William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

pursued.
    “I … yes. Yes, we were friends.” She gulped. She was very pale and her hands were locked together on the rail of the stand. The light glinted on the gems in her rings.
    “Think back to your feelings during that friendship,” Rathbone began. He was painfully aware that Helena Moulton was embarrassed now about owning to having been Dinah’s friend, afraid the society in which she lived would then associate her with Dinah, as if testifying were somehow condoning what Dinah was accused of having done.
    Rathbone did not believe her testimony would sway the case in Dinah’s favor, even that it would necessarily make any difference at all, but he needed every extra hour he could to stretch out the testimony of the few witnesses he had to create the outline of someone else to suspect. Perhaps even now Monk would find something that would prove this person’s existence. And curiously enough, Rathbone had almost as much faith in Runcorn as he did in Monk. There was stubbornness in the man that would cling on to the very end, especially because he was angry at having been used and misled in the first place.
    Mrs. Moulton was waiting for the question, as was Pendock, who was beginning to be irritated.
    “You spent time together?” Rathbone continued. “You went to afternoon parties, exhibitions of art and photographs of travel and exploration, soirées, dinner parties at times, even the theater, and of course garden parties in the summer?”
    “I did with many people,” she replied guardedly.
    “Of course. Without lots of people, it is hardly a party, is it?” he said smoothly. “You enjoyed each other’s company?”
    It was a question to which she could hardly say no. That would be to suggest some ulterior motive.
    “Yes, yes, I … did,” she agreed a shade reluctantly.
    “You must have spoken of many things?”
    Coniston rose to his feet. “My lord, this is wasting the court’s time. The prosecution concedes that Mrs. Moulton was friends with the accused.”
    Rathbone wanted to object, but he had no grounds on which to argue the point. If he lost, it would be only one more defeat for him in the minds of the jury.
    Pendock looked at Rathbone with annoyance. “You have some point, Sir Oliver? If so, please proceed to make it. The social comings and goings of Mrs. Moulton and the accused seem totally irrelevant.”
    “I am trying to establish, my lord, Mrs. Moulton’s standing in her ability to comment on the accused’s state of mind.”
    “Then please consider it established and ask your question,” Pendock said tartly.
    “Yes, my lord.” Rathbone had hoped for more time, but there was nothing with which to argue. “Mrs. Moulton was the accused anxious or worried in the week or so before Dr. Lambourn’s death?”
    She hesitated. She looked up for an instant, as if to meet Dinah’s eyes in the dock above the courtroom gallery, then changed her mind and stared fixedly at Rathbone.
    “As I recall, she was just as usual. She … she did mention that he was working very hard and seemed rather tired.”
    “And after his death?” he asked.
    Her face filled with compassion, the tension vanishing as all consciousness of herself and the courtroom was swallowed up by her pity. “She was like a woman walking in her sleep,” she said huskily. “I have never seen anyone more numbed with grief. I knew they were close. He was a very gentle man, a good man …” She gulped and composed herself again with difficulty. “I felt for her deeply, but there was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do.”
    “Indeed not,” he agreed softly. “Even the very closest of friends cannot reach out far enough to touch such a loss. Death is terrible in itself, but that a person should have taken his own life is so very much worse.”
    “She never believed that!” Mrs. Moulton said urgently, leaning forward over the rail as if three or four inches less between them would lend power to her words. “She always said that he had been killed to … to keep his work from being accepted. I am sure she believed that.”
    “Indeed, Mrs. Moulton, so do I,” Rathbone agreed. “In fact I intend to make that clear to the jury.”
    A flicker of displeasure crossed Coniston’s face.
    Pendock was irritated but he did not interrupt.
    Rathbone hurried on, gaining a lick of confidence, which was like a flame in the wind, any moment to be extinguished.
    “When the police arrested her and accused