Page 95 of A Sunless Sea (William Monk 17)

It was a question to which she could hardly say no. That would be to suggest some ulterior motive.

“Yes, yes, I … did,” she agreed a shade reluctantly.

“You must have spoken of many things?”

Coniston rose to his feet. “My lord, this is wasting the court’s time. The prosecution concedes that Mrs. Moulton was friends with the accused.”

Rathbone wanted to object, but he had no grounds on which to argue the point. If he lost, it would be only one more defeat for him in the minds of the jury.

Pendock looked at Rathbone with annoyance. “You have some point, Sir Oliver? If so, please proceed to make it. The social comings and goings of Mrs. Moulton and the accused seem totally irrelevant.”

“I am trying to establish, my lord, Mrs. Moulton’s standing in her ability to comment on the accused’s state of mind.”

“Then please consider it established and ask your question,” Pendock said tartly.

“Yes, my lord.” Rathbone had hoped for more time, but there was nothing with which to argue. “Mrs. Moulton was the accused anxious or worried in the week or so before Dr. Lambourn’s death?”

She hesitated. She looked up for an instant, as if to meet Dinah’s eyes in the dock above the courtroom gallery, then changed her mind and stared fixedly at Rathbone.

“As I recall, she was just as usual. She … she did mention that he was working very hard and seemed rather tired.”

“And after his death?” he asked.

Her face filled with compassion, the tension vanishing as all consciousness of herself and the courtroom was swallowed up by her pity. “She was like a woman walking in her sleep,” she said huskily. “I have never seen anyone more numbed with grief. I knew they were close. He was a very gentle man, a good man …” She gulped and composed herself again with difficulty. “I felt for her deeply, but there was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do.”

“Indeed not,” he agreed softly. “Even the very closest of friends cannot reach out far enough to touch such a loss. Death is terrible in itself, but that a person should have taken his own life is so very much worse.”

“She never believed that!” Mrs. Moulton said urgently, leaning forward over the rail as if three or four inches less between them would lend power to her words. “She always said that he had been killed to … to keep his work from being accepted. I am sure she believed that.”

“Indeed, Mrs. Moulton, so do I,” Rathbone agreed. “In fact I intend to make that clear to the jury.”

A flicker of displeasure crossed Coniston’s face.

Pendock was irritated but he did not interrupt.

Rathbone hurried on, gaining a lick of confidence, which was like a flame in the wind, any moment to be extinguished.

“When the police arrested her and accused her of murdering Zenia Gadney, she told them that she had been with you at the time she was said to have been seen in Copenhagen Place, searching for Mrs. Gadney. Is that correct?”

Helena Moulton looked uncomfortable. “Yes.” She said it so quietly that Pendock had to ask her to repeat her answer so the jury could hear her. “Yes,” she said with a sudden jolt.

Rathbone smiled at her, very slightly, in reassurance. “And was she with you at that time, Mrs. Moulton?” he asked.

“No.”

Pendock leaned forward.

“No,” she said more clearly. “She … she said that she was with me at a soirée. I don’t know why on earth she said that. I couldn’t support her. I was at an art exhibition, and dozens of people saw me. There wasn’t a soirée anywhere near us that day.”

“So it was quite impossible that she was telling the truth,” Rathbone concluded.

“Yes, it was.”

Coniston rose to his feet again. “My lord, my learned friend is wasting time again. We have already established that the accused was lying! That is not an issue.”

“My lord.” Rathbone faced Pendock. “That is not the point I am trying to make. What Mr. Coniston has apparently missed is the fact that Dinah Lambourn could never have expected to be believed in that statement.”

Coniston spread his hands. It was a gesture of helplessness, inviting the court in general, and the jury in particular, to conclude that Rathbone was indeed doing no more than using up time in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable.