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She stood up, taking the cue so that he did not appear to have hurried her, and she saw the flash of satisfaction in his face. In every other circumstance she would have sat down again simply to annoy him. Now she was eager to escape while she still had what she wanted. “Then I shall not take up more of your time, Mr. Thorpe,” she said. “Good day.” She went out without looking back. If she were too civil it would cause him to think the matter over, and perhaps change his mind.
She was not certain whether she wished to go to the trial with Hester or alone. She did not consider her emotions to be transparent generally, but she did not delude herself that Hester would be unaware of the turmoil inside her. Still, it might be too hard to find an excuse not to go together. And whether she wished it or not, they might need each other deeply before it was over.
She and Hester were in court side by side w
hen the trial opened and the two protagonists faced each other. Pendreigh was magnificent merely in his presence, even before he needed to speak. He was a most striking figure with his height and his elegance of movement. His mane of shining hair was largely concealed by his wig, but the light still caught the golden edges of it. To those who knew he was the victim’s father, and thus the father-in-law of the accused, his presence was like the charge of electricity in the air before a storm.
Up in the dock, which was set at a height and quite separate from the body of the court, Kristian was white-faced, his eyes hollow, looking dark and very un-English. Would that tell against him? She looked again at the jury. To a man they were concentrating on the counsel for the prosecution, a diminutive man with a quite ordinary face of intense sincerity. When he spoke briefly his voice was gentle, well-modulated, the kind that almost immediately sounds familiar, as if you must know him but simply have forgotten where and how.
The indictment was read. Callandra had been to trials before, but there was a reality about this one that was almost physical in its impact. When she heard the word murder, not once but twice, she could feel the sweat break out on her body, and the packed room seemed to swim in her vision as if she were going to faint. Dimly, she felt Hester’s fingers grasp her arm and the strength of it steadied her.
The witnesses were brought on one by one, starting with the police constable who had first found the bodies. The shock and sense of tragedy were still clear in him, and Callandra could feel the response to it in the room.
There was nothing Pendreigh or anyone else could have done to alter either the facts or the compassion. At least he was wise enough not to try.
The constable was followed by Runcorn, looking unhappy but perfectly certain of himself, and suitably respectful both of the court and of the subjects of passion and death. Callandra was startled at the anger in him when he spoke of Sarah Mackeson, as if in some way he did not understand himself and it outraged him. There was a gulf of every kind of difference between her and this relatively uneducated, certainly unpolished, policeman with his prejudices and ambitions. He had been an enemy to Monk all the time she had known him, and long before that, and she thought him pompous, self-absorbed and thoroughly tiresome.
And yet looking at him now, she could see that his anger was honest, and cleaner than any of the ritual words of the legal procedure being played out. He would have hated anyone to know it, but he cared.
The jury heard it, and Callandra saw with cold fear how an answering anger was born in them. Because Sarah was real to Runcorn, with a life that mattered, she became more real to them also, and their determination to punish someone for her death the greater.
She knew it would go on like this, day after day. For all his sharpness of intellect, the legion of words at his command, and his understanding of the law, there was nothing Fuller Pendreigh could do against the facts which would be displayed one by one. Where was Monk? What had he learned in Vienna? There must be some other explanation, and please heaven he would find it. Please heaven it would be soon enough.
She sat sick and shivering as the trial went on around her as relentlessly as if it were a play being acted from a script already written and there was no avoiding the climax at the end, or the tragedy.
Monk went to see Father Geissner in his home as Magda Beck had suggested. The first time, the housekeeper told him that the Father was occupied, but he made an appointment for the following day. Fretting at the time lost, he spent the remaining hours of daylight wandering around the city looking at the areas which had featured most heavily in the uprising, trying to picture it in his mind, event by event, as he had been told it.
Nothing in the calm, prosperous streets told him that the cafes and shops, the comfortable houses, had witnessed desperation and violence, nor was there anything reflected in the faces of people hurrying about their business, buying and selling, gossiping, calling out greetings in the sharp, cold air.
In the evening, Monk did as everyone had been so keen to suggest to him, and went to hear the young Johann Strauss conduct his orchestra. The gay, lyrical music had caught Europe by storm, delighting even the rather staid and unimaginative Queen Victoria, and set all London dancing the waltz.
Here in its own city it had a magic, a laughter and a speed that forgot politics, the cold wind across Hungary from the east beyond, or the losses and mistakes of the past. For three hours Monk saw the heart of Vienna, and past and future were of no importance, swallowed in the delight of the moment. He would never again hear three-quarter time without a lurch of memory and a sweetness.
He returned to his hotel long after midnight, and at ten o’clock the next morning, after an excellent cup of coffee, he set out to keep his appointment with Father Geissner.
This time he was shown in immediately, and the housekeeper left them alone.
Father Geissner was a quiet, elderly man with an ascetic face, which was almost beautiful in its inner peace.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Monk?” he asked in excellent English, inviting him with a wave of his hand to be seated.
Monk had already considered any possible advantage it might give him to approach the subject obliquely, and had discarded it as more likely to lose him the priest’s trust if he were discovered. This man spent his professional life listening to people’s secrets. Like Monk, he must have learned to tell truth from lies and to understand the reasons why people concealed their acts and often their motives. “You were recommended to me by Frau Magda Beck,” Monk answered, barely glancing around the comfortable, book-lined office where he had been received. “She told me that you knew her brother-in-law, Kristian Beck, when he lived here, especially during the uprising in ’48.”
“I did,” Geissner agreed, but his expression was guarded, even though he looked directly at Monk and his blue eyes were candid. “Why is that of interest to you?”
“Because Elissa Beck has been murdered in London, where they lived, and Kristian has been charged with the crime.” He ignored the startled look in Geissner’s face. “He is a friend of my wife, who is a nurse.” Then he added quickly, “She was in the Crimea with Miss Nightingale,” in case Geissner’s opinion of nurses was founded upon the general perception of them as domestic servants whose moral character precluded their obtaining an ordinary domestic position. “And he is also a friend of Lady Callandra Daviot, whom I have known for many years. We all feel that there is another explanation for what happened, and I have come to Vienna to see if it may lie in the past.”
A brief flash of pity crossed Geissner’s face, but there was no way to tell whether it was for Elissa because she was dead, Kristian for his present situation, or even for Monk because he had set out on a task in which he could not succeed.
“I used to be in the police force,” Monk explained, then realized instantly that that also might be little recommendation. “Now I investigate matters privately, for people who have problems beyond the police’s interest or on which they have given up.”
Geissner raised white eyebrows. “Or have an answer which they find unacceptable?”
“They might be forced to accept it,” Monk said carefully, watching Geissner’s face and seeing no reaction. “But not easily, not as long as there is any possibility at all of a different one. Those who know Dr. Beck now cannot believe he would do such a thing. He is a man of remarkable self-discipline, dedication and compassion.”
“That sounds like the man I knew,” Geissner agreed with a faint smile which looked to be more sorrow than any reluctance to feel admiration.
Monk struggled to read his emotions, and knew he failed. There was a world of knowledge behind his words, far more subtle than merely the passage of events.
