A Breach Of Promise Part 23

Monk was furious. Now he would intervene, whether she liked it or not.

But he was prevented by Perdita herself, who was standing in the doorway, also wide-eyed and extremely pale. She must have heard their raised voices. Now she was trembling as she steadied herself with one hand on the doorframe behind Athol.

"You will not be replaced, Hester," she said huskily, and cleared her throat. "Athol, I appreciate that you no doubt have my welfare in mind, but you will not dismiss my staff, or indeed give them any instructions at all. Miss Latterly is in my employ, not yours, and she will stay here as long as I wish her to and she is willing."

"You are upset, my dear," Athol said after a moment's hesitation in amazement at her outburst. "When you have had time to reconsider, you will realize that what I say is right." He nodded several times to emphasize his certainty.

"It is not right!" she contradicted him, coming into the room and facing him squarely. "Certainly I am upset that Melville is dead, poor creature, and I am upset about the manner of his death-" She corrected herself. "Her death! The whole thing is a most tragic matter altogether. But I am plain angry that you should choose to dismiss my staff without reference to me or my wishes."

"It is for your good, my dear Perdita-"

"I don't care whose good it is for!" she shouted at him. "Or whose good you think it is! You will not make my decisions for me." She took a deep breath and resumed in a normal voice. "And anyway, you are wrong. It is not for my good that should be shut away from knowing what is going on. What use am I to anybody, especially myself, if life pa.s.ses me by? Would you allow me to decide for you what you should know and what you shouldn't?"

He laughed abruptly. "That is hardly comparable, my dear girl. I know an infinitely greater amount about the world and its ways than you do."

"Of course you do!" she rejoined smartly. "n.o.body told you you should stay in the nursery and drink milk for the rest of your life!"

"Really, Perdita!" He bridled, stepping backwards. "Your complete loss of composure rather proves what I say. You are overwrought and quite unable to think clearly. That is not a matter you should be discussing in front of Miss Latterly and Mr. Monk."

"Why not?" she demanded. "You are trying to dismiss Hester. Should that be done behind her back?"

"Perdita, please control yourself!" Athol was becoming seriously annoyed now. His rather thin patience was worn through. "Have Martha make you a cup of tea or something. This vindicates my judgment that this has all been too much for you. If you are not careful you will take a fit of the vapors, and then you can be no help to Gabriel or anyone else."

"I shall not take a fit of the vapors!" Perdita retaliated. "The very worst I shall do is tell you precisely what I think and feel about your interfering in my household. But believe me, Athol, that could be very bad. Hester is staying here, and that is the end to it. If you do not find that something you can abide, then I shall be sorry not to see you until Gabriel is better and she has been released to care for someone else... but I shall endure it. Stoically!" Her face was bright pink, and in spite of her att.i.tude of confidence, she was trembling.

Hester was trying very hard to keep the smile from her lips.

Monk did not bother.

"I am sure your husband will be obliged to you, Mrs. Sheldon," he said quietly. "It is not pleasant to rely on someone and have them dismissed by anyone else, no matter how well intended. And your understanding and feelings regarding the Melville case will no doubt make it much easier for him to bear his own sense of distress, since he will not have to do it alone."

"I wiE thank you to concern yourself with your own affairs, sir!" Athol said to him coldly. "You have already brought enough distress and disturbance into this house. We should not even have heard of this miserable, farcical business if it were not for you. Women dressing up as men, deceiving the world, trying to ape their betters and living a completely unnatural life. It is a debas.e.m.e.nt of all that is purest and most honorable in domestic happiness, and those things any decent man holds dear ... those very values which are the cornerstone of any civilized society."

Perdita stared at him. "Why shouldn't women design houses? We live in them just as much as men do-more so."

"Because you are plainly not competent to do so!" he answered, exasperation sharpening his voice. "That is self-evident." He swept his arm sideways, dramatically. "You run households, that is an utterly different affair. It does not call for mathematical or logical skills, for special perception, individuality, or thought-and certainly not for genius-"

Monk interrupted. "If you have your household accounts kept for you by someone with no mathematical skills you will be in a very unfortunate position. But that is irrelevant. Keelin Melville was a woman, and she was the most brilliant architect of this generation, perhaps of this century."

