William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

sir. Very unremarkable, very ordinary medical vials.”
    “Of glass?”
    “I have said so.”
    “Clear glass?”
    “No sir, dark blue colored glass, as is customary when a substance is poisonous, or can be if taken ill-advisedly.”
    “Easy to see if a vial is full or empty?”
    At last Ormorod understood. “No sir. Half full, perhaps; but completely full or quite empty would appear exactly the same, no line of liquid to observe.”
    “Thank you, Doctor. We may presume one of them was used by Miss Latterly on the previous evening, the other we may never know … unless Miss McDermot should choose to tell us.”
    “Mr. Argyll!” the judge said angrily. “You may presume what you please, but you will not do it aloud in my court. Here we will have evidence only. And Miss McDermot has said nothing about the subject.”
    “Yes, my lord,” Argyll said unrepentantly. The damage was done, and they all knew it.
    Ormorod said nothing.
    Argyll thanked him and excused him. He left somewhat reluctantly. He had enjoyed his moment in the limelight.
    On the third day Gilfeather called Mary Farraline’s own doctor to describe her illness, its nature and duration, and to swear that there was no reason why she should not have lived several more years of happy and fulfilled life. There were all the appropriate murmurs of sympathy. He described the medicine he had prescribed for her, and the dosage.
    Argyll said nothing.
    The apothecary who had prepared the medicine was called, and described his professional services in detail.
    Again Argyll said nothing, except to ascertain that the medicine could have been distilled to become more concentrated, and thus twice as powerful, while still in the same volume of liquid, and that it did not need a nurse’s medical knowledge or skills to do so. It was all totally predictable.
    Hester sat in the dock watching and listening. Half of her wished that it could be over. It was like a ritual dance, only in words, everyone taking a carefully rehearsed and foreordained part. It had a nightmarish quality, because she could only observe. She could take no part in it, although it was her life they were deciding. She was the only one who could not go home at the end of it, and would certainly not do it all again next week, or next month, but over a different matter, and with different players walking on and off.
    She wanted the suspense to stop, the judgment to be made.
    But when it was, then perhaps it would be all over. There would be condemnation. No more hope, however slight, however little she set her heart on it. She thought now that she had resigned herself. But had she really? When it came to the moment that it was no longer a matter of imagination that the judge put on the black cap and pronounced the sentenceof death, would she still really keep her back straight, her knees locked and supporting her weight?
    Or would the room spin around her and her stomach churn and rise in sickness? Perhaps after all she needed a little longer to prepare herself.
    The next witness was Callandra Daviot. Somehow word had been whispered around until almost everyone in the gallery knew that she was Hester’s friend, and they were therefore hostile to her. A battle of wits was expected. It was almost as if there were a scent of blood in the air. People craned forward to see her stiff, broad-hipped figure walk across the floor of the courtroom and climb the steps to the witness stand.
    Watching her, Monk had an almost sickening lurch of familiarity. It was as if she were not only a woman he had known in the last year and a half, and who had helped him financially, a woman whose courage and intellect he admired, but as if she were a part of his own emotional life. She was not beautiful; even in her youth she had been charming at best. Her nose was too long, her mouth too individual, her hair was too curly and tended to frizz and fly away at odd and uncomplimentary angles. No pins had yet been devised which would make it sit fashionably. Her figure was broad at the hip and a trifle too rounded at the shoulders.
    And yet the whole had a dignity and honesty about it that superceded the elegance of other Society women, a reality where artifice ruled. He ached to be able to help her, impossible as that was, and was disgusted with his own sentimentality.
    He sat in his seat with his body rigid, all his muscles locked, telling himself he was a fool, that he did not care overmuch, that his whole life would