William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

weak against the strong, the poor against the wealthy, the ignorant against the educated and the clever. But you will have to be very subtle indeed to gain anything good from them on the witness stand.”
    “I take your warning,” he said grimly. The outlook was not good. She had told him nothing, but given him hope. “What is your own opinion of Sir Herbert? You have been working with him, haven’t you?”
    “Yes.” She frowned. “It surprises me, but I find it hard to believe he used her as her letters suggest. I hope I am not being vain, but I have never caught in his eye even the slightest personal interest in me.” She looked at Rathbone carefully to judge his response. “And I have worked closely with him,” she continued. “Often late into the night, and on difficult cases when there was much room for emotion over shared success or failure. I have found him dedicated to his work, and totally correct in all particulars of his behavior.”
    “Would you be prepared to swear to that?”
    “Of course. But I cannot see that is useful. I daresay any other nurse who has worked with him will do the same.”
    “I cannot call them without being sure they will say as you do,” he pointed out. “I wonder, could you—”
    “I have already,” she interrupted. “I have spoken with a few others who worked with him now and then, most particularly the youngest and best-looking. None of them has ever found him anything but most correct.”
    He felt a slight lift of spirits. If nothing else, it established a pattern.
    “Now that is helpful,” he acknowledged. “Did Nurse Barrymore confide in anyone, do you know? Surely she had some particular friend.”
    “None of whom I am aware.” She shook her head and made a little face. “But I shall look further. She didn’t in the Crimea. She was totally absorbed in her work; there was no time and no emotion left for much more than the sort of silent understanding that requires no effort. England and all its ties were left behind. I suppose there must have been a great deal of her I didn’t know—didn’t even think about.”
    “I need to know,” he said simply. “It would make all the difference if we knew what was going on in her mind.”
    “Of course.” She looked at him gravely for a moment, then straightened her shoulders. “I shall inform you of anything that I think could possibly be of use. Do you require it written down, or will a verbal report be sufficient?”
    With difficulty he kept himself from smiling. “Oh, a verbal report will be far better,” he said soberly. “Then if I wish to pursue any issue further I can do it at the time. Thank you very much for your assistance. I am sure justice will be the better served.”
    “I thought it was Sir Herbert you were trying to serve,” she said dryly, but not without amusement. Then she politely took her farewell and excused herself back to her duties.
    He stood in the small room for a moment or two after she had gone. He felt a sense of elation slowly filling him. He had forgotten how exhilarating she was, how immediate and intelligent, how without pretense. To be with her was at once pleasingly familiar, oddly comfortable, and yet also disturbing. It was something he could not easily dismissfrom his thoughts or choose when he would think about it and when he would not.
    Monk had very mixed feelings about undertaking to work for Oliver Rathbone in Sir Herbert Stanhope’s defense. When he had read the letters he had believed they were proof of a relationship quite different from anything Sir Herbert had admitted. It was both shameful, on a personal and professional level, and—if she were indiscreet, as she had so obviously threatened to be—a motive for murder … a very simple one which would easily be believed by any jury.
    But on the other hand Rathbone’s account of it having been all in Prudence’s feverish overemotional imagination was something which with any other woman would have been only too easily believable. And was Monk guilty of having credited Prudence with a moral strength, a single-minded dedication to duty, that was superhuman, overlooking her very ordinary, mortal weaknesses? Had he once again created in his imagination a woman totally different from, and inferior to, the real one?
    It was a painful thought. And yet wounding as it was, he could not escape it. He had read into Hermione qualities she did not have, and perhaps into Imogen Latterly too. How many other