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“Mrs. McIvor, did you concur in your brother’s decision to employ a nurse from London for your mother?”
“Yes I did,” she said slowly and calmly. “I confess I thought it an excellent idea. I thought as well as her professional abilities, and her experience in travel, she would be an interesting companion for my mother.” She looked apologetic. “Mother had traveled considerably in her youth, and I think at times she missed the excitement of it. I thought such a woman would be able to talk with her about foreign parts and experiences that would be bound to entertain her.”
“Most understandable.” Gilfeather nodded. “I think in your circumstances I should have felt the same. And presumably that part of your arrangement lived up to your hopes.”
Oonagh smiled bleakly, but did not answer.
“Were you present when Miss Latterly arrived, Mrs. McIvor?” Gilfeather continued.
The questions were all as Monk had foreseen. Gilfeather asked them and Oonagh answered them, and the court listened with rapt attention, all except Monk, who stared around at first one face, then another. Gilfeather himself looked satisfied, even smug. Watching him, the jury could only believe he was completely in command of the whole procedure and held no doubt as to its outcome.
Monk resented it bitterly, while admiring the man’s professionalism. He could not recall the trial of his mentor all those years ago. He did not even know in which court it had been held, but his helplessness now brought back waves of old emotion and grief. Then he had known the truth and had watched impotently while someone he had both loved and admired had been convicted of a crime he had not committed. Then Monk had been young and looking with incredulity at the injustice, not believing until the last possible moment that it could really happen. Afterwards he had been stunned. This time it was all too familiar, an old wound with scar tissue ripped away to reveal the unhealed depths, and probed anew.
At the defense table James Argyll sat with his black brows drawn down in thought. His was a dangerous face, full of strength and subtlety, but he was a man without weapons. Monk had failed him. Deliberately he used the word over and over to himself. Failure. Someone had killed Mary Farraline, and he had not found any trace of who it was or why it had happened. He had had weeks in which to seek, and all he had produced was that Kenneth had a pretty mistress with long yellow hair, white skin and a determination never to be cold and hungry again, or to sleep in some strange bed at some man’s favor, because she had not one of her own.
Actually Monk sympathized with her more than he did with Kenneth, who had been forced to part with more expensive gifts than he had wished, in order to keep her favors.
But unless someone could raise adequate suspicion of embezzlement to have the company books audited, and embezzlement was in fact proved true, then it was possibly scandalous, although not probably, and it was certainly no cause for murder.
Monk looked at Rathbone and in spite of himself felt a stab of sympathy. To a stranger he appeared merely to be listening, his head a trifle to one side, his long face thoughtful, his dark eyes heavy-lidded as if his attention were entirely involved. But Monk had known him long enough and seen him under pressure before. He could see the angle of his shoulders hunched under his beautiful jacket, the stiffness of his neck and the slow clenching and unclenching of his hand on the table, and he felt the frustration boiling inside him. Whatever he thought or whatever emotions churned inside him, there was nothing he could do now. Whatever he would have done differently, whether it was a whole strategy or as little as an intonation or an expression of the face, he could only sit silently and watch.
Oonagh was answering Gilfeather’s questions about the preparation for Mary’s journey.
“And who packed your mother’s case, Mrs. McIvor?”
“Her lady’s maid.”
“Upon whose instructions?”
“Mine.” Oonagh hesitated only a fraction of a moment, her face pale, her head high. No one in the court moved. “I prepared a list of what should go in, so Mother would have everything she needed and … and not too many dinner gowns rather than plain day dresses, and skirts. It… it was not a social visit … not really.”
There was a murmur of sympathy like a breath of wind around the room. The personal details brought the reality of death more sharply.
Gilfeather waited a second or two, allowing the emotions time.
“I see. And naturally you included the appropriate jewelry on this list?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And you packed this list in the case?”
“Yes.” The ghost of a smile crossed her face. “So the maid who packed for her return would have something by which to know what should be there, and nothing would accidentally be left behind. It can be very tiresome …” She did not need to finish.
Again the sense of the dead woman filled the room. Someone in the gallery was weeping.
“Which brings me to another point, Mrs. McIvor,” Gilfeather said after several moments. “Precisely why was your mother making this long journey to London? Would it not have been more sensible for your sister to have returned to Edinburgh, and then been able to visit the whole family?”
“Normally speaking, of course,” Oonagh agreed, resuming her calm, intelligent tone. “But my sister is recently married and expecting her first child. She could not travel, and she was very anxious to see Mother.”
“Indeed? And do you know why that was?”
There was a complete silence in the court. One woman coughed discreetly and the sound was like gunfire.
“Yes … she was concerned … afraid that her child might not be quite normal, might be afflicted with some hereditary illness….” The words dropped one by one, carefully enunciated, into a pool of expectancy. There were gasps around the room. The jurors sat motionless. The judge turned sharply towards her.
Rathbone’s head came up, his expression tense.
Argyll’s eyes searched Oonagh’s face.
