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“Did you at any time have cause to doubt the wisdom of your choice prior to your seeing her off in Edinburgh station for the journey to London?”
“No. She seemed a perfectly acceptable young woman,” Alastair answered. Never once did he glance at Hester, but kept his eyes studiously away from her.
Gilfeather asked him a few more questions, all fairly trivial. Monk’s attention wandered. He looked for Oonagh’s fair head and did not find her, but Eilish was easy to see, and Deirdra. He was surprised to see Deirdra looking straight back at him with pity, and something like conspiracy, in her eyes.
Or perhaps it was only the lamplight reflecting.
Gilfeather sat down amid a stir of excitement from the gallery. James Argyll stood up.
“Mr. Farraline …”
Alastair looked at him with a fixed, polite expression of dislike.
“Mr. Farraline.” Argyll did not smile at him. “Why did you choose someone from London rather than Edinburgh? Have we no acceptable nurses in Scotland?”
Alastair’s face tightened noticeably.
“I imagine so, sir. None of them answered our advertisement. We wished for the best we could find. A woman who had served with Florence Nightingale seemed to us above reproach.”
There was a murmur around the crowd and mixed emotions, patriotic approval of Florence Nightingale and all she stood for in their minds, anger that her reputation should be besmirched, even vicariously, surprise, doubt and anticipation.
“You really considered such qualification necessary for so simple a task as administering a prepared dose to an intelligent and far from incapacitated lady?” Argyll said curiously. “Members of the jury may wonder why a local woman of sound reputation would not have served at least as well, and far less expensively in railway fares than sending for a stranger from London.”
This time the rustle was agreement.
Monk shifted impatiently. It was a point so minor as to be worthless, too subtle for the jury even to understand, much less recall when the time came.
“We wanted someone accustomed to travel,” Alastair repeated doggedly, his face pink, although it was impossible to tell what emotion lay behind the flushed cheeks and unhappy eyes. It could have been no more than grief, and certain embarrassment at being required to stand so publicly for everyone to stare at with such morbid interest. He was used only to honor, respect, even awe. Now his private affairs, his family and its emotions, were displayed and he was helpless to defend himself.
“Thank you,” Argyll said politely, conveying neither belief nor disbelief. “Did Miss Latterly seem an entirely satisfactory person to you while she was in your house?”
Even if Alastair had wished to den
y it, he was now in a position where he could not, or he would seem to have connived at whatever ill he had implied.
“Yes, of course,” he said sharply. “I should never have permitted my mother to travel if I had suspected anything at all.”
Argyll nodded and smiled. “In fact, would it be true to say that your mother seemed to get along particularly well with Miss Latterly?”
Alastair’s face hardened. “Yes … I feel it would. A remarkably—” He stopped.
Argyll waited. The judged looked inquiringly at Alastair. The jurors all sat staring.
Alastair bit his lip. Apparently he had thought better of what he was going to say.
There was a murmur of sympathy around the room. Alastair’s face tightened, loathing the public pity.
Argyll knew when he had stopped winning, even if he did not know why.
“Thank you, sir. That is all I have to ask you.”
Gilfeather nodded benignly, and the judge excused Alastair with a further expression of sympathy and respect which Alastair accepted tight-lipped.
The next witness to be called was Oonagh McIvor. She caused even more of a stir than Alastair. She had no title, no public position, but even if no one had known who she was, her air of dignity and suppressed passion would have commanded both respect and attention. Of course she was dressed entirely in black, but she was anything but drab. Her fair skin was delicate and warm and the gleam of her hair was plain beneath her black bonnet.
She climbed the steps deliberately and took the oath with an unwavering voice, then stood waiting for Gilfeather to begin. Not one of the fifteen jurors took his eyes from her.
Gilfeather hesitated, as if wondering how much to play on the jury’s sympathy, then decided against it. He was a subtle man and saw no need to gild the lily.
