place. All criminal proceedings were beneath the dignity of respectable people, and she had never expected in all her days to find herself in such a position.
Lovat-Smith was obviously amused by it. There was nothing but respect in his face, and his manners were flawless, but Rathbone knew him well enough to detect it in the angle of his shoulders, the gestures of his hands, even the way he walked across the polished boards of the floor toward the stand and looked up at her.
“Mrs. Flaherty,” he began quietly. “You are a matron of the Royal Free Hospital, are you not?”
“I am,” she said grimly. She seemed about to add something more, then closed her lips in a thin line.
“Just so,” Lovat-Smith agreed. He had not been raised by a governess nor had he been in hospital. Efficient middle-aged ladies did not inspire in him the awe they did in many of his colleagues.
He had told Rathbone, in one of their rare moments of relaxation together, late at night over a bottle of wine, that he had gone to a charity school on the outskirts of the city before a patron, observing his intelligence, had paid for him to have extra tutelage.
Now Lovat-Smith looked up at Mrs. Flaherty blandly. “Would you be good enough, ma’am, to tell the court where you were from approximately six in the morning of the day Prudence Barrymore met her death until you heard that her body had been discovered? Thank you so much.”
Grudgingly and in precise detail she told him what he wished. As a result of his frequently interposed questions, she also told the court the whereabouts of almost all the other nurses on duty that morning, and largely those of the chaplain and the dressers also.
Rathbone did not interrupt. There was no point of procedure he quarreled with, nor any matter of fact. It would have been foolish to draw attention to the weakness of his position by fighting when he could not win. Let the jury think he was holding his fire in the certainty that he had a fatal blow to deliver at some future time. He sat back in his chair a little, composing his face into an expression of calm interest, a very slight smile on his lips.
He noticed several jurors glancing at him and then at Lovat-Smith, and knew they were wondering when the real battle would begin. They also took furtive looks at Sir Herbert, high up in the dock. He was very pale, but if there was terror inside him, or the sick darkness of guilt, not a breath of it showed in his face.
Rathbone studied him discreetly as Lovat-Smith drew more fine details from Mrs. Flaherty. Sir Herbert was listening with careful attention, but there was no real interest in his face. He seemed quite relaxed, his back straight, his hands clasped in front of him on the railing. It was all familiar territory and he knew it did not matter to the core of the case. He had never contested his own presence in the hospital at the time, and Mrs. Flaherty excluded only the peripheral players who were never true suspects.
Judge Hardie adjourned the court, and as they were leaving Lovat-Smith fell in step beside Rathbone, his curiously light eyes glittering with amusement.
“Whatever made you take it up?” he said quietly, but the disbelief was rich in his voice.
“Take what up?” Rathbone looked straight ahead of him as if he had not heard.
“The case, man! You can’t win!” Lovat-Smith watched his step. “Those letters are damning.”
Rathbone turned and smiled at him, a sweet dazzling smile showing excellent teeth. He said nothing.
Lovat-Smith faltered so minutely only an expert eye could have seen it. Then the composure returned and his expression became smooth again.
“It might keep your pocket, but it won’t do your reputation any good,” he said with calm certainty. “No knighthood in this sort of thing, you know.”
Rathbone smiled a little more widely to hide the fact that he feared Lovat-Smith was right.
The afternoon’s testimony was in many ways predictable, and yet it left Rathbone feeling dissatisfied, as he told his father later that evening when he visited him at his home in Primrose Hill.
Henry Rathbone was a tall, rather stoop-shouldered, scholarly man with gentle blue eyes masking a brilliant intellect behind a benign air and a rich, occasionally erratic and irreverent sense of humor. Oliver was more deeply fond of him than he would have admitted, even to himself. These occasional quiet dinners were oases of personal pleasure in an ambitious and extremely busy life.
On this occasion he was troubled and Henry Rathbone was immediately aware of it, although he had begun with all the usual trivial talk about the weather, the roses, and the cricket score.
They were sitting together in the evening light after an excellent supper of crusty bread, pâté, and French cheese. They had finished a bottle of red wine; it was not of a particularly good year, but satisfaction lent to the tongue what the vintage did not.
“Did you make a tactical error?” Henry Rathbone asked eventually.
“What makes you ask that?” Oliver looked at him nervously.
“Your preoccupation,” Henry replied. “If it had been something you had foreseen you would not still be turning it over in your mind.”
“I’m not sure,” Oliver confirmed. “In fact, I am not sure how I should approach this altogether.”
