William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

physician to treat Prince Friedrich?”
    “Yes, from the accident until he died.” His face was pale at the memory. “I … I honestly thought the poor man was recovering. He seemed to be considerably better. Of course, he had a great deal of pain, but one does from broken bones. But he was far less feverish, and he had begun to take a little nourishment.”
    “The last time you saw him alive?” Monk asked. “Before the relapse?”
    “He was sitting up in bed.” Gallagher looked very strained. “He seemed pleased to see me. I can picture it exactly. It was spring, as you know, late spring. It was a beautiful day, sunlight streaming in through the windows, a vase of lily of the valley on the bureau in the sitting room. The perfume of them filled the room. They were a particular favorite of the Princess’s. I hear she cannot abide them since that day. Poor creature. She idolized him. She never left his side from the moment he was carried in from his accident. Distraught, she was, absolutely distraught. Beside herself with distress for him.”
    He took a deep breath and let it out silently. “Quite different from when he died. Then it was as if the world had ended for her. She simply sat there, white-faced, neither moving nor speaking. She did not even seem to see us.”
    “What did he die of?” Monk asked a little more gently. He was aware of conflicting emotions tearing inside him. “Medically speaking.”
    Gallagher’s eyes widened. “I did not do a postmortem examination, sir. He was a royal prince! He died as the result of his injuries in the fall. He had broken several bones. They had seemed to be healing, but one cannot see inside the living body to know what other damage there may be, what organs may have been crushed or pierced. He bled to death internally. That is what every symptom led me to believe. I had not expected it, because he seemed to be recovering, but that may have been the courage of his spirit, when in truth he was injured soseriously that the slightest movement may have ruptured some vessel and caused a fatal hemorrhage.”
    “The symptoms …” Monk prompted, this time quite softly. Whatever the cause of it, or whoever, he could not help feeling pity for the man whose death he was trying to examine so clinically. All he had heard of him suggested he was a man of courage and character, willing to follow his heart and pay the cost without complaint, a man capable of immense love and sacrifice, perhaps, in the last, a man torn by duty—and murdered for it.
    “Coldness,” Gallagher replied. “Clamminess of the skin.” He swallowed; his hands tightened on his lap. “Pains in the abdomen, nausea. I believe that was the site of the bleeding. That was followed by disorientation, a sense of giddiness, numbness in the extremities, sinking into a coma, and finally death. Very precisely, heart failure. In short, sir, the symptoms of internal bleeding.”
    “Are there any poisons which produce the same symptoms?” Monk asked, frowning, disliking having to say it.
    Gallagher stared at him.
    Monk thought of the yew trees at the end of the hornbeam hedge, the stone urn pale against their dark mass. Everyone knew that the needlelike yew leaves were bitterly poisonous. Everyone in the house had access to them; one simply had to take a walk in the garden, the most natural thing in the world to do.
    “Are there?” he repeated.
    Stephan shifted his weight.
    “Yes, of course,” Gallagher said reluctantly. “There are thousands of poisons. But why in heaven’s name should such a woman poison her husband? It makes no conceivable sense!”
    “Would the leaves of the yew trees produce such symptoms?” Monk pressed.
    Gallagher thought for so long Monk was about to ask him again.
    “Yes,” he said at last. “They would.” He was white-faced.
    “Exactly those symptoms?” Monk could not let it go.
    “Well …” Gallagher hesitated, his face filled with misery. “Yes … I am not an expert in such matters, but one does occasionally find village children put the leaves in their mouths. And women have been known to—” He stopped for a moment, then continued unhappily. “To use it in an effort to procure an abortion. A young woman died in the next village about eight years ago.”
    Stephan shifted his weight again. “But Gisela never left Friedrich’s rooms,” he said quietly. “Even if he was poisoned, she is about the only one in the house who could not possibly have