Weighed in the Balance Read online

  Monk was furious, but forced a smile as natural and diplomatic as he could. He had hoped that he might be present when they decided to discuss the matter and had invented a pretext of being an objective and fresh mind to aid them in covering all eventualities. However, it seemed natural that they regarded Monk as an interesting guest but an outsider, and Monk didn’t dare press the point. He was thankful that Stephan would be there and could convey back to him anything of use, but he would have welcomed the opportunity to question them himself.

  The next day, Monk did, however, find an opportunity to visit Gallagher, the doctor who had attended Friedrich after his fall and until his death. Everyone else went shooting for the day, but Stephan affected a slight indisposition and requested that Monk accompany him to the doctor. It was an injury to his hand, and he asked Monk to drive him in the gig.

  “What was said last night?” Monk asked as soon as they were out of the drive and into the lane which led to the doctor’s house. Despite his walks with Stephan in the gardens of the Hall, he had felt oppressed and was glad to be out in the clear autumn air.

  “I’m going to disappoint you,” Stephan said regretfully. “It turned out that I’d observed or remembered more than any of the others, and a few of them know more this morning than they did yesterday, thanks to me.”

  Monk frowned. “Well, you could hardly not have pooled your knowledge with them, and at least we know what they’re likely to say, should it come to trial.”

  “But you feel you have wasted an opportunity.”

  Monk nodded, too angry to speak. He would not be reporting this to Rathbone.

  Dr. Gallagher turned out to be a mild-mannered man of about fifty or so who was not perturbed about being summoned away from his books to attend two gentlemen from the Hall who had called for his help.

  “Indeed,” he said courteously. “What a shame, Baron von Emden. Let me have a look at it. Right wrist, is it?”

  “Sorry for our deception, Doctor.” Stephan smiled and rested his hands on his hips, demonstrating two perfectly supple wrists. “Rather a delicate matter. Didn’t want to advertise it. Hope you understand. Mr. Monk”—he gestured towards Monk, beside him—“is trying to help us deal with this abysmal business of the Countess Rostova’s accusations.”

  Gallagher looked blank.

  “Oh, you haven’t heard?” Stephan pulled a face expressing chagrin. “I am afraid she has behaved quite … quite extraordinarily. The whole affair will have to come to trial.”

  “What affair?”

  “Prince Friedrich’s death,” Monk said, stepping in. “I regret to say she has started spreading the charge around society that it was not an accident but deliberate poison.”

  “What?” Gallagher was aghast. He seemed almost unable to believe he had heard correctly. “What do you mean? Not … not that … that I …”

  “No, of course not!” Monk said immediately. “No one even thought of such a thing. It is the widow, Princess Gisela, whom she is accusing.”

  “Oh, my God! How perfectly fearful.” Gallagher stepped back and all but collapsed into the chair behind him. “How can I help?”

  Stephan was about to speak, but Monk cut across him.

  “You will no doubt be called to give evidence, unless we can gather sufficient proof to force her to withdraw the charge and offer the fullest apology. The greatest assistance you could give would be to answer all our questions with the utmost candor, so we know precisely where we stand, and if she has clever counsel, what is the worst we must fear.”

  “Of course. Of course. Anything I can do.” Gallagher pressed his hand to his brow. “Poor woman! To lose the husband she loved so profoundly and then to face such a diabolical slander, and from one she must have supposed her friend. Ask me anything you wish.”

  Monk sat down opposite the doctor in a well-worn brown chair. “You understand I am speaking as a sort of devil’s advocate? I shall probe for weaknesses, so if I find them, I shall know how to defend.”

  “Of course. Proceed!” Gallagher said almost eagerly.

  Monk felt a tinge of conscience, but only a slight one. The truth was what mattered.

  “You were the only physician to treat Prince Friedrich?”

  “Yes, from the accident until he died.” His face was pale at the memory. “I … I honestly thought the poor man was recovering. He seemed to be considerably better. Of course, he had a great deal of pain, but one does from broken bones. But he was far less feverish, and he had begun to take a little nourishment.”

  “The last time you saw him alive?” Monk asked. “Before the relapse?”

  “He was sitting up in bed.” Gallagher looked very strained. “He seemed pleased to see me. I can picture it exactly. It was spring, as you know, late spring. It was a beautiful day, sunlight streaming in through the windows, a vase of lily of the valley on the bureau in the sitting room. The perfume of them filled the room. They were a particular favorite of the Princess’s. I hear she cannot abide them since that day. Poor creature. She idolized him. She never left his side from the moment he was carried in from his accident. Distraught, she was, absolutely distraught. Beside herself with distress for him.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out silently. “Quite different from when he died. Then it was as if the world had ended for her. She simply sat there, white-faced, neither moving nor speaking. She did not even seem to see us.”

  “What did he die of?” Monk asked a little more gently. He was aware of conflicting emotions tearing inside him. “Medically speaking.”

