Weighed in the Balance (49 page)

“If the pupils of the eyes were dilated?” Rathbone added.

“I would suspect poison.”

“By the leaves or the bark of the yew tree, possibly?”

“Very possibly.”

“And if the patient had blotches on his skin?”

“Oh … that is not yew. That sounds more like lily of the valley—”

There was a hiss of breath around the entire court. The judge leaned forward, his face tense, eyes wide. The jurors sat bolt upright. Harvester broke his pencil with the unconscious tension of his hands.

“Lily of the valley?” Rathbone said carefully. “Is that poisonous?”

“Oh, yes, as poisonous as anything in the world,” Rainsford said seriously. “As poisonous as yew, hemlock or deadly nightshade. All of it—the flowers, the leaves, the bulbs. Even the water in which the cut flowers stand is lethal. It causes exactly the symptoms you describe.”

“I see. Thank you, Dr. Rainsford. Would you remain there in case Mr. Harvester has anything to ask you.”

Harvester stood up, drew in a deep breath, and then shook his head and sat down again. He looked ill.

The jury retired and was absent for only twenty minutes.

“We find in favor of the defendant, Countess Zorah Rostova,” the foreman announced with a pale, sad face. He looked at the judge first, to see if he had fulfilled his duty, then at Rathbone with a calm, grave dislike. Then he sat down.

There was no cheering in the gallery. Perhaps they did not know what they had expected, but it was not this. It left them unhappy—with truth, but no victory. Too many dreams were soiled and broken forever.

Rathbone turned to Zorah.

“You were right, she did murder him,” he said with a sigh. “What will happen to the fight to keep independence now? Will they find a new leader?”

“Brigitte,” she answered. “She is well loved, and she has the courage, and the belief, and the dedication to her country. Rolf and the Queen will be behind her.”

“But when the King dies, Waldo will succeed him. Then Ulrike will have far less power,” Rathbone pointed out.

Zorah smiled. “Don’t believe it! Ulrike will always have power. The only one who is remotely a match for her is Brigitte, in her own way. They are on the same side, but unification will come; it is simply a matter of when and how.”

She rose to her feet amid the shifting and muttering of the crowd as they moved to leave. “Thank you, Sir Oliver. I fear my defense has cost you dearly. You will not be loved for what you have done. You have shown people too much of what they would prefer not to have known. You have made the wealthy and the privileged see themselves, however briefly, a great deal more clearly than they wished to, parts of themselves they would have preferred to ignore.

“And you have disturbed the dreams of ordinary people who like, even need, to see us as wiser and better than we are. In future it will be harder for them to look on our wealth and idleness and bear it with equanimity—and they have to do that,
because too many are dependent upon us, one way or another. And neither will we forgive them for having seen our faults.”

Her face tightened. “I think perhaps I should not have spoken. Maybe it would have been better if I had allowed her to get away with it. It might have done less harm in the end.”

“Don’t say that!” He clasped her arm.

“Because it was a hard battle?” She smiled. “And we paid too much to win? That had nothing to do with it, Sir Oliver. How much it costs has nothing to do with how much it is worth.”

“I know that. I meant don’t believe that it is better to allow a helpless man to be murdered by the person he trusted above all others, and for it to go unquestioned. The day we accept that, because it will be uncomfortable to look at the truth it exposes, we have lost all that makes us worth respecting.”

“How very proper—and English,” she replied, but with a sudden tenderness in her voice. “You look exactly as if you would say such a thing, with your striped trousers and stiff, white collar, but perhaps you are right, for all that. Thank you, Sir Oliver. It has been most entertaining to know you.” And with that she smiled more widely, with a warmth and radiance he had not seen in her before, and turned and left in a swirl of scarlet and russet skirts.

The room was darker without her. He wanted to go after her, but it would have been foolish. There was no place for him in her life.

Monk and Hester were at his elbow.

“Brilliant,” Monk said dryly. “Another astounding victory—but Pyrrhic, this time. You will have lost more than you gained. Good thing you got your knighthood already. You’d not get it now.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Rathbone replied sourly. “I would not have done it, had not the alternative been even worse.” But his mind was on Zorah, the brimming life in her,
the recklessness and the courage. Perhaps honoring her was worth the cost and the sense of loss now.

Monk sighed. “How could such a love end like that? He gave up everything for her. His country, his people, his throne. How could the greatest love story of the century end in disillusion, hatred and murder?”

“It wasn’t the greatest love,” Hester answered him. “It was two people who needed what the other could give. She wanted power, position, wealth and fame. He seemed to want constant admiration, devotion, someone to be there all the time, to live his life for him. He hadn’t the courage to stand without her. Love is brave and generous, and above all it springs from honor. In order to love someone else, you must first be true to yourself.”

Rathbone looked at her and slowly his face creased into a smile.

Monk frowned. His eyes filled with intense dislike, then anger, then as he fought with himself, he lost the battle, and his body eased.

Deliberately, he put his arm around Hester.

“You are right,” he said grudgingly. “You are pompous, opinionated and insufferable—but you are right.”

On a sunless street deep in London’s dangerous slums, a respected solicitor is found dead—and beside him lies the barely living body of his son.

THE SILENT CRY

by

ANNE PERRY

The police are baffled until shrewd investigator William Monk uncovers a connection between them and a series of rapes and beatings of local prostitutes.

Then it becomes shockingly clear that the son must have killed his own father….

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Published by Fawcett Books.