William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

her soul.
    “She should really have been a doctor,” Hester said again, smiling at her own memories. “She would have been so gifted!”
    “That is why being so desperate to marry just isn’t like her,” Faith replied. “If it had been to be accepted into medical training, I would have believed it. I think she would have done anything for that. Although it wasimpossible—of course. I know that. No school anywhere takes women.”
    “I wonder if they ever would …” Hester said very slowly. “If an important enough surgeon—say, someone like Sir Herbert—were to recommend it?”
    “Never!” Faith denied it even while the thought lit her eyes.
    “Are you sure?” Hester said urgently, leaning forward. “Are you sure Prudence might not have believed they would?”
    “You mean that was what she was trying to force Sir Herbert to do?” Faith’s eyes widened in dawning belief. “Nothing at all to do with marriage, but to help her receive medical training—not as a nurse but as a doctor? Yes—yes—that is possible. That would be Prudence. She would do that.” Her face was twisted with emotion. “But how? Sir Herbert would laugh at her and tell her not to be so absurd.”
    “I don’t know how,” Hester confessed. “But that is something she would do—isn’t it?”
    “Yes—yes she would.”
    Hester bent to the letters again, reading them in a new light—understanding why the operations were so detailed, every procedure, every patient’s reaction noted so precisely.
    She read several more letters describing operations written out in technical detail. Faith sat silently, waiting.
    Then quite suddenly Hester froze. She had read three operations for which the procedure was exactly the same. There was no diagnosis mentioned, no disease, no symptoms of pain or dysfunction at all. She went back and reread them very carefully. All three patients were women.
    Then she knew what had caught her attention: they were three abortions—not because the mother’s life was endangered, simply because for whatever personal reason she did not wish to bear the child. In each case Prudence had used exactly the same wording and recording of it—like a ritual.
    Hester raced through the rest of the letters, coming closer to the present. She found seven more operations detailed inexactly the same way, word for word, and each time the patient’s initials were given but not her name, and no physical description. That also was different from all other cases she had written up: in others she had described the patient in some detail, often with personal opinion added—such as: “an attractive woman” or “an overbearing man.”
    There was one obvious conclusion: Prudence knew of these operations, but she had not attended them herself. She had been told only sufficient to nurse them for the first few hours afterwards. She was keeping her notes for some other reason.
    Blackmail! It was a cold, sick thought—but it was inescapable. This was her hold over Sir Herbert. This was why Sir Herbert had murdered her. She had tried to use her power, had tried once too hard, and he had stretched out his strong beautiful hands and put them around her neck—and tightened his hold until there was no breath in her!
    Hester sat still in the small room with the light fading outside. She was suddenly completely cold, as if she had swallowed ice. No wonder he had looked dumbfounded when he had been accused of having an affair with Prudence. How ridiculously, absurdly far from the truth.
    She had wanted him to help her study medicine, and had used her knowledge of his illegal operations to try to force him—and paid for it with her life.
    She looked up at Faith.
    Faith was watching her, her eyes intent on Hester’s face.
    “You know,” she said simply. “What is it?”
    Carefully and in detail Hester explained what she knew.
    Faith sat ashen-faced, her eyes dark with horror.
    “What are you going to do?” she said when Hester finished.
    “Go to Oliver Rathbone and tell him,” Hester answered.
    “But he is defending Sir Herbert!” Faith was aghast. “He is on Sir Herbert’s side. Why don’t you go to Mr. Lovat-Smith?”
    “With what?” Hester demanded. “This is not proof. We understand this only because we knew Prudence. Anyway,Lovat-Smith’s case is closed. This isn’t a new witness, or new evidence—it is only a new understanding of what the court has already heard. No, I’ll go to Oliver. He may know what to