A Breach of Promise

Rathbone stood by the fire, staring into the flames. "I don't think there's any point. Melville is ruined. You haven't read the newspapers, have you?" This was more a statement than a question.

"No. Why?" Monk's heart sank. He did not know why it should matter so much, but it left him suddenly quite cold. "Why?" he repeated, moving closer to the fire himself.

Without looking up at him, Rathbone told him about Isaac Wolff and Sacheverall's evidence regarding him.

Monk heard him out in silence. He should not have been surprised. In fact, he should have found it himself. He should have looked harder at Melville. If he had found it, then he could have warned Rathbone so he would have made Melville withdraw.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I was looking for women. I never thought of that. I should have."

Rathbone shrugged. "So should I." He looked around and smiled. "We didn't do very well, did we?"

They stood together watching the fire die for several moments, until the manservant came to the door again. He opened it and stood in the entrance, his face white, his eyes wide and dark.

"Sir Oliver." His voice shook a little. "I am afraid, sir, you have just received a message… sir…"

"Yes?"

Monk clenched his fists and felt his body chill.

"I'm sorry, sir," the manservant went on, now in little more than a whisper. "But Mr. Melville has been found dead."

Rathbone stared at him.

"I'm sorry, Sir Oliver. I am afraid there is no doubt."

Rathbone closed his eyes and looked for a moment as if he were about to faint.

Monk took a step towards him.

Rathbone put his hands up and waved him back. He rubbed his eyes. "Thank you for telling me. That will be all."

"Yes sir." The man withdrew discreetly.

Rathbone turned to Monk, his face devoid of any shred of color, his eyes hollow with grief and guilt.

Chapter 8

Rathbone entered court on Monday exhausted from one of the most deeply miserable nights he could remember. He and Monk had gone immediately to Melville's lodgings, where Isaac Wolff, gray-faced, had met them at the door. There had been nothing anyone could do to help. He had called a doctor, who had assumed death to have been caused by some form of poison and had guessed bellado

No one mentioned suicide, but it hung unspoken like a darkness over them all. One does not take bellado

Naturally the police had been called. There must be certainty. Even this could not be allowed to pass in private. Suicide was a crime.

Now there was nothing left but loss, not only personal but of one of the greatest, most luminous creative minds of the age. For Rathbone there was also shame for his own failure to have prevented this, a weighing down of guilt, and the last legal formalities of closing the issue. And there was also a colossal rage. He was clenched up inside with it. As he strode up the steps and along the hallway of the courthouse, he scarcely saw the colleagues he passed, the clerks and ushers, the litigants.

His feet were loud and sharp on the stone of the floor, his back rigidly straight, his fingernails dug into the palms of his hands.

He entered the courtroom just as they were begi

He was moving too quickly, not perhaps for Delphine, but certainly for Zillah herself. There was something indecent in it. Zillah was a charming girl, but the first thought that came to Rathbone's mind was Barton Lambert's money. Perhaps that was unjust, but he was too raw to care.

Sacheverall faced Rathbone and nodded, his eyes bright. If he read anything in Rathbone's expression, he must have assumed it was defeat. He showed no sign of apprehension.

"I apologize, my lord, if I have kept the court waiting," Rathbone said swiftly to the judge. "I was detained by circumstances beyond my control."

Sacheverall let out a slight sound, no more than an audible sigh, but the disbelief in it was obvious.

McKeever caught some sense of Rathbone's emotion.

"What circumstances were those, Sir Oliver?" he asked.

"I regret it profoundly, my lord, but my client is dead."

There was an instant's utter silence. No one moved, not even a creak of wood or rustle of fabric. Then suddenly there was uproar. A woman shrieked. Several people rose to their feet, although there was nowhere to go. The jurors looked to each other, eyes wide with shock, unable yet to grasp the full significance of what they had heard.

"Silence!" McKeever said distinctly, looking around the room, then frowning at Rathbone. "I will have order! Sir Oliver, will you please explain to us what happened? Did Mr. Melville meet with an accident?"

"It is not yet possible to say, my lord." Rathbone found it difficult to find the right words, although he had tried to formulate them all the way there. Now, standing in the long-familiar room in which he had fought numberless cases, he was lost to express what he felt.

Press reporters had been expecting a quiet collapse of the struggle and were there only to leam the damages, and perhaps to watch the human ruin as a man's personal Me was torn apart. Now they were scrambling for pencils to write something entirely different.

In the gallery a woman gave a little squeal and stifled it with her hand.

"Mr. Melville was found dead last night," Rathbone began again. "At present the cause is not known."

The buzz in the gallery rose.

"Silence!" McKeever ordered sharply, his face darkening with anger. He reached for his gavel and banged it with a loud crack. "I will clear the court if there is not silence and a decent respect!"

He was obeyed reluctantly, but within seconds.

Rathbone looked across at Sacheverall, waiting to see how he would react, if he was as horrified by his own part in this as Rathbone was. Rathbone saw surprise, but not amazement. He thought in a flash that the possibility had occurred to him. If the prosecutor was distressed or ashamed, he hid it well.

Barton Lambert, on the other hand, sitting behind him, looked devastated. His blunt, rather ordinary face was slack with horror, mouth open, eyes staring fixedly. He seemed almost unaware of anyone around him, of Delphine at his side looking embarrassed, caught by surprise, but not grieved beyond her ability to control with dignity. Her head was high, her lips firmly closed, her gaze resolutely forward. She would not satisfy the curious in the gallery by meeting their looks.

Zillah, on her father's other side, had slumped forward and buried her face in her hands, her hat askew and her bright hair shining in the sunlight from the windows. Her shoulders were hunched and she shook, not yet with weeping but with the deep shuddering movement of horror and disbelief. She seemed hardly able to catch her breath. Her father was still too deeply stu

Sacheverall, who so often had his attention upon her, now stood up and went from his table around to stand beside her. He spoke to her, leaning close and putting his hand on her shoulder. He repeated whatever it was he had said, and she sat up slowly, her face ashen, her eyes hollow, burning with tears.