A Breach of Promise - Anne Perry [165]
“Is she buried yet?” Hester asked. “Perhaps if they haven’t washed her hands … under the nails …”
“Yes,” he answered before she finished. “They buried her.” The words hurt. “As a suicide … in unhallowed ground. Even Wolff was not permitted to be there.”
“God won’t care,” she said with unwavering conviction. “But without her hands to look at … what about the suit she wore? Do you think we could see that? Or did they bury her in it?” There was finality in her voice, as if she expected the answer even before he gave it.
“I don’t know, but I expect they did bury her in it. Why would they be bothered to change it? And Delphine took the packet back. She was careful enough for that.”
“What about the jewelry itself?” she asked, but without hope.
“It wouldn’t prove anything much, except to us,” he replied. “Only that she had belladonna in the same pocket … not that anyone else put it there. Delphine would simply say that Melville had a packet of belladonna powder in her pocket and it burst or came undone. We couldn’t prove otherwise—even if we knew it!”
“Then I don’t think we can prove it,” Hester said slowly.
“Not—not prove it? We’ve got to!” He was outraged. It was monstrous! Unbearable! Delphine Lambert had abandoned two tiny children to the cruelty of strangers—two vulnerable, damaged children who needed her even more than most. Then she had murdered the most brilliant, dazzling, creative architect of the age, all to further her own comfort and ambition, and to find a good marriage for her adopted daughter—whether she wanted it or not. Appearance had been everything, beauty, glitter—as shallow as the skin. The passion and hope and pain of the heart beneath had been thrown away. He could not let himself think it could all just happen and no one could call for any accountability, any justice, any regret at all. All kinds of arguments raged through his head, and even as he thought of each one, he knew it was no use.
“Can we?” Hester asked, her face puckered. She had not known Keelin Melville; she had not even been at court this time, as she had in most of the other cases he had cared about deeply. It was strange, and he realized now he had missed her. But Gabriel Sheldon was tied inextricably to it, because Martha Jackson was part of his household, part of Perdita’s life, and because he too knew what it was like to be disfigured, to know his face, the outer part of him everyone saw and judged him by so easily, filled people with revulsion, even with fear. He was an outcast of the same kind, a victim of a world where sight ruled so much. Hester understood it.
And she understood Keelin Melville, a woman fighting to succeed in a world where men made all the rules and judged only by the yardstick of their own preconceptions, not by reality of courage or skill or achievement. She had seen others sacrificed to it, and eventually crushed.
“We must!” he said fiercely, leaning farther forward. “We must find a way.”
“It’s all gone,” she pointed out, her mouth tight, her eyes sad. “Will they dig her up again, do you suppose?”
He had to be honest. There was not the slightest chance, not on the belief he had now. No one would want to consider it, to raise such a hideous possibility, face the suit for criminal libel if they were wrong.
“No.”
She looked at his empty plate. “Do you want some more soup?”
“No! I want to think of a way to prove what happened to Keelin Melville and find some justice for those two abandoned and unloved children!” He sighed. “And I want some kind of vengeance … some balancing of the scales.”
She sat in silence for a while again, cupping her chin in her hands.
He waited, searching for an answer in his mind, going over the details of the case, all the questions and answers. He was warm, physically comfortable, but exhaustion was creeping over him and he was finding it harder and harder to concentrate.
The door opened and Martha came in carrying a tray with fresh tea on it. Her eyes were bright and calm and there was a glow in her cheeks. She set the tray down on the table, smiling at him. She was almost