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Half a dozen people at the table swiveled to look at him, caught as much by the tone of his voice as by his words.
“I beg your pardon?” Colonel Weatherall said with puzzlement, his thin, white hair catching the light.
“I said, ‘Neither has Lambert,’ “Rathbone repeated. “Any building he has paid for is exactly the same today as it was a week ago.”
“Hardly!” Lofthouse laughed. “My dear fellow, you, of all people, know the truth! I don’t mean to be unkind, or to make an issue of your misfortune, if that is the word, but Melville was a woman, for heaven’s sake.” He said no more, as if that fact was all the explanation required.
Weatherall cleared his throat and coughed into his handkerchief.
A ginger-haired man helped himself to more cheese.
“Precisely,” Rathbone agreed, facing Lofthouse unblinkingly. “The buildings are exactly the same. Our knowledge of Melville’s sex has changed, but not of her architectural skills.”
“Oh! Come now!” Lofthouse laughed again, glancing along the table at the others before looking back at Rathbone. “You cannot seriously be suggesting that a woman—a young woman at that—can conceive and draw up technically perfect plans for the sort of buildings Lambert commissioned and had built, for heaven’s sake? Really, Rathbone. We all sympathize with your embarrassment. We have all of us made mistakes of judgment at one time or another….” A smile curled his lips. “Although not, I think, of that order … or nature …” His smile broadened.
Rathbone could feel the rage inside him almost beyond his grasp to contain. How dare this complacent oaf make a shabby joke out of Keelin Melville’s tragedy and society’s prejudice?
“Lofthouse, I think …” Laurence began, although there was a look of humor in his eyes also, or so it seemed to Rathbone. He was not in the mood to consider it a reflection from the chandeliers.
“Oh, come on, my dear fellow!” Lofthouse was not going to be hushed. The port was at his elbow, and extremely good. “It has an element of the absurd, you must admit. When a genius like Rathbone gets caught out so very thoroughly, we lesser mortals must be allowed our moment of laughter. If he is not man enough to take it, then he should not enter the fray!”
Laurence opened his mouth to protest, but Rathbone spoke before he could, leaning forward across the table.
“You can jeer at me all you like. I am perfectly happy to enter the arena and do my best—win, lose, or draw. If my loss gives you pleasure, you are welcome to it!” He ignored the indrawn breath around the table and the looks of amazement. “But I am deeply offended by your making a public joke out of the death of a young woman whose only sin, so far as we know, was to be denied the opportunity to study or to practice her art so long as we knew she was a woman and not a man. She deceived us because we deserved it—in fact, in a sense demanded it.”
He disregarded Lofthouse’s rising anger or Colonel Weatherall’s incredulity, even his host’s embarrassment. “And to suggest that the buildings are worth less because they were designed by a woman rather than a man is the utmost hypocrisy. You know nothing more or less about them now than you did last week, when you were full of praise. They look exactly the same, your knowledge of their design and construction and material is exactly what it was before. You marveled yesterday, and today you mock, and nothing is different except your perception of the personal life of the architect.”
“Rathbone, I really think …” Laurence protested.
Lofthouse was red in the face. He half rose to his feet, hands on the white tablecloth.
Rathbone rose also.
“You say a young woman cannot do such things,” he continued, his tone even more penetrating. “Therefore what she does must be worthless, and what she had done must be worthless because she is a young woman. Actually, she was nearly forty.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “But no doubt where age matures a man it merely dulls a woman. I cannot think even you can seriously believe such an argument. You are a hypocrite, and it is bigots like you who drive genius to destruction, because you don’t understand it, and what you don’t understand you destroy.”
He had gone too far, and he knew it even as he was speaking, not that he did not mean it, but he should not have said it. He stared at their shocked faces. He should apologize, at least to Laurence. Perhaps he would tomorrow, or next week, but not today. He was too passionately, irretrievably, angry.
“You’re drunk!” Lofthouse accused him with amazement, then ruined the effect by hiccuping.
Rathbone looked at him, then at the half-empty glass beside him, with withering contempt.
There was nothing left for him to do but incline his head in the barest acknowledgment to Laurence, then excuse himself and leave.
Outside he found himself shivering. It was over a mile and a half to his rooms, but he set out walking without even giving it thought, going faster and faster, oblivious of people passing him or the clatter and light in the gloom of carriages. It was only as he was crossing Piccadilly that he realized he did not really want to go home. He did not want to spend the rest of the evening alone with his thoughts.
He stopped abruptly on the curb and swung around, ready to hail the nearest cab. He climbed in and directed it to take him to Primrose Hill.
When he arrived Henry Rathbone was sitting by the fire with his slippers off, toasting his feet, sucking absentmindedly on an empty pipe, and deep in a book of philosophy, with which he profoundly disagreed. But its arguments were exercising his mind, which he enjoyed enormously. Even losing his temper in such an abstract way was a form of pleasure.
However, as soon as Oliver came in he realized that something was wrong. It did not require a great deal of deduction, since Oliver had left his hat at Laurence’s, his gloves were still stuffed in his pockets and his hands were red with cold. It was now pitch-dark, and chilly enough to suspect frost.
Henry had, of course, followed the case and knew of the latest tragic developments. He stood up and regarded Oliver gravely, holding his pipe in his hand.
“Has something happened?” he asked.
Oliver ran his fingers through his ha
ir, something totally uncharacteristic. He loathed looking untidy; it was almost as bad as being unclean.
