The Sins of the Wolf (36 page)

“Yes.”

“Why, sir? Why not one of her own servants? You have a sufficiency of servants, do you not?”

“Of course.” Alastair looked puzzled and unhappy. “Mother’s lady’s maid had never traveled, and did not wish to. We were afraid her own nervousness would make her unsuitable as a companion, and possibly inefficient, especially at dealing with any difficulty or inconvenience which might arise.”

“Naturally,” Gilfeather agreed, nodding sagely. “You wished someone competent to take care in any contingency, therefore a woman who had traveled before.”

“And a nurse,” Alastair added. “Just in case the….” He swallowed. He looked wretched. “In case the tension of the journey should make Mother unwell.”

The judge’s mouth tightened. There was a rustle in the gallery.

Oliver Rathbone winced. Argyll sat expressionless.

“So you advertised for someone suitable?” Gilfeather prompted.

“Yes. We had two or three replies, but Miss Latterly seemed to us to be the best qualified and most suitable.”

“She gave you references, of course?”

“Of course. She seemed excellent.”

“Did you at any time have cause to doubt the wisdom of your choice prior to your seeing her off in Edinburgh station for the journey to London?”

“No. She seemed a perfectly acceptable young woman,” Alastair answered. Never once did he glance at Hester, but kept his eyes studiously away from her.

Gilfeather asked him a few more questions, all fairly trivial. Monk’s attention wandered. He looked for Oonagh’s fair head and did not find her, but Eilish was easy to see, and Deirdra. He was surprised to see Deirdra looking straight back at him with pity, and something like conspiracy, in her eyes.

Or perhaps it was only the lamplight reflecting.

Gilfeather sat down amid a stir of excitement from the gallery. James Argyll stood up.

“Mr. Farraline …”

Alastair looked at him with a fixed, polite expression of dislike.

“Mr. Farraline.” Argyll did not smile at him. “Why did you choose someone from London rather than Edinburgh? Have we no acceptable nurses in Scotland?”

Alastair’s face tightened noticeably.

“I imagine so, sir. None of them answered our advertisement. We wished for the best we could find. A woman who had served with Florence Nightingale seemed to us above reproach.”

There was a murmur around the crowd and mixed emotions, patriotic approval of Florence Nightingale and all she
stood for in their minds, anger that her reputation should be besmirched, even vicariously, surprise, doubt and anticipation.

“You really considered such qualification necessary for so simple a task as administering a prepared dose to an intelligent and far from incapacitated lady?” Argyll said curiously. “Members of the jury may wonder why a local woman of sound reputation would not have served at least as well, and far less expensively in railway fares than sending for a stranger from London.”

This time the rustle was agreement.

Monk shifted impatiently. It was a point so minor as to be worthless, too subtle for the jury even to understand, much less recall when the time came.

“We wanted someone accustomed to travel,” Alastair repeated doggedly, his face pink, although it was impossible to tell what emotion lay behind the flushed cheeks and unhappy eyes. It could have been no more than grief, and certain embarrassment at being required to stand so publicly for everyone to stare at with such morbid interest. He was used only to honor, respect, even awe. Now his private affairs, his family and its emotions, were displayed and he was helpless to defend himself.

“Thank you,” Argyll said politely, conveying neither belief nor disbelief. “Did Miss Latterly seem an entirely satisfactory person to you while she was in your house?”

Even if Alastair had wished to deny it, he was now in a position where he could not, or he would seem to have connived at whatever ill he had implied.

“Yes, of course,” he said sharply. “I should never have permitted my mother to travel if I had suspected anything at all.”

Argyll nodded and smiled. “In fact, would it be true to say that your mother seemed to get along particularly well with Miss Latterly?”

Alastair’s face hardened. “Yes … I feel it would. A remarkably—” He stopped.

Argyll waited. The judged looked inquiringly at Alastair. The jurors all sat staring.

Alastair bit his lip. Apparently he had thought better of what he was going to say.

There was a murmur of sympathy around the room. Alastair’s face tightened, loathing the public pity.

