A Breach Of Promise Part 19

"I regret it profoundly, my lord, but my client is dead."

There was an instant's utter silence. No one moved, not even a creak of wood or rustle of fabric. Then suddenly there was uproar. A woman shrieked. Several people rose to their feet, although there was nowhere to go. The jurors looked to each other, eyes wide with shock, unable yet to grasp the full significance of what they had heard.

"Silence!" McKeever said distinctly, looking around the room, then frowning at Rathbone. "I will have order! Sir Oliver, will you please explain to us what happened? Did Mr. Melville meet with an accident?"

"It is not yet possible to say, my lord." Rathbone found it difficult to find the right words, although he had tried to formulate them all the way there. Now, standing in the long-familiar room in which he had fought numberless cases, he was lost to express what he felt.

Press reporters had been expecting a quiet collapse of the struggle and were there only to leam the damages, and perhaps to watch the human ruin as a man's personal Me was torn apart. Now they were scrambling for pencils to write something entirely different.

In the gallery a woman gave a little squeal and stifled it with her hand.

"Mr. Melville was found dead last night," Rathbone began again. "At present the cause is not known."

The buzz in the gallery rose.

"Silence!" McKeever ordered sharply, his face darkening with anger. He reached for his gavel and banged it with a loud crack. "I will clear the court if there is not silence and a decent respect!"

He was obeyed reluctantly, but within seconds.

Rathbone looked across at Sacheverall, waiting to see how he would react, if he was as horrified by his own part in this as Rathbone was. Rathbone saw surprise, but not amazement. He thought in a flash that the possibility had occurred to him. If the prosecutor was distressed or ashamed, he hid it well.

Barton Lambert, on the other hand, sitting behind him, looked devastated. His blunt, rather ordinary face was slack with horror, mouth open, eyes staring fixedly. He seemed almost unaware of anyone around him, of Delphine at his side looking embarra.s.sed, caught by surprise, but not grieved beyond her ability to control with dignity. Her head was high, her lips firmly closed, her gaze resolutely forward. She would not satisfy the curious in the gallery by meeting their looks.

Zillah, on her father's other side, had slumped forward and buried her face in her hands, her hat askew and her bright hair shining in the sunlight from the windows. Her shoulders were hunched and she shook, not yet with weeping but with the deep shuddering movement of horror and disbelief. She seemed hardly able to catch her breath. Her father was still too deeply stunned and overwhelmed by his own emotions to help her, to offer any kind of comfort.

Sacheverall, who so often had his attention upon her, now stood up and went from his table around to stand beside her. He spoke to her, leaning close and putting his hand on her shoulder. He repeated whatever it was he had said, and she sat up slowly, her face ashen, her eyes hollow, burning with tears.

"Go away!" she said quite clearly.

"My dear!" Sacheverall began urgently.

"If you touch me again I shall strike you!" she hissed, and indeed if he had looked at her face at all he must have known she truly meant it.

Delphine leaned across, looking at Sacheverall rather than Zillah.

"I am sure you mean only kindness, Mr. Sacheverall," she said with a smile, but without warmth, "but I think perhaps you had better allow us a short while to overcome our dismay. It has been a very dreadful time for all of us, but most especially Zillah. Please make allowances for her...."

Sacheverall did not withdraw his hand. "Of course," he said with a nod. "Of course it has. I do understand."

"You understand nothing!" Zillah snapped, glaring at him. "You are a-a condottiere!"

"A what?" He was momentarily at a loss.

"A soldier of fortune," she replied witheringly. "A man hired to fight for any cause, literally 'one under contract.' And if you do not take your hand off my arm I shall scream. Do you wish that?"

He removed his hand quickly. "You are hysterical," he said soothingly. "It has all been a great shock to you."

"Yes, I am!" she agreed, to his surprise. "I have never felt worse in my life. I don't think there is anything terrible still left to happen, except your manner towards me."

"Zillah!" Delphine interrupted sharply, then smiled up at Sacheverall. "I think you had better be advised to leave us a little while, a day or two. For all your sympathy, I don't think you do understand quite how fearful this has been to one of innocence in the more ... elemental feelings of men. It is enough to make anyone ... a trifle off balance. Please do not take to heart anything that is said just now. Make a little allowance...."

