A Breach of Promise (44 page)

“Sir Oliver,” he began slowly, “you were Keelin Melville’s counsel during the case for breach of promise brought by Barton Lambert on behalf of his daughter, Miss Zillah Lambert.” It was made as a statement, but he waited as if for a reply.

“Yes sir. I was,” Rathbone agreed.

“When did you become aware that Miss Melville was indeed a woman, and not a man, Sir Oliver?”

“After her death, at the same time as we all did,” Rathbone answered. He could feel the eyes of everyone in the small public gallery upon him and the heat burned up his cheeks at the realization that they must think him a fool. It was not his reputation that bothered him, but the fear that they were right.

“You have no confidence towards your client now, except that of the truth,” the coroner said quietly. “What reason did Melville give you for breaking her betrothal to Miss Lambert?”

“She swore that she had never intended to become betrothed to her,” Rathbone answered, looking directly at the coroner and avoiding catching the eye of anyone else in the room. “She said it had happened by misunderstanding, which I had difficulty in believing at the time, but now it seems very readily explainable.
I think she was genuinely very fond of Miss Lambert, in a manner of friendship, as one woman may be to another. She must have been extremely lonely.” He found it difficult to say, and was not even sure if he wanted to expose such private grief to the stare of others. He doubted himself even as he spoke. “Isaac Wolff was the only person she could trust. Perhaps with Miss Lambert she was able to come closer to the pretty and feminine things she would like to have been able to share in herself but knew she never could. She might have allowed her guard to slip, and without being aware of it have given the wrong impression.”

There was a soft murmur from the public section. He did not turn to look, although he could imagine Zillah’s face. It might be some comfort to her that the deceit was not meant.

The coroner nodded, still watching Rathbone, waiting for him to go on.

“She was horrified when she knew,” he resumed, remembering with painful vividness the look in her eyes. It had been close to panic. He had been impatient with it then.

“But she did not explain?” The coroner’s face also was touched with deep sadness.

“No.”

“I presume you asked?”

“Of course. I pleaded with her to tell me, in total confidence, if she knew anything to Miss Lambert’s discredit or if there was anything in her own life which prevented her marrying …”

He heard the faint rustle in the courtroom, but no one laughed.

“She told me there was not.” He took a breath. “I did not accept her word. I employed an agent of enquiry to research into both Miss Lambert’s past and hers. He found nothing.” He owed Monk something better than a bare statement. “If there had been longer, I daresay he would have learned the truth, but events overtook us. It appeared Melville’s affair with Mr. Wolff was reason enough. Of course, we now know it was … a love between man and woman, not illegal, not abnormal.” He had
nearly said “not scandalous,” but perhaps since they were not married, there would be those who would consider it so. “Such as is usual enough,” he said instead.

“What was her frame of mind, as far as you could judge, when Mr. Sacheverall brought Isaac Wolff to the stand and accused him of a homosexual relationship with Melville?” There was a chill in the coroner’s voice, and he did not look towards where Sacheverall was sitting.

“She was deeply distressed,” Rathbone answered truthfully. “Very deeply. But she denied it to me.”

“Did you believe her?”

“I … I don’t know. I neither believed nor disbelieved. I was concerned with trying to rescue what I could from the situation. I hoped I might persuade Miss Lambert to settle for a small amount of damages, so at least Melville might not be financially ruined, as well as socially and professionally.” He found the words difficult to say. They still hurt. The failure was deep and twisting inside him.

“Did you tell Miss Melville your hopes?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know of anything that occurred that afternoon which would so alter the circumstances as to make her despair and take her own life?”

“Sacheverall had called a prostitute to the stand in the morning who had sworn that the affair she had observed was of a sexual nature,” Rathbone said bitterly, “not the friendship both Wolff and Melville had insisted. But if that was the final incident, then I would have expected her to have taken the poison during the luncheon adjournment, and according to the surgeon she did not.”

“Did Miss Melville at any time speak of taking her life, or say anything which led you, even in hindsight, to suppose she was thinking of it?”

“No.” Rathbone’s voice sank. “Perhaps I should have realized how desperate she was, but I had formed the belief that her art was so precious to her she would have lived to practice it regardless of anything else. I … in hindsight, I even wondered
if she had been murdered … but I know of no way in which anyone else could have administered the poison to her, nor any reason why they should.”

“I see. Thank you, Sir Oliver. I have nothing further to ask you.”

Rathbone remained where he was. He wanted to say something else, something about the whole ridiculous situation which had brought about a needless tragedy and destroyed one of the most luminous talents he had ever known, not to mention a vibrant, intelligent human being capable of suffering and laughter and dreams.

“It need not have happened!” he said angrily, leaning forward a little over the slender rails of the witness stand, his hands gripping them. “If any of us had behaved with a little more sense, a little more charity, it would all have been avoided. Keelin Melville could be alive now, still creating beauty for us and for our heirs in this city, this country.”

