The Sins Of The Wolf Part 30

In front of him Argyll sat rigid, only a tiny muscle flicking at the side of his temple.

Florence's face hardened as she looked at Gilfeather with dislike.

Please-please-Rathbone prayed in his head.

"Because she is an outspoken woman, with more courage than tact, thank G.o.d," Florence said sharply. "She does not care for hospital life, having to obey the orders of those who are on occasion less knowledgeable than herself but are too arrogant to be told by someone they consider inferior. Perhaps it is a fault, but it is an honest one."

The jury smiled.

Somewhere in the gallery a man cheered, and then instantly fell silent.

"And an impetuous one," Gilfeather added, taking a step forward. "Even, perhaps, a self-indulgent one, would you not say, Miss Nightingale?"

"I would not."

"Oh I would! Sometimes self-indulgent, and unquestionably arrogant. It is the weakness, the fault, of a woman who considers herself above others, believes her own opinions count more than those of men trained and qualified in their profession, a profession perhaps she aspires to, but for which she has no training but practice, in extraordinary circ.u.mstances-"

"Mr. Gilfeather," she cut across him imperiously, her eyes blazing, her body quivering with the fierceness of her emotion. "You are either intending to provoke me to anger, sir, or you are more naive than a man in your position has a right to be! Have you the faintest idea of the 'extraordinary circ.u.mstances' to which you refer so glibly? You are well dressed, sir. You look in the best of health. How often do you go without your dinner? Do you even know what it is like to be so hungry you would be glad to boil the bones of a rat?"

There were gasps around the room. A woman in the gallery slid forward in her seat. The judge winced.

"Madam-" Gilfeather protested, but she barely heard him.

"You have your sight, sir, and your limbs. Have you seen a man with his legs shot away? Do you know how quickly one must act to stop him hemorrhaging to death? Could you find the arteries in all that blood and save him? Would your nerve hold you, and your stomach?"

"Madam-" Gilfeather tried again.

"I am sure you are master of your profession," she swept on, not leaning forward over the railing as another might have, but standing stiff and straight, head high. "But how often do you work all day and all night for days on end? Or do you return home to a nice soft bed-one that is warm enough, and in which you may lie safely until the morning? Have you lain on a canvas sheet on the earth, too cold to sleep, listening to the groans of those in agony, and hearing in your memory the rattle of the dying, and knowing tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow there will always be more, and all you can do will only ease it a little, a very little!"

There was utter silence in the court.

The judge waved his hands at Gilfeather.

Gilfeather shrugged.

"And when you are ill, sir, vomiting and with a flux you cannot control, is there someone to hold a bowl for you, wash you clean, bring you a little fresh water, change your sheets? I hope you are suitably grateful, sir-because, dear G.o.d, there are so many for whom there is not, because there are too few of us willing to do it, or with the heart and the stomach for it! Yes, Hester Latterly is an extraordinary woman, molded by circ.u.mstances beyond most people to imagine. Yes, she is headstrong, at times arrogant, capable of making decisions that would quail many a heart less brave, less pa.s.sionate, less moved by intolerable pity." She barely took a breath. "And before you ask me, I can believe she would kill to save her own life, or that of a patient in her charge. I would prefer not to think she would kill out of revenge, no matter how gross or intolerable the wrong, but I would not swear to it on oath." Now at last she did lean forward, facing Gilfeather with a burning eye. "But I would take my oath before G.o.d, she would not poison a patient for gain of a paltry piece of jewelry and then give it back unasked. If you believe that, sir, you are a lesser judge of mankind than you have a right to be and hold the calling you do."

Gilfeather opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was well beaten and he knew it. He had provoked a force of nature, and the storm had broken over him.

"I have no more questions," he said grimly. "Thank you, Miss Nightingale."

Rathbone had been staring at her.

"Go and help her," he hissed at Argyll.

"What?"

"a.s.sist her!" Rathbone said fiercely. "Look at her, man!"

"But, she's ..." Argyll began.

"Strong! No she's not! Get on with it!"

The sheer fury of Rathbone's voice impelled him to his feet. He plunged forward just as Florence reached the bottom of the steps and all but collapsed.

In the gallery people craned forward anxiously. One man rose as if to leave his place.

"Allow me, madam," Argyll said, grasping Florence's arm and holding her up. "I feel you have exhausted yourself on our behalf."

"It is nothing," she said, but she clung to him all the same, allowing him to take a remarkable amount of her weight. "Merely a little breathlessness. Perhaps I am not as well as I had imagined."

Quite slowly he escorted her, without asking the court's permission, as far as the doors out, every man and woman in the room watching him with bated breath, and then amid a sigh of approval and respect, he returned to his place.

"Thank you, my lord," he said solemnly to the judge. "The defense next calls the prisoner, Miss Hester Latterly."

