William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

which might help him. She was moved by curiosity to know what truth lay behind such wild charges, what emotions drove those two so different women and the prince who was between them. But far more urgently than that, she was afraid for Rathbone. He had undertaken the case in good conscience, only later todiscover that the physical facts made it impossible Gisela could be guilty. There was no other possible defense for Zorah’s behavior. Now the height of his career, which he had so recently achieved, looked like being short-lived and ending in disaster. Regardless of public opinion, his peers would not excuse him for such a breaking of ranks as to attack a foreign royal family with a charge he could not substantiate.
    Zorah Rostova was a woman they would not ever forgive. She had defied all the rules. There was no way back for her, or for those who allied themselves with her … unless she could be proved innocent—in intent, if not in fact.
    It was not easy to choose a time when anyone would be receptive to a conversation about Zorah. Robert’s tragedy overshadowed anything else. Hester found herself growing desperate. Rathbone was almost always on her mind, and the urgency of the case became greater with every day that passed. The trial was set for late October, less than two weeks away.
    She was obliged to contrive a discussion, feeling awkward and sinkingly aware that she might, by clumsiness, make future questions impossible. Dagmar was sitting by the open window in the afternoon light, idly mending a piece of lace on the neck of a blouse. She did so only to keep her fingers busy. Hester sat a little distance from her, sewing in her hand also, one of Robert’s nightshirts that needed repair where the sleeve was coming away from the armhole. She threaded a needle and put on her thimble and began to stitch.
    She could not afford to hesitate any longer. “Will you go to the trial?”
    Dagmar looked up, surprised.
    “Trial? Oh, you mean Zorah Rostova? I hadn’t thought of it.” She glanced out of the window to where Robert was sitting in the garden in a wheelchair Bernd had purchased. He was reading. Victoria had not come, so he was alone. “I wonder if he’s cold,” she said anxiously.
    “If he is, he has a rug,” Hester replied, biting back herirritation. “And the chair moves really quite well. Please forgive me for saying so, but he will be better if you allow him to do things for himself. If you treat him as if he were helpless, then he will become helpless.”
    Dagmar smiled ruefully. “Yes. I’m sorry. Of course he will. You must think me very foolish.”
    “Not at all,” Hester replied honestly. “Just hurt and not sure how best to help. I imagine the Baron will go?”
    “Go?”
    “To the trial.” She could not give up. Rathbone’s long, meticulous face, with its humorous eyes and precise mouth, was very sharp in her mind. She had never seen him doubting himself before. He had confronted defeat for others with resolution and skill and unflagging strength. But for himself it was different. She did not doubt his courage, but she knew that underneath the habitual composure he was profoundly disconcerted. He had discovered qualities in himself he did not care for, vulnerabilities, a certain complacency which had been shattered.
    “Will he not?” she went on. “After all, it concerns not only the life and death of people you knew quite well but perhaps the murder of a man who could once have been your king.”
    Dagmar stopped even pretending to sew. The fabric slipped out of her hands.
    “If anyone had told me three months ago that this could happen, I would have said they were ridiculous. It is so completely absurd!”
    “Of course, you must have known Gisela,” Hester prompted. “What was she like? Did you care for her?”
    Dagmar thought for a moment. “I don’t suppose I did know her, really,” she said at length. “She was not the sort of woman one knows.”
    “I don’t understand …” Hester said desperately.
    Dagmar frowned. “She had admirers, people who enjoyed her company, but she did not seem to have close friends. IfFriedrich liked someone, then she did; if he did not, then for her that person barely existed.”
    “But Friedrich did not dislike you,” Hester said, hoping profoundly that was true.
    “Oh, no,” Dagmar agreed. “I think in a slight way we were friends, at least better than mere acquaintances, before Gisela came. But she could make him laugh,