more than disappointment in someone with whom he was falling in love; it would almost certainly mean changing places with the man in the dock.
And yet as Fowler paraded one witness after another, Rathbone said and did nothing.
“For God’s sake!” Monk said desperately that evening as he paced his sitting room floor. “He can’t be going to let it go by default. He’s got to do more than just hope they can’t prove it. Does he want to get accused of an incompetent defense?” He was ashen-faced, his eyes hollow. “He’s not doing that to save me, is he?”
“No, of course not,” Hester said instantly, standing in front of him.
“Not for me,” Monk said with painful humor. “For you.”
She caught his arm. “He’s not still in love with me.”
“The more fool he!” he retorted.
“He’s in love with Margaret,” she explained. “At least he soon will be.”
He drew in his breath, staring at her. “I didn’t know that!”
A flash of impatience crossed her face and disappeared. “You wouldn’t,” she replied. “I don’t know what he’s going to do, William, but he’ll do something-for honor, pride, all kinds of things. He won’t let it go without a fight.”
But Rathbone was unavailable all weekend. When Hester went to fetch fresh milk on Saturday morning, Monk snatched a few moments alone to look again at Katrina’s diary. He hated doing it, but he was desperate enough to grasp after any clue at all.
But he still could understand only fragments of it. It was cryptic, scattered words as if simply to remind herself of emotions; the people who inspired them were so woven into her life she needed nothing more to bring them back to her. Nothing made a chain of sense.
He struggled with his own memory. There was something just beyond his grasp, something that defined it all, but the shadows blurred and the harder he looked the more rapidly it dissolved into chaos, leaving him dependent on the slow, minute process of the law.
On Monday morning, when the trial resumed for the third day, it looked as if letting go without a fight was exactly what Rathbone was going to do.
Monk, Hester and Margaret all sat in an agony of impatience as Fowler brought on the police witnesses, first the constable called to the scene who found the body, then Runcorn, who described his own part in the proceedings.
At last Rathbone accepted the invitation, now offered somewhat sarcastically, to cross-examine the witness.
“Good gracious!” Fowler said in amazement, playing to the jury, who until now had had nothing to consider but uncontested evidence.
“Superintendent Runcorn,” Rathbone began courteously. “You described your conduct in excellent detail. You appear to have overlooked nothing.”
Runcorn eyed him with suspicion. He was far too experienced at giving evidence to imagine a compliment was merely that. “Thank you, sir,” he said flatly.
“And presumably you tried to find evidence proving that this cloak found on the roof from which Miss Harcus fell belonged to Mr. Dalgarno?”
“Naturally,” Runcorn conceded.
“And did you succeed?” Rathbone enquired.
“No, sir.”
“Mr. Dalgarno doesn’t have a cloak?”
“Yes, sir, but it’s not that one.”
“Has he two, then?”
“Not that we can trace, sir. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t his,” Runcorn said defensively.
“Of course not. He purchased this one secretly in order to leave it on the rooftop after he had thrown Miss Harcus off it to her death.”
There was a nervous titter around the room. Several jurors looked confused. Jarvis Baltimore reached across and slid his hand over Livia’s.
“If you say so, sir,” Runcorn replied blandly.
“No, no, I do not say so!” Rathbone retorted. “You say so! I say it belonged to someone else… who was on the roof and was responsible for Miss Harcus’s death… someone you never thought of trying to trace.”
“No one else had reason,” Runcorn said calmly.
“That you know of!” Rathbone challenged him. “I will presently show you a completely different interpretation of circumstances, Superintendent, one beyond your wildest ideas… which you would never seek to prove because it is extraordinary beyond anything else I have ever heard, and no man could be expected to think of it. Thank you. That is all.”
Monk swiveled to look at Hester, his eyes wide.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “I’ve no idea.”
The jurors were staring at each other. There was a buzz of speculation in the body of the court.
“Grandstanding!” Fowler said audibly, disgust heavy in his voice.
Rathbone smiled to himself, but Hester had a hideous fear that he was doing exactly that, and that Fowler was not blustering, but knew it.
Margaret sat with her knuckles white, leaning forward a little.
Fowler called his next witness-the police surgeon, of whom Rathbone asked nothing-and then began on the neighbors who had seen or heard something that evening.
Rathbone glanced at his watch now and then.
“What is he waiting for?” Monk hissed.
“I don’t know!” Hester said more sharply than she had intended. What could Rathbone hope for? What other solution was there? He had not shaken any of the testimony at all, let alone suggested the alternative he had spoken of so dramatically.
They adjourned for the day and people trooped out into the halls and corridors. Hester overheard more than one say that they would not bother to return.
“I don’t know why a man like Rathbone would take such a case,” one man said disgustedly as he began down the broad steps into the street. “There’s nothing in it for him but defeat, and he knows it.”
“He can’t be doing as well as we thought,” his companion replied.
“He knows his client’s guilty!” The first man pursed his lips. “Still, I’d have thought he’d try, for the look of it.”
Hester was so angry she started forward, but stopped as she felt the pressure of Monk’s hand on her arm. She swung around to face him.
“What were you going to say?” he asked.
She drew breath to reply, and realized she had nothing prepared that made sense. She saw Margaret’s misery and growing confusion. “He’ll fight!” she assured her, because she knew how badly Margaret wanted to believe it.
Margaret made an attempt at a smile, but excused herself to find a hansom home before facing the evening in Coldbath Square.
Hester began the fourth day of the trial with a sinking heart. She had lain awake in the night wondering whether to go to Rathbone’s house and demand to see him, but realized there was nothing she could learn that would help, and certainly she had nothing to offer him. She had no idea who could have killed Katrina Harcus, or why. She knew it was not Monk, and was less and less certain that it was Dalgarno, although she could not like the man. Looking at him through the days so far she had seen fear in his face, in the hunched angle of his shoulders, the tight lips and pallor of his skin, but she had not seen pity for the dead woman. Nor had she seen any concern for Livia Baltimore, who was growing more miserable with each new piece of testimony that showed how callously he had treated a young woman who had believed he loved her, and whom, all evidence showed, deeply loved