"Nonsense!" Athol laughed derisively. "When one looks at her work with real perception, one can see that it is eccentric, highly unlikely to last. It has a femininity to it, a fundamental weakness."

Perdita let out a howl of rage and turned on her heel. Then as she reached the corridor she swung around again, staring at Athol.

"I think it is going to rain. You had better leave before you get soaked on the way home. I should not like you to catch pneumonia."

In spite of himself Monk glanced out the window. Brilliant suns.h.i.+ne streamed in out of a dazzling sky. He glanced at Hester and saw her eyes full of deep, s.h.i.+ning satisfaction.

Rathbone also encountered society's prejudices regarding Keelin Melville. He knew of nothing else he could do in the case. His client was dead. There was nothing further to defend or to prosecute. There were other cases to which he needed to turn his attention. But tomorrow would be sufficient time.

Today he was weighed down by the sense of his failure.

Unfortunately, he had social obligations which, if he did not attend to them, would make the threads of daily life harder to pick up. He could not mourn the Melville case indefinitely. Perhaps thinking of something else, being surrounded by other people whose minds were occupied with other matters, would make it easier for him. It might prove like a cold bath, agonizing for the first few minutes, then invigorating, or at least leaving him a little warmer afterwards from the chill of grief.

He attended a dinner party at the house of a man who had long been an a.s.sociate, and perhaps also a friend-at least their acquaintance went back to their earliest days of practicing law.

James Laurence had married well, and his house in Mayfair was very fine indeed. Rathbone could have afforded one like it if he had wanted one sufficiently. He might have had to do without one or two other things, but it would not have been impossible.

But Laurence had chosen to marry and to entertain in society. He also selected cases largely according to the fee he would charge, in order to support his choice. Rathbone did not wish to do that. His rooms suited him perfectly well. Of course, if he married that would have to change.

He went in and found several of the guests already arrived. The chandeliers were dazzling. The sound of laughter and the c.h.i.n.k of gla.s.s filled the room amid the exquisitely colored skirts of the women, the glitter of jewels and the pallor of shoulders and bosoms.

He was greeted and absorbed into the company immediately. Everyone was courteous and spoke of all manner of subjects: what was currently playing at the theater; the last parliamentary debate and what might be expected of the next; a little bit of harmless gossip as to who might marry whom. It was light and pleasantly relaxing.

Only after dinner, when the ladies had retired to the withdrawing room and the gentlemen remained at the table, pa.s.sing port and savoring a little excellent Stilton, was the matter of Keelin Melville raised, and then it was obliquely.

"Poor old Lambert," Lofthouse said ruefully, holding his gla.s.s in his hand and turning it around so the light fell through the ruby liquid. "He must feel a complete fool."

"It's his daughter I'm sorry for," Weatherall replied abruptly. "How must she feel? She's been taken in completely."

Lofthouse turned to look at him, his tufted eyebrows raised. "She hasn't paid out a fortune for buildings which are worthless now!" he retorted, his voice heavy with impatience.

Rathbone was already raw. His temper snapped.

"Neither has Lambert!" he said very clearly.

Half a dozen people at the table swiveled to look at him, caught as much by the tone of his voice as by his words.

"I beg your pardon?" Colonel Weatherall said with puzzlement, his thin, white hair catching the light.

"I said, 'Neither has Lambert,' " Rathbone repeated. "Any building he has paid for is exactly the same today as it was a week ago."

"Hardly!" Lofthouse laughed. "My dear fellow, you, of all people, know the truth! I don't mean to be unkind, or to make an issue of your misfortune, if that is the word, but Melville was a woman, for heaven's sake." He said no more, as if that fact was all the explanation required.

Weatherall cleared his throat and coughed into his handkerchief.

A ginger-haired man helped himself to more cheese.

"Precisely," Rathbone agreed, facing Lofthouse unblinkingly. "The buildings are exactly the same. Our knowledge of Melville's s.e.x has changed, but not of her architectural skills."