"Of course," he said, smiling back at her. "Of course." He inclined his head towards Zillah and returned to his table.

Zillah hissed something to her mother. It was inaudible from where Rathbone stood, but gauging from the slow flush of Sacheverall's cheeks, he heard at least its tone, if not its content.

McKeever looked at Rathbone expectantly.

"I a.s.sume we may have the tragic news from some witness, Sir Oliver? And no doubt we shall have expert witnesses as well? There has been a doctor in attendance?"

"Yes, my lord. I have taken the liberty of requesting the presence of both the doctor and Mr. Isaac Wolff, who found Mr. Melville."

"Thank you. That was most appropriate. It will save the court's time in adjourning in order to send for them." He hesitated, took a deep breath. "Sir Oliver, I would like to express the court's deep sorrow that events have transpired this way. Killian Melville was a brilliant man, and his art was an adornment to our society and all those generations that lie ahead of us. His loss is a tragedy." He did not refer to the case or its outcome. The omission was intentional and marked. Several of the jurors nodded agreement.

"Thank you, my lord," Rathbone said with a rush of emotion which took him by surprise, making his voice hoa.r.s.e.

Somewhere in the gallery a man blew his nose rather loudly and a woman stifled a sob.

"Call Mr. Wolff," McKeever directed.

Part of Rathbone was sorry to have to put Wolff through this ordeal. The man had had hardly any sleep; he had lost probably the person he loved most to a sudden and profoundly tragic death, almost certainly suicide in despair at the shattering loss of his private life and of his career. Wolff himself might easily lose his professional standing also, his livelihood, even his liberty, if Sacheverall were vindictive enough to lay a complaint. He was haggard with a grief nothing would mend.

And yet the deep burning rage within Rathbone wanted this court, which had accomplished all this, to see what they had done. Especially he wanted Lambert to see. Sacheverall might never feel any regret or shame, but if others saw, then possibly his reputation would sour, and Rathbone desired that with a hunger he could all but taste.

Isaac Wolff came in like a man in a nightmare. His dark eyes were so far sunken into his head he looked cadaverous. He walked across the floor and up the steps to the witness-box like an old man, although he was barely forty. He looked towards Rathbone without seeing him.

The court waited in complete silence. They felt his grief and it held them in awe. It was like an animal thing, raw in the air.

Rathbone had already told him of his own feelings. There was no need to repeat any formal sympathy now, and he did not wish to break the tension by such civilities.

"Mr. Wolff, will you please tell us of the events late yesterday evening which bring you here today?" he asked.

Wolff spoke briefly, almost abruptly, except that his voice held no expression, no variation in tone.

"I went to see Melville. I knew he would be distressed after the day in court." It was a simple statement without adjectives, even without expression. It had the starkness of real and final tragedy. He was looking at Rathbone now. Perhaps he knew that Rathbone at least understood the magnitude of his emotion. "I rang the bell of his rooms. There was no answer. I have a key. I let myself in. He was in the sitting room, in the chair by the fire, but the ashes had burned right down. It was obviously three or four hours since it had been stoked. He looked as if he might have been asleep. At first I hoped he was. Then I touched him and I knew. He was cold." He said nothing further.

"What time was that, Mr. Wolff?" Rathbone asked.

There was still silence in the room. Everyone was staring at Wolff. There was a sea of faces, a pale blur as every person's attention was on him.

"Between half past ten and eleven," Wolff replied. There was complete calm about him. Whatever they thought of him would not hurt him now. The worst he could conceive had already happened.

"Did you see anything to give you cause to know or guess the manner of his death?" Rathbone pursued, although he knew the answer.

"No." Just the single word.

"Was anything disturbed?"

"No. Everything was as always."

"Was there a gla.s.s or cup in the room, near where he was sitting?"

"No."

"Was there a note or a letter of any kind?"

"No."

"Thank you, Mr. Wolff. If you will remain there, His Lordship may have some questions for you."

Wolff turned slowly towards the judge.

"No, thank you," McKeever declined quietly. "It seems perfectly clear. I am sorry we had to trouble you, Mr. Wolff. The court extends you its sympathy."

