Weighed in the Balance (9 page)

“But you feel you have wasted an opportunity.”

Monk nodded, too angry to speak. He would not be reporting this to Rathbone.

Dr. Gallagher turned out to be a mild-mannered man of about fifty or so who was not perturbed about being summoned away from his books to attend two gentlemen from the Hall who had called for his help.

“Indeed,” he said courteously. “What a shame, Baron von Emden. Let me have a look at it. Right wrist, is it?”

“Sorry for our deception, Doctor.” Stephan smiled and rested his hands on his hips, demonstrating two perfectly supple wrists. “Rather a delicate matter. Didn’t want to advertise it. Hope you understand. Mr. Monk”—he gestured towards Monk, beside him—“is trying to help us deal with this abysmal business of the Countess Rostova’s accusations.”

Gallagher looked blank.

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Stephan pulled a face expressing
chagrin. “I am afraid she has behaved quite … quite extraordinarily. The whole affair will have to come to trial.”

“What affair?”

“Prince Friedrich’s death,” Monk said, stepping in. “I regret to say she has started spreading the charge around society that it was not an accident but deliberate poison.”

“What?” Gallagher was aghast. He seemed almost unable to believe he had heard correctly. “What do you mean? Not … not that … that I …”

“No, of course not!” Monk said immediately. “No one even thought of such a thing. It is the widow, Princess Gisela, whom she is accusing.”

“Oh, my God! How perfectly fearful.” Gallagher stepped back and all but collapsed into the chair behind him. “How can I help?”

Stephan was about to speak, but Monk cut across him.

“You will no doubt be called to give evidence, unless we can gather sufficient proof to force her to withdraw the charge and offer the fullest apology. The greatest assistance you could give would be to answer all our questions with the utmost candor, so we know precisely where we stand, and if she has clever counsel, what is the worst we must fear.”

“Of course. Of course. Anything I can do.” Gallagher pressed his hand to his brow. “Poor woman! To lose the husband she loved so profoundly and then to face such a diabolical slander, and from one she must have supposed her friend. Ask me anything you wish.”

Monk sat down opposite the doctor in a well-worn brown chair. “You understand I am speaking as a sort of devil’s advocate? I shall probe for weaknesses, so if I find them, I shall know how to defend.”

“Of course. Proceed!” Gallagher said almost eagerly.

Monk felt a tinge of conscience, but only a slight one. The truth was what mattered.

“You were the only physician to treat Prince Friedrich?”

“Yes, from the accident until he died.” His face was pale at the memory. “I … I honestly thought the poor man was recovering. He seemed to be considerably better. Of course, he had a great deal of pain, but one does from broken bones. But he was far less feverish, and he had begun to take a little nourishment.”

“The last time you saw him alive?” Monk asked. “Before the relapse?”

“He was sitting up in bed.” Gallagher looked very strained. “He seemed pleased to see me. I can picture it exactly. It was spring, as you know, late spring. It was a beautiful day, sunlight streaming in through the windows, a vase of lily of the valley on the bureau in the sitting room. The perfume of them filled the room. They were a particular favorite of the Princess’s. I hear she cannot abide them since that day. Poor creature. She idolized him. She never left his side from the moment he was carried in from his accident. Distraught, she was, absolutely distraught. Beside herself with distress for him.”

He took a deep breath and let it out silently. “Quite different from when he died. Then it was as if the world had ended for her. She simply sat there, white-faced, neither moving nor speaking. She did not even seem to see us.”

“What did he die of?” Monk asked a little more gently. He was aware of conflicting emotions tearing inside him. “Medically speaking.”

Gallagher’s eyes widened. “I did not do a postmortem examination, sir. He was a royal prince! He died as the result of his injuries in the fall. He had broken several bones. They had seemed to be healing, but one cannot see inside the living body to know what other damage there may be, what organs may have been crushed or pierced. He bled to death internally. That is what every symptom led me to believe. I had not expected it, because he seemed to be recovering, but that may have been the courage of his spirit, when in truth he was injured so
seriously that the slightest movement may have ruptured some vessel and caused a fatal hemorrhage.”

“The symptoms …” Monk prompted, this time quite softly. Whatever the cause of it, or whoever, he could not help feeling pity for the man whose death he was trying to examine so clinically. All he had heard of him suggested he was a man of courage and character, willing to follow his heart and pay the cost without complaint, a man capable of immense love and sacrifice, perhaps, in the last, a man torn by duty—and murdered for it.

“Coldness,” Gallagher replied. “Clamminess of the skin.” He swallowed; his hands tightened on his lap. “Pains in the abdomen, nausea. I believe that was the site of the bleeding. That was followed by disorientation, a sense of giddiness, numbness in the extremities, sinking into a coma, and finally death. Very precisely, heart failure. In short, sir, the symptoms of internal bleeding.”

“Are there any poisons which produce the same symptoms?” Monk asked, frowning, disliking having to say it.

Gallagher stared at him.

Monk thought of the yew trees at the end of the hornbeam hedge, the stone urn pale against their dark mass. Everyone knew that the needlelike yew leaves were bitterly poisonous. Everyone in the house had access to them; one simply had to take a walk in the garden, the most natural thing in the world to do.

“Are there?” he repeated.

Stephan shifted his weight.

