Rathbone. “Sir Oliver, I will not have this grave and very terrible trial turned into a farce. The accused went to seek the victim where she lived. Whatever happened after she found her ended in the victim’s death by violence, and then her hideous mutilation. These facts are beyond dispute. Is that the end of your case for the prosecution, Mr. Coniston?”
“Yes, my lord, it is.”
“Have you any questions for Mr. Blakelock?” Pendock turned to Rathbone.
“No, thank you, my lord.”
“Then we shall adjourn for luncheon. After that you may call your first witness for the defense.” Pendock turned to Blakelock. “Thank you. You may leave the stand.”
Rathbone stood in the center of the floor feeling as if he were in an arena waiting for lions, naked of armor and without a sword to attack. He had never felt so vulnerable before, even in cases where he knew his client was guilty. He realized with a shock that it was not his faith in Dinah that was wounded, perhaps critically, but his belief in himself. His confidence, and some of his hope, had bled away.
Now he must lay very careful suggestions of a powerful figure bent on protecting himself. And all the time, in everything, he must believe that Dinah was innocent, no matter how far against reason that seemed to be. It must be in his mind always that Lambourn discovered something in his research that imperiled a man of power, and he was murdered to silence him. It was made to look like suicide to discredit him. Zenia Gadney was murdered to destroy Dinah and her crusade to save Lambourn’s reputation, and therefore his cause.
He made himself smile, feeling as if it were ghastly on his face.
“I call Mrs. Helena Moulton.”
Helena Moulton was called by the usher. A moment later, she appeared and rather hesitantly climbed the steps up to the witness stand. She was clearly nervous. Her voice shook as she swore to tell the truth.
“Mrs. Moulton,” Rathbone began gently, “are you acquainted with the accused, Dinah Lambourn?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Moulton avoided looking up at the dock. She stared straight ahead of her at Rathbone as if her neck were fixed in a brace.
“Were you friends?” he pursued.
“I … yes. Yes, we were friends.” She gulped. She was very pale and her hands were locked together on the rail of the stand. The light glinted on the gems in her rings.
“Think back to your feelings during that friendship,” Rathbone began. He was painfully aware that Helena Moulton was embarrassed now about owning to having been Dinah’s friend, afraid the society in which she lived would then associate her with Dinah, as if testifying were somehow condoning what Dinah was accused of having done.
Rathbone did not believe her testimony would sway the case in Dinah’s favor, even that it would necessarily make any difference at all, but he needed every extra hour he could to stretch out the testimony of the few witnesses he had to create the outline of someone else to suspect. Perhaps even now Monk would find something that would prove this person’s existence. And curiously enough, Rathbone had almost as much faith in Runcorn as he did in Monk. There was stubbornness in the man that would cling on to the very end, especially because he was angry at having been used and misled in the first place.
Mrs. Moulton was waiting for the question, as was Pendock, who was beginning to be irritated.
“You spent time together?” Rathbone continued. “You went to afternoon parties, exhibitions of art and photographs of travel and exploration, soirées, dinner parties at times, even the theater, and of course garden parties in the summer?”
“I did with many people,” she replied guardedly.
“Of course. Without lots of people, it is hardly a party, is it?” he said smoothly. “You enjoyed each other’s company?”
It was a question to which she could hardly say no. That would be to suggest some ulterior motive.
“Yes, yes, I … did,” she agreed a shade reluctantly.
“You must have spoken of many things?”
Coniston rose to his feet. “My lord, this is wasting the court’s time. The prosecution concedes that Mrs. Moulton was friends with the accused.”
Rathbone wanted to object, but he had no grounds on which to argue the point. If he lost, it would be only one more defeat for him in the minds of the jury.
Pendock looked at Rathbone with annoyance. “You have some point, Sir Oliver? If so, please proceed to make it. The social comings and goings of Mrs. Moulton and the accused seem totally irrelevant.”
“I am trying to establish, my lord, Mrs. Moulton’s standing in her ability to comment on the accused’s state of mind.”
“Then please consider it established and ask your question,” Pendock said tartly.
“Yes, my lord.” Rathbone had hoped for more time, but there was nothing with which to argue. “Mrs. Moulton was the accused anxious or worried in the week or so before Dr. Lambourn’s death?”
She hesitated. She looked up for an instant, as if to meet Dinah’s eyes in the dock above the courtroom gallery, then changed her mind and stared fixedly at Rathbone.
“As I recall, she was just as usual. She … she did mention that he was working very hard and seemed rather tired.”
“And after his death?” he asked.
Her face filled with compassion, the tension vanishing as all consciousness of herself and the courtroom was swallowed up by her pity. “She was like a woman walking in her sleep,” she said huskily. “I have never seen anyone more numbed with grief. I knew they were close. He was a very gentle man, a good man …” She gulped and composed herself again with difficulty. “I felt for her deeply, but there was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do.”
“Indeed not,” he agreed softly. “Even the very closest of friends cannot reach out far enough to touch such a loss. Death is terrible in itself, but that a person should have taken his own life is so very much worse.”
“She never believed that!” Mrs. Moulton said urgently, leaning forward over the rail as if three or four inches less between them would lend power to her words. “She always said that he had been killed to … to keep his work from being accepted. I am sure she believed that.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Moulton, so do I,” Rathbone agreed. “In fact I intend to make that clear to the jury.”
A flicker of displeasure crossed Coniston’s face.
Pendock was irritated but he did not interrupt.
Rathbone hurried on, gaining a lick of confidence, which was like a flame in the wind, any moment to be extinguished.
“When the police arrested her and accused her of murdering Zenia Gadney, she told them that she had been with you at the time she was said to have been seen in Copenhagen Place, searching for Mrs. Gadney. Is that correct?”
Helena Moulton looked uncomfortable. “Yes.” She said it so quietly that Pendock had to ask her to repeat her answer so the jury could hear her. “Yes,” she said with a sudden jolt.
Rathbone smiled at her, very slightly, in reassurance. “And was she with you at that time, Mrs. Moulton?” he asked.
“No.”
Pendock leaned forward.
“No,” she said more clearly. “She … she said that she was with me at a soirée. I don’t know why on earth she said that. I couldn’t support her. I was at an art exhibition, and dozens of people saw me. There wasn’t a soirée anywhere near us that day.”
“So it was quite impossible that she was telling the truth,” Rathbone concluded.
“Yes, it was.”
Coniston rose to his feet again. “My lord, my learned friend is wasting time again. We have already established that the accused was lying! That is not an issue.”
“My lord.” Rathbone faced Pendock. “That is not the point I am trying to make. What Mr. Coniston has apparently missed is the fact that Dinah Lambourn could never have expected to be believed in that statement.”
