William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

duty or in the nurses’ dormitory catching some well-needed sleep, and he was honest enough to admit he did not care. She was the only person to whom he could confide the confusion and power of his feelings.
    As it chanced, she had just fallen asleep after a long day’s duty beginning before seven, but he knew where the nurses’ dormitory was and he strode in with an air of such authority that no one stopped or questioned him until he was at the entrance doorway. Then a large nurse with ginger hair and arms like a navvy stood square in the middle, staring at him grimly.
    “I need to see Miss Latterly in a matter of urgency,” hesaid, glaring back at her. “Someone’s life may depend on the matter.” That was a lie, and he uttered it without a flicker.
    “Oh yeah? Whose? Yours?”
    He wondered what her regard for Sir Herbert Stanhope had been.
    “None of your affair,” he said tartly. “I’ve just come from the Old Bailey, and I have business here. Now out of my way, and fetch Miss Latterly for me.”
    “I don’t care if yer’ve come from ’Ell on a broomstick, yer not comin’ in ’ere.” She folded her massive arms. “I’ll go an’ tell ’er as yer ’ere if yer tell me who yer are. She can come and see yer if she feels like it.”
    “Monk.”
    “Never!” she said in disbelief, looking him up and down.
    “That’s my name, not my calling, you fool!” he snapped. “Now tell Hester I’m here.”
    She snorted loudly, but she obeyed, and about three minutes later Hester herself came out of the dormitory looking tired, very hastily dressed, and her hair over her shoulder in a long brown braid. He had never seen it down before, and it startled him. She looked quite different, younger and more vulnerable. He had a twinge of guilt for having woken her on what was essentially a selfish errand. In all probability it would make no difference at all to the fate of Sir Herbert Stanhope whether he spoke to her this evening or not.
    “What happened?” she said immediately, still too full of exhaustion and sleep to have thought of all the possibilities fear could suggest.
    “Nothing in particular,” he said, taking her arm to lead her away from the dormitory door. “I don’t even know if it is going well or badly. I shouldn’t have come, but there was no one else I really wished to speak to. Lovat-Smith has finished his case, and I wouldn’t care to be in Stanhope’s shoes. But then Geoffrey Taunton comes out of it badly too. He has a vile temper, and a record of violence. He was inthe hospital at the time—but it’s Stanhope in the dock, and nothing so far is strong enough to change their places.”
    They were in front of one of the few windows in the corridor and the late afternoon sun shone in a haze of dusty light over them and in a pool on the floor around their feet.
    “Has Oliver any evidence to bring, do you know?” She was too tired to pretend formality where Rathbone was concerned.
    “No I don’t. I’m afraid I was short with him. His defense so far is to make Prudence look a fool.” There was pain and anger still tight inside him.
    “If she thought Sir Herbert Stanhope would marry her, she was a fool,” Hester said, but with such sadness in her voice he could not be angry with her for it.
    “He also suggested that she exaggerated her own medical abilities,” he went on. “And her stories of having performed surgery in the field were fairy tales.”
    She turned and stared at him, confusion turning to anger.
    “That is not so! She had as good a knowledge of amputation as most of the surgeons, and she had the courage and the speed. I’ll testify. I’ll swear to that, and they won’t shake me, because I know it for myself.”
    “You can’t,” he answered, the flat feeling of defeat betrayed in his tone, even his stance.
    “I damned well can!” she retorted furiously. “And let go of my arm! I can stand up perfectly well by myself! I’m tired, not ill.”
    He kept hold of her, out of perversity.
    “You can’t testify, because Lovat-Smith’s case is concluded,” he said through clenched teeth. “And Rathbone certainly won’t call you. That she was accurate and realistic is not what he wants to hear. It will hang Sir Herbert.”
    “Maybe he should be hanged,” she said sharply, then immediately regretted it. “I don’t mean that. I mean maybe he did kill her. First I thought he did, then I didn’t, now I don’t know what I think anymore.”
    “Rathbone