Argyll knew when he had stopped winning, even if he did not know why.

“Thank you, sir. That is all I have to ask you.”

Gilfeather nodded benignly, and the judge excused Alastair with a further expression of sympathy and respect which Alastair accepted tight-lipped.

The next witness to be called was Oonagh McIvor. She caused even more of a stir than Alastair. She had no title, no public position, but even if no one had known who she was, her air of dignity and suppressed passion would have commanded both respect and attention. Of course she was dressed entirely in black, but she was anything but drab. Her fair skin was delicate and warm and the gleam of her hair was plain beneath her black bonnet.

She climbed the steps deliberately and took the oath with an unwavering voice, then stood waiting for Gilfeather to begin. Not one of the fifteen jurors took his eyes from her.

Gilfeather hesitated, as if wondering how much to play on the jury’s sympathy, then decided against it. He was a subtle man and saw no need to gild the lily.

“Mrs. McIvor, did you concur in your brother’s decision to employ a nurse from London for your mother?”

“Yes I did,” she said slowly and calmly. “I confess I thought it an excellent idea. I thought as well as her professional abilities, and her experience in travel, she would be an interesting companion for my mother.” She looked apologetic. “Mother had traveled considerably in her youth, and I think at times she missed the excitement of it. I thought such a woman would be able to talk with her about foreign parts and experiences that would be bound to entertain her.”

“Most understandable.” Gilfeather nodded. “I think in
your circumstances I should have felt the same. And presumably that part of your arrangement lived up to your hopes.”

Oonagh smiled bleakly, but did not answer.

“Were you present when Miss Latterly arrived, Mrs. McIvor?” Gilfeather continued.

The questions were all as Monk had foreseen. Gilfeather asked them and Oonagh answered them, and the court listened with rapt attention, all except Monk, who stared around at first one face, then another. Gilfeather himself looked satisfied, even smug. Watching him, the jury could only believe he was completely in command of the whole procedure and held no doubt as to its outcome.

Monk resented it bitterly, while admiring the man’s professionalism. He could not recall the trial of his mentor all those years ago. He did not even know in which court it had been held, but his helplessness now brought back waves of old emotion and grief. Then he had known the truth and had watched impotently while someone he had both loved and admired had been convicted of a crime he had not committed. Then Monk had been young and looking with incredulity at the injustice, not believing until the last possible moment that it could really happen. Afterwards he had been stunned. This time it was all too familiar, an old wound with scar tissue ripped away to reveal the unhealed depths, and probed anew.

At the defense table James Argyll sat with his black brows drawn down in thought. His was a dangerous face, full of strength and subtlety, but he was a man without weapons. Monk had failed him. Deliberately he used the word over and over to himself. Failure. Someone had killed Mary Farraline, and he had not found any trace of who it was or why it had happened. He had had weeks in which to seek, and all he had produced was that Kenneth had a pretty mistress with long yellow hair, white skin and a determination never to be cold and hungry again, or to sleep
in some strange bed at some man’s favor, because she had not one of her own.

Actually Monk sympathized with her more than he did with Kenneth, who had been forced to part with more expensive gifts than he had wished, in order to keep her favors.

But unless someone could raise adequate suspicion of embezzlement to have the company books audited, and embezzlement was in fact proved true, then it was possibly scandalous, although not probably, and it was certainly no cause for murder.

Monk looked at Rathbone and in spite of himself felt a stab of sympathy. To a stranger he appeared merely to be listening, his head a trifle to one side, his long face thoughtful, his dark eyes heavy-lidded as if his attention were entirely involved. But Monk had known him long enough and seen him under pressure before. He could see the angle of his shoulders hunched under his beautiful jacket, the stiffness of his neck and the slow clenching and unclenching of his hand on the table, and he felt the frustration boiling inside him. Whatever he thought or whatever emotions churned inside him, there was nothing he could do now. Whatever he would have done differently, whether it was a whole strategy or as little as an intonation or an expression of the face, he could only sit silently and watch.

Oonagh was answering Gilfeather’s questions about the preparation for Mary’s journey.

