Page 122 of A Sudden, Fearful Death (William Monk 4)

“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 performed 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 lie 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.”