his silence was not easy.
“Mr. Runcorn, did you see any marks of struggle on the ground, or on Dr. Lambourn’s person?” Rathbone asked. “Were his clothes torn or in disarray, for example? Were his shoes scuffed, his hair tangled or his skin bruised?”
“No, sir. He looked fairly peaceful.”
“As a man might who had committed suicide?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Or been brought there, dosed with opium he took to be something else?” Rathbone suggested. “Given to him by someone he trusted, causing him to be insensible when that person carefully slit his wrists and left him there to bleed to death, alone in the night?”
Runcorn’s face showed his imagination of the tragedy. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly, his voice a little husky. “Exactly like that.”
Coniston looked up at Pendock, but this time kept his silence with grim resignation.
“Thank you, Mr. Runcorn,” Rathbone said courteously. “Please wait until Mr. Coniston has asked you whatever he wishes to.”
Coniston stood up and walked toward the witness stand. “Mr. Runcorn, did you see anything whatsoever to prove that Dr. Lambourn was in the company of anyone when he went up One Tree Hill in the middle of the night?”
“It isn’t so much what I saw as what I didn’t see,” Runcorn replied. “No knife to cut his wrists, nothing with which to take opium.”
“And from that you deduce that it was someone he knew, and trusted, this mystery companion?” Coniston pursued.
“Yes, sir. Seems to make sense. Why would you go up a hill in the dark with someone you didn’t trust? And there were no signs of a fight. Anyone fights for their life, when it comes down to it.”
“Indeed.” Coniston nodded. “Then it could even have been a woman, for example the accused, his … mistress, with whom he lived as if she were his wife, and pretended to the world that she was, who was with him?”
There was a gasp in the gallery at Coniston’s blunt statement. Several jurors actually looked up at the dock, where Dinah sat white-faced.
“Could’ve been,” Runcorn agreed quietly. “But then, it could’ve been the lady who really was his wife.”
One of the jurors blasphemed-and immediately clapped his hand over his mouth and blushed scarlet.
Pendock glanced at him but said nothing.
“Thank you, Mr. Runcorn. I think we have heard enough of your remarkable suppositions.” Coniston returned to his seat.
“Anything further, Sir Oliver?” Pendock inquired.
“No, thank you, my lord,” Rathbone answered. “I would like to call Dr. Wembley, the surgeon who examined Dr. Lambourn’s body.”
Wembley was called, sworn in, and faced Rathbone.
“I shall be very brief, Dr. Wembley,” Rathbone began, still standing out in the center of the open space, every eye upon him. “Were there any marks on the body of Joel Lambourn when you examined him on One Tree Hill, or later in your postmortem?”
“Other than the cuts on his wrists, you mean?” Wembley asked. “No, none at all. He seemed to be a healthy man in his fifties, well nourished and perfectly normal.”
“Could you say whether or not he had been involved in any kind of physical struggle immediately prior to his death?” Rathbone asked.
“He had not.”
“Were there any bruises, ligature marks, abrasions, anything at all on his body or his clothes to suggest he had been carried manually?” Rathbone pursued. “Or that he had been tied up, perhaps by the ankles, arms, or any other part of his body? Or bumped around? The rubbing of fabric, perhaps, twisting as if something had been used to make carrying easier?”
Wembley looked incredulous. “Nothing whatsoever. I can’t think what gives you that idea.”
“I do not have that idea, Doctor,” Rathbone assured him. “I simply want to exclude it. I believe Dr. Lambourn walked up One Tree Hill in the company of someone he trusted completely. It never occurred to him that they might do him any harm whatsoever.” He smiled bleakly. “Thank you, Dr. Wembley. That is all I have to ask you.”
This time Coniston did not take the trouble to cross-examine. His face showed his belief in the total futility of the entire exercise.
MONK ARRIVED AT THE Old Bailey considerably later than Rathbone, after the trial had resumed. He had been out since before dawn questioning people near the Limehouse Pier and along Narrow Street leading to it, asking the new questions that they had planned yesterday evening. He had the answers, even though he had come perilously close to putting them in the witnesses’ mouths. But he believed them, and time was desperate.
He was walking up the long hall when he recognized ahead of him the figures of Barclay and Amity Herne. They were standing fairly close to each other, but there was no ease in either of them. Barclay was facing a doorway to one side of the hall, as if expecting someone to emerge out of it. There was anxiety in every line and angle of his body, and the side of his face that Monk could see was sharp with fear.
Amity was facing him, half facing Monk, but she was oblivious to everyone else aside from her husband. She was speaking to him urgently and-to judge by her expression-with both anger and contempt.
Monk stopped, pretending to search his pockets for something, and watched them discreetly.
Amity appeared to repeat something she had said and took Herne by the arm. He shook her off as though her touch soiled his clothes. Then, with a single word of dismissal, he walked briskly away, disappearing around the first corner.
Amity stood still. Her back was to Monk now, so he could not read her expression, but the rigidity of her body, the stiff, high shoulders, were expressive enough.
He was about to move forward himself when the door Herne had been watching opened and Sinden Bawtry came out. Immediately, as if by the simple drawing of a curtain, Amity Herne changed completely. She turned toward him and Monk could see most of her face. It was lit with joy, her eyes soft and bright, a slight smile parting her lips.
Could she be so good an actress? Surely this was an unguarded moment no one was meant to see, perhaps least of all her husband?
Bawtry came toward her, smiling. Was there more warmth in it than courtesy required, or was Monk imagining it because of the sudden fire in
Then they remembered themselves and the moment vanished. He spoke. She answered, and formality was restored again.
Monk stepped forward from the place where he had stopped and walked briskly on toward the court where he knew he would soon be called.
Rathbone was relieved when Monk climbed the steps to the witness stand and was sworn in again. Rathbone knew that Coniston’s patience and Pendock’s strength were both wearing out. He must hold the jury’s attention. They must begin to believe him soon and see a totally different pattern emerging. All he had asked of Pendock, all he could or would ask, was a fair hearing.
“Mr. Monk,” he began, his voice hard and clear, “I know you have already testified to finding the body of Zenia Gadney, horribly mutilated, but I must ask again details I did not ask before, because new explanations have become highly possible. Mrs. Gadney’s body was found early in the morning, as was Dr. Lambourn’s. Can you tell us again exactly where that was?”
“On Limehouse Pier.”
“On the pier itself?”
“Yes.”
“Is that a place where a prostitute might conduct her business?”