“And who packed your mother’s case, Mrs. McIvor?”

“Her lady’s maid.”

“Upon whose instructions?”

“Mine.” Oonagh hesitated only a fraction of a moment, her face pale, her head high. No one in the court moved. “I prepared a list of what should go in, so Mother would have everything she needed and … and not too many dinner gowns rather than plain day dresses, and skirts. It… it was not a social visit … not really.”

There was a murmur of sympathy like a breath of wind around the room. The personal details brought the reality of death more sharply.

Gilfeather waited a second or two, allowing the emotions time.

“I see. And naturally you included the appropriate jewelry on this list?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you packed this list in the case?”

“Yes.” The ghost of a smile crossed her face. “So the maid who packed for her return would have something by which to know what should be there, and nothing would accidentally be left behind. It can be very tiresome …” She did not need to finish.

Again the sense of the dead woman filled the room. Someone in the gallery was weeping.

“Which brings me to another point, Mrs. McIvor,” Gilfeather said after several moments. “Precisely why was your mother making this long journey to London? Would it not have been more sensible for your sister to have returned to Edinburgh, and then been able to visit the whole family?”

“Normally speaking, of course,” Oonagh agreed, resuming her calm, intelligent tone. “But my sister is recently married and expecting her first child. She could not travel, and she was very anxious to see Mother.”

“Indeed? And do you know why that was?”

There was a complete silence in the court. One woman coughed discreetly and the sound was like gunfire.

“Yes … she was concerned … afraid that her child might not be quite normal, might be afflicted with some hereditary illness….” The words dropped one by one, carefully enunciated, into a pool of expectancy. There were gasps around the room. The jurors sat motionless. The judge turned sharply towards her.

Rathbone’s head came up, his expression tense.

Argyll’s eyes searched Oonagh’s face.

“Indeed,” Gilfeather said very softly. “And what did your mother propose to do about these fears, Mrs. McIvor?” He did not ask what the illness was, and Monk heard the whisper and rustle around the crowd as a hundred people let out their breath in release of tension and disappointment.

Oonagh paled a little. Her chin lifted. She knew their thoughts.

“She was going to assure her that the disease of which my father died was contracted long after she was born and was in no way hereditary.” Her voice was very level, very clear. “It was a fever he developed while serving in the army abroad, and it damaged his internal organs, eventually killing him. Griselda was too young to have remembered it accurately, and I suppose at the time of Father’s death she was not told. No one thought it would matter to her.” She hesitated. “I am sorry to say so, but Griselda worries about her health far more than is necessary or natural.”

“You are saying her anxiety was without cause?” Gilfeather concluded.

“Yes. Quite without cause. She would not believe that easily, and Mother was going to see her in person to convince her.”

“I see. Very natural. I am sure any mother might well have done the same.”

Oonagh nodded but did not reply.

There was a faint air of disappointment around the room. Some people’s attention wandered.

Oonagh cleared her throat.

“Yes?” Gilfeather said immediately.

“It is not only my mother’s gray pearl brooch which was missing,” she said carefully. “Although of course we have that back now.”

Now the attention was returned in full. No one fidgeted anymore.

“Indeed?” Gilfeather looked interested.

“There was also a diamond brooch of a great deal more
value,” Oonagh said gravely. “It was commissioned from our family jeweler, but it was not among my mother’s effects.”

In the dock Hester straightened up sharply and leaned forward, amazement in her face.

“I see.” Gilfeather stared at Oonagh. “And the estimated worth of the two pieces, Mrs. McIvor?”

“Oh, a hundred pounds or so for the pearls, and perhaps a little more for the diamonds.”

There was a gasp of breath around the room. The judge frowned and leaned forward a little.

“A very considerable sum indeed,” Gilfeather agreed. “Enough to buy a great many luxuries for a woman living from one chance job to another.”

Rathbone winced, so slightly perhaps only Monk saw it, but he knew exactly why.

“And was this diamond brooch on the list to be packed for London?”

“No. If Mother took it, it was a last-minute decision of her own.”