'You have no confidence towards your client now, except that of the truth,' the coroner said quietly. 'What reason did Melville give you for breaking her betrothal to Miss Lambert?'
'She swore that she had never intended to become betrothed to her,' Rathbone answered, looking directly at the coroner and avoiding catching the eye of anyone else in the room. 'She said it had happened by misunderstanding, which I had difficulty in believing at the time, but now it seems very readily explainable. I think she was genuinely very fond of Miss Lambert, in a manner of friendship, as one woman may be to another. She must have been extremely lonely.' He found it difficult to say, and was not even sure if he wanted to expose such private grief to the stare of others. He doubted himself even as he spoke. 'Isaac Wolff was the only person she could trust. Perhaps with Miss Lambert she was able to come closer to the pretty and feminine things she would like to have been able to share in herself but knew she never could. She might have allowed her guard to slip, and without being aware of it have given the wrong impression.'
There was a soft murmur from the public section. He did not turn to look, although he could imagine Zillah's face. It might be some comfort to her that the deceit was not meant.
The coroner nodded, still watching Rathbone, waiting for him to go on.
'She was horrified when she knew,' he resumed, remembering with painful vividness the look in her eyes. It had been close to panic. He had been impatient with it then.
'But she did not explain?' The coroner's face also was touched with deep sadness.
'No.'
'I presume you asked?'
'Of course. I pleaded with her to tell me, in total confidence, if she knew anything to Miss Lambert's discredit or if there was anything in her own life which prevented her marrying…'
He heard the faint rustle in the courtroom, but no one laughed.
'She told me there was not.' He took a breath. 'I did not accept her word. I employed an agent of enquiry to research into both Miss Lambert's past and hers. He found nothing.' He owed Monk something better than a bare statement. 'If there had been longer, I daresay he would have learned the truth, but events overtook us. It appeared Melville's affair with Mr. Wolff was reason enough. Of course, we now know it was… a love between man and woman, not illegal, not abnormal.' He had nearly said 'not scandalous,' but perhaps since they were not married, there would be those who would consider it so. 'Such as is usual enough,' he said instead.
'What was her frame of mind, as far as you could judge, when Mr. Sacheverall brought Isaac Wolff to the stand and accused him of a homosexual relationship with Melville?' There was a chill in the coroner's voice, and he did not look towards where Sacheverall was sitting.
'She was deeply distressed,' Rathbone answered truthfully. 'Very deeply. But she denied it to me.'
'Did you believe her?'
'I… I don't know. I neither believed nor disbelieved. I was concerned with trying to rescue what I could from the situation. I hoped I might persuade Miss Lambert to settle for a small amount of damages, so at least Melville might not be financially ruined, as well as socially and professionally.' He found the words difficult to say. They still hurt. The failure was deep and twisting inside him.
'Did you tell Miss Melville your hopes?'
'Of course.'
'Do you know of anything that occurred that afternoon t which would so alter the circumstances as to make her despair and take her own life?'
'Sacheverall had called a prostitute to the stand in the morning who had sworn that the affair she had observed was of a sexual nature,' Rathbone said bitterly, 'not the friendship both Wolff and Melville had insisted. But if that was the final incident, then I would have expected her to have taken the poison during the luncheon adjournment, and according to the surgeon she did not.'
'Did Miss Melville at any time speak of taking her life, or I say anything which led you, even in hindsight, to suppose she was thinking of it?'
'No.' Rathbone's voice sank. 'Perhaps I should have realized how desperate she was, but I had formed the belief that her art was so precious to her she would have lived to practice it regardless of anything else. I… in hindsight, I even wondered if she had been murdered… but I know of no way in which anyone else could have administered the poison to her, nor any reason why they should.'
'I see. Thank you, Sir Oliver. I have nothing further to ask you.'
Rathbone remained where he was. He wanted to say something else, something about the whole ridiculous situation which had brought about a needless tragedy and destroyed one of the most luminous talents he had ever known, not to mention a vibrant, intelligent human being capable of suffering and laughter and dreams.
'It need not have happened!' he said angrily, leaning forward a little over the slender rails of the witness stand, his hands gripping them. 'If any of us had behaved with a little more sense, a little more charity, it would all have been avoided. Keelin Melville could be alive now, still creating beauty for us and for our heirs in this city, this country.'
There was a murmur of shock in the gallery, and then something which could even have been approval.
He leaned over farther. 'For God's sake, why can't we allow women to use whatever talents they have without hounding and denying them until they are reduced to pretending to be men in order to be taken at their true value?'
There was a shifting of weight on the public benches, and a rustle and creak of fabric. People were uncomfortable.
'Why can't we allow people to break a betrothal if they realize it was a mistake,' he went on passionately, 'without assuming there must be some fearful sin on the part of one or the other of them? Why do we care so much if a woman is pretty or not? If all we want is something lovely to look at, we can buy a picture and hang it on the wall. We do this!' He flung out his arms. 'We create a society where people go to law instead of saying to each other the simple truth. And now instead of a broken romance-which, God knows, hurts enough, but we all experience it-we have scandal, disgrace, shame, and worst of all, we have destroyed one of the brightest talents of our generation. And over what? A misunderstanding.'
There was definite movement in the gallery now, a whispering, a buzz. Even the jurors were muttering.
Sacheverall rose to his feet, his face red.
'Sir Oliver is being disingenuous, sir, and I cannot sit here in silence and allow it. He knows as well as I do that a young woman's reputation is precious to her. A man who robs another person of reputation steals one of his, or her, most priceless possessions… one that can never be got back again.' He glanced at the jurors; he did not care about the public. 'That is not a false value. It is a very real one.'
His expression twisted to undisguised contempt, and he was moving forward from his seat. 'Sir Oliver would be one of the first to complain if his good name was compromised. In fact, he may discover after the loss of this case just how painful it can be when people no longer think of you as well as they once did.' He was now out in front of the court, not more than a couple of yards from where Rathbone stood. He was a large man and seemed to crowd the area. He moved his hands around, taking up even more space. Everyone was watching him, but the expressions Rathbone could see were very varied, and not all of respect.
'It is natural enough to resent losing a case, especially as dramatically as he lost this one.' Sacheverall smiled fleetingly towards Rathbone. 'But that was his error of judgment in accepting it and choosing to fight it in the first place. Now he is blaming all the rest of us'-he swung his arms wide to embrace everyone present-'for Melville's misfortune. That is manifestly preposterous. We are not at fault in any way. Keelin Melville chose to behave unnaturally, to deny her womanhood and attempt to follow a masculine profession from which she would, of course, have been excluded had she not practiced such a deception.'
There was a rumble from the body of the room, but he ignored it. He also ignored the growing darkness in the coroner's face, the tight pull of his lips and the drawing down of his brows.
'She also deceived Barton Lambert, her friend and benefactor, who had from the very beginning shown her only kindness and a trust she did not honor and did not return.' He gestured contemptuously towards Rathbone. 'For Sir Oliver to complain now, and accuse society at large, is to show his own shallowness of character and to demonstrate that, far from learning by his error of judgment, he is determined to compound it.'
The coroner was so furious he scarcely knew where to begin.
'Mr. Sacheverall,' he said loudly and very clearly, 'I believe Sir Oliver included himself in his castigation of society. Perhaps your own involvement in these events did not allow you to listen to what he said with the attention
