AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Monk stared at Hooper, waiting.
Hooper’s face was marked with sadness.
‘I just heard from the local
station that this morning, at daylight, they found the body of Adrienne Radnor. She was lying in a ditch about quarter of a mile from her home. She was strangled to death. They don’t know anything else yet. The inspector will tell us when they do.’
Hester wanted to say that it could not be so, but she knew with cold, sick certainty that it could. She put her hands over her face and felt the hot tears prick through her eyelids. She did not even hear what Monk said, and barely felt his hand touch hers.
Chapter Fourteen
RATHBONE HAD felt certain from the beginning that there was only a slight chance of a successful prosecution of Hamilton Rand for kidnap. Even so, victory had seemed within their grasp until the moment Radnor strode into the court, vigorous, almost larger than life, and proclaimed his very obvious cure. Then, of course, the case had fallen apart. Lord Justice Patterson had had no choice. No jury would have convicted after that.
It had been a much more bitter defeat than Rathbone had thought it would be. In spite of the success of the experiment, and the huge leap forward for medicine that it represented, he was still certain that there had been a crime committed. He had had no conception of how great a crime until Monk told him about the bones dug up in the orchard. It struck him with a new and far deeper sense of defeat that there was no proof whatever that they were perhaps the bodies of people experimented on by Rand. And yet these bones fitted what was known of Rand and his research.
Who were they? Those who would not be missed, either because they lived alone and no one cared enough to report their absence, or those whose absence could be explained in some reasonable way?
The bones seemed to belong to bodies of all sizes, all ages. Who had been the patients receiving the treatment? Old rich men terrified to die, like Radnor? They would have gone to Rand willingly, even paid for the privilege. If they had lived, everyone would have heard about their cure, so presumably they had died and theirs would have been the larger corpses – unless they had died in the hospital, like so many others. That would require no explanation. The very ill were expected to die.
The smaller skeletons troubled him far more. Were they children from very poor families, like Charlie, Maggie and Mike? Why take children? Was it something about their blood? Or were they simply easier to manage? They would certainly be easily overpowered, and far easier to keep captive.
Whatever the benefits to medicine, Rathbone would dearly have liked to see Rand prosecuted for his crimes. Someone else could take over his research. If those bodies were what was left of children he had bled to death, then he should hang for it.
Then, the previous day, Monk had told him very briefly about the finding of the body of Adrienne Radnor. In a matter of a few minutes Rathbone was hurled from contempt for her almost to pity, and he felt a sense of outrage on her behalf. He had thought of her as devoted to her father blindly, to an unhealthy degree. She had seemed to be dependent upon him not only socially and financially, and perhaps for all her material comforts, but also emotionally in a way that was beyond normal.
Now he saw her as pitiful, her devotion abused, a woman denied her youth, and now denied her maturity also.
Who had killed her, strangled her and dumped her body in a ditch as if it were so much refuse? Her reticule was gone, so the attack on her appeared at a glance to be a robbery turned unnecessarily violent. But as he sat in his office the more he thought of that, the less sense it made. She lived in a very wealthy area where few people roamed around at night. What was she doing out on the road in the dark, and alone? And what could possibly be in her reticule that would be worth stealing, or committing murder to take?
Could it really be coincidence, so hard on the heels of so much else?
He wanted to go and talk with Ardal Juster, and see what he thought of it, and if there were reasonable suspects from the case. Exactly what had happened? Was there at last a viable prosecution in this miserable affair?
First he would talk it over with Beata York. Her judgement was sound, and any reason to see her pleased him.
He considered whether he would go home and shave again and change his clothes before calling, or if that would be too obviously contrived. Yet if he went straight from his chambers at Lincoln’s Inn he would look tired, since it was the end of the day, and as if he had not cared sufficiently to go home and prepare. He decided to go directly.
The door opened and the now familiar butler welcomed him in. He did not even ask why Rathbone had come.
‘Good evening, Sir Oliver. How pleasant to see you. I hope you are well, sir?’
‘Very, thank you,’ Rathbone replied. ‘I apologise for calling without asking if it is convenient, but I’m afraid there has been a tragic development in the Rand case; at least I think it is connected. I would deeply appreciate Lady York’s opinion as to whether it may be, or not. It concerns a woman whom she knows at least as well as I do.’ He was talking too much, and he was aware of it. The butler did not care why he was here, and he certainly did not need an explanation.
‘Yes, sir. If you care to wait in the morning room I will see if Lady York is available.’ He appeared about to add something more, then changed his mind, and left Rathbone to find his own way through the open door of the morning room to wait there.
It was only a few minutes later that Beata herself came to the door. She was dressed in a pale, neutral colour that would not have been flattering on anyone else, but it complemented the warmth of her beauty perfectly, reminding him of sunlight in a quiet corner of a garden.
‘I heard about Adrienne Radnor’s death,’ she said sadly. ‘Do you think it is part of this larger matter? From the very little I read in the newspapers . . . and don’t raise your eyebrows like that, Oliver. I do read the newspapers, and now that I am alone in the house, I read whichever ones I please.’ There was amusement and very slight defiance in her eyes, just for a moment.
It gave him an extraordinary feeling of warmth, as if she were letting him know that no matter how close they became, there were certain privileges she would keep, regardless.
He smiled back at her. ‘Good. That means I will not have to explain to you what we know or what I am concerned about. Possibly not even why I feel so oddly grieved for a woman I did my best to prosecute as complicit in the kidnap of Hester and the three children.’
‘Do you?’ she asked, but the lift in her voice seemed as much hope as surprise. ‘Do you feel grieved?’
He did not know how to answer easily. ‘Yes . . . I do.’
She regarded him carefully, perhaps seeing his weariness at the end of the day, the fact that he had not been home to change. Now he was conscious of it. It was a mistake, a discourtesy.
