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Her face lit with amusement.
“Good Heavens, no! It would be totally absurd. Of course not.”
“Then for Prudence to imagine that he was in love with her was unrealistic, was it not? It was the belief of a woman who could not tell her dreams from reality?”
A shadow crossed her face, but it was impossible to read it.
“Yes—yes it was.”
He had to press home the point.
“You said she had some medical skill, ma’am. Do you have any evidence that it was surgical skill of a degree where she was capable of performing amputations herself, unaided and successfully? Was she indeed not a mere nurse, but a surgeon?”
There was an unhappy murmur around the room and a confusion of emotions.
Berenice’s eyebrows shot up.
“Good Heavens. Of course not! If you forgive me, Mr. Rathbone, you have no knowledge whatever of the medical world if you can ask such a question. A woman surgeon is absurd.”
“Then in that respect also, she had lost the ability to distinguish between daydreams and reality?”
“If that is what she said, then most certainly she had. She was a nurse, a very good one, but certainly not a doctor of any sort. Poor creature, the war must have unhinged her. Perhaps we are at fault if we did not see it.” She looked suitably remorseful.
“Perhaps the hardships she endured and the suffering she saw unbalanced her mind,” Rathbone agreed. “And her wish to be able to help led her to imagine she could. We may never know.” He shook his head. “It is a tragedy that such a fine and compassionate woman, with so intense a desire to heal, should have been strained beyond the point she could endure with safety to her own nature; and above all that she should end her life by such a means.” He said that for the jury, not that it had
any relevance to the evidence, but it was imperative to keep their sympathy. He had destroyed Prudence’s reputation as a heroine; he must not take from her even the role of honorable victim.
Lovat-Smith’s last witness was Monk.
He climbed the steps of the witness box stone-faced and turned to the court coldly. As before, he had caught snatches of what Rathbone had drawn from Berenice Ross Gilbert from those who were coming and going from the courtroom: press reporters, clerks, idlers. He was furious even before the first question.
“Mr. Monk,” Lovat-Smith began carefully. He knew he had a hostile witness, but he also knew his evidence was incontestable. “You are no longer with the police force but undertake private inquiries, is that correct?”
“It is.”
“Were you employed to inquire into the murder of Prudence Barrymore?”
“I was.” Monk was not going to volunteer anything. Far from it losing the public’s interest, they sensed antagonism and sat a little more upright in order not to miss a word or a look.
“By whom? Miss Barrymore’s family?”
“By Lady Callandra Daviot.”
In the dock Sir Herbert sat forward, his expression suddenly tense, a small vertical line between his brows.
“Was it in that capacity that you attended the funeral of Miss Barrymore?” Lovat-Smith pursued.
“No,” Monk said tersely.
If Monk had hoped to disconcert Lovat-Smith, he succeeded only slightly. Some instinct, or some steel in Monk’s face, warned him not to ask what his reason had been. He could not guarantee the answer. “But you were there?” he said instead, sidestepping the issue.
“I was.”
“And Miss Barrymore’s family knew your connection with the case?”
“Yes.”
There was not a sound in the room now. Something of the rage in Monk, some power in his face, held the attention without a whisper or a movement.
