William Monk 09 - A Breach of Promise

also, his livelihood, even his liberty, if Sacheverall were vindictive enough to lay a complaint. He was haggard with a grief nothing would mend.
    And yet the deep burning rage within Rathbone wanted this court, which had accomplished all this, to see what they had done. Especially he wanted Lambert to see. Sacheverall might never feel any regret or shame, but if others saw, then possibly his reputation would sour, and Rathbone desired that with a hunger he could all but taste.
    Isaac Wolff came in like a man in a nightmare. His dark eyes were so far sunken into his head he looked cadaverous. He walked across the floor and up the steps to the witness-box like an old man, although he was barely forty. He looked towards Rathbone without seeing him.
    The court waited in complete silence. They felt his grief and it held them in awe. It was like an animal thing, raw in the air.
    Rathbone had already told him of his own feelings. There was no need to repeat any formal sympathy now, and he did not wish to break the tension by such civilities.
    “Mr. Wolff, will you please tell us of the events late yesterday evening which bring you here today?” he asked.
    Wolff spoke briefly, almost abruptly, except that his voice held no expression, no variation in tone.
    “I went to see Melville. I knew he would be distressed after the day in court.” It was a simple statement without adjectives, even without expression. It had the starkness of real and final tragedy. He was looking at Rathbone now. Perhaps he knew that Rathbone at least understood the magnitude of his emotion. “I rang the bell of his rooms. There was no answer. I have a key. I let myself in. He was in the sitting room, in the chair by the fire, but the ashes had burned right down. It was obviously three or four hours since it had been stoked. He looked as if hemight have been asleep. At first I hoped he was. Then I touched him and I knew. He was cold.” He said nothing further.
    “What time was that, Mr. Wolff?” Rathbone asked.
    There was still silence in the room. Everyone was staring at Wolff. There was a sea of faces, a pale blur as every person’s attention was on him.
    “Between half past ten and eleven,” Wolff replied. There was complete calm about him. Whatever they thought of him would not hurt him now. The worst he could conceive had already happened.
    “Did you see anything to give you cause to know or guess the manner of his death?” Rathbone pursued, although he knew the answer.
    “No.” Just the single word.
    “Was anything disturbed?”
    “No. Everything was as always.”
    “Was there a glass or cup in the room, near where he was sitting?”
    “No.”
    “Was there a note or a letter of any kind?”
    “No.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Wolff. If you will remain there, His Lordship may have some questions for you.”
    Wolff turned slowly towards the judge.
    “No, thank you,” McKeever declined quietly. “It seems perfectly clear. I am sorry we had to trouble you, Mr. Wolff. The court extends you its sympathy.”
    “Thank you.” At another time there might have been a shadow of humor in Wolff’s acceptance. Today there was none. Something inside him was dead and there was no response except words, bare of feeling.
    He turned and stepped down, holding on to the banister as if his sight and his coordination were impaired. He made his way to one of the seats at the back of the gallery and someone rose to give him space. Rathbone watched with his heart beating violently in case it were to shun him, but there was so deep a look of pity on the man’s face his gesture could not have beenmisunderstood. Rathbone was suddenly uplifted by such compassion from a stranger, such a lack of judgment of frailty, only the awareness of grief.
    He looked at Barton Lambert again. Lambert was shifting uncomfortably in his seat, as if he wanted to take some physical action but could think of nothing which answered his needs. There was a profound unhappiness in every line of him. He turned to Delphine, but she was looking the other way, her chin high, making the best of having to be there in these circumstances, but still aware of being the victor. Nothing so far had taken that from her. Zillah’s reputation was vindicated, and that mattered to her above all else.
    Zillah herself sat white-faced and quite still, her eyes on Isaac Wolff and then on the judge, although it was impossible to say if she could actually see either of them, she appeared so sunk in