Page 114 of The Sins of the Wolf (William Monk 5)

There was a gasp from the court. Someone cried out. One of the jurors jerked forward. Another searched for Baird McIvor in the gallery. One bit his lip and looked up at Hester.

“Are you sure of this, Mr. Fyffe?” Argyll asked, struggling to keep the rising excitement out of his voice. “I assume you have documented proof, or you would not make such a charge?”

“Of course I have,” Quinlan answered him. “The papers are all there for anyone to see. Baird handled the matter for her, and even he would not deny it. He could not. Whatever rents there were is a mystery. The property is worth several pounds a year. Nothing whatever reached her account. For her, it was as if it never existed.”

“Did you tax him with it, Mr. Fyffe?”

“Of course I did! He said it was a private agreement between himself and Mother-in-law, and not my concern.”

“And that explanation does not satisfy you?”

Quinlan looked incredulous. “Would it you, sir?”

“No,” Argyll agreed. “No, it would not. It sounds highly irregular, to put the kindest possible interpretation upon it.”

Quinlan pulled a face of contempt.

“And the circumstances it explained?” Argyll went on. “You spoke of a circumstance that you had previously not understood.”

“His relationship with Mrs. Farraline,” Quinlan replied, his eyes hard and brilliant. “Shortly before the time he obtained the right to act for her in the matter of the croft, he appeared very depressed. He was sunk in gloom and short temper, spending many hours alone, and in a frame of mind approaching despair.”

Not a person in the court moved or let out a whisper.

“Then quite suddenly his mood changed,” Quinlan continued. “After many talks with Mrs. Farraline. It is plain now that he convinced her to give him this charge on her behalf, and he used it to clear himself of whatever trouble it was that plagued him.”

Gilfeather rose to his feet.

The judge nodded to him, and turned to Quinlan.

“Mr. Fyffe, that is a conclusion which may or may not be accurate. However, you may not draw it, only present to the jury what actual evidence you possess.”

“Documents, my lord,” he replied. “The ownership deeds of the croft, Mrs. Farraline’s written permission that Mr. McIvor may act for her to receive rents, and the fact that he never paid any money to her, for that or any other reason. Is that not proof?”

“It would be adequate for most people,” the judge conceded. “But it is not my privilege, but the jury’s, to make of it what they will.”

“That is not all,” Quinlan continued, his face set like a man staring at death. “I believed, like everyone else, that it was the nurse, Miss Latterly, who murdered Mother-in-law in order to conceal the fact that she had stolen a gray pearl pin. But now I find it increasingly harder to maintain that conviction. She seems to be a woman of remarkable courage and virtue, which of course I did not know earlier.” He took a mighty breath. “And I did not connect the sight of my brother-in-law, Baird McIvor, in the laundry room, on the lady’s maid’s day off, fiddling with jars and vials of liquid, pouring one from another.”

There was a violent moment in the court. Baird shot to his feet, his face ashen. Oonagh tried to restrain him, clinging on to his arm. Alastair let out a cry of amazement.

Eilish sat white-knuckled, frozen.

“I had no idea what he was doing at the time, and no interest,” Quinlan went on in a clear, relentless voice. “Now I fear I may have witnessed something very terrible, and my failure to grasp its meaning has cost Miss Latterly the most dreadful experience imaginable, to be charged with the murder of her patient and tried for her life.”

Argyll looked flushed, almost stunned.

“I see,” he said with a choking voice. “Thank you, Mr. Fyffe. That must have been very difficult for you to reveal, prejudicing your own family as it does. The court appreciates your honesty.” If there was sarcasm in his mind, it barely touched his lips.

Quinlan said nothing.

Gilfeather rose immediately to cross-examine. He attacked Quinlan, his accuracy, his motives, his honesty, but he failed in all. Quinlan was quiet, firm and unshakable; if anything, his confidence grew. Gilfeather quickly realized his position was only damaged by pursuing it, and with only one bitter, angry movement, he resumed his seat.

Rathbone could barely contain himself. He wished to tell Argyll a hundred things about his summing up, what to say, above all what to avoid. It was simple. To play on emotion, the love of courage and honor, not to overplay the reference to Miss Nightingale, but he had no opportunity, and on reflection, perhaps that was best. Argyll knew it all.

It was masterful; all the emotion was there, but concealed, latent rather than overt. He led them by their own passions, not his. When he sat down there was no sound in the room except the squeak as the judge sat forward and ordered the jury to retire and consider its verdict.

Then began the longest and the briefest time conceivable, between the moment when the die is cast and that when it falls.

It was one desperate, unbearable hour.