Henry waited.
Oliver outlined the case as he knew it so far. Henry
listened in silence, leaning back in his chair, his legs crossed comfortably.
“What testimony have you heard so far?” he asked when Oliver finally came to an end.
“Just factual this morning. Callandra Daviot recounted how she found the body. The police and the surgeon gave the facts of death and the time and manner, nothing new or startling. Lovat-Smith played it for all the drama and sympathy he could, but that was to be expected.”
Henry nodded.
“I suppose it was this afternoon,” Oliver said thoughtfully. “The first witness after luncheon was the matron of the hospital—a tense, autocratic little woman who obviously resented being called at all. She made it quite obvious she disapproved of ‘ladies’ nursing, and even Crimean experience won no favor in her eyes. In fact, the contrary—it challenged her dominion.”
“And the jury?” Henry asked.
Oliver smiled. “Disliked her,” he said succinctly. “She cast doubt on Prudence’s ability. Lovat-Smith endeavored to keep her quiet on that but she still created a bad impression.”
“But …” Henry prompted.
Oliver gave a sharp laugh. “But she swore that Prudence pursued Sir Herbert, asked to work with him and spent far more time with him than any other nurse. She did admit, grudgingly, that she was the best nurse and that Sir Herbert asked for her.”
“All of which you surely foresaw.” Henry looked at him closely. “It doesn’t sound sufficient to account for your feelings now.”
Oliver sat in thought. Outside the evening breeze carried the scent of late-blooming honeysuckle in through the open French windows and a flock of starlings massed against the pale sky, then swirled and settled again somewhere beyond the orchard.
“Are you afraid of losing?” Henry broke the silence. “You’ve lost before—and you will again, unless you prefer to take only certain cases, ones so safe they require only a conductor through the motions?”
“No, of course not!” Oliver said in deep disgust. He was not angry; the suggestion was too absurd.
“Are you afraid Sir Herbert is guilty?”
This time his answer was more considered. “No. No, I’m not. It’s a difficult case, no real evidence, but I believe him. I know what it is like to have a young woman mistake admiration or gratitude for a romantic devotion. One has absolutely no idea—beyond perhaps a certain vanity—I will confess to that, reluctantly. And then suddenly there she is, all heaving bosom and melting eyes, flushed cheeks—and there you are, horrified, mouth dry, brain racing, and feeling both a victim and a cad, and wondering how on earth you can escape with both honor and some kind of dignity.”
Henry was smiling so openly he was on the verge of laughter.
“It’s not funny!” Oliver protested.
“Yes it is—it’s delicious. My dear boy, your sartorial elegance, your beautiful diction, your sheer vanity, will one day get you into terrible trouble! What is this Sir Herbert like?”
“I am not vain!”
“Yes you are—but it is a small fault compared with many. And you have redeeming features. Tell me about Sir Herbert.”
“He is not sartorially elegant,” Oliver said a trifle waspishly. “He dresses expensively, but his taste is extremely mundane, and his figure and deportment are a trifle portly and lacking in grace. Substantial is the word I would choose.”
“Which says more about your feeling for him than about the man himself,” Henry observed. “Is he vain?”
“Yes. Intellectually vain. I think it very probable he did not even notice her except as an extremely efficient adjunct to his own skills. I would be very surprised if he even gave her emotions a thought. He expects admiration, and I have been led to believe he always gets it.”
“But not guilty?” Henry wrinkled his brow. “What would he have to lose if she accused him of impropriety?”
“Not nearly as much as she. No one of any standing would believe her. And there is no evidence whatever except her word. His reputation is immaculate.”
“Then what disturbs you? Your client is innocent and you have at least a fighting chance of clearing him.”
Oliver did not answer. The light was fading a little in the sky, the color deepening as the shadows spread across the grass.
“Did you behave badly?”
“Yes. I don’t know what else I could have done—but yes, I feel it was badly.”
“What did you do?”
“I tore Barrymore to shreds—her father,” Oliver answered quietly. “An honest, decent man devastated by grief for a daughter he adored, and I did everything I could to make him believe she was a daydreamer who fantasized about her abilities and then lied about them to others. I tried to show that she was not the heroine she seemed, but an unhappy woman who had failed in her dreams and created for herself an imaginary world where she was cleverer, braver, and more skilled than she was in truth.” He drew in a deep breath. “I could see in his face I even made him doubt her. God, I loathed doing that! I don’t think I have ever done anything for which I felt grubbier.”
