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e smiled with a sad twist to her lips. ‘I wanted him to succeed,’ she admitted. ‘Of course I did. I imagine everyone here would do. But in my case it was very personally immediate. If he failed and Mr Radnor died, then he would be guilty of a crime he could not afford to pay for. I was a witness to it. He would have to kill me too—’
‘My lord!’ Lyons protested. ‘That is the wildest speculation—’
Juster shot to his feet. ‘My lord, my learned friend asked the witness a question regarding her wishes in the experiment. He cannot now complain if he does not like the answer. Whatever the actual outcome, Mrs Monk wished the experiment to succeed for the very personal reason that she feared for her life if it did not.’
Patterson smiled bleakly. ‘Your point is well taken, Mr Juster. And yours also, Mr Lyons. Perhaps you would like to rephrase your question?’
Lyons faced Hester, thin-lipped and angry.
‘Perhaps we would fare better if I stuck to facts. Mrs Monk, did Mr Rand ever harm you, physically? Did he lay hands upon you at all while you were in the cottage, or since? I think you might manage to answer that with a yes or no!’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Did he ever threaten you with harm?’
‘No, never.’
‘Yet you expect the gentlemen of the jury to believe that you feared he would kill you, if the experiment failed? Again, yes or no will suffice.’
‘Yes.’ She looked across at the jury. ‘They are gentlemen of position and intelligence. They understand how someone with sufficient knowledge to be useful could, as circumstances change, become someone with enough knowledge to be a liability, even a danger.’
Juster hid his smile by pretending to blow his nose. When Lyons gave up, he declined to question Hester any further.
After the luncheon adjournment Juster resumed with his final witness, Bryson Radnor. It was masterful. Rathbone watched it with professional admiration, and a growing feeling of unease.
At first his anxiety was only slight. Radnor stood in the witness stand facing the court. He was a handsome man, broad and strong, his head like that of an old lion made gaunt by grief. He had allowed his mane of hair to grow a trifle long. The light caught the white in it, drawing the eye to his head, with his dark eyes and powerful features.
Juster led him to describe Adrienne’s care for him, and the devotion she had shown him since her mother had died. He said in hushed and dramatic tones how her dependence upon him in her grief had gradually turned to the strength as his health had failed. It began when it had been slight, only after some time did he realise that he was experiencing the onset of a fatal disease.
The entire courtroom listened to him with intense emotion. His grief was palpable. Some of the women in the gallery wept. Men sat stiff-faced, attempting to be stoic in the presence of such loyalty, and tragedy.
Juster could hardly lose.
Rathbone knew that the substance of the case was already over. There did not seem to be anything Lyons could do that would substantially change the conviction that was grasping the jury.
At Juster’s prompting, Radnor described what he could remember of his treatment. Any answer that might be uncomfortable he simply said he did not recall. No one could blame him. Even Patterson appeared impressed.
Rathbone did not even know why he was so disconcerted. Could he be feeling anything as base as envy, because Juster had got away with it. The right man was going to be convicted at last.
Or was he? Was Rand the right man?
All the evidence said so – at least, it seemed to. There was no one else to suspect. The murderer was someone Adrienne had known. She had been too busy to form any other relationships. And why would anyone else wish her harm, let alone to kill her?
Hester had argued that she did not believe Rand had killed her. She thought Radnor had killed her himself, to reclaim his freedom to indulge the rest of his life as he would, alone, unencumbered, without criticism, or the additional expense of a daughter to whom he owed such a debt.
What could the defence produce, or even suggest, that would raise a reasonable doubt?
Rathbone learned the day after: doctors. Two brilliant and over-articulate doctors explained to the court just how many people died of shock and blood loss who could be saved if Hamilton Rand’s procedure were to be proved successful. It would revolutionise medicine. They each described bleeding to death with sufficient horror to paralyse the jury with fear.
The second doctor reinforced everything the first had said.
Juster did not argue.
His final witness was Magnus Rand. He testified to his brother’s dedication to medical research, since the time of Edward’s death. He could not prove that Hamilton had not killed Adrienne, but he drew a vivid picture of a man obsessed with finding a cure for white blood disease. He was not likeable. He was frequently insensitive, dogmatic, thoughtlessly rude. He did not hate anyone, since he was not sufficiently emotionally involved to care. He had not the personal imagination to envisage such a thing.
This testimony did not affect the jury at all. To judge from their faces, they saw only that he was cold, dedicated to his science and impervious to the human cost to others.
They returned with a verdict of guilty.
