by Anne Perry
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.
Hester 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 very 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.”
“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.
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 wh
at? 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.