"It is growing late," the judge said sharply, his face creased with ill-suppressed rage. "The court will adjourn for today. You may call your witness tomorrow, Mr. Argyll." And he slammed down the gavel as if he would break the shaft of it in his hand.

Hester climbed the steps of the witness-box and turned to face the court. She had slept little, and the few moments she had had were fraught with nightmares, and now that the moment had come, it seemed unreal. She could feel the railing beneath her hands, the wood of it smoothed by a thousand other clenched fingers and white knuckles; the judge with his narrow face and deep-set eyes seemed the figment of yet another nightmare. Her senses were filled with an incomprehensible roaring sound, without form or meaning. Was it people in the gallery talking to each other, or only the blood thundering through her veins, cutting her off from the sights and sounds plain to everyone else?

In spite of all the promises to herself, her eyes searched the gallery for Monk's hard, smooth face, and she found instead Henry Rathbone. He was looking at her, and although from that distance she could not see him clearly, in her mind's eye his clear blue eyes had never been plainer, and the gentleness and the hurt for her brought a rush of emotion beyond her control. She knew him ridiculously little. She had had just a few moments with Oliver in his house on Primrose Hill, a quiet evening supper (overcooked because they were late), the summer evening in the garden, the starlit sky above the apple trees, the scent of honeysuckle on the lawn. It was all so familiar, so sweet, the pain of it almost intolerable. She wished she had not seen him, and yet she could not tear her eyes away.

"Miss Latterly!"

Argyll's voice jerked her back to the present and to the proceedings that had at last begun.

"Yes...sir?" This was her chance to speak for herself, the only chance she would be given between now and the verdict. She must be right. She could not afford a mistake of any sort, not a word, a look, a gesture that could be interpreted wrongly. She might live, or die, upon such tiny things.

"Miss Latterly, why did you respond to Mr. Farraline's advertis.e.m.e.nt for someone to accompany his mother from Edinburgh to London? It was a post of short duration, and far beneath your skill. Did it pay extraordinarily well? Or were you so greatly in need of funds that anything at all was welcome?"

"No sir, I accepted it because I thought it would be interesting, and agreeable. I had never been to Scotland before, and all I had heard of it was in its praise." She forced a wan smile at memory. "I had nursed many men from Scottish regiments, and formed a unique respect for them."

She felt the ripple of emotion through the room, but she was not sure if she understood it or not. There was no time to think about it now. She must concentrate on Argyll.

"I see," he said smoothly. "And the remuneration, was it good?"

"It was generous, considering the lightness of the task," she said honestly. "But it was perhaps balanced by the fact that in order to accept it, one would have to forgo other, possibly longer, engagements. It was not undue."

"Indeed. But you were not in grave need, were you?"

"No. I had just completed a very satisfactory case with a patient who was well enough no longer to require nursing, and I had another post to go to a short time afterwards. It was ideal to take up the time between."

"We have only your word for that, Miss Latterly."

"It would be simple enough to check on it, sir. My patient-"

He held up his hands and she stopped.

"Yes, I have done so." He turned to the judge. "There is a disposition for Miss Latterly's past patient, my lord, and another from the lady who was expecting her, and who of course has now had to employ someone else. I suggest that they be read into the evidence."

"Yes, yes, of course," the judge conceded. "Proceed, if you please."

"Had you ever heard of the Farraline family, before the post?"

"No sir."

"Did they receive you courteously?"

"Yes sir."

Gradually, in precise detail, he led her through her day at the Farraline house, not mentioning any other members of the family except as they affected her movements. He asked about the dressing room when the lady's maid was packing, had her describe everything she could recall, including the medicine chest, the vials she had been shown, and the exact instructions. The effort to remember kept her mind too occupied for fear to creep into her voice. It stayed submerged like a great wave, forever rolling, its great power never breaking and overwhelming her.

Then he moved on to the journey on the train. Stumblingly, filled with sadness, her eyes focused on him, ignoring the rest of the room, she told him how she and Mary had talked, how she had recalled some of the journeys of her youth, the people, the laughter, the scenes, the things she had loved. She told him how she had been reluctant to end the evening, how only Oonagh's warning about Mary's lateness had made her at last insist. In a low quiet voice, only just above tears, she recited opening the chest, finding one vial gone, and giving the second vial to Mary before closing the chest again and making her comfortable, and then going to sleep herself.

In the same voice, with only the barest hesitation, she told him of waking in the morning, and finding Mary dead.

At that point he stopped her.

"Are you quite sure you made no error in giving Mrs. Farraline her medicine, Miss Latterly?"

"Quite sure. I gave her the contents of one vial. She was a very intelligent woman, Mr. Argyll, and not shortsighted or absentminded. If I had done anything amiss she would certainly have known, and refused to take it."

"This gla.s.s you used, Miss Latterly, was it provided for you?"

"Yes sir. It was part of the fitments of the medicine chest, along with the vials."

