A Sudden, Fearful Death

by Anne Perry

  “His defense is that he is innocent,” Arthur interrupted. “The poor woman was obviously deluded. It happens to unmarried ladies of a certain age, I believe. They construct fantasies, daydreams about eminent people, men of position, dignity. It is usually simply sad and a little embarrassing. On this occasion it has proved tragic also.”

  With difficulty Monk suppressed the question that rose to his lips. Did this smooth-faced, rather complacent young man think of the death of Prudence Barrymore, or only of the charge against his father?

  “That is one thing that is undeniable,” he agreed aloud. “Nurse Barrymore is dead, and your father is in prison awaiting trial for murder.”

  Lady Stanhope gasped and the last vestige of color drained from her cheeks. She clutched at Arthur’s hand resting on her shoulder.

  “Really, sir!” Arthur said furiously. “That was unnecessary! I would think you might have more sensitivity toward my mother’s feelings. If you have some business with us, please conduct it as briefly and circumspectly as you can. Then leave us, for pity’s sake.”

  Monk controlled himself with an effort. He could remember doing this before, sitting opposite stunned and frightened people who did not know what to say and could only sit mesmerized by their grief. He could see a quiet woman, an ordinary face devastated by tormenting loss, white hands clenched in her lap. She too had been unable to speak to him. He had been filled with a rage so vast the taste of it was still familiar in his mouth. But it had not been against her, for her he felt only a searing pity. But why? Why now, after all these years, did he remember that woman instead of all the others?

  Nothing came, nothing at all, just the emotion filling his mind and making his body tense.

  “What can we do?” Lady Stanhope asked again. “What can we say to help Herbert?”

  Gradually, with uncharacteristic patience, he drew from them a picture of Sir Herbert as a quiet, very proper man with an ordinary domestic life, devoted to his family, predictable in all his personal tastes. His only appetite seemed to be for a glass of excellent whiskey every evening, and a fondness for good roast beef. He was a dutiful husband, an affectionate father.

  The conversation was slow and tense. He explored every avenue he could think of to draw from either of them anything that would be of use to Rathbone, better than the predictable loyalty which he believed was quite literally the truth but not necessarily likely to influence a jury. What else could a wife say? And she was not a promising witness. She was too frightened to be coherent or convincing.

  In spite of himself he was sorry for her.

  He was about to leave when there was a knock at the door. Without waiting for a reply, a young woman opened it and came in. She was slender—in fact, thin—and her face was so marked with illness and disappointment it was hard to tell her age, but he thought probably not more than twenty.

  “Excuse my interruption,” she began, but even before she spoke Monk was overcome by a wave of memory so vivid and so agonizing his present surroundings became invisible to him, Lady Stanhope and Arthur merely blurs on the edge of his vision. He knew what the old case was, violently and with sickening immediacy. A girl had been molested and murdered. He could still see her thin broken body and feel the rage inside himself, the confusion and the pain, the aching helplessness. That was why he had driven his constables so hard, worried and harassed his witnesses, why his contempt had scalded Runcorn without mercy or patience.

  The horror was back inside him with all the freshness it had had when he was twenty. It did not excuse the way he had treated people, it did not undo anything, but it explained it. At least he had had a reason, a passion which was not centered upon himself. He was not merely cruel, arrogant, and ambitious. He had cared—furiously, tirelessly, single-mindedly.

  He found himself smiling with relief, and yet there was a sickness in his stomach.

  “Mr. Monk?” Lady Stanhope said nervously.

  “Yes—yes, ma’am?”

  “Are you going to be able to help my husband, Mr. Monk?”

  “I believe so,” he said firmly. “And I shall do everything within my power, I promise you.”

  “Thank you. I—we—are most grateful.” She held Arthur’s hand a little more tightly. “All of us.”

