The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [404]
“Why did you kill him?” he repeated desperately.
“Whatever you say, you cannot make it worse than it is already.”
“I killed him because he was having an affair with Louisa,” she repeated flatly. “At least I thought he was.”
And he could get nothing further from her. She refused to add anything, or take anything from what she had said.
Reluctantly, temporarily defeated, he took his leave. She remained sitting on the cot, immobile, ashen-faced.
Outside in the street the rain was a steady downpour, the gutter filling, people hurrying by with collars up. He passed a newsboy shouting the latest headlines. It was something to do with a financial scandal and the boy caressed the words with relish, seeing the faces of passersby as they turned. “Scandal, scandal in the City! Financier absconds with fortune. Secret love nest! Scandal in the City!”
Rathbone quickened his pace to get away from it. They had temporarily forgotten Alexandra and the murder of General Carlyon, but as soon as the trial began it would be all over every front page and every newsboy would be crying out each day’s revelations and turning them over with delight, poring over the details, imagining, condemning.
And they would condemn. He had no delusion that there would be any pity for her. Society would protect itself from threat and disruption. They would close ranks, and even the few who might feel some twinge of pity for her would not dare to admit it. Any woman who was in the same situation, or imagined herself so, would have even less compassion. If she herself had to endure it, why should Alexandra be able to escape? And no man whose eyes or thoughts had ever wandered, or who considered they might in the future, would countenance the notion that a wife could take such terrible revenge for a brief and relatively harmless indulgence of his very natural appetites. Carlyon’s offense of flirtation, not even proved to be adultery, would be utterly lost in her immeasurably deeper offense of murder.
Was there anything at all Rathbone could do to help her? She had robbed him of every possible weapon he might have used. The only thing still left to him was time. But time to do what?
He passed an acquaintance, but was too absorbed in thought to recognize him until he was twenty yards farther along the pavement. By then it was too late to retrieve his steps and apologize for having ignored his greeting.
The rain was easing into merely a spring squall. Bright shafts of sunlight shone fitfully on the wet pavement.
If he went into court with all he had at present he would lose. There would be no doubt of it. He could imagine it vividly, the feeling of helplessness as the prosecution demolished his case effortlessly, the derision of the spectators, the quiet and detached concern of the judge that there should be some semblance of a defense, the crowds in the gallery, eager for details and ultimately for the drama of conviction, the black cap and the sentence of death. Worse than those, he could picture the jury, earnest men, overawed by the situation, disturbed by the story and the inevitability of its end, and Alexandra herself, with the same white hopelessness he had seen in her face in the cell.
And afterwards his colleagues would ask him why on earth he had given such a poor account of himself. What ailed him to have taken so foregone a case? Had he lost his skills? His reputation would suffer. Even his junior would laugh and ask questions behind his back.
He hailed a cab and rode the rest of the way to Vere Street in a dark mood, almost resolved to decline the