William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

the least discomfort.
    Corriden Wade was in court and could be called should he be needed, and so was Hester. They were both to be allowed immediate access to the prisoner if he showed any need for their attention or assistance.
    Nevertheless, as the testimony began, Rhys was alone as hefaced a bitterly hostile crowd, his accusers and his judges. There was no one to speak for him except Rathbone, standing a solitary figure, black-gowned, white-wigged, a fragile barrier against a tide of hatred.
    Goode called his witnesses one after the other: the women who had found the two bodies, Constable Shotts and John Evan. He took Evan carefully step by step through his investigation, not dwelling on the horror but permitting it to be passionately conveyed through Evan’s white face and broken, husky voice.
    He called Dr. Riley, who spoke quietly and in surprisingly simple language of Leighton Duff’s terrible wounds and the death he must have suffered.
    “And the accused?” Goode asked, standing in the middle of the floor like a great crow, his arms dangling in his gown. His aquiline face with its pale eyes reflected vividly the horror and the sense of tragedy he felt unmistakably deeply.
    Hester had liked him ever since first meeting him in the Stonefield case. Staring around the courtroom, more to judge the emotion of the crowd than to note who was present, she was lent a moment’s real happiness to see Enid Ravensbrook, her face smoothed of its earlier suffering, her eyes gentle and bright as she watched Goode, a smile on her lips. Hester looked more closely, and saw there was a gold wedding band on her hand, not the one she had worn earlier, but a new one. For an instant Hester forgot the present ache of fear and tragedy.
    But it was brief. Reality returned with Riley’s answer.
    “He was also very severely injured,” he said quietly.
    There was barely a sound in the room. There were faint rustles, tiny movements, a sigh of breath. The jurors never took their eyes from the proceedings.
    “A great deal of blood?” Goode pressed.
    Riley hesitated.
    No one moved.
    “No …” he said at last. “When a person is kicked and punched there are terrible bruises, but the skin is not necessarily broken. There was some blood, especially where his ribswere cracked. One had pierced the skin. And on his back. There the flesh had been ripped.”
    There was a gasp of indrawn breath in the room. Several of the jurors looked very white.
    “But Sergeant Evan said that the accused’s clothes were soaked in blood, Dr. Riley,” Goode pointed out. “Where did that come from, if not from his injuries?”
    “I assume from the dead man,” Riley replied. “His wounds were more severe, and there were several places where the skin was broken. But I am surprised he bled so badly.”
    “And there were no wounds on the accused to account for such blood?” Riley pressed.
    “No, there were not.”
    “Thank you, Dr. Riley.”
    Rathbone rose. It was a forlorn hope, but he had nothing else. He must try anything, no matter how remote. He had no idea what Monk would produce, and there were always the possibilities that involved Arthur and Duke Kynaston.
    “Dr. Riley, have you any way of knowing whose blood it was on Rhys Duff’s clothes?”
    “No, sir,” Riley answered without the least resentment. The smooth expression of his face suggested he had no conviction in the matter himself, only a sadness that the whole event should have happened at all.
    “So it could belong to a third, or even a fourth, person, whom we have not yet mentioned?”
    “It could … were there such a person.”
    The jury looked bemused.
    The judge watched Rathbone anxiously, but he did not intervene.
    “Thank you.” Rathbone nodded. “That is all I have to ask you, sir.”
    Goode called Corriden Wade, who reluctantly, pale-faced, his voice barely audible, admitted that Rhys’s injuries could not have produced the blood described on his clothes. Not once did he look up to the dock, where Rhys sat motionless, his face twisted in an unreadable expression, a mixture of helpless bitterness and blazing anger. Nor did Wade appear to looktowards the gallery, where Sylvestra sat next to Eglantyne, both of them watching him intently. He kept his eyes undeviatingly on Goode, confirming that the events of the night of Rhys’s father’s death had rendered Rhys incapable of communication, either by speech or by writing. He was able only to nod or shake his head.