“Is it true?” Henry’s voice was gentle.
“I don’t know. It could be,” Oliver said furiously. “That isn’t the point! I put dirty, irreverent fingers over the man’s dreams! I dragged out the most precious thing he had, held it up to the public, then smeared it all over with doubt and ugliness. I could feel the crowd hating me—and the jury—but not as much as I loathed myself.” He laughed abruptly. “I think only Monk equaled the hold of me as I was leaving and I thought he was going to strike me. He was white with rage. Looking at his eyes, I was frightened of him.” He gave a shaky laugh as the shame of that moment on the Old Bailey steps came back to him, the frustration and the self-disgust. “I think if he could have got away with it, he might have killed me for what I did to Barrymore—and to Prudence’s memory.” He stopped, aching for some word of denial, of comfort.
Henry looked at him with bright, sad eyes. There was love in his face, the desire to protect, but not to excuse.
“Was it a legitimate question to raise?” he asked.
“Yes, of course it was. She was normally a highly intelligent woman, but there was nothing whatever to make anyone, even a fool, think that Sir Herbert would leave his wife and seven children and ruin himself professionally, socially, and financially for her. It’s preposterous.”
“And what makes you think she believed he would?”
“The letters, damn it! And they are in her hand, there is no question about that. The sister identified them.”
“Then perhaps you do have a tormented woman with two quite distinct sides to her nature—one rational, brave, and efficient, the other quite devoid of judgment and even of self-preservation?” Henry suggested.
“I suppose so.”
“Then why do you blame yourself? What is it you have done that is so wrong?”
“Shattered dreams—robbed Barrymore of his most precious belief—and perhaps a lot of others as well, certainly Monk.”
“Questioned it,” Henry corrected. “Not robbed them—not yet.”
“Yes I have. I’ve made them doubt. It is tarnished. It won’t ever be the same again.”
“What do you believe?”
Oliver thought for a long time. The starlings were quiet at last. In the gathering dusk the perfume of the honeysuckle was even stronger.
“I believe there is something damned important that I don’t know yet,” he answered finally. “Not only don’t I know it, I don’t even know where to look.”
“Then go with your beliefs,” Henry advised, his voice comfortable and familiar in the near darkness. “If you don’t have knowledge, it is all you can do.”
The second day was occupied with Lovat-Smith’s calling a tedious procession of hospital staff who all testified to Prudence’s professional ability, and he was meticulous at no point to slight her. Once or twice he looked across at Rathbone and smiled, his gray eyes brilliant. He knew the precise values of all the emotions involved. It was po
intless hoping he would make an error. One by one he elicited from them observations of Prudence’s admiration for Sir Herbert, the inordinate number of times he chose her alone to work with him, their obvious ease with each other, and finally her apparent devotion to him.
Rathbone did what he could to mitigate the effect, pointing out that Prudence’s feelings for Sir Herbert did not prove his feelings for her, and that he was not even aware that on her part it was more than professional, let alone that he had actively encouraged her. But he had an increasingly unpleasant certainty that he had lost their sympathy. Sir Herbert was not an easy man to defend; he did not naturally attract their liking. He appeared too calm, too much a man in command of his own destiny. He was accustomed to dealing with those who were desperately dependent upon him for the relief of bodily pain, even the continuance of their physical existence.
Rathbone wondered if he were frightened behind that masklike composure, if he understood how close he was to the hangman’s noose and his own final pain. Was his mind racing, his imagination bringing out his body in cold sweat? Or did he simply believe such a thing could not happen? Was it innocence which armored him against the reality of his danger?
What had really happened between himself and Prudence?
Rathbone went as far as he dared in trying to paint her as a woman with fantasies, romantic delusions, but he saw the faces of the jurors and felt the wave of dislike when he disparaged her, and knew he dared do little more than suggest, and leave the thought in their minds to germinate as the trial progressed. Henry’s words kept coming back to him. Go with your beliefs.
But he should not have quarreled with Monk. That had been self-indulgent. He needed him desperately. The only way to save Sir Herbert from the gallows, never mind his reputation, was to find whoever did kill Prudence Barrymore. Even the escape of reasonable doubt was beginning to recede. Once he even heard a sharp note of panic in his own voice as he rose to cross-examine, and it brought him out in a sweat over his body. Lovat-Smith would not have missed it. He would know he was winning, as a dog on the chase scents the kill.