William Monk 09 - A Breach of Promise

creature must have been out of her wits … afraid for Mr. Wolff, maybe?”
    Monk was not satisfied.
    “Do you want to speak with the usher around the corner when everyone left at that adjournment?” Pearson enquired helpfully. “He might have noticed if Miss Melville was given a drink, and maybe took a pill or a powder with it.”
    “Yes, please,” Monk accepted. “I can’t think what difference it makes now, but it seems such a pointless time to have begun the process of ending her own life … with a poison which acts over three or four hours.”
    “She was very distressed,” Pearson pointed out. “I remember her face. She looked like a person who has seen herwhole world come to an end … more pain than she can endure.” His voice sank and the weight of sadness seemed to droop in his shoulders. He led the way up the wide hallway, stopping twice to ask other people where Mr. Sutton was, and in one of the side rooms eventually found a small man with a narrow chest and bright, dark eyes.
    “Oh … Mr. Sutton,” he said quickly. “This is Mr. Monk. He’s looking into how poor Miss Melville managed to take poison without anyone noticing. Seems it must have happened while she was here. Some time in the afternoon. Since they were in court all the time except for the adjournment, it looks like it was then.”
    “Wasn’t then,” Sutton said immediately, pursing his lips and looking beyond Pearson to Monk. “Sorry, sir, but I was outside the court all the time and Miss Melville never left the hallway.”
    “Did anyone bring her a glass of water, or perhaps offer her a flask?” Monk suggested.
    “No sir.” Sutton was quite firm. “She sat by herself until Mrs. Lambert went over to her and gave her back the gifts she’d given Miss Lambert. I saw a pair of earrings, a gold fob an’ a real pretty miniature painting o’ trees and such. Had them in a packet. Just opened it up and tipped them all out into Miss Melville’s hands. They were dusty as if they had been pushed to the back of a drawer. I hardly think she knew what was going on, that distracted she was.”
    “Are you certain Miss Melville didn’t eat or drink anything?” Monk pressed. It would be easy enough to understand if at this point she had taken a stiff brandy, if nothing else. Any normal person would have waited for the privacy of her own home to take poison. But Melville was a woman. Did women think or feel differently?
    He could imagine no reason why they should. Surely agony such as this knew no boundaries of sex!
    “What I don’t understand,” Pearson said, scratching the back of his neck, “is why she did it then. If it was me, I’d have done it the day before, when Mr. Sacheverall brought Mr. Wolff in—that is, if I were going to do it at all … which I can’tsay I would. Although I can’t say I wouldn’t, not until I’d been there.”
    “No,” Monk agreed, staring at Sutton. “But you saw Melville all the time, and she didn’t eat or drink anything? Are you certain?”
    “If she had done, she didn’t drink from it in that adjournment, sir. I’d take an oath on that myself. She must’ve took the poison some other way, or more like some other time. I don’t want to overstep my place, sir, but maybe the doc got it wrong?”
    “Maybe …” Monk said, but he did not believe it. “Thank you, Mr. Sutton. You have been very helpful.” And with a word of thanks to Pearson as well, he walked back down the hallway.
    He spent several more hours confirming what he had been told, but he could find no variation in accounts. Melville had spoken to few people. She had been white-faced, her body rigid, her eyes reflecting the pain she must have felt, but she had neither eaten nor drunk anything.
    How had she taken the belladonna which had killed her? And why had she chosen to do it at such a time, instead of either the night before, after Wolff had testified, or that evening, after the prostitute had finally sealed Sacheverall’s case?
    Any answer he could think of was unsatisfactory, leaving questions in his mind, a darkness unresolved.

10
    M
ONK SPENT
a miserable, agitated evening. It would be ridiculous to expect every case to resolve into a solution so absolute there could be no doubt about any part of it. None ever did. There were always unknowns, thoughts he could not fathom. One had to let go once sufficient answers were found to be certain of the truth of the verdict.
    But this one troubled him