William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

do—please God!”
    “He’ll get away with it,” Faith said desperately. “Do you—do you really think we are right?”
    “Yes, I do. But I’m going to Oliver tonight. I suppose we could be mistaken—but … no—we are not. We are right.” She was on her feet, scrambling to pick up her wrap, chosen during the warmth of the day and too thin for the chiller evening air.
    “You can’t go alone,” Faith protested. “Where does he live?”
    “Yes I can. This is no occasion for propriety. I must find a hansom. There is no time to lose. Thank you so much for letting me have these. I’ll return them, I promise.” And without waiting any longer she stuffed the letters in her rather large bag, hugged Faith Barker, and bolted out of the sitting room down the stairs and out into the cool, bustling street.
    “I suppose so,” Rathbone said dubiously, holding the sheaf of letters in his hand. “But medical school? A woman! Can she really have imagined that was possible?”
    “Why not?” Hester said furiously. “She had all the skill and the brains, and a great deal more experience than most students when they start. In fact, than most when they finish!”
    “But then …” he began, then met her eyes and stopped. Possibly he thought better of his argument, or more likely he saw the expression on her face and decided discretion was the better part of valor.
    “Yes?” she demanded. “But what?”
    “But did she have the intellectual stamina and the physical stomach to carry it through,” he finished, looking at her warily.
    “Oh I doubt that!” Her voice was scalding with sarcasm. “She was only a mere woman, after all. She managed tostudy on her own in the British Museum library, get out to the Crimea and survive there, on the battlefield and in the hospital. She remained and worked amid the carnage and mutilation, epidemic disease, filth, vermin, exhaustion, hunger, freezing cold, and obstructive army authority. I doubt she could manage a medical course at a university!”
    “All right,” he conceded. “It was a foolish thing to have said. I beg your pardon. But you are looking at it from her point of view. I am trying to see it, however mistaken they are, from that of the authorities who would—or would not—have allowed her in. And honestly, however unjust, I believe there is no chance whatsoever that they would.”
    “They might have,” she said passionately, “if Sir Herbert had argued for her.”
    “We’ll never know.” He pursed his lips. “But it does shed a different light on it. It explains how he had no idea why she appeared to be in love with him.” He frowned. “It also means he was less than honest with me. He must have known what she referred to.”
    “Less than honest!” she exploded, waving her hands in the air.
    “Well, he should have told me he gave her some hope, however false, of being admitted to study medicine,” he replied reasonably. “But perhaps he thought the jury would be less likely to believe that.” He looked confused. “Which would make less of a motive for him. It is curious. I don’t understand it.”
    “Dear God! I do!” She almost choked over the words. She wanted to shake him till his teeth rattled. “I read the rest of the letters myself—carefully. I know what they mean. I know what hold she had over him! He was performing abortions, and she had detailed notes of them—names of the patients and days, treatments—everything! He killed her, Oliver. He’s guilty!”
    He held out his hand, his face pale.
    She pulled the letters out of her bag and gave them to him.
    “It’s not proof,” she conceded. “If it had been, I’d havegiven them to Lovat-Smith. But once you know what it means, you understand it—and what must have happened. Faith Barker knows it’s true. The chance to study and qualify properly is the only thing Prudence would have cared about enough to use her knowledge like that.”
    Without answering he read silently all the letters she had given him. It was nearly ten minutes before he looked up.
    “You’re right,” he agreed. “It isn’t proof.”
    “But he did it! He murdered her.”
    “Yes—I agree.”
    “What are you going to do?” she demanded furiously.
    “I don’t know.”
    “But you know he’s guilty!”
    “Yes … yes I do. But I am his advocate.”
    “But—” She stopped. There was finality in his face, and she accepted it, even though she did not understand. She nodded. “Yes—all