  Gallagher’s eyes widened. “I did not do a postmortem examination, sir. He was a royal prince! He died as the result of his injuries in the fall. He had broken several bones. They had seemed to be healing, but one cannot see inside the living body to know what other damage there may be, what organs may have been crushed or pierced. He bled to death internally. That is what every symptom led me to believe. I had not expected it, because he seemed to be recovering, but that may have been the courage of his spirit, when in truth he was injured so seriously that the slightest movement may have ruptured some vessel and caused a fatal hemorrhage.”

  “The symptoms …” Monk prompted, this time quite softly. Whatever the cause of it, or whoever, he could not help feeling pity for the man whose death he was trying to examine so clinically. All he had heard of him suggested he was a man of courage and character, willing to follow his heart and pay the cost without complaint, a man capable of immense love and sacrifice, perhaps, in the last, a man torn by duty—and murdered for it.

  “Coldness,” Gallagher replied. “Clamminess of the skin.” He swallowed; his hands tightened on his lap. “Pains in the abdomen, nausea. I believe that was the site of the bleeding. That was followed by disorientation, a sense of giddiness, numbness in the extremities, sinking into a coma, and finally death. Very precisely, heart failure. In short, sir, the symptoms of internal bleeding.”

  “Are there any poisons which produce the same symptoms?” Monk asked, frowning, disliking having to say it.

  Gallagher stared at him.

  Monk thought of the yew trees at the end of the hornbeam hedge, the stone urn pale against their dark mass. Everyone knew that the needlelike yew leaves were bitterly poisonous. Everyone in the house had access to them; one simply had to take a walk in the garden, the most natural thing in the world to do.

  “Are there?” he repeated.

  Stephan shifted his weight.

  “Yes, of course,” Gallagher said reluctantly. “There are thousands of poisons. But why in heaven’s name should such a woman poison her husband? It makes no conceivable sense!”

  “Would the leaves of the yew trees produce such symptoms?” Monk pressed.

  Gallagher thought for so long Monk was about to ask him again.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “They would.” He was white-faced.

  “Exactly those symptoms?” Monk could not let it go.

  “Well …” Gallagher hesitated,
his face filled with misery. “Yes … I am not an expert in such matters, but one does occasionally find village children put the leaves in their mouths. And women have been known to—” He stopped for a moment, then continued unhappily. “To use it in an effort to procure an abortion. A young woman died in the next village about eight years ago.”

  Stephan shifted his weight again. “But Gisela never left Friedrich’s rooms,” he said quietly. “Even if he was poisoned, she is about the only one in the house who could not possibly have done it. And believe me, if you knew Gisela you would not even entertain the idea of her having someone else provide the poison for her. She would never put herself so fatally in someone else’s power.”

  “This is monstrous,” Gallagher said miserably. “I hope you will do everything in your ability to fight such a dreadful shadow and at least clear that poor woman’s name.”

  “We will do everything we can to find the truth—and prove it,” Monk promised ambiguously.

  Gallagher did not doubt him for a moment. He rose to his feet and clasped Monk’s hand. “Thank you, sir. I am most relieved. And if there is anything further I can do to assist you, you have but to say. And you too, of course, Baron von Emden. Good day to you, gentlemen, good day.”

  “That hardly helps us at all,” Stephan said as they climbed into the gig and Monk took the reins. “Perhaps it was yew poison … but it wasn’t Gisela!”

  “So it would seem,” Monk agreed. “I am afraid we still have rather a long way to go.”

  3

  HESTER LATTERLY, about whom Monk and Rathbone had both thought so recently, was unaware of their involvement in the case of Princess Gisela and the Countess Rostova, although she had heard murmurs of the affair in general.

  Since her return from nursing in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, she had held several posts in that profession, mostly private. She had just completed the care of an elderly lady recuperating from a nasty fall, and was presently not engaged. She was delighted to receive a call from her friend and sometimes patroness Lady Callandra Daviot. Callandra was well into her fifties. Her face was full of wit and character, but even her most ardent admirer would not have said she was beautiful. There was too much strength in her, and far too much eccentricity. She had a very agreeable lady’s maid who had years ago given up trying to do anything elegant with Callandra’s hair. If it stayed more or less within its pins, that was victory enough.

  On this day she was even untidier than usual, but she swept in with an armful of flowers and an air of excited purpose.

  “For you, my dear,” she announced, placing the flowers on the side table in Hester’s small sitting room. There was no purpose in Hester’s renting more spacious accommodation, even could she have afforded it; she was hardly ever there. “Although I hope you will not be here long enough to enjoy them. I simply brought them because they are so lovely.” Callandra sat down on the nearest chair, her skirts crooked, hoops at an angle. She slapped at the skirt absently and it remained where it was.

  Hester sat opposite her, listening with attention she did not have to feign. “Thank you anyway,” she said, referring to the flowers.

  “There is a case I should be most grateful if you would take. A young man with whom I have a very slight acquaintance. He first introduced himself to me as Robert Oliver, an Anglicism he affected, possibly because he was born in this country and feels utterly at home here. However, his name is actually Ollenheim, and his parents, the Baron and Baroness, are expatriates from Felzburg …”

  “Felzburg?” Hester said in surprise.

