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Rathbone went that evening to visit Beata York. It was an impulsive idea and perhaps not very wise, but his longing to see her overrode his judgement. He realised just how much it had done so when he stood on the doorstep and had already pulled the bell rope. It was too late to leave. If he did, he would look like a naughty child who played practical jokes because he was too young to understand how silly it was, and what a nuisance to servants who had better things to do.
The butler received him with not only courtesy but charm, as if he still felt guilty over Ingram York’s appalling behaviour, which was now some time ago.
‘Good evening, Sir Oliver,’ he said graciously. ‘If you will come into the morning room I will inform Lady York that you are here.’
Still feeling self-conscious, Rathbone accepted, following the man across the now-familiar hall and into the morning room. It was still as austere as when York himself had lived here. That was before the awful night when he had completely lost his temper and attacked Rathbone with his cane, finally collapsing to the floor in some kind of seizure. Every time Rathbone came into this room since then, the horror had come back to him. It was not from fear of injury, it was shock and then desperate embarrassment at York’s sudden headlong fall from what had seemed to be merely eccentric into a state of complete insanity. He had disliked the man too much for pity, and yet in spite of himself, he felt something very close to it, if one can feel pity and revulsion at the same moment.
The butler returned and conducted him into the withdrawing room where Beata awaited him.
Rathbone felt a sudden lurch of emotion as he saw her again. It has been over three weeks, and some of the sharpness of memory had faded. There were small things about her that seemed new: a softness of the light on her hair, the way her eyebrows arched, the very direct way she looked at him, yet without challenge. He knew that would change if he said something she felt to be cruel, or unworthy. The loss of the warmth in her would be the most devastating thing he could imagine at this moment.
‘I thought you would be back when you heard about what had happened to Hester Monk,’ she said gently. ‘Isn’t it a sad commentary on our public interests when the trial of a doctor for medical horror is more worthy of news than the kidnap of a nurse and three small children?’ She looked past him at the butler, then back at Rathbone. ‘Have you eaten recently?’
‘Sufficiently,’ he replied. ‘It seems almost an irrelevance at the moment.’ She had indicated a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace from her own. He had a strange, sharp feeling that it had been Ingram York’s, before his collapse. In fact he could remember him sitting in it. How totally even a small time could change everything! It was not so long ago that he had first come here, honoured to be invited. And yet since then he had been a judge himself, and in that office lost even his right to practise law in court.
Sh
e had asked the butler to bring cold ham and egg pie and a pot of tea, and he had barely heard her. He murmured his thanks.
‘Are you going to accept the case?’ she asked.
‘Only to assist,’ he answered. ‘Ardal Juster is prosecuting.’
‘I know the legalities,’ she chided him with a tiny smile. ‘Whatever he thinks, you will lead. He is not a fool. He will be out to win, and he knows very well the value of your experience, and your judgement.’
‘My judgement?’ he said incredulously. ‘If he has any wits at all, he’ll not listen to that!’ He allowed himself to smile at her. It had its own kind of absurdity, and he did not want her to hear bitterness in his voice. There was little less attractive than self-pity, and he cared fiercely what she thought of him, far more than it was safe to admit.
She smiled back, this time ruefully, aware of her own weaknesses.
‘You were right in your moral judgement, my dear, just wrong in the law as to how you went about it. But there was no right way. Is there a right way in this? From the little I have read in the newspapers, it is far from a simple issue, but the press always exaggerate so! Competition is good for some businesses – it makes everyone do their best – but seeing who can shout the loudest only ends in deafening us all.’
He felt the knots ease out of his muscles, as if there were warmth in the room that unlocked the old tensions.
‘I only read The Times . . .’ he began.
‘But of course,’ she agreed with a hint of laughter. ‘I cannot imagine you reading the penny dreadfuls.’
‘It might be where the story belongs,’ he said ruefully. ‘Hamilton Rand is a brilliant chemist, but he’s not a doctor. According to Hester, and she doesn’t exaggerate, Rand kidnapped her, and the three children whose blood he was taking, and held them in a cottage in the countryside in Kent. Going willingly was Bryson Radnor, a wealthy man suffering from white blood disease, and his adult daughter, Adrienne, who helped to look after him, and with the household chores.’
Beata listened without interrupting him.
‘The difficulty lies in the fact that Radnor and his daughter were entirely willing. She is being charged along with Rand . . .’
‘And not Radnor himself?’ she said with surprise.
‘He is claiming to have been ill and barely conscious when he made the journey from the hospital to the cottage.’
‘Really? How gallant of him!’ There was stinging sarcasm in her voice.
‘It could be true, and the jury could well believe him.’
‘What does the daughter say?’
‘Nothing, so far. She seems very dependent upon him.’
‘Financially, socially, emotionally?’ she queried.
‘Probably all of those.’
