only a mother can. You were familiar with her love of medicine and the care of the sick and injured.' He put his hands in his pockets and looked up at her. 'Did you find it easy to believe that she actually performed operations herself?'.
Anne Barrymore frowned, concentrating on what was obviously difficult for her.
'No, I am afraid I did not. It is something that has always puzzled me.'
'Do you think that it is possible she exaggerated her own role a trifle in order to be-shall we say, closer to her ideal? Of more service to Sir Herbert Stanhope?'
Her face brightened. 'Yes-yes, that would explain it. It is not really a natural thing for a woman to do, is it? But love is something we can all understand so easily.'
'Of course it is,' Rathbone agreed, although he found it increasingly hard to accept as the sole motive for anyone's actions, even a young woman. He questioned his own words as he said mem. But this was not the time to be self-indulgent. All that mattered now was Sir Herbert, and showing the jury that he was as much a victim as Prudence Barrymore and that the affliction to him might yet prove as fatal. 'And you do not find it difficult to believe that she wove aD her hopes and dreams around Sir Herbert?'
She smiled sadly. 'I am afraid it seems she was foolish, poor child. So very foolish.' She shot a look of anger and frustration at Mr. Barrymore, sitting high in the public gallery, white-faced and unhappy. Then she turned back to Rathbone. 'She had an excellent offer from a totally suitable young man at home, you know,' she went on earnestly. 'We could none of us understand why she did not accept him.' Her brows drew down and she looked like a lost child herself. 'A head full of absurd dreams. Quite impossible, and not to be desired anyway. It would never have made her happy.' Suddenly her eyes filled with tears again. 'And now it is all too late. Young people can be so wasteful of opportunity.'
There was a deep murmur of sympathy around the room. Rathbone knew he was on the razor's edge. She had admitted Prudence created a fantasy for herself, that she misread reality; but her grief was also transparently genuine, and no honest person in the courtroom was untouched by it. Most had families of their own, a mother they could in their own minds put in her place, or a child they could imagine losing, as she had. If he were too tentative he would miss his chance and perhaps Sir Herbert would pay with his life. If he were too rough he would alienate the jury, and again Sir Herbert would bear the cost.
He must speak. The rustle of impatience was beginning; he could hear it around him.
'We all offer you not only our sympathy but our understanding, ma'am,' he said clearly. 'How many of us in our own youth have not let slip what would have been precious. Most of us do not pay so very dearly for our dreams or our misconceptions.' He walked a few paces and turned, facing her from the other direction. 'May I ask you one thing more? Do you find yourself able to believe that Prudence, in the ardor of her nature and her admiration of noble ideals and the healer's art, may have fallen in love with Sir Herbert Stanhope, and being a natural woman, have desired of him more than he was free to give her?'
He had his back to Sir Herbert, and was glad of it. He preferred not to see his client's face as he speculated on such emotions. If he had, his own thoughts might have intruded, his own anger and guilt.
'And that, as with so many of us,' he continued, 'the wish may have been father to the thought that in truth he returned her feelings, when in fact he felt for her only the respect and the regard due to a dedicated and courageous colleague with a skill far above that of her peers?'
'Yes,' she said very quietly, blinking hard. 'You have put it precisely. Foolish girl. If only she would have taken what was offered her and settled down like anyone else, she could have been so happy! I always said so-but she wouldn't listen. My husband'-she gulped-'encouraged her. I'm sure he meant no harm, but he didn't understand!' This time she did not look at the gallery.
'Thank you, Mrs. Barrymore,' Rathbone said quickly, wishing to leave the matter before she spoiled the effect. 'I have nothing further to ask you.'
Lovat-Smith half rose to his feet, then changed his mind and sat down again. She was confused and grief- stricken, but she was also rooted in her convictions. He would not compound his error.
After his quarrel with Rathbone on the steps of the courthouse two days previous, Monk had gone home in a furious temper. It was not in the least alleviated by the fact that he knew perfectly well that Rathbone was bound by his trust to Sir Herbert, regardless of his opinion of Prudence Barrymore. He was not free to divide his loyalties, and neither evidence nor emotion permitted him to swerve.
Still he hated him for what he had suggested of Prudence, generally because he had seen the faces of the jury nodding, frowning, beginning to see her differently: less of a disciple of the lady with the lamp, tending the sick and desperate in dangerous foreign lands, and more as a fallible young woman whose dreams overcame her good sense.
But more particularly, and at the root of his anger, was the fact that it had woken the first stirrings of doubt in himself. The picture of her he had painted in his mind was now already just so very slightly tarnished, and try as he might, he could not clear it to the power and simplicity it had had before. It did not matter whether she had loved Sir Herbert Stanhope or not, was she deluded enough to have misread him so entirely? And worse than that, had she really performed the medical feats she had claimed? Was she really one of those sad but so understandable creatures who paint on the gray world the colors of their dreams and then escape into parallel worlds of their own making, warping everything to fit?
He could understand that with a sudden sickening clarity. How much of himself did he see only through the twisted view of his own lack of memory? Was his ignorance of his past his own way of escaping what he could not bear? How much did he really want to remember?
To begin with he had searched with a passion. Then as he had learned more, and found so much that was harsh, ungenerous, and self-seeking, he had pursued it less and less. The whole incident of Hermione had been painful and humiliating. And he suspected also that much of Runcorn's bitterness lay at his door. The man was weak, that was his one flaw, but Monk had traded on it over the years. A better man might not have used it in that way. No wonder Runcorn savored his final triumph.
And even as he thought it, Monk understood enough of himself to know he would not let it rest. Half of him hoped Sir Herbert was not guilty and he could undercut Runcorn yet again.
In the morning he went back to the hospital and questioned the nurses and dressers once more about seeing a strange young man in the corridors the morning of Prudence's death. There was no doubt it had been Geoffrey Taunton. He had admitted as much himself. But perhaps someone had seen him later than he had said. Maybe someone had overheard an angry exchange, angry enough to end in violence. Perhaps someone had even seen Nanette Cuthbertson, or a woman they had not recognized who could have been her. She certainly had motive enough.
It took Mm the best part of the day. His temper was short and he could hear the rough edges to his voice, the menace and the sarcasm in his questions, even as he disliked them. But his rage against Rathbone, his impatience to find a thread, something to pursue, overrode his judgment and his better intentions.
By four o'clock all he had learned was that Geoffrey Taunton had been there, precisely as he already knew, and that he had been seen leaving in a red-faced and somewhat flustered state while Prudence was still very much alive. Whether he had then doubled back and found her again, to resume the quarrel, was unresolved. Certainly it was possible, but nothing suggested that it was so. In fact, nothing suggested he was of a nature or personality given to violence at all. Prudence's treatment of him would try the patience of almost any man.
About Nanette Cuthbertson he learned nothing conclusive at all. If she had worn a plain dress, such as nurses or domestics wear, she could have passed in and out again with no one giving her a second glance.
By late afternoon he had exhausted every avenue, and was disgusted with the case and with his own conduct of it. He had thoroughly frightened or offended at least a dozen people, and furthered his own interests hardly at all.
He left the hospital and went outside into the rapidly cooling streets amid the clatter and hiss of carriages, the sound of vendors' cries as costers' carts traveled by, peddlers called their wares, and men and women hurried to reach their destinations before the heavy skies opened up in a summer thunderstorm.
He stopped and bought a newspaper from a boy who was shouting: 'Latest on trial o' Sir 'Erbert! Read all about it! Only a penny! Read the news 'ere!' But when Monk opened the page it was little enough: merely more