“Yes, of course,” Gallagher said reluctantly. “There are thousands of poisons. But why in heaven’s name should such a woman poison her husband? It makes no conceivable sense!”

“Would the leaves of the yew trees produce such symptoms?” Monk pressed.

Gallagher thought for so long Monk was about to ask him again.

“Yes,” he said at last. “They would.” He was white-faced.

“Exactly those symptoms?” Monk could not let it go.

“Well …” Gallagher hesitated, his face filled with misery. “Yes … I am not an expert in such matters, but one does occasionally find village children put the leaves in their mouths. And women have been known to—” He stopped for a moment, then continued unhappily. “To use it in an effort to procure an abortion. A young woman died in the next village about eight years ago.”

Stephan shifted his weight again. “But Gisela never left Friedrich’s rooms,” he said quietly. “Even if he was poisoned, she is about the only one in the house who could not possibly have done it. And believe me, if you knew Gisela you would not even entertain the idea of her having someone else provide the poison for her. She would never put herself so fatally in someone else’s power.”

“This is monstrous,” Gallagher said miserably. “I hope you will do everything in your ability to fight such a dreadful shadow and at least clear that poor woman’s name.”

“We will do everything we can to find the truth—and prove it,” Monk promised ambiguously.

Gallagher did not doubt him for a moment. He rose to his feet and clasped Monk’s hand. “Thank you, sir. I am most relieved. And if there is anything further I can do to assist you, you have but to say. And you too, of course, Baron von Emden. Good day to you, gentlemen, good day.”

“That hardly helps us at all,” Stephan said as they climbed into the gig and Monk took the reins. “Perhaps it was yew poison … but it wasn’t Gisela!”

“So it would seem,” Monk agreed. “I am afraid we still have rather a long way to go.”

3

H
ESTER
L
ATTERLY,
about whom Monk and Rathbone had both thought so recently, was unaware of their involvement in the case of Princess Gisela and the Countess Rostova, although she had heard murmurs of the affair in general.

Since her return from nursing in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, she had held several posts in that profession, mostly private. She had just completed the care of an elderly lady recuperating from a nasty fall, and was presently not engaged. She was delighted to receive a call from her friend and sometimes patroness Lady Callandra Daviot. Callandra was well into her fifties. Her face was full of wit and character, but even her most ardent admirer would not have said she was beautiful. There was too much strength in her, and far too much eccentricity. She had a very agreeable lady’s maid who had years ago given up trying to do anything elegant with Callandra’s hair. If it stayed more or less within its pins, that was victory enough.

On this day she was even untidier than usual, but she swept in with an armful of flowers and an air of excited purpose.

“For you, my dear,” she announced, placing the flowers on the side table in Hester’s small sitting room. There was no purpose in Hester’s renting more spacious accommodation, even
could she have afforded it; she was hardly ever there. “Although I hope you will not be here long enough to enjoy them. I simply brought them because they are so lovely.” Callandra sat down on the nearest chair, her skirts crooked, hoops at an angle. She slapped at the skirt absently and it remained where it was.

Hester sat opposite her, listening with attention she did not have to feign. “Thank you anyway,” she said, referring to the flowers.

“There is a case I should be most grateful if you would take. A young man with whom I have a very slight acquaintance. He first introduced himself to me as Robert Oliver, an Anglicism he affected, possibly because he was born in this country and feels utterly at home here. However, his name is actually Ollenheim, and his parents, the Baron and Baroness, are expatriates from Felzburg …”

“Felzburg?” Hester said in surprise.

Callandra’s face suddenly lost all its humor and became filled with profound pity. “Young Robert contracted a very serious illness, a fever which, when the worst of it passed, left him without movement in his lower body and legs. His natural functions are unimpaired, but he is helpless to leave his bed and needs the constant care of a nurse. He has been attended so far by the doctor daily, and his mother, and the household servants, but a professional nurse is required. I took the liberty of suggesting your name for a number of reasons.”

Hester listened in silence, but with growing interest.

“To begin with, and most important,” Callandra enumerated earnestly, “Robert may be severely damaged. It is even conceivable he may not regain the use of his legs. If that is so, it is going to be desperately difficult for him to face. He will need all the help and the wisdom that can be offered him. You, my dear, have had much experience, as an army nurse, of caring for young men fearfully disabled. You will know, as much as anyone can, how best to help him.

“My second reason is that some time ago, during the time we were investigating the murder of poor Prudence Barrymore”—again Callandra’s face darkened with memory of pain, and of love—“I spent a little time with Victoria Stanhope and learned that the child was a victim of incest, and then of a badly performed abortion, as a result of which she is internally damaged for life. She is in almost continuous pain, at times greater than others, and has no prospects of marriage because she will be unable to fulfill its physical obligations.” She held up her hand to prevent Hester from interrupting. “I was with her when she and young Robert met, and they were instantly attracted. Of course, at that time I hastened her away before further tragedy could ensue. Now matters are different. Robert is also damaged. Her courage and innocence may be the thing which will best help him to come to terms with his altered situation.”

“And if he recovers?” Hester said quickly. “But she falls in love with him? And she will never be whole! What then?”

“I don’t know,” Callandra admitted. “But if he does not, and she is the person who could lift him from despair, and by so doing, believe in her own value and purpose, how terrible that we should have allowed our fear to have prevented it.”