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“Did anyone bring her a glass of water, or perhaps offer her a flask?” Monk suggested.
“No sir.” Sutton was quite firm. “She sat by herself until Mrs. Lambert went over to her and gave her back the gifts she’d given Miss Lambert. I saw a pair of earrings, a gold fob an’ a real pretty miniature painting o’ trees and such. Had them in a packet. Just opened it up and tipped them all out into Miss Melville’s hands. They were dusty as if they had been pushed to the back of a drawer. I hardly think she knew what was going on, that distracted she was.”
“Are you certain Miss Melville didn’t eat or drink anything?” Monk pressed. It would be easy enough to understand if at this point she had taken a stiff brandy, if nothing else. Any normal person would have waited for the privacy of her own home to take poison. But Melville was a woman. Did women think or feel differently?
He could imagine no reason why they should. Surely agony such as this knew no boundaries of sex!
“What I don’t understand,” Pearson said, scratching the back of his neck, “is why she did it then. If it was me, I’d have done it the day before, when Mr. Sacheverall brought Mr. Wolff in—that is, if I were going to do it at all … which I can’t say I would. Although I can’t say I wouldn’t, not until I’d been there.”
“No,” Monk agreed, staring at Sutton. “But you saw Melville all the time, and she didn’t eat or drink anything? Are you certain?”
“If she had done, she didn’t drink from it in that adjournment, sir. I’d take an oath on that myself. She must’ve took the poison some other way, or more like some other time. I don’t want to overstep my place, sir, but maybe the doc got it wrong?”
“Maybe …” Monk said, but he did not believe it. “Thank you, Mr. Sutton. You have been very helpful.” And with a word of thanks to Pearson as well, he walked back down the hallway.
He spent several more hours confirming what he had been told, but he could find no variation in accounts. Melville had spoken to few people. She had been white-faced, her body rigid, her eyes reflecting the pain she must have felt, but she had neither eaten nor drunk anything.
How had she taken the belladonna which had killed her? And why had she chosen to do it at such a time, instead of either the night before, after Wolff had testified, or that evening, after the prostitute had finally sealed Sacheverall’s case?
Any answer he could think of was unsatisfactory, leaving questions in his mind, a darkness unresolved.
10
MONK SPENT a miserable, agitated evening. It would be ridiculous to expect every case to resolve into a solution so absolute there could be no doubt about any part of it. None ever did. There were always unknowns, thoughts he could not fathom. One had to let go once sufficient answers were found to be certain of the truth of the verdict.
But this one troubled him more deeply than most. It was not only the tragedy of it, it was the feeling, the almost certainty, that Keelin Melville had some last secret she had taken to the grave with her, which would make sense of her behavior.
He paced back and forth across his sitting room, ignoring the dying embers of the fire and the rai
n spattering against the windows, loud because he had forgotten to draw the curtains.
He could understand why Melville had not told Zillah she was really a woman. She had kept the secret so long she could not trust anyone at all, except Wolff, not to reveal it. Perhaps it would only have been a confidence to a girl friend, whispered in exchange for some other romantic secret or dream, a moment’s hurt and loneliness eased by sharing. But then what would bind the friend to keep total silence? The chance to share such a dramatic piece of information could be a temptation too great.
No, she was wiser to trust no one. Too much depended on it. And once the case had gone so far, it was too late to hope Barton Lambert would keep silent. If he had told anyone in anger, no matter how much he had regretted it, it would be too late to take it back. Knowledge can never be withdrawn.
Before it all happened, Monk would have thought it trivial. What did it matter whether a person was a man or a woman, except to those who knew that person? The works of art were the same. Why not let it be known, and if there were no more commissions, then leave! Go to Italy, or France, or anywhere one liked.
But Melville had spent twelve years in England, had designed some of the loveliest buildings in the country. She did not want to see them belittled for a reason that had nothing to do with their value. And she had been right. It was happening already, the derisory remarks, the suddenly altered perception when nothing in the reality was changed. She had been prepared to take the chance, and fought to survive in England.
And, of course, once the trial had begun she could not leave. And it seemed she really had believed it would turn out differently.
So what had made her change her mind and take belladonna poison … in the middle of the afternoon?
He stopped at the window and stared out of it, seeing only the blur of the rain. Nobody else cared now, except Rathbone, of course, and that was for emotional reasons. He hated failure, and he was not used to guilt. Monk smiled to himself. He was much more used to it, but he liked it no better. The only difference was that for him it was a familiar pain, for Rathbone it had all the shock of the new.
At least Monk imagined it had!
Was that why Keelin Melville had killed herself? Guilt?
Over what? The injury she had done to Zillah Lambert could very easily be explained. It was error, private social clumsiness possibly. Certainly nothing that warranted suicide.
Anyway, wasn’t genius rather more self-protective than that? He tried to think back on what he knew of the lives of the great creative people. Many of them had hurt others, been eccentric, selfish, single-minded, impossible to live with happily, sometimes even to live with at all. But it was those around them they injured, not themselves. They were too fired by their passion to make, to build, to create, paint, dance or whatever it was that formed their gift to the world. Sometimes they burned themselves out; sometimes illness or accident consumed them. Many died young.
But he could think of no example of one who had killed himself over guilt regarding his abuse of women. The very idea was almost a contradiction within itself.
Was Melville so different simply because she was a woman?
He doubted it.