"Thank you." At another time there might have been a shadow of humor in Wolff's acceptance. Today there was none. Something inside him was dead and there was no response except words, bare of feeling.

He turned and stepped down, holding on to the banister as if his sight and his coordination were impaired. He made his way to one of the seats at the back of the gallery and someone rose to give him s.p.a.ce. Rathbone watched with his heart beating violently in case it were to shun him, but there was so deep a look of pity on the man's face his gesture could not have been misunderstood. Rathbone was suddenly uplifted by such compa.s.sion from a stranger, such a lack of judgment of frailty, only the awareness of grief.

He looked at Barton Lambert again. Lambert was shifting uncomfortably in his seat, as if he wanted to take some physical action but could think of nothing which answered his needs. There was a profound unhappiness in every line of him. He turned to Delphine, but she was looking the other way, her chin high, making the best of having to be there in these circ.u.mstances, but still aware of being the victor. Nothing so far had taken that from her. Zillah's reputation was vindicated, and that mattered to her above all else.

Zillah herself sat white-faced and quite still, her eyes on Isaac Wolff and then on the judge, although it was impossible to say if she could actually see either of them, she appeared so sunk in her own sense of loss.

"Sir Oliver!" McKeever recalled his attention.

"My lord?"

"Did you say you had also requested the doctor to attend?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Then would you call him."

"Yes, my lord. Dr. G.o.dwin."

There was instant rustling and creaking in the gallery as a score of people craned around to watch as the doors opened.

G.o.dwin proved to be a st.u.r.dy man with dark hair and the music of the Welsh valleys in his voice, hi total silence from the crowd and from the jury, he swore to his name and professional status, then awaited Rathbone's questions.

"Dr. G.o.dwin, were you summoned to Great Street at about eleven o'clock yesterday evening?"

"I was."

"By whom, and for what purpose?"

"By Mr. Isaac Wolff, to attend his friend Killian Melville, who had apparently died."

"And when you examined Mr. Melville, was he indeed dead?"

"Yes sir, he was-at least... at that point I made only a cursory examination. Very cursory."

There was absolute silence in the room.

Everyone was unnaturally still, as if waiting for something extraordinary without knowing what.

McKeever leaned forward, listening intently, frowning as if he did not completely understand.

"Your choice of words is curious," Rathbone pointed out. "Are you suggesting that later examination proved that Mr. Melville was not actually dead?" He asked it only to clarify. He entertained no hope of error.

"Oh no. Killian Melville was dead, I am afraid, poor soul," G.o.dwin a.s.sured him, nodding and pursing his lips.

"Can you say from what cause, Dr. G.o.dwin?"

"Not yet, not for certain, like. But it was poison of some sort, and very probably of the type of belladonna. See it in the eyes. But I'll know for sure when I've tested the contents of the stomach. Not been time for that yet."

"Thank you. I have nothing else to ask you at this point."

"No-no, I daresay not." G.o.dwin stood quite still. "But I can tell you something I imagine you did not know."

The room seemed to crackle as if there were thunder in the air.

"Yes?"

"Killian Melville was a woman."

No one moved.

A reporter broke a pencil in half and it sounded like gunfire.

A woman screamed.

"I-I beg your pardon," Rathbone said, swallowing and choking.

"Killian Melville was a woman," G.o.dwin repeated clearly.

"You mean he was-" McKeever was startled.

"No, my lord," G.o.dwin corrected. "I mean she was ... in every way a perfectly normal woman."

Zillah Lambert slid into a faint.

There were gasps around the gallery. One of the jurors used an expletive he would not have wished to have owned he even knew.

Delphine Lambert gave a scream and jerked her hand up to her mouth. Slowly her face turned scarlet with embarra.s.sment and rage. She stared fixedly ahead of her, refusing to risk meeting anyone else's eyes. She had been completely confounded. It was obvious to anyone who looked at her. Perhaps that, more than anything else, annoyed her now. The shock was total.

No one seemed to have noticed Zillah as she slumped momentarily insensible.

Sacheverall at last reacted. He scrambled to his feet, his arms waving.

"Hardly normal, my lord! Dr. G.o.dwin makes a mockery of the word. Killian Melville was in no way normal. Man or woman."