  9

  THE TRIAL OF SIR HERBERT STANHOPE opened at the Old Bailey on the first Monday in August. It was a gray, sultry day with a hot wind out of the south and the smell of rain. Outside the crowds pressed forward, climbing up the steps, eager to claim the few public seats available. There was an air of excitement, whispering and pushing, an urgency. Newsboys shouted promises about exclusive revelations, prophesies of what was to come. The first few heavy drops of rain fell with a warm splatter on oblivious heads.

  Inside the wood-paneled courtroom the jury sat in two rows, their backs to the high windows, faces toward the lawyers’ tables, behind whom were the few public benches. To the jurors’ right, twenty feet above the floor, was the dock, like a closed-in balcony, its hidden steps leading down to the cells. Opposite the dock was the witness box, like a pulpit. To reach it one crossed the open space of the floor and climbed the curving steps up, then stood isolated, facing the barristers and the public. Higher still, and behind the witness box, surrounded by magnificently carved panels and seated on plush, was the judge. He was robed in scarlet velvet and wigged in curled white horsehair.

  The court had already been called to order. The jury was empaneled and the charge had been read and answered. With immense dignity, head high and voice steady, Sir Herbert denied his guilt absolutely. Immediately there was a rustle of sympathy around the body of the court.

  The judge, a man in his late forties with brilliant light gray eyes and a clean-boned, lean-cheeked face, flashed his glance around but refrained from speech. He was a hard man, young for such high office, but he owed no one favors and had no ambitions but the law. He was saved from ruthlessness by a sharp sense of humor, and redeemed by a love of classical literature and its soaring imagination, which he barely understood but knew he held to be of immense worth.

  The prosecution was conducted by Wilberforce Lovat-Smith, one of the most gifted barristers of his generation and a man Rathbone knew well. He had faced him frequently across the floor of the court, and held him in high regard, and not a little liking. He was of barely average height, dark-complexioned with a sharp-featured face and heavy-lidded, surprisingly blue eyes. His appearance was not impressive. He looked rather more like an itinerant musician or player than a pillar of the establishment. His gown was a fraction too long for him, indifferently tailored, and his wig was not precisely straight. But Rathbone did not make the mistake of underestimating him.

  The first witness to be called was Callandra Daviot. She walked across the space between the benches toward the witness stand with her back straight and her head high. But as she climbed the steps she steadied herself with her hand on the rail, and when she turned to Lovat-Smith her face was pale and she looked tired, as if she had not slept well for days, even weeks. It was apparent that either she was ill or she was carrying some well-nigh-intolerable burden.

  Hester was not present; she was on duty at the hospital. Apart from the fact that financially she required the employment, both she and Monk believed she might still learn something useful there. It was a remote chance, but any chance at all was worth taking.

  Monk was sitting in the center of the row toward the front, listening and watching every inflection and expression. He would be at hand if Rathbone wanted to pursue any new thread that should appear. He looked at Callandra and knew that something was deeply wrong. He stared at her for several minutes, until well into the beginning of her evidence, before he realized what troubled him about her appearance even more than the gauntness of her face. Her hair was totally, even beautifully tidy. It was quite out of character. The fact that she was in the witness box did not account for it. He had seen her at far more important and formal occasions, even dressed before departing
to dine with ambassadors and royalty, still with wisps of hair curling wildly out of place. It touched him with an unanswerable unhappiness.

  “They were quarreling about the fact that the laundry chute was apparently blocked?” Lovat-Smith was saying with affected surprise. There was total stillness in the courtroom, although everyone in it knew what was coming. The newspapers had screamed it in banner headlines at the time, and it was not a thing one forgot. Still the jurors leaned forward, listening to every word, eyes steady in concentration.

  Mr. Justice Hardie smiled almost imperceptibly.

  “Yes,” Callandra was offering no more than exactly what she was asked for.

