Weighed in the balance - Anne Perry [90]
“Oh … yes, by all means.” Rathbone was looking not at Simms but at Monk. He searched Monk’s eyes and saw defeat in them. “Thank you,” he added, his voice carrying his disappointment, too heavy for his self-mastery to conceal it.
Inside, he closed the door and walked stiffly around his desk to the far side. He pulled his chair back and sat down.
Monk sat in the nearer one.
Rathbone did not cross his legs as usual, nor did he lean back. His face was calm and his eyes direct, but there was fear in them as he regarded Monk.
Monk saw no purpose in telling the story in chronological order. It would only spin out the tension.
“I think it very probable Friedrich was murdered,” he said flatly. “We have every cause to raise the issue, and we may even be able to prove it, with good luck and considerable skill. But there is no possibility that Gisela is guilty.”
Rathbone stared back without replying.
“There really is none,” Monk repeated. He hated having to say this. It was the same feeling of helplessness again, carrying all the old sense of watching while someone you ought to save was suffering, losing. He owed Rathbone nothing, and it was entirely his own fault that he had taken such an absurd case, but all that touched his reason, not his emotions.
He took a deep breath. “Friedrich was her life. She did not have a lover, and neither did he. Friend and enemy alike knew that they adored each other. They did nothing apart. Every evidence I found indicates they were still as deeply in love as in the beginning.”
“But duty?” Rathbone urged. “Was there a plot to invite him back to Felzburg to lead the fight for independence, or not?”
“Almost certainly—”
“Then …”
“Then nothing!” Monk said tartly. “He didn’t bow to duty twelve years ago, and nothing whatever suggests there has been the slightest change.”
Rathbone clenched his fist on the desk, his knuckles shining. “Twelve years ago his country was not facing forced unification with the rest of the German states. Surely he had that much honor in him—that much patriotism and sense of who he was. Damn it, Monk, he was born to be king!”
Monk heard the rising desperation in Rathbone’s voice. He could see it in his eyes, in the spots of color in his cheeks. He had nothing whatever with which to help. Everything he knew made it worse.
“He was a man who gave up everything for the woman he loved,” he said clearly and levelly. “And there is nothing … absolutely nothing … to indicate that he ever, for a moment, regretted that decision. If his people wanted him back, then they would have to take his wife with him. The decision was theirs, and apparently he had always believed they would make it in her favor.”
Rathbone stared at him.
The silence in the room was so heavy the clock seemed to bang out the seconds. The muffled clatter of the traffic beyond the windows came from another world.
“What?” Rathbone said at last. “What is it, Monk? What is it that you are not telling me?”
“That there seems to me every possibility that Friedrich was not the intended victim, but Gisela herself,” he replied. He was about to go on, explaining why, but he saw the understanding of it already there in Rathbone’s face.
“Who?” Rathbone said huskily.
“Perhaps Zorah herself. She is an ardent independent.”
Rathbone paled.
“Or anyone else who was of the independent party,” Monk went on. “The worst possibility—”
“Worst!” Rathbone’s voice was high and sharp with sarcasm. “Worse than my own client?”
“Yes.” Monk could not withhold the truth.
Rathbone glared at him with disbelief.
Monk struck the blow. “Count Lansdorff. The Queen’s brother, acting on her behalf.”
Rathbone tried to speak, but his voice failed him. His face was paper white.
“I’m sorry,” Monk said inadequately. “But that is the truth. You can’t fight without knowing it. Opposing Counsel will find it out, if he’s any good at all. She’ll tell him, if nothing