"I see. Designed to hold the contents of one vial, or more?"

"One vial, sir; that was its purpose."

"Quite so. You would have had to fill it twice to administer more?"

"Yes sir."

There was no need to add anything further. He could see from the jurors' faces that they had taken the point.

"And the gray pearl brooch," he continued. "Did you see it at any time prior to your finding it in your baggage when you had arrived at the home of Lady Callandra Daviot?"

"No sir." She nearly added that Mary had mentioned it, and then just in time refrained. The thought of how close she had come to such an error sent the blood rus.h.i.+ng burningly up her face. Dear heaven, she must look as if she were lying! "No sir. Mrs. Farraline's baggage was in the goods van, along with my own. I had no occasion to see any of her things once I had left the dressing room at Ainslie Place. And even then, I only saw the topmost gowns as they were laid out."

"Thank you, Miss Latterly. Please remain where you are. My learned friend will no doubt wish to question you also."

"Indeed I will." Gilfeather rose to his feet with alacrity. But before he could begin, the judge adjourned the court for luncheon, and it was afternoon before he could launch his attack. And attack it was. He advanced towards the witness stand with flying hair an aureole around his head. He was a large man, shambling like a newly awoken bear, but his eyes were bright and gleaming with the light of battle.

Hester faced him with her heart beating so violently her body shook and her breath caught in her throat so she feared she might choke when she was forced to speak.

"Miss Latterly," he began smoothly. "The defense has painted a picture of you as a virtuous, heroic and self-sacrificing woman. Because of the circ.u.mstances which bring you here, you must give me leave to doubt the total accuracy of that." He pulled a small face. "People of the sort depicted by my learned friend do not suddenly stoop to murder, especially the murder of an old lady in their trust, and for the gain of a few pearls set in a pin. Would you agree?

"In fact," he went on, looking at her with concentration, "I presume the burden of his argument to be that it is inconceivable that a person should change her nature so utterly, therefore you could not be guilty. Is that not so?"

"I did not prepare the defense, sir, so I cannot speak for Mr. Argyll," she said levelly. "But I imagine you are correct."

"Do you agree with the hypothesis, Miss Latterly?" His voice was sharp, demanding an answer.

"Yes sir, I do, although at times we may misjudge people, or fail to read them aright. If it were not so, we should never be taken by surprise."

There was a ripple of amus.e.m.e.nt around the room. One or two men nodded in appreciation.

Rathbone held his breath in an agony of apprehension.

"A very sophisticated argument, Miss Latterly," Gilfeather conceded.

She had seen Rathbone's face, and knew why he had stared at her with such pleading. She must make amends.

"No sir," she said humbly. "It is merely common sense. I think any woman would have told you the same."

"That is as may be, ma'am," Gilfeather said. "However, you will appreciate why I shall endeavor to disprove their high estimation of you."

She waited in silence for him to do so.

He nodded, pulling a very slight face. "Why did you go to the Crimea, Miss Latterly? Was it like Miss Nightingale, in answer to a call to serve G.o.d?" He invested no sarcasm or condescension in the question, his voice and his expression were innocent, but there was a waiting in the room, a readiness for disbelief.

"No sir." She kept her voice low and her tone as gentle as lay within her power. "I intended to serve my fellow men in a way best suited to such skills as I possessed, and I believed it would be a fine and daring thing to do. I have but one life, and I had rather do something purposeful with it than at the end look back and regret all the chances I had missed, and what I might have made of myself."

"So you are a woman to take risks?" Gilfeather said with a smile he could not hide.

"Physical ones, sir, not moral ones. I think to stay at home, safe and idle, would have been a moral risk, and one I was not prepared for."

"You draw a fine argument, madam."

"I am fighting for my life, sir. Would you expect anyone to do less?"

"No madam. Since you ask, I expect you to use every art and argument, every subtlety and persuasion that your mind can devise or your desperation conceive."

She looked at him with loathing. All Rathbone's warnings rang in her head as clearly as if he were saying them now, and her emotion overrode them all. She was going to lose anyway. She would not do it without honesty and what dignity was possible.

"You make it sound, sir, as if we were two animals battling for mastery of each other, not rational human beings seeking to find the truth and serve our best understanding of justice. Do you wish to know who killed Mrs. Farraline, Mr. Gilfeather, or do you merely wish to hang someone, and I will do?"

For a moment Gilfeather was startled. He had been fought with before, but not in these terms.

There was a gasp and a sigh of suspended breath. A journalist broke his pencil. One of the jurors choked.

"Oh G.o.d!" Rathbone said inaudibly.

The judge reached for his gavel, and mistook the distance. His fingers closed on nothing.

In the gallery Monk smiled, and his stomach knotted inside him with grief.

"Only the right person will do, Miss Latterly," Gilfeather said angrily, his hair standing on end. "But all the evidence says that that is you. If it is not, pray tell me who is it?"