"Oh! Come now!" Lofthouse laughed again, glancing along the table at the others before looking back at Rathbone. "You cannot seriously be suggesting that a woman-a young woman at that-can conceive and draw up technically perfect plans for the sort of buildings Lambert commissioned and had built, for heaven's sake? Really, Rathbone. We all sympathize with your embarra.s.sment. We have all of us made mistakes of judgment at one time or another...." A smile curled his lips. "Although not, I think, of that order ... or nature ..." His smile broadened.

Rathbone could feel the rage inside him almost beyond his grasp to contain. How dare this complacent oaf make a shabby joke out of Keelin Melville's tragedy and society's prejudice?

"Lofthouse, I think..." Laurence began, although there was a look of humor in his eyes also, or so it seemed to Rathbone. He was not in the mood to consider it a reflection from the chandeliers.

"Oh, come on, my dear fellow!" Lofthouse was not going to be hushed. The port was at his elbow, and extremely good. "It has an element of the absurd, you must admit. When a genius like Rathbone gets caught out so very thoroughly, we lesser mortals must be allowed our moment of laughter. If he is not man enough to take it, then he should not enter the fray!"

Laurence opened his mouth to protest, but Rathbone spoke before he could, leaning forward across the table.

"You can jeer at me all you like. I am perfectly happy to enter the arena and do my best-win, lose, or draw. If my loss gives you pleasure, you are welcome to it!" He ignored the indrawn breath around the table and the looks of amazement. "But I am deeply offended by your making a public joke out of the death of a young woman whose only sin, so far as we know, was to be denied the opportunity to study or to practice her art so long as we knew she was a woman and not a man. She deceived us because we deserved it-in fact, in a sense demanded it."

He disregarded Lofthouse's rising anger or Colonel Weatherall's incredulity, even his host's embarra.s.sment "And to suggest that the buildings are worth less because they were designed by a woman rather than a man is the utmost hypocrisy. You know nothing more or less about them now than you did last week, when you were full of praise. They look exactly the same, your knowledge of their design and construction and material is exactly what it was before. You marveled yesterday, and today you mock, and nothing is different except your perception of the personal rife of the architect."

"Rathbone, I really think..." Laurence protested.

Lofthouse was red in the face. He half rose to his feet, hands on the white tablecloth.

Rathbone rose also.

"You say a young woman cannot do such things," he continued, his tone even more penetrating. "Therefore what she does must be worthless, and what she had done must be worthless because she is a young woman. Actually, she was nearly forty." His voice dripped sarcasm. "But no doubt where age matures a man it merely dulls a woman. I cannot think even you can seriously believe such an argument. You are a hypocrite, and it is bigots like you who drive genius to destruction, because you don't understand it, and what you don't understand you destroy."

He had gone too far, and he knew it even as he was speaking, not that he did not mean it, but he should not have said it. He stared at their shocked faces. He should apologize, at least to Laurence. Perhaps he would tomorrow, or next week, but not today. He was too pa.s.sionately, irretrievably, angry.

"You're drunk!" Lofthouse accused him with amazement, then ruined the effect by hiccuping.

Rathbone looked at him, then at the half-empty gla.s.s beside him, with withering contempt.

There was nothing left for him to do but incline his head in the barest acknowledgment to Laurence, then excuse himself and leave.

Outside he found himself s.h.i.+vering. It was over a mile and a half to his rooms, but he set out walking without even giving it thought, going faster and faster, oblivious of people pa.s.sing him or the clatter and light in the gloom of carriages. It was only as he was crossing Piccadilly that he realized he did not really want to go home. He did not want to spend the rest of the evening alone with his thoughts.

He stopped abruptly on the curb and swung around, ready to hail the nearest cab. He climbed in and directed it to take him to Primrose Hill.

When he arrived Henry Rathbone was sitting by the fire with his slippers off, toasting his feet, sucking absentmindedly on an empty pipe, and deep in a book of philosophy, with which he profoundly disagreed. But its arguments were exercising his mind, which he enjoyed enormously. Even losing his temper in such an abstract way was a form of pleasure.

However, as soon as Oliver came in he realized that something was wrong. It did not require a great deal of deduction, since Oliver had left his hat at Laurence's, his gloves were still stuffed in his pockets and his hands were red with cold. It was now pitch-dark, and chilly enough to suspect frost.

