Funeral in Blue - Anne Perry [95]
He blinked rapidly. “Tell Monk to find someone who will describe the fighting at the barricades, the camaraderie of danger, how they lived, their passions and loyalties. Make the court here see what she was truly like; it will be the best epitaph for her. She deserves that.” His voice cracked and he looked away. “Not the woman they will try to present who owed money to sordid little men who never knew anything of her as she really was, men who never had a cause to fight for but their own greed.”
He raised his eyes to look at her fully, intensely. “Bring back something that will make them understand how a man could lose his senses over her so that he never forgot her, even thirteen years later, when she was married to his friend, and how he could still feel for her so overwhelmingly that he lost all judgment and morality, so that her rejection of him made him feel as if his whole life were slipping out of his grasp. She was unique, irreplaceable by anyone else.” He stopped abruptly, recalling himself to the present only with the severest effort of will. His hands were trembling. He took a deep breath and steadied his voice. “I wish I could go myself, see the places, speak to the people, but I must stay here and prepare the case. I have been advised that it will be very soon. The Crown believe that they have all the evidence they require to proceed.”
He lifted one shoulder very slightly, barely a shrug. “I . . . I hardly know where to begin. Kristian is a fine man, but opinionated. He has made many enemies among those in power in the hospital authorities, and very few friends. Those he has served are the poor and the sick, and in many cases, I’m afraid, those already dead. No doubt they would swear he had the patience of a saint and limitless compassion, but they are beyond our reach.”
He stared at her steadily. “Impress upon Monk the utmost importance of his errand, Lady Callandra. And please permit me to assist in the cost of it.” He returned to the desk and opened one of the drawers. He produced several gold coins and a treasury note. He held them all out. “I shall transfer to your bank a hundred pounds, but in the meantime, take this for his immediate needs, with my deepest gratitude.”
She did not require it—her own funds were ample, and she would have given everything she possessed to defend Kristian—but she sensed his need to give as well, and she accepted it.
He returned to the desk and sat down, pulling pen and paper towards him to begin to write in a large, generous scrawl.
She waited, with the first lift of hope she had felt in days. Perhaps in Vienna, Monk would find the truth and prove Kristian’s innocence. Afterwards, when Kristian was free, she would bear the confusion of discovering Elissa Beck was a heroine, brave and beautiful, funny and kind.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the letter when it was finished. “Thank you very much.”
Monk went to see Kristian in prison to learn from him any information at all which might help, no matter how painful or how irrelevant it might seem.
He was not surprised to see him looking haggard, almost shrunken, as if the shock of Elissa’s murder and his own arrest had drained the heart out of him, and even something of the physical substance. Monk had seen it before in other men.
“I’m going to Vienna,” he said quickly, knowing they had only minutes. “I need all the help you can give me.”
Kristian shook his head. “I can’t believe Max would have killed her,” he said quietly. “Quarreled, perhaps, lost his temper with her for what she was doing, that she was . . . wasting herself.” The pain in his voice was like a razor edge. “And