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“I—I don’t recall the question,” she said wretchedly.
Rathbone answered before Hardie could reword it and make it innocuous.
“You are not saying that Prudence Barrymore was blackmailing Sir Herbert, are you?” he demanded, his voice louder and sharper than he had intended.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, she was blackmailing him.”
“But,” Rathbone protested, as if horror-stricken, “but you said—why, for God’s sake? You said yourself she had no wish whatever to marry him!”
Berenice stared at him with unmitigated hatred.
“She wanted him to help her gain medical training. I know that from deduction—not observation. You cannot charge me with concealing it.”
“Ch—charge you?” Rathbone stammered.
“For God’s sake!” She leaned over the witness stand railing, her face twisted with fury. “You know he killed her! You just have to go through this charade because you are supposed to defend him. Get on with it! Get it done!”
Rathbone turned to her very slightly, then away again to look up at Sir Herbert in the dock.
His face was gray, his mouth slack with disbelief, his eyes bright with sick panic.
There was only the faintest, thinnest flicker of hope. Very slowly he turned from Rathbone to the jury. He looked at one, then another, then another, right to the last. Then he knew it was defeat … final and absolute.
There was silence in the room. Not even a pencil moved.
Philomena Stanhope looked up at the dock steadily, and there was something in her face very close to pity.
Lovat-Smith held out his hand to Rathbone, his face burning with admiration.
In the public benches Hester turned to Monk, afraid of the triumph she would see in his eyes. But it was not there. It was not a victory they had achieved, only the conclusion of a tragedy, and some measure of justice, at least for Prudence Barrymore and those who had loved her.
Available in bookstores everywhere!
THE SINS
OF THE WOL
An Inspector William Monk Novel
by Anne Perry
Please read on for a
compelling excerpt from
THE SINS OF THE WOLF
by Anne Perry….
Published by Ivy Books.
Available at your local bookstore.
HESTER’S FIRST FEELING was one of profound loss. Long ago she might have had an initial moment of rejecting the fact altogether, refusing to believe Mary was dead, but she had seen too much death not to recognize it, even when it was completely without warning. Last night Mary had seemed in excellent health and buoyant spirits, and yet she must have died quite early in the night. Her body was cold to the touch, and such stiffness took from four to six hours to achieve.
Hester pulled the blanket up over her, gently covering her face, and then stood back. The train was moving more slowly now, and there were houses in the gray, early morning beyond the rain-streaked windows.
Then the next emotion came: guilt. Mary had been her patient, entrusted to her care, and after only a few hours she was dead. Why? What had she done so badly? What had she bungled, or forgotten, that Mary had died without even a sound, no cry, no gasp, no struggle for breath? Or perhaps there had been, only Hester had been too soundly asleep to hear, and the clatter of the train had masked it.