  “Please continue, Lady Callandra,” Lovat-Smith prompted. She was not a hostile witness, but she was not helpful either. A lesser man might have been impatient with her. Lovat-Smith was far too wise for that. The court sympathized with her, thinking the experience would have shocked any sensitive woman. The jurors were all men, naturally. Women were not considered capable of rational judgment sufficient to vote as part of the mass of the population. How could they possibly weigh the matter of a man’s life or death as part of a mere twelve? And Lovat-Smith knew juries were ordinary men. That was both their strength and their weakness. They would presume Callandra was an average woman, susceptible, fragile, like all women. They had no idea she had both wit and strength far more than many of the soldiers her husband had treated when he was alive. Accordingly he was gentle and courteous.

  “I regret having to ask you this, but would you recount for us what happened next, in your own words. Do not feel hurried….”

  The ghost of a smile crossed Callandra’s mouth.

  “You are very civil, sir. Of course. I shall tell you. Dr. Beck peered down the chute to see if he could discover what was blocking it, but he could not. We sent one of the nurses for a window pole to push down the chute and dislodge whatever it was. At that time …” She swallowed hard and continued in a hushed voice. “We assumed it was a tangle of sheets. Of course the window pole failed.”

  “Of course,” Lovat-Smith agreed helpfully. “What did you do then, ma’am?”

  “Someone, I forget which of the nurses, suggested we fetch one of the skivvies who was a child, and very small, and send her down the chute to clear it.”

  “Send the child down?” Lovat-Smith said very clearly. “At this time you were still of the belief it was linen blocking the way?”

  There was a shiver of apprehension around the room. Rathbone pulled a face, but very discreetly, out of view of the jury. In the dock Sir Herbert sat expressionless. Judge Hardie drummed his fingers silently on the top of his bench.

  Lovat-Smith saw it and understood. He invited Callandra to continue.

  “Of course,” she said quietly.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Dr. Beck and I went down to the laundry room to await the blockage.”

  “Why?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why did you go downstairs to the laundry room, ma’am?”

  “I—I really don’t remember. It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. I suppose to find out what it was, and see that the quarrel was resolved. That is why we intervened in the beginning, to resolve the quarrel.”

  “I see. Yes, quite natural. Will you please tell the court what occurred then?”

  Callandra was very pale and seemed to require an effort to maintain her control. Lovat-Smith smiled at her encouragingly.

  “After a moment or two there was a sort of noise….” She drew in her breath, not looking at Lovat-Smith. “And a body came out of the chute and landed in the laundry basket below it.”

  She was prevented from continuing immediately by the rustles and murmurs of horror in the public gallery. Several of the jurors gasped and one reached for his handkerchief.

  In the dock Sir Herbert winced very slightly, but his eyes remained steadily on Callandra.

  “At first I thought it was the skivvy,” she resumed. “Then an instant later a second body landed and scrambled to get out. It was then we looked at the first body and realized quite quickly that she was dead.”

  Again there was a gasp of indrawn breath around the room and a buzz of words, cut off instantly.

  Rathbone glanced up at the dock. Even facial expressions could matter. He had known more than one prisoner to sway a jury against him by insolence. But he need not have worried. Sir Herbert was composed and grave, his face showing only sadness.

  “I see.” Lovat-Smith held up his hand very slightly. “How did you know this first body was dead, Lady Callandra? I know you have some medical experience; I believe your late husband was an army surgeon. Would you please just describe for us what the body was like.” He smiled deprecatingly. “I apologize for asking you to relive what must be extremely distressing for you, but I assure you it is necessary for the jury, you understand?”

  “It was the body of a young woman wearing a gray nurse’s dress.” Callandra spoke quietly, but her voice was thick with emotion. “She was lying on her back in the basket, sort of folded, one leg up. No one who was not rendered senseless would have remained in such a position. When we looked at her more closely, her eyes were closed, her face ashen pale, and there were purple bruise marks on her throat. She was cold to the touch.”

  There was a long sigh from the public galleries and someone sniffed. Two jurors glanced at each other, and a third shook his head, his face very grave.

  Rathbone sat motionless at his table.

  “Just one question, Lady Callandra,” Lovat-Smith said apologetically. “Did you know the young woman?”