Henry had, of course, followed the case and knew of the latest tragic developments. He stood up and regarded Oliver gravely, holding his pipe in his hand.

"Has something happened?" he asked.

Oliver ran his fingers through his hair, something totally uncharacteristic. He loathed looking untidy; it was almost as bad as being unclean.

"Not really, at least nothing in the Melville case," he answered, taking off his coat and handing it to the manservant waiting at his elbow. "I went to a dinner party this evening and lost my temper."

"Seriously, I presume." Henry nodded to the manservant, who disappeared, closing the door silently. "You look cold. Would you like a gla.s.s of port?"

"No!" Oliver declined. "I mean, no thank you. It was during the port that I told them they were hypocrites and bigots who were responsible for the ruin of a genius like Melville." He sat down in the other chair, opposite his father, watching his face to see his reaction.

"Unwise," Henry answered, resuming his own seat. "What are you doing now, thinking how to apologize?"

"No!" The reply was instant and sincere.

"Are they responsible?"

Oliver calmed down a little. "They, and people like them, yes."

"A lot of people ..." Henry gazed at him very levelly.

Oh'ver's temper had worn itself out and left not a great deal but sadness and a growing feeling of his own guilt.

"You are not responsible for society's att.i.tudes," Henry said, knocking out his pipe, forgetting there was nothing in it.

"No, but I was responsible for Melville," Oliver answered. "I was very personally and directly responsible. If she had believed she could trust me, then she would have told me the truth. We could have told Zillah Lambert, at least, and she would probably have respected the confidence, for her own sake if not for Melville's. Then there need never have been a case and Melville would still be alive ... possibly even practicing her profession."

"Perhaps," Henry agreed. "Is that what is troubling you?"

"I suppose so."

"Didn't you ask her, press her for the truth?"

"Yes, of course I did! Obviously she didn't trust me."

"What was to prevent her trusting Zillah Lambert, regardless of you?"

"Well... nothing, I suppose."

"But years of rejection," Henry concluded. "Years of lying and concealing. You cannot know everything that went before which made her what she was." He reached for his tobacco and pulled out a few shreds between his fingers and thumb, pus.h.i.+ng them into the bowl of his pipe. "Perhaps you were unimaginative not to have guessed, perhaps not. Either way, there is nothing you can do now except cripple yourself with remorse. That will serve no one. It is self-indulgent... and perhaps you need a little indulgence, but do not let it persist for too long. It can become a habit-and an excuse."

"My G.o.d, you're a harsh judge," Oliver said, jerking his head up to glare at his father.

Henry struck a match and lit his pipe. It went out again immediately. His mouth softened, but there was no equivocation in his mild blue eyes.

"Do you want to be invalided out?"

"No, of course I don't. And I'd like a gla.s.s of sherry. Actually, I left before I drank more than a sip of the port."

"It's behind you." Henry made another attempt at lighting his pipe.

The following morning a little before noon Rathbone was in his offices in Vere Street when his clerk told him the police surgeon had called with information.

"Ask him in," Rathbone said immediately.

The surgeon came in, looking grave.

"Well?" Rathbone asked as soon as the barest formalities were over.

"Definitely belladonna," the surgeon replied, sitting down in the chair opposite the desk. "Not very surprising. Easy to come by." He stopped.

"But..." Rathbone prompted, sitting a little straighter.

The surgeon bit his lips, his eyes narrowing. "But the thing that I find hard to understand, and which brings me back to you rather than merely sending you a report, is that from the amount she took, and the time she died, she must have taken it while she was still in the courthouse." He drew his brows together. "Which can only mean she had it with her, presumably against such an eventuality as ... what? What happened that afternoon that suddenly became unbearable?"

Rathbone tried to think back. It had been the day Sachev-erall had put the witnesses on the stand and exposed what he thought was a h.o.m.os.e.xual affair. Had Melville known that was going to happen, or feared it? If so, why had she not told Rathbone to plead guilty and settle out of court? She would have saved Wolff's reputation at least. And if she loved him, surely she would have done that?

Had she carried belladonna all the time, just in case?

"Do you know something?" the surgeon asked. "I would guess she took it after two in the afternoon, and well before five in the evening, probably before four."