  Callandra’s face suddenly lost all its humor and became filled with profound pity. “Young Robert contracted a very serious illness, a fever which, when the worst of it passed, left him without movement in his lower body and legs. His natural functions are unimpaired, but he is helpless to leave his bed and needs the constant care of a nurse. He has been attended so far by the doctor daily, and his mother, and the household servants, but a professional nurse is required. I took the liberty of suggesting your name for a number of reasons.”

  Hester listened in silence, but with growing interest.

  “To begin with, and most important,” Callandra enumerated earnestly, “Robert may be severely damaged. It is even conceivable he may not regain the use of his legs. If that is so, it is going to be desperately difficult for him to face. He will need all the help and the wisdom that can be offered him. You, my dear, have had much experience, as an army nurse, of caring for young men fearfully disabled. You will know, as much as anyone can, how best to help him.

  “My second reason is that some time ago, during the time we were investigating the murder of poor Prudence Barrymore”—again Callandra’s face darkened with memory of pain, and of love—“I spent a little time with Victoria Stanhope and learned that the child was a victim of incest, and then of a badly performed abortion, as a result of which she is internally damaged for life. She is in almost continuous pain, at times greater than others, and has no prospects of marriage because she will be unable to fulfill its physical obligations.” She held up her hand to prevent Hester from interrupting. “I was with her when she and young Robert met, and they were instantly attracted. Of course, at that time I hastened her away before further tragedy could ensue. Now matters are different. Robert is also damaged. Her courage and innocence may be the thing which will best help him to come to terms with his altered situation.”

  “And if he recovers?” Hester said quickly. “But she falls in love with him? And she will never be whole! What then?”

  “I don’t know,” Callandra admitted. “But if he does not, and she is the person who could lift him from despair, and by so doing, believe in her own value and purpose, how terrible that we should have allowed our fear to have prevented it.”

  Hester hesitated, torn between the two dangers.

  Callandra had had far longer to weigh the issues. There was no indecision in her eyes.

  “I truly believe there is more regret over what we fail to do than over decisions made which turned out badly,” she said with conviction. “Are you willing to try, at least?”

  Hester smiled. “And your third reason?”

  “You need a position!” Callandra said simply.

  It was true. Since her father’s ruin and death Hester had no means of her own, and she refused to be dependent upon her brother; therefore, she must earn her own living as her skills allowed. Not that it was an issue she resented. It gave her both independence and interest, both of which she prized highly. The financial urgency of it was less pleasant, but common to most people.

  “I should be happy to do what I can,” she said sincerely. “If you feel that Baron and Baroness Ollenheim would find me acceptable.”

  “I have already seen to that,” Callandra replied decisively. “The sooner you can take up the position, the better.”

  Hester rose to her feet.

  “Oh,” Callandra added with bright eyes. “By the way, Oliver Rathbone has taken up the case of the Countess Rostova.”

  “What?” Hester stopped abruptly and stood motionless. “I beg your pardon. What did you say?”

  Callandra repeated herself.

  Hester swung around to stare at her.

  “Then I can only believe there must be more to the case than there seems. And pray so!”

  “And William is investigating it for him,” Callandra added. “Which, of course, is how I know about it.” Callandra was also William Monk’s patroness, tiding him through his leaner times.

  Hester merely said “I see.” But she did not see at all. “Then, if you are sure the Baron and Baroness Ollenheim are expecting me, I had better pack a case and make myself available.”

  “I shall be happy to take you,” Callandra said generously. “The house is on Hill Street, near Berkeley Square.”

  “Thank you.”

  Callandra had prepared the way well, and Baron and Baroness Ollenheim welcomed Hester’s professional services. The bur
den of caring for their son had fallen heavily upon them, as their emotions were so deeply involved. Hester found the Baroness Dagmar a charming woman who in times less stressful, when not exhausted and strained with grief and anxiety, would have been beautiful. Now she was pale with fatigue, sleepless nights had left deep shadows under her eyes, and she had no time or interest to dress more than simply.

  Baron Bernd was also disturbed by feelings which harrowed him profoundly, but he made a greater effort to conceal them, as was expected of a man and an aristocrat. Nevertheless, he was more than courteous to Hester and permitted her to see his relief at her presence.

  Robert Ollenheim himself was a young man of perhaps twenty, with a fair face and thick, light brown hair which fell forward over the left side of his brow. In normal health he would have been most handsome; lying wasted by the recent fever, weak and still aching, he nevertheless managed a certain grace in greeting Hester when she made herself known to him and began her duties. He must have been aware of the seriousness of his situation, and the possibility of permanent disability had to have crossed his mind, but no mention was made of it.

  She found caring for him easy in its physical work. It was simply a matter of nursing, keeping him as comfortable as possible, trying to reduce his distress and discomfort, seeing that he drank broth and beef tea frequently and gradually began to take greater nourishment. The doctor called very regularly, and she was left no important decisions to make. The difficulty lay in the concern for him and the fear that lay at the back of all their minds as to how complete his recovery would be. No one spoke of paralysis, but as each day went by, and still he felt no sensation and gained no power of movement below the waist, the fear grew.

  She did not forget the extraordinary case with which Monk and Rathbone were involved, and once or twice she overheard Bernd and Dagmar discussing it when they were not aware she was close by.