There was a murmur of shock in the gallery, and then something which could even have been approval.

He leaned over farther. “For God’s sake, why can’t we allow women to use whatever talents they have without hounding and denying them until they are reduced to pretending to be men in order to be taken at their true value?”

There was a shifting of weight on the public benches, and a rustle and creak of fabric. People were uncomfortable.

“Why can’t we allow people to break a betrothal if they realize it was a mistake,” he went on passionately, “without assuming there must be some fearful sin on the part of one or the other of them? Why do we care so much if a woman is pretty or not? If all we want is something lovely to look at, we can buy a picture and hang it on the wall. We do this!” He flung out his arms. “We create a society where people go to law instead of saying to each other the simple truth. And now instead of a broken romance—which, God knows, hurts enough, but we all experience it—we have scandal, disgrace, shame, and worst of all, we have destroyed one of the brightest talents of our generation. And over what? A misunderstanding.”

There was definite movement in the gallery now, a whispering, a buzz. Even the jurors were muttering.

Sacheverall rose to his feet, his face red.

“Sir Oliver is being disingenuous, sir, and I cannot sit here in silence and allow it. He knows as well as I do that a young woman’s reputation is precious to her. A man who robs another person of reputation steals one of his, or her, most priceless possessions … one that can never be got back again.” He glanced at the jurors; he did not care about the public. “That is not a false value. It is a very real one.”

His expression twisted to undisguised contempt, and he was moving forward from his seat. “Sir Oliver would be one of the first to complain if his good name was compromised. In fact, he may discover after the loss of this case just how painful it can be when people no longer think of you as well as they once did.” He was now out in front of the court, not more than a couple of yards from where Rathbone stood. He was a large man and seemed to crowd the area. He moved his hands around, taking up even more space. Everyone was watching him, but the expressions Rathbone could see were very varied, and not all of respect.

“It is natural enough to resent losing a case, especially as dramatically as he lost this one.” Sacheverall smiled fleetingly towards Rathbone. “But that was his error of judgment in accepting it and choosing to fight it in the first place. Now he is blaming all the rest of us”—he swung his arms wide to embrace everyone present—“for Melville’s misfortune. That is manifestly preposterous. We are not at fault in any way. Keelin Melville chose to behave unnaturally, to deny her womanhood and attempt to follow a masculine profession from which she would, of course, have been excluded had she not practiced such a deception.”

There was a rumble from the body of the room, but he ignored it. He also ignored the growing darkness in the coroner’s face, the tight pull of his lips and the drawing down of his brows.

“She also deceived Barton Lambert, her friend and benefactor,
who had from the very beginning shown her only kindness and a trust she did not honor and did not return.” He gestured contemptuously towards Rathbone. “For Sir Oliver to complain now, and accuse society at large, is to show his own shallowness of character and to demonstrate that, far from learning by his error of judgment, he is determined to compound it.”

The coroner was so furious he scarcely knew where to begin.

“Mr. Sacheverall,” he said loudly and very clearly, “I believe Sir Oliver included himself in his castigation of society. Perhaps your own involvement in these events did not allow you to listen to what he said with the attention which I think was its due. I have heard what has been said here today up to this point, and unless there is evidence yet to come which contradicts it, I cannot help but agree that the death of Keelin Melville was a tragedy which need not have happened. And for you to suggest that she was depraved, that she deceived Mr. Lambert willfully, I find unjustified and most distasteful.”

Sacheverall’s face reddened, but it was as much in anger as shame. There was no shred of retreat in his attitude, and his chin jerked up, not down.

“Unless you have something to say which is germane to the issue, Mr. Sacheverall,” the coroner continued, “you will return to your seat and keep from any further interruption to our proceedings.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you have any information we should know as to when Keelin Melville took the poison which killed her, where she obtained it, or when?”

“No—I …”

“Did you observe anything which you have not told the police?”

“No—I …”

“Have you anything useful whatever to add?”

“I …”

“Then please resume your seat—and do not interrupt us again!”

Sacheverall retreated in ill-concealed fury. There might have
been sympathy for him among his peers, or his friends in society. There was none in the courtroom. Whatever the people there had thought of Keelin Melville in her lifetime, now they had nothing but a sense of pity and an uncomfortable suspicion that they were in some way, no matter how small a way, to blame for her death.

The coroner called Isaac Wolff to the stand. He was obviously in a state of deep grief. His face was almost bloodlessly pale, his eyes had the hollow look of a man who is suffering a prolonged illness, and he spoke quietly and without any lift or timbre in his voice.

The coroner treated him with the greatest courtesy, asking him only those facts which were necessary to corroborate or enlarge upon what was already known.

Wolff answered as briefly as possible, and his bare hands grasped the rail as if he needed it in order to keep his balance. The room was full, for the most part, of ordinary people, and they were too sensible of the presence of loss not to share in it. There was not a sound among them as he spoke. No one fidgeted or turned away. No one whispered