William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

his eyes bright. “Gisela was furious.”
    “I thought she was devoted to Friedrich?” Monk looked at him anxiously. “Why should she care if Zorah rode with Florent?”
    Now Stephan was thoroughly amused.
    “Don’t be naive!” he exclaimed. “Certainly, she was devoted to Friedrich, but she adored other admirers. It was part of her role as the great lover that all men should admire her. She is the woman for whom a throne was lost: always gorgeous, always desirable, always utterly happy. She had to be the center of the party, the most alluring, the one who could make everyone laugh at whatever she chose. She was terribly witty at dinner that evening, but Zorah was just as quick. It was a battle royal over the dinner table.”
    “Unpleasant?” Monk asked, trying to visualize it and gauge the underlying emotion. Was her hatred really enough to prompt Zorah to fabricate this charge, or even to blind her to the truth and make her believe a lie because she wanted to? Was it all really stung vanity, a battle for fame and love?
    Stephan stopped and stood still on the path, looking at Monk carefully for some time before answering.
    “Yes,” he said at last. “I think there is a sense in which it has always been unpleasant. I’m not really sure. Perhaps I don’t understand people as well as I thought I did. I couldn’t speak as she did to anyone whom I liked, but I don’t think I really know what they felt.” The wind blew in his face, lifting his hair a little. The sky was clouding over to the west. “Zorah always believed Gisela to be selfish,” he went on. “A woman who married for position and then was cheated out of the ultimate glory. Most people believed she married for love and didn’t care about anything else. They would have thought Zorah merely jealous, had she expressed her views, but she had enough sense not to. They could never have liked each other; they were too utterly different.”
    “But you believe Zorah?”
    “I believe her honesty.” He hesitated. “I am not absolutely certain I believe her to be correct.”
    “And yet you will stake so much to help me defend her?”
    Stephan shrugged and flashed a sudden, brilliant smile. “Ilike her … I like her enormously. And I do think poor Friedrich might have been murdered, and if he was, we ought to know. You can’t murder princes and simply walk away. I have that much loyalty to my country.”
    Monk received a very different picture when he spent a delicious afternoon in the rose garden with Evelyn. The flowers were in their second blossoming. The garden was sheltered from the light breeze, and in the still air the perfume was heavy and sweet. The climbing roses had been trained up columns and over arches, and the shrub roses were four or five feet high, making dense mounds of blossom on either side of the grass paths. Evelyn’s huge crinoline skirts touched the lavender at the edges of the beds, disturbing their scent. The two strollers were surrounded by color and perfume.
    “It’s an unspeakable thing for Zorah to do,” Evelyn said, her eyes wide as if she were still amazed at it, her voice rising in indignation. “She’s always been very odd, but this is incredible, even for her.”
    Monk offered his arm as they walked up a flight of stone steps to another level, and Evelyn took it quite naturally. Her hand was small and very beautiful. He was surprised how much pleasure it gave him to feel its feather touch on his sleeve.
    “Has she?” he asked casually. “Why on earth do you think she said anything as strange as this? She cannot possibly believe it is true, can she? I mean, is the evidence not entirely against it?”
    “Of course it is,” she said with a laugh. “For a start, why would she? If you want to be quite brutal about it … married to Friedrich, Gisela had wealth, rank and extraordinary allure. As a widow she has no rank anymore, Felzburg will make her no allowance, and even the wealth will be used up pretty rapidly if she continues the life to which she has been accustomed—and believe me, enjoyed very much indeed. He spenta fortune on jewels and gowns for her, carriages, their palace in Venice, parties, travel to anywhere she wanted. Admittedly that was only within Europe, not like Zorah, who went to the oddest places.” She stopped in front of a huge wine-red Bourbon rose and looked up at him. “I mean, why would any woman want to go to South America? Or to Turkey, or up the Nile, or to China,