  “Yes.” Callandra’s face was white. “It was Prudence Barrymore.”

  “One of the hospital nurses?” Lovat-Smith stepped back a yard. “In fact, one of your very best nurses, I believe? Did she not serve in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale?”

  Rathbone considered objecting that this was irrelevant: Lovat-Smith was playing for drama. But he would do his cause more harm than good by trying to deny Prudence Barrymore her moment of posthumous recognition, as Lovat-Smith would know; he could see it in his faintly cocky stance, as if Rathbone were no danger.

  “A fine woman in every respect,” Callandra said quietly. “I had the highest regard and affection for her.”

  Lovat-Smith inclined his head. “Thank you, ma’am. The court offers you its appreciation for what must have been a most difficult duty for you. Thank you, I have nothing further to ask you.”

  Judge Hardie leaned forward as Callandra moved fractionally.

  “If you would remain, Lady Callandra, Mr. Rathbone may wish to speak.”

  Callandra flushed at her own foolishness, although she had not actually taken a step to leave.

  Lovat-Smith returned to his table, and Rathbone rose, approaching the witness box and looking up at her. He was disturbed to see her so drawn.

  “Good morning, Lady Callandra. My learned friend has concluded with your identification of the unfortunate dead woman. But perhaps you would tell the court what you did after ascertaining that she was beyond your help?”

  “I—we—Dr. Beck remained with her”—Callandra stammered very slightly—“to see she was not touched, and I went to report the matter to Sir Herbert Stanhope, so that he might send for the police.”

  “Where did you find him?”

  “In the theater—operating upon a patient.”

  “Can you recall his reaction when you informed him what had happened?”

  Again faces turned toward the dock as people stared at Sir Herbert, curious and titillated by horror.

  “Yes—he was shocked, of course. He told me to go to the police station and inform the police—when he realized it was a police matter.”

  “Oh? He did not realize it immediately?”

  “Perhaps that was my fault,” she acknowledged. “I may have told him in such a way he thought it was a natural death. There are frequently deaths in a hospital.”

  “Of co
urse. Did he appear to you to be frightened or nervous?”

  A ghost of bitter amusement passed over her face. “No. He was perfectly calm. I believe he completed the operation.”

  “Successfully?” He had already ascertained that it was successfully, or he would not have asked. He could remember vividly asking Sir Herbert, and his candid, rather surprised reply.

  “Yes.” Callandra met his eyes and he knew she understood precisely.

  “A man with a calm mind and a steady hand,” he remarked. Again he was aware of the jury looking toward the dock.

  Lovat-Smith rose to his feet.

  “Yes, yes,” Judge Hardie said, waving his hand. “Mr. Rathbone, please keep your observations till your summation. Lady Callandra was not present at the rest of the operation to pass judgment upon it. You have already elicited that the patient survived, which I imagine you knew? Yes—quite so. Please proceed.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Rathbone bowed almost imperceptibly. “Lady Callandra, we may assume that you did in fact inform the police. One Inspector Jeavis, I believe. Was that the end of your concern in the case?”

  “I beg your pardon?” She blinked and her face became even paler, something like fear in her eyes and the quick tightening of her mouth.

  “Was that the end of your concern in the case?” he repeated. “Did you take any further actions?”

  “Yes—yes I did….” She stopped.

  “Indeed? And what were they?”

  Again there was the rustle of movement in the court as silks and taffetas brushed against each other and were crushed as people leaned forward. On the jury benches all faces turned toward Callandra. Judge Hardie looked at her inquiringly.

  “I—I employed a private agent with whom I am acquainted,” she replied very quietly.

  “Will you speak so the jury may hear you, if you please,” Judge Hardie directed her.

  She repeated it more distinctly, staring at Rathbone.

  “Why did you do that, Lady Callandra? Did you not believe the police competent enough to handle the matter?” Out of the corner of his vision he saw Lovat-Smith stiffen and knew he had surprised him.