Anne Perry - A Breach of Promise

"I need to know a good deal more about the last day of the Melville trial. You are very observant of people…"

"My job, sir," Pearson answered with suitable gravity, but he stood a little straighter for the compliment. "Times there's little else to do but notice people. What is it you need to know, Mr. Monk?"

"Did Melville leave the courtroom at any time before the hearing ended?"

"No sir."

"Are you sure? Not for any reason?"

"No sir. They'd have had to halt the trial if he'd excused himself. Sir Oliver'll have told you that."

Monk sighed. "I thought not, but he could have forgotten. He is very disturbed at the outcome."

Pearson shook his head. "Nobody likes to lose a case, but for the poor soul to have taken her life is truly terrible. I was very sorry to hear about that. He always seemed like a nice gentleman to me-or I suppose I should say lady, now. I never guessed. Never came into my mind." He looked at Monk curiously, searching his face to see if he felt the same.

"Nor mine," Monk admitted. "The surgeon says she took the poison while she was here in the court, some time during that afternoon."

Pearson frowned. "I don't rightly see how that could be, Mr. Monk. Was she supposed to have swallowed it like?"

"Yes."

"T don't know where. She wouldn't have eaten nor drunk anything in the courtroom. Judge wouldn't allow it. And if she had, anyone would have seen. There's always people looking at the accused, and that's what it amounted to in this case, poor soul. Mr. Sacheverall went after him something fierce. I mean her. Still can't get it into my head that she was a woman."

A group of junior counsel passed by, glancing at Monk, and one nodded as if he thought for a moment he knew him, then continued on his way.

"Was there an adjournment for any reason?"

"Yes! Yes… Sir Oliver tried again with Mr. Sacheverall. I remember that. It must have been then!" Memory quickened Pearson's face. "Must have! No other time. I'm almost sure when Miss Melville left at the end of the day, she went straight out the back way, before the crowds could get at her. Sir Oliver went with her, then came out the front. If she really did take it here, and not after she left, then it must have been during the adjournment."

"Curious," Monk said slowly.

"Sir?"

"Why didn't she wait until she knew the result of Rathbone's talk with Sacheverall? There might have been some better resolution."

"I don't know, sir, I really don't." Pearson shook his head in agreement. "Don't make a lot of sense, does it? Poor creature must have been out of her wits… afraid for Mr, Wolff, maybe?"

Monk was not satisfied.

"Do you want to speak with the usher around the corner when everyone left at that adjournment?" Pearson enquired helpfully. "He might have noticed if Miss Melville was given a drink, and maybe took a pill or a powder with it."

"Yes, please," Monk accepted. "I can't think what difference it makes now, but it seems such a pointless time to have begun the process of ending her own life… with a poison which acts over three or four hours."

"She was very distressed," Pearson pointed out. "I remember her face. She looked like a person who has seen her whole world come to an end… more pain than she can endure." His voice sank and the weight of sadness seemed to droop in his shoulders. He led the way up the wide hallway, stopping twice to ask other people where Mr. Sutton was, and in one of the side rooms eventually found a small man with a narrow chest and bright, dark eyes.

"Oh… Mr. Sutton," he said quickly. "This is Mr. Monk. He's looking into how poor Miss Melville managed to take poison without anyone noticing. Seems it must have happened while she was here. Some time in the afternoon. Since they were in court all the time except for the adjournment, it looks like it was then."

"Wasn't then," Sutton said immediately, pursing his lips and looking beyond Pearson to Monk. "Sorry, sir, but I was outside the court all the time and Miss Melville never left the hallway."

"Did anyone bring her a glass of water, or perhaps offer her a flask?" Monk suggested.

"No sir." Sutton was quite firm. "She sat by herself until Mrs. Lambert went over to her and gave her back the gifts she'd given Miss Lambert. I saw a pair of earrings, a gold fob an' a real pretty miniature painting o' trees and such. Had them in a packet. Just opened it up and tipped them all out into Miss Melville's hands. They were dusty as if they had been pushed to the back of a drawer. I hardly think she knew what was going on, that distracted she was."

"Are you certain Miss Melville didn't eat or drink anything?" Monk pressed. It would be easy enough to understand if at this point she had taken a stiff brandy, if nothing else. Any normal person would have waited for the privacy of her own home to take poison. But Melville was a woman. Did women think or feel differently?

He could imagine no reason why they should. Surely agony such as this knew no boundaries of sex!

"What I don't understand," Pearson said, scratching the back of his neck, "is why she did it then. If it was me, I'd have done it the day before, when Mr. Sacheverall brought Mr. Wolff in-that is, if I were going to do it at all… which I can't say I would Although I can't say I wouldn't, not until I'd been there."

"No," Monk agreed, staring at Sutton. "But you saw Melville all the time, and she didn't eat or drink anything? Are you certain?"

"If she had done, she didn't drink from it in that adjournment, sir. I'd take an oath on that myself. She must've took the poison some other way, or more like some other time. I don't want to overstep my place, sir, but maybe the doc got it wrong?"

"Maybe…" Monk said, but he did not believe it. "Thank you, Mr. Sutton. You have been very helpful." And with a word of thanks to Pearson as well, he walked back down the hallway.

He spent several more hours confirming what he had been told, but he could find no variation in accounts. Melville had spoken to few people. She had been white-faced, her body rigid, her eyes reflecting the pain she must have felt, but she had neither eaten nor drunk anything.

How had she taken the belladonna which had killed her? And why had she chosen to do it at such a time, instead of either the night before, after Wolff had testified, or that evening, after the prostitute had finally sealed Sacheverall's case?

Any answer he could think of was unsatisfactory, leaving questions in his mind, a darkness unresolved.

Monk spent a miserable, agitated evening. It would be ridiculous to expect every case to resolve into a solution so absolute there could be no doubt about any part of it. None ever did. There were always unknowns, thoughts he could not fathom. One had to let go once sufficient answers were found to be certain of the truth of the verdict.

But this one troubled him more deeply than most. It was not only the tragedy of it, it was the feeling, the almost certainty, that Keelin Melville had some last secret she had taken to the grave with her, which would make sense of her behavior.

He paced back and forth across his sitting room, ignoring the dying embers of the fire and the rain spattering against the windows, loud because he had forgotten to draw the curtains.

He could understand why Melville had not told Zillah she was really a woman. She had kept the secret so long she could not trust anyone at all, except Wolff, not to reveal it. Perhaps it would only have been a confidence to a girl friend, whispered in exchange for some other romantic secret or dream, a moment's hurt and loneliness eased by sharing. But then what would bind the friend to keep total silence? The chance to share such a dramatic piece of information could be a temptation too great.