AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hester winced. “And then what?”
“Then Rathbone came back, spoke to Keelin for a few moments, and they returned to court.”
Hester sat for a while thinking silently. It did not seem to make any sense. Monk thought of the afternoon session, the tension and despair. He could picture Keelin Melville safely next to Rathbone, her face tense, the light reflecting in her clear eyes, which were almost the color of aquamarine. Her skin was very fair, spattered with freckles, her features fine but with a remarkable inner power. It was the face of a visionary. And her hands were beautiful too, strong and slender, perfectly proportioned … except that she bit her nails—not badly, but enough to make them too short. It seemed to be in moments of greatest anxiety. He could recall her hands in her mouth when … Hands in her mouth!
“She bit her nails!” he almost shouted, leaning towards Hester and clasping her hand where it lay on the table, turning it over. “She bit her nails!”
“What?” She looked startled.
He rubbed his fingertips along the tabletop, then put them to his lips.
r />
“The powder …” she breathed out the words. “If that was the belladonna, then she put it to her lips … into her mouth. Her hands were covered in it from the jewelry!”
“Would it be enough?” He barely dared ask.
“It could be …” she said slowly, staring back at him. “If it were pure … to act within a few hours. Especially if she ate nothing.” Her voice rose a little, getting more urgent. “She didn’t wash her hands after touching the jewelry?”
“No. She went straight back into court. I don’t imagine at that point she would think of such a thing … still less of a taste.”
“I don’t think it tastes unpleasant,” she answered. “Children sometimes eat the fruit by mistake.”
“Does it kill them?” he asked.
“Yes, it does, usually. And this would be concentrated.”
“Where would she have got it?” He tried to keep the sense of victory out of his voice, but it was there in spite of him.
“An herbalist, or even distill it herself,” she replied, not taking her eyes from his.
“There won’t be berries this time of the year.”
“You don’t need the berries. Any part of it is poisonous … berries, flowers, roots, leaves, anything at all!”
Monk clenched his fist. “That’s it! That’s how she did it! By God, she’s clever! Now, how can we prove it?” He sat back on the chair. He was warm at last, and very comfortable in Gabriel’s shirt and trousers. He felt elated. He knew the truth! And Keelin Melville had not killed herself. She had not died in drowning despair, surrendering. It had not even been directly his, or Rathbone’s, failure which had been responsible.
“Is she buried yet?” Hester asked. “Perhaps if they haven’t washed her hands … under the nails …”
“Yes,” he answered before she finished. “They buried her.” The words hurt. “As a suicide … in unhallowed ground. Even Wolff was not permitted to be there.”
“God won’t care,” she said with unwavering conviction. “But without her hands to look at … what about the suit she wore? Do you think we could see that? Or did they bury her in it?” There was finality in her voice, as if she expected the answer even before he gave it.
“I don’t know, but I expect they did bury her in it. Why would they be bothered to change it? And Delphine took the packet back. She was careful enough for that.”
“What about the jewelry itself?” she asked, but without hope.
“It wouldn’t prove anything much, except to us,” he replied. “Only that she had belladonna in the same pocket … not that anyone else put it there. Delphine would simply say that Melville had a packet of belladonna powder in her pocket and it burst or came undone. We couldn’t prove otherwise—even if we knew it!”
“Then I don’t think we can prove it,” Hester said slowly.
“Not—not prove it? We’ve got to!” He was outraged. It was monstrous! Unbearable! Delphine Lambert had abandoned two tiny children to the cruelty of strangers—two vulnerable, damaged children who needed her even more than most. Then she had murdered the most brilliant, dazzling, creative architect of the age, all to further her own comfort and ambition, and to find a good marriage for her adopted daughter—whether she wanted it or not. Appearance had been everything, beauty, glitter—as shallow as the skin. The passion and hope and pain of the heart beneath had been thrown away. He could not let himself think it could all just happen and no one could call for any accountability, any justice, any regret at all. All kinds of arguments raged through his head, and even as he thought of each one, he knew it was no use.
“Can we?” Hester asked, her face puckered. She had not known Keelin Melville; she had not even been at court this time, as she had in most of the other cases he had cared about deeply. It was strange, and he realized now he had missed her. But Gabriel Sheldon was tied inextricably to it, because Martha Jackson was part of his household, part of Perdita’s life, and because he too knew what it was like to be disfigured, to know his face, the outer part of him everyone saw and judged him by so easily, filled people with revulsion, even with fear. He was an outcast of the same kind, a victim of a world where sight ruled so much. Hester understood it.
And she understood Keelin Melville, a woman fighting to succeed in a world where men made all the rules and judged only by the yardstick of their own preconceptions, not by reality of courage or skill or achievement. She had seen others sacrificed to it, and eventually crushed.
“We must!” he said fiercely, leaning farther forward. “We must find a way.”
