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‘Because I have more experience in serious injury involving great loss of blood than most nurses have.’
‘Indeed? Why is that?’
Hester answered very briefly, describing her time in the Crimea as an army nurse, sometimes actually on the battlefield.
Juster did not have to pretend his admiration. The battles and their losses were sti
ll sharp in public memory, and the name of Florence Nightingale was known everywhere. Many people had family or friends who had fallen at Balaclava, Inkerman, or the Alma.
Rathbone had heard this before, but it still gave him a shiver of horror, pity, fury for the incompetence, pity for the terrible losses.
There was not a man in the jury who did not listen to Hester with awe now. Lyons would be a fool to attack her, whatever she said.
‘Did you know what these treatments were going to be, before you began?’ Juster asked.
‘No.’
‘And when you did?’
She hesitated for several moments.
In the body of the courtroom no one moved.
‘I could see the enormous potential.’ Hester chose her words with almost painful care. ‘If it worked it would result in the saving of more lives in the future than we could ever guess. Thousands, tens of thousands of people. Not just soldiers in war but people in any kind of accident – industrial, railway trains – women with difficult births, and of course all sorts of diseases of the blood. There is no end to what could be achieved.’ There was a very slight flush to her face and her knuckles were white where she gripped the rails of the witness stand.
Juster nodded slowly, not wanting to break the spell before he had to.
‘So he is a hero?’ he said at last.
‘A flawed one,’ she said quietly.
Now the jury were straining to catch every word.
‘Why?’ Juster pressed her.
‘Because of the means he used to obtain the blood he gave to Mr Radnor.’ She shook her head and lowered her eyes. ‘There is always cost to experiment. Success is not certain, or it is no longer an experiment. But those who pay the price must do it knowingly, and willingly.
‘Mr Radnor was willing?’
She stared at Juster. ‘Of course he was. He had no choice: he would have died without the treatment. But the children whose blood Mr Rand used were too small to have choice. And their parents had no idea what was going to be done. It is beyond the imagination of most of us.’
‘Of course it is,’ Juster agreed. ‘But Mr Rand has already been charged with kidnapping you, and been found not guilty of that. There was some question that you might have gone willingly, in the interest of the great experiment. You do admire him, do you not?’
She looked at him with patience. ‘If I had gone willingly, Mr Juster, I would have informed my family, not left them to be frantic with worry for me, and no idea where I was, or even if I were still alive.’
‘Of course,’ Juster agreed.
Lyons rose to his feet. ‘My lord, I am sure everyone in this court has undying admiration for Mrs Monk’s past heroism, and can understand her interest in such a medical breakthrough, but I see no direct connection with the murder of Adrienne Radnor. Indeed, I would understand if Mrs Monk bore a considerable grudge against Miss Radnor for being complicit in her imprisonment and forced assistance in the whole affair. Surely my learned friend is not going to suggest that Mrs Monk had involvement also in Miss Radnor’s death?’
There was a shout of protest from somewhere in the gallery, a glare from the judge, and considerable fidgeting of embarrassment and discomfort in the jury.
Juster smiled. ‘My lord, Mr Lyons makes my point for me. Miss Radnor was indeed party to Mrs Monk being held prisoner during the experiment. Therefore if there was a crime in that, or in the treatment of the children whose blood was so often taken from them and used, then Miss Radnor could have testified to it, perhaps in more detail than we have heard so far. Provable detail, that is.’
Lyons swung around and faced Juster angrily.
‘Mr Rand has already been charged with that offence, and found not guilty. Whatever your opinion of him, it is irrelevant. He cannot be charged again.’
‘Not with that crime,’ Juster agreed. ‘But Miss Radnor spent many days in the cottage in Redditch, and, unlike Mrs Monk, she was free to wander wherever she wished. What else did she discover? Did she, perhaps, discover the secret of the mass graves the police have since found there . . . graves of other people, other children?’
