Funeral in Blue - Anne Perry [120]
“No. There is no one you can ask, because no one else knows of it, and I cannot speak of it any further. I am sorry.” He lifted his chin a little. “But if you imagine it has to do with Elissa’s death, I believe you are wrong. I alone know what happened, and I have told no one.” A little smile touched his lips. “Nor does anyone else ever come to me with guesses, such as you have.”
Monk waited.
Geissner leaned forward a little. “Kristian’s guilt was for himself. He did not hold anyone else responsible. He understood not only what he had done in sending Hanna, but why. They did not. The difference was one of understanding, and he did not expect it of Elissa or of Max.” He looked at Monk with intensity. “One does not have to imagine people perfect in order to love them, Mr. Monk. Love acknowledges faults, weaknesses, even the need now and again for forgiveness where there is no repentance and no understanding of fault. We learn at different speeds. Elissa had many strengths, many virtues, and she was unflinchingly brave. I think she was the bravest woman I ever knew. I am truly sorry she is dead, but I cannot believe Kristian killed her, unless he has changed beyond all recognition from the man I knew.”
“I think he has,” Monk said slowly. “But to someone even less likely to have killed anyone at all . . . even a soldier of the Hapsburg army.”
“That does not surprise me.”
“What about Max Niemann?”
“Max? He was in love with Elissa. I am not telling you anything that is a confidence. It was no secret then, or now. He never married. I think no one could take her place in his mind. No other woman could be as brave, as beautiful, or as passionate in her ideals. She was so intensely alive that beside her anyone else would seem gray.”
“Did Hanna Jakob have family?”
Geissner looked surprised. “You think one of them might have traveled to London after all these years and exacted some kind of revenge?”
“I’m looking for anything,” Monk admitted.
“Her parents still live here, in Leopoldstadt. On Heinestrasse, I believe. You could ask.”
“Thank you.” Monk rose to his feet. “Thank you for your frankness, Father Geissner.”
Geissner stood also. “If there is anything I can do to help Kristian, please let me know. I shall pray for him, and say a mass for Elissa’s soul, and her abiding peace at last. There will be many who revere her memory and would wish to come. Godspeed to you, Herr Monk.”
Monk went out into the street, deep in troubled and painful thought.
In London, the trial of Kristian Beck continued, each day seeming worse than the last, and more damning. Mills was spending less time with his witnesses for the prosecution, sensing that Pendreigh was desperate to stretch out the evidence.
Sitting in the seats reserved for the general public, not daring to look at Callandra in case she should read her growing sense of despair, Hester tried to tell herself that that was ridiculous. Mills could not know that Monk was in Vienna. He was amply experienced and intelligent enough to have read the signs that the defense had no case, no disproof, not even a serious doubt to raise that any jury would be obliged to consider. One did not need any more than observation of human nature to know that; an eye to see Pendreigh’s face, the concentration, the slightly exaggerated gestures as he strove to keep the jury’s attention, the increasing sharpness in his voice as his questions grew longer and more abstruse.
Mills had already called all the police and medical evidence, and Pendreigh had argued anything that was even remotely debatable, and several things that were not. Mills had called witnesses who said that Kristian had originally told the police he had been with patients at the time that Elissa and Sarah had been killed, then more witnesses to prove that he had lied.
Pendreigh had tried to show that it was an error, the mistake of a man hurrying from one sick person to another, preoccupied with suffering and the need to