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Cardman took a deep breath and let it out soundlessly. “No, sir.”
; “Neither have I,” Dobie agreed. He gave a little shrug and turned out his hands, palms upwards. “Neither has anyone!”
The first witness of the afternoon was Melisande Ewart. Runcorn, having given his own evidence, was free to remain in the courtroom. He sat on the other side of the aisle in the gallery. Monk was acutely conscious of his stiff shoulders, clenched hands, eyes never moving from Melisande’s face.
She stood in the witness box, calm but for two spots of color high in her cheeks.
Rathbone was gentle with her, drawing from her bit by bit the account of Runcorn and Monk’s visit to her and exactly what she had told them. Finally he had her describe the man who had emerged from the mews and bumped into her.
“Thank you, Mrs. Ewart,” he concluded. “Please remain where you are in case Mr. Dobie wishes to speak to you.”
Monk looked again at the jury and saw sharp interest in their faces, and approval also. She was a woman of gentleness and considerable beauty, and she had conducted herself with quiet grace. Dobie would be a fool to attack her. Nevertheless he did.
“You were returning from the theater, you said, ma’am?” he began.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“At about midnight?”
“Yes.”
“A little late. Did you attend a party after the final curtain?”
“No. The traffic was very heavy.”
“It must have been! What play did you see?” Obviously he already knew the answer.
“Hamlet,” she answered.
“A great tragedy, perhaps the greatest, but full of violence and unnatural death,” he observed. “Murder after murder. Including Hamlet’s own father, as he finally succeeded in proving.”
“I am familiar with the plot,” she said a little coldly.
Runcorn’s knuckles were white, and his big hands clenched and unclenched slowly.
“And just as you arrived home,” Dobie went on, “late and emotionally drained by one of the most powerful plays in the English language, you see a man emerge from the mews near your home.” He sounded reasonable, even soothing. “It is dusk, he almost bumps into you. He apologizes for being clumsy and a little drunk, and goes on his way. Have I summarized correctly what actually happened, Mrs. Ewart?”
She hesitated, her eyes going to Rathbone as if for help.
Runcorn half rose in his seat and then subsided, his face tight with anger.
Hester grasped Monk’s arm, her fingers digging into him.
“You are not incorrect, sir, so much as incomplete,” Melisande replied to Dobie. “The man was a stranger in the area and he had no legitimate business in the mews. There was a large, dark stain on the shoulder of his jacket. I did not ask about it, but he saw that I had noticed it, and he told me that it was manure. He had tripped and fallen in the mews. But it was a lie. I was close enough to him to have smelled manure. It smelled more like blood.”
“Even if it was blood, that does not mean he was guilty of murder,” Dobie argued.
Melisande’s eyes widened. “You mean he might have been in Mr. Havilland’s stable and fallen over his dead body innocently, without thinking he should mention it?”
Dobie’s face flamed, and there was a titter of embarrassed laughter around the courtroom.
“Bravo,” Hester whispered to Monk.
Runcorn was smiling, his eyes bright, his cheeks red.
Dobie returned to the attack, but he was losing and he knew it. Moments later he retreated. Rathbone thanked Melisande again and then called the first of his nervous, uninteresting, but very necessary witnesses who were going to prove the trail of the money Aston Sixsmith had paid to the assassin. They detailed every move from Argyll’s bank to its final destination. This line of enquiry was tedious but essential. It would continue for the rest of the day—and if Dobie wanted to contest any of it, it would go on probably longer than that.
