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“I don’t know. It could be,” Oliver said furiously. “That isn’t the point! I put dirty, irreverent fingers over the man’s dreams! I dragged out the most precious thing he had, held it up to the public, then smeared it all over with doubt and ugliness. I could feel the crowd hating me—and the jury—but not as much as I loathed myself.” He laughed abruptly. “I think only Monk equaled the hold of me as I was leaving and I thought he was going to strike me. He was white with rage. Looking at his eyes, I was frightened of him.” He gave a shaky laugh as the shame of that moment on the Old Bailey steps came back to him, the frustration and the self-disgust. “I think if he could have got away with it, he might have killed me for what I did to Barrymore—and to Prudence’s memory.” He stopped, aching for some word of denial, of comfort.
Henry looked at him with bright, sad eyes. There was love in his face, the desire to protect, but not to excuse.
“Was it a legitimate question to raise?” he asked.
“Yes, of course it was. She was normally a highly intelligent woman, but there was nothing whatever to make anyone, even a fool, think that Sir Herbert would leave his wife and seven children and ruin himself professionally, socially, and financially for her. It’s preposterous.”
“And what makes you think she believed he would?”
“The letters, damn it! And they are in her hand, there is no question about that. The sister identified them.”
“Then perhaps you do have a tormented woman with two quite distinct sides to her nature—one rational, brave, and efficient, the other quite devoid of judgment and even of self-preservation?” Henry suggested.
“I suppose so.”
“Then why do you blame yourself? What is it you have done that is so wrong?”
“Shattered dreams—robbed Barrymore of his most precious belief—and perhaps a lot of others as well, certainly Monk.”
“Questioned it,” Henry corrected. “Not robbed them—not yet.”
“Yes I have. I’ve made them doubt. It is tarnished. It won’t ever be the same again.”
“What do you believe?”
Oliver thought for a long time. The starlings were quiet at last. In the gathering dusk the perfume of the honeysuckle was even stronger.
“I believe there is something damned important that I don’t know yet,” he answered finally. “Not only don’t I know it, I don’t even know where to look.”
“Then go with your beliefs,” Henry advised, his voice comfortable and familiar in the near darkness. “If you don’t have knowledge, it is all you can do.”
The second day was occupied with Lovat-Smith’s calling a tedious procession of hospital staff who all testified to Prudence’s professional ability, and he was meticulous at no point to slight her. Once or twice he looked across at Rathbone and smiled, his gray eyes brilliant. He knew the precise values of all the emotions involved. It was po
intless hoping he would make an error. One by one he elicited from them observations of Prudence’s admiration for Sir Herbert, the inordinate number of times he chose her alone to work with him, their obvious ease with each other, and finally her apparent devotion to him.
Rathbone did what he could to mitigate the effect, pointing out that Prudence’s feelings for Sir Herbert did not prove his feelings for her, and that he was not even aware that on her part it was more than professional, let alone that he had actively encouraged her. But he had an increasingly unpleasant certainty that he had lost their sympathy. Sir Herbert was not an easy man to defend; he did not naturally attract their liking. He appeared too calm, too much a man in command of his own destiny. He was accustomed to dealing with those who were desperately dependent upon him for the relief of bodily pain, even the continuance of their physical existence.
Rathbone wondered if he were frightened behind that masklike composure, if he understood how close he was to the hangman’s noose and his own final pain. Was his mind racing, his imagination bringing out his body in cold sweat? Or did he simply believe such a thing could not happen? Was it innocence which armored him against the reality of his danger?
What had really happened between himself and Prudence?
Rathbone went as far as he dared in trying to paint her as a woman with fantasies, romantic delusions, but he saw the faces of the jurors and felt the wave of dislike when he disparaged her, and knew he dared do little more than suggest, and leave the thought in their minds to germinate as the trial progressed. Henry’s words kept coming back to him. Go with your beliefs.
But he should not have quarreled with Monk. That had been self-indulgent. He needed him desperately. The only way to save Sir Herbert from the gallows, never mind his reputation, was to find whoever did kill Prudence Barrymore. Even the escape of reasonable doubt was beginning to recede. Once he even heard a sharp note of panic in his own voice as he rose to cross-examine, and it brought him out in a sweat over his body. Lovat-Smith would not have missed it. He would know he was winning, as a dog on the chase scents the kill.
The third day was better. Lovat-Smith made his first tactical error. He called Mrs. Barrymore to the stand to testify to Prudence’s spotless moral character. Presumably he had intended her to heighten the emotional pitch of sympathy for Prudence. Mrs. Barrymore was the bereaved mother, it was a natural thing to do, and in his position Rathbone would most certainly have done the same. He admitted as much to himself.
Nevertheless it proved a mistake.
Lovat-Smith approached her with deference and sympathy, but still all the cocky assurance in his stance that Rathbone had seen the previous day. He was winning, and he knew it. It was the sweeter for being against Oliver Rathbone.
“Mrs. Barrymore,” he began with a slight inclination of his head, “I regret having to ask you to do this, painful as it must be for you, but I am sure you are as keen as the rest of us that justice should be done, for all our sakes.”
She looked tired, her fair skin puffy around the eyes, but she was perfectly composed, dressed in total black, which became her fair coloring and delicate features.
“Of course,” she agreed. “I shall do my best to answer you honestly.”
“I am sure you will,” Lovat-Smith said. Then, sensing the judge’s impatience, he began. “Naturally you have known Prudence all her life, probably no one else knew her as well as you did. Was she a romantic, dreaming sort of girl, often falling in love?”
