William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

your own reputation by making a charge against the one person who cannot be guilty, simply in order to force the matter to justice!”
    “What do you suggest?” she asked, her voice tense, cracking a little under the strain of effort to be light. “That I accuse Klaus von Seidlitz? But he is not guilty!”
    She was still standing, the firelight reflecting red on her skirt. It was growing dark outside.
    “You know it was not Klaus. You have no proof it was Gisela.” Hope suddenly lifted inside him. “Then withdraw the charge, and we will investigate until we have enough evidence, then we’ll take it to the police! Tell the truth! Say you believe he was murdered but you don’t know by whom. You named Gisela simply to make someone listen to you and investigate. Apologize to her. Say you now realize you were wrong to suspect her, and you hope she will forgive your error of judgment and join with everyone to discover the truth. She can hardly refuse to do that. Or she will indeed look as if she may have colluded. I will draw up a statement for you.”
    “You will not!” she said fiercely, her eyes hot and stubborn. “We shall go to trial.”
    “But we don’t have to!” Why was the woman so obtuse? She was going to cause such unnecessary pain to herself! “Monk will learn everything he can—”
    “Good!” She swung around and stared towards the window. “Then let him do it by the time we meet in court, and he can testify for me.”
    “That may not be in time …”
    “Then tell him to hurry!”
    “Withdraw the charge against Gisela. Then the trial will not take place. She may ask damages, but I can plead on your behalf so that—”
    She jerked back to glare at him. “Are you refusing to take my instructions. Sir Oliver? That is the right term, is it not? Instructions.”
    “I am trying to advise you—” he said desperately.
    “And I have heard your advice and declined it,” she cut across him. “I do not seem able to make you understand that I believe Gisela killed Friedrich and I am not going to accuse someone else as a device. A device, I may add, which I do not believe would work.”
    “But she did not kill him.” His voice was getting louder and more strident than he wished, but she was trying him to exasperation. “You cannot prove something which is not true! And I will not be party to trying.”
    “I believe it is true,” she said inflexibly, her face set, body rigid. “And it is not your calling to be judge as well as counsel, is it?”
    He took a deep breath. “It is my obligation to tell you the truth … which is that if Friedrich was indeed murdered, by the use of yew leaves, then Gisela is the one person whose actions and whereabouts are accounted for at all times, and she could not have killed him.”
    She stared at him defiantly, her chin high, her eyes wide. Butshe had no answer to his logic. It beat her, and she had to acknowledge it.
    “If you wish to be excused, Sir Oliver, then I excuse you. You need not consider your honor stained. I seem to have asked of you more than is just.”
    He felt an overwhelming relief, and was ashamed of it
    “What will you do?” he asked gently, the tension and the sense of doom skipping away from him, but in their place was a whisper of failure, as if some opportunity had been lost, and even a sort of loneliness.
    “If you see the situation as you have said, no doubt any other barrister of like skill and honor will see it the same way,” she answered. “They will advise me as you have. And then I shall have to reply to them as I have to you, so I shall have gained nothing. There is only one person who believes in the necessity of pursuing the case.”
    “Who is that?” He was surprised. He could imagine no one.
    “I, of course.”
    “You cannot represent yourself!” he protested.
    “There is no alternative that I am prepared to accept.” She stared at him with a very slight smile, irony and amusement mixed in it—and behind it, fear.
    “Then I shall continue to represent you, unless you prefer me not to.” He was horrified as he heard his own voice. It was rash to a degree. But he could hardly abandon her to her fate, even if she had brought it upon herself.
    She smiled ruefully, full of gratitude.
    “Thank you, Sir Oliver.”
    “That was most unwise,” Henry Rathbone said gravely. He was leaning against the mantelshelf in his sitting room. The French doors were no longer open onto the garden, and there was a brisk