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Rathbone swiveled to face Hester again. “Mrs. Monk, among those records did you find those of the young woman, Kitty, who came to you with cuts and bruises on the night Nolan Baltimore’s body was discovered in Leather Lane, near Coldbath Square?”
“Yes.”
“Was she among the once-respectable young women who had been reduced to selling her body for a particularly repulsive type of abuse in order to pay the ever-mounting debt of such high rates of usury that she could never be free of it?”
“Yes.”
“Could you describe her for the court, Mrs. Monk? What did she look like?”
Now she understood. It was so terrible she felt sick. The room swam around her as if she were at sea, the silence was a roar like waves. She heard Rathbone’s voice only distantly.
“Mrs. Monk? Are you all right?”
She clung onto the rails, gripping them hard so the physical pain would bring her back to the moment.
“Mrs. Monk!”
“She was . . .” She gulped and licked her dry lips. “She was fairly tall, very handsome. She had dark hair and golden brown eyes . . . very beautiful. She gave me the name of Kitty . . . and the records said Kitty Hillyer . . .”
Rathbone turned very slowly to face the judge. “My lord, I believe we now know where Katrina Harcus obtained the money to dress as well as was necessary for a handsome but penniless young woman, born illegitimate, left destitute when her father died and his promised legacy did not come. She traveled south to London to try and make a fortunate marriage. However, within the space of two months her mother died, her fiancé rejected her for a richer bride, and her debts became so urgent she was drawn into the most repellent form of prostitution to satisfy the usurer, her father’s colleague, a man she had known as a child and to whom she had turned for help in a strange city, and who had so betrayed her. Perhaps because of who he was, his demands revolted her so intensely that she fought him off, to his death.”
The judge commanded silence in the growing swell of fury within the room, but it was several long seconds before he received it, so intense was the wave of emotion in the room. He nodded to Rathbone to continue.
“And that very night when she was taken by two other prostitutes to Coldbath Square to have her own injuries treated,” Rathbone resumed, facing the jury now, “who should be the nurse who helped her, but the wife of the man who was, in her mind, the author of her grief, all the injustices against her from childhood? She heard the name of Mrs. Monk, and the description both of Monk’s appearance and his nature, and his new occupation. I believe from that moment on she began to plan a terrible revenge.”
A hideous, unbelievable thought danced at the edge of Hester’s mind.
Fowler stood up, but did not know what to say. No one was listening to him anyway.
Hester could think only of Monk. Dalgarno, the jury, even Rathbone, melted from her vision. Monk was sitting motionless, his eyes wide and hollow, his skin bleached of every vestige of color. Margaret had moved closer to him, but she had no idea what to do to offer any word or gesture.
“Katrina Harcus had nothing left,” Rathbone said quietly, but in the now total silence every word was clear. “Her mother was dead, the man she loved had deserted her, and she had no hope of ever winning him back because there was, only too obviously, nothing to win. He was incapable of love or even of honor. She was in debt beyond her means ever to repay, and she had sold her body to a particularly degraded form of prostitution from which she may well have felt she would never again be clean. And now she was also guilty of a man’s death. She was wise enough in the ways of the world to know that society would see it as murder, regardless of the provocation she endured, or that she may not have intended him to die. It would be only a matter of time before the police found her, and she would live in fear of it for the rest of her life.”
He spread his hands. “The one thing left for her was revenge. And fate handed her the perfect opportunity for that when she found Mrs. Monk in Coldbath Square. She knew all about the original fraud in Liverpool for which her father, Arrol Dundas, was convicted. She created the impression of another fraud almost exactly like it, knowing that Monk would not be able to resist the temptation to investigate it. The likelihood of his recognizing her was remote. She had been a child of eight when he had last seen her, if indeed he saw her at all.”
He looked from the judge to the jury. “She took good care that they met in public, where they would be observed by impartial witnesses. She may have made certain Monk would be there at her house in Cuthbert Street that night. We can call Mr. Monk to the stand to testify of that, if necessary.” He drew in a deep breath and faced the judge again. “That, my lord, is the purpose of Mr. Garstang’s so very exact testimony. He saw her face as she fell. Inspector Runcorn described her on the ground, on her side . . . not her back. No one saw two distinct figures, and the cloak was left on the roof, my lord, because she was not thrown or pushed off—she jumped!”
He was momentarily prevented from continuing by the uproar of amazement, disbelief and horror that engulfed the room. But it faded quickly as the terrible truth sank into understanding, and then belief.
When he resumed, his voice fell into utter silence.
“My lord, Michael Dalgarno is innocent of murder, because there was no murder . . . at least not of Katrina Harcus when she went off the roof of her house and plunged to her death. As for the night she killed Nolan Baltimore, we shall—”
He was prevented from saying whatever he had intended by Livia, now lurching to her feet, her face gray.
“That’s not true!” she screamed. “That’s a wicked thing to say! It’s a lie!” Her voice choked in a sob. “An evil . . . terrible thing to say! My father . . .” She lashed her arms left and right as if fighting her way through some physical obstacle. “My father would never have done anything like that! It’s . . . it’s filthy! It’s disgusting! I saw those women—they were . . .” The tears were streaming down her face. “They were broken, bleeding . . . whoever did that was monstrous!”
Rathbone looked wretched. He struggled for something, anything, to say to ease her grief, but there was nothing left.
“That can’t be how he died!” Livia went on, turning from Rathbone to the judge. “He quarreled dreadfully with Michael and Jarvis that night!” she said desperately. “It was over the railway again, the huge order we have for the new brakes they’ve invented. Michael and Jarvis did it together, and Papa only found out that night, my lord! He flew into a terrible rage and said they’d ruin the company, because years ago Mr. Monk had forced him to sign a letter promising he would never manufacture the brakes again. He’d paid a fortune to silence somebody, but the price was that nobody would ever use them . . .”
Monk shot to his feet. “Where’s Jarvis Baltimore?” he shouted at Livia. “Where is he?”
She stared at him. “The train,” she said chokingly. “The inaugural run.”
Monk said something to Margaret, then looked at Hester once where she still stood in the witness-box, then he scrambled past the people next to him and ran up the aisle and out of the door.
The judge looked at Rathbone. “Do you understand, Sir Oliver?”
