Weighed in the balance - Anne Perry [146]
“I would have too, Sir Oliver,” Rolf said grimly. “But only as a last resort. I did not want a broken man. As it happened, I did not have the opportunity, and after his accident it would have been brutal. It might have killed him. Whether I would have told him later, had he recovered, I cannot tell you. I do not know.”
“Thank you, Count Lansdorff. I have no further questions for you. Please remain, in case Mr. Harvester has.”
Harvester rose, swayed a little, as if caught in a great wind, and cleared his throat.
“I … I assume, Count Lansdorff, that this monstrous story is one you could, and would, prove in this court if required to?” He attempted to sound brave, even defiant, but his ability failed him. He was obviously as appalled as anyone in the room. He was a man quietly devoted to his own wife and daughters, and his emotions had been too profoundly outraged for him to conceal it.
“Of course,” Rolf said dryly.
“You may be required to do so. Naturally, I shall take instruction.” There was nothing he could say to rebut the charge, and to have spoken now of its irrelevance to Zorah’s slander would have been ridiculous. No one cared. No one was even listening. He sat down again a changed man.
The judge looked at Rathbone, his face pinched with sadness.
“Sir Oliver, I feel, regrettably, that you had better provide whatever substantiation is open to you. We do not impugn Count Lansdorff’s testimony, but so far it is still only his word. I think it were better the issue were closed now, if that is a chance available to us.”
Rathbone nodded. “I call Baron Bernd Ollenheim to the stand.”
“Baron Bernd Ollenheim!” the usher repeated.
Very slowly, Bernd rose to his feet and made his way forward from the gallery, across the floor and up the steps of the witness stand till he turned at the top and faced the court. He was white, his eyes sick with distress. He looked over Rathbone’s head towards Gisela as if she were something that had crept out of a cesspool.
“Would you like a glass of water, sir?” the judge asked him gently. “I can send an usher for one with no difficulty.”
Bernd recalled himself. “No … no, thank you, my lord. I shall be quite in command of myself.”
“If you wish for assistance, you may request it,” the judge assured him.
Rathbone felt like a man stripping another naked. He did it only because the question must be answered now, and finally.
“Baron Ollenheim, I shall not keep you long.” He took a deep breath. “I regret the necessity for calling you at all. I simply wish to ask you either to substantiate or to deny the testimony of Count Lansdorff regarding your son. Is he indeed also the son of Gisela Berentz?”
Bernd had difficulty in speaking. His throat seemed to have closed. He struggled to fill his lungs with air, and then to master the anguish which overwhelmed him.
The entire courtroom was silent in shared distress.
“Yes …” he said at last “Yes, he is. But my wife … my wife has always loved him … not only for my sake, but for his own. No …” He gasped again, his face twisted with the pain of memory—and fear for her now. “No woman could love a child more.”
“We do not doubt it, sir,” Rathbone said quietly. “Nor the agony this must have cost you, both then and now. Is Count Lansdorff also correct that Gisela Berentz wished to destroy the child”—he used the word intentionally, but having seen Robert Ollenheim through Hester’s eyes, it came easily—“but that you forced her to carry it to term and to give birth?”
The silence deafened the room.
“Yes …” Bernd whispered.
“I ask your pardon for the intrusion into what should have been able to remain a purely personal grief,” Rathbone apologized. “And I assure you of our respect for you and your family. I have nothing further I need to ask you. Unless Mr. Harvester has, that is all.”
Harvester rose. He looked wretched.
“No, thank you. I do not believe that Baron Ollenheim has anything relevant to the issue at hand which he could tell us.”
It was a brave attempt to remind