Anne Perry - A Breach of Promise

Monk took a step towards him.

Rathbone put his hands up and waved him back. He rubbed his eyes. "Thank you for telling me. That will be all."

"Yes sir." The man withdrew discreetly.

Rathbone turned to Monk, his face devoid of any shred of color, his eyes hollow with grief and guilt.

Rathbone entered court on Monday exhausted from one of the most deeply miserable nights he could remember. He and Monk had gone immediately to Melville's lodgings, where Isaac Wolff, gray-faced, had met them at the door. There had been nothing anyone could do to help. He had called a doctor, who had assumed death to have been caused by some form of poison and had guessed belladonna, but it would require a full postmortem examination to be certain.

No one mentioned suicide, but it hung unspoken like a darkness over them all. One does not take belladonna by accident, and Wolff was too naked in his grief to make any pretense at lying. Melville had had excellent health, better than most people's. He took no medication of any sort.

Naturally the police had been called. There must be certainty. Even this could not be allowed to pass in private. Suicide was a crime.

Now there was nothing left but loss, not only personal but of one of the greatest, most luminous creative minds of the age. For Rathbone there was also shame for his own failure to have prevented this, a weighing down of guilt, and the last legal formalities of closing the issue. And there was also a colossal rage. He was clenched up inside with it. As he strode up the steps and along the hallway of the courthouse, he scarcely saw the colleagues he passed, the clerks and ushers, the litigants.

His feet were loud and sharp on the stone of the floor, his back rigidly straight, his fingernails dug into the palms of his hands.

He entered the courtroom just as they were beginning to consider him overdue, and there was a buzz of attention and disapproval. Sacheverall swung around, his fair face with its protruding ears serenely triumphant. He did not even consider it a possibility that Rathbone had found a weapon against him. A part of Rathbone's anger turned to hatred, an emotion he was very unused to. He noticed Sacheverall smile at Zillah and her uncertain look back at him. There was no question that Sacheverall was pursuing her himself. There was no mistaking the nature of his interest, the eagerness in his eyes, the energy, almost excitement, when he spoke her name or had even the slightest contact with her.

He was moving too quickly, not perhaps for Delphine, but certainly for Zillah herself. There was something indecent in it. Zillah was a charming girl, but the first thought that came to Rathbone's mind was Barton Lambert's money. Perhaps that was unjust, but he was too raw to care.

Sacheverall faced Rathbone and nodded, his eyes bright. If he read anything in Rathbone's expression, he must have assumed it was defeat. He showed no sign of apprehension.

"I apologize, my lord, if I have kept the court waiting," Rathbone said swiftly to the judge. "I was detained by circumstances beyond my control."

Sacheverall let out a slight sound, no more than an audible sigh, but the disbelief in it was obvious.

McKeever caught some sense of Rathbone's emotion.

"What circumstances were those, Sir Oliver?" he asked.

"I regret it profoundly, my lord, but my client is dead."

There was an instant's utter silence. No one moved, not even a creak of wood or rustle of fabric. Then suddenly there was uproar. A woman shrieked. Several people rose to their feet, although there was nowhere to go. The jurors looked to each other, eyes wide with shock, unable yet to grasp the full significance of what they had heard.

"Silence!" McKeever said distinctly, looking around the room, then frowning at Rathbone. "I will have order! Sir Oliver, will you please explain to us what happened? Did Mr. Melville meet with an accident?"

"It is not yet possible to say, my lord." Rathbone found it difficult to find the right words, although he had tried to formulate them all the way there. Now, standing in the long-familiar room in which he had fought numberless cases, he was lost to express what he felt.

Press reporters had been expecting a quiet collapse of the struggle and were there only to leam the damages, and perhaps to watch the human ruin as a man's personal Me was torn apart. Now they were scrambling for pencils to write something entirely different.

In the gallery a woman gave a little squeal and stifled it with her hand.

"Mr. Melville was found dead last night," Rathbone began again. "At present the cause is not known."

The buzz in the gallery rose.

"Silence!" McKeever ordered sharply, his face darkening with anger. He reached for his gavel and banged it with a loud crack. "I will clear the court if there is not silence and a decent respect!"

He was obeyed reluctantly, but within seconds.

Rathbone looked across at Sacheverall, waiting to see how he would react, if he was as horrified by his own part in this as Rathbone was. Rathbone saw surprise, but not amazement. He thought in a flash that the possibility had occurred to him. If the prosecutor was distressed or ashamed, he hid it well.

Barton Lambert, on the other hand, sitting behind him, looked devastated. His blunt, rather ordinary face was slack with horror, mouth open, eyes staring fixedly. He seemed almost unaware of anyone around him, of Delphine at his side looking embarrassed, caught by surprise, but not grieved beyond her ability to control with dignity. Her head was high, her lips firmly closed, her gaze resolutely forward. She would not satisfy the curious in the gallery by meeting their looks.

Zillah, on her father's other side, had slumped forward and buried her face in her hands, her hat askew and her bright hair shining in the sunlight from the windows. Her shoulders were hunched and she shook, not yet with weeping but with the deep shuddering movement of horror and disbelief. She seemed hardly able to catch her breath. Her father was still too deeply stunned and overwhelmed by his own emotions to help her, to offer any kind of comfort.

Sacheverall, who so often had his attention upon her, now stood up and went from his table around to stand beside her. He spoke to her, leaning close and putting his hand on her shoulder. He repeated whatever it was he had said, and she sat up slowly, her face ashen, her eyes hollow, burning with tears.

"Go away!" she said quite clearly.

"My dear!" Sacheverall began urgently.

"If you touch me again I shall strike you!" she hissed, and indeed if he had looked at her face at all he must have known she truly meant it.

Delphine leaned across, looking at Sacheverall rather than Zillah.

"I am sure you mean only kindness, Mr. Sacheverall," she said with a smile, but without warmth, "but I think perhaps you had better allow us a short while to overcome our dismay. It has been a very dreadful time for all of us, but most especially Zillah. Please make allowances for her…"

Sacheverall did not withdraw his hand. "Of course," he said with a nod. "Of course it has. I do understand."

"You understand nothing!" Zillah snapped, glaring at him. "You are a-a condottiere!"

"A what?" He was momentarily at a loss.

"A soldier of fortune," she replied witheringly. "A man hired to fight for any cause, literally 'one under contract.' And if you do not take your hand off my arm I shall scream. Do you wish that?"

He removed his hand quickly. "You are hysterical," he said soothingly. "It has all been a great shock to you."

"Yes, I am!" she agreed, to his surprise. "I have never felt worse in my life. I don't think there is anything terrible still left to happen, except your manner towards me."

"Zillah!" Delphine interrupted sharply, then smiled up at Sacheverall. "I think you had better be advised to leave us a little while, a day or two. For all your sympathy, I don't think you do understand quite how fearful this has been to one of innocence in the more… elemental feelings of men. It is enough to make anyone… a trifle off balance. Please do not take to heart anything that is said just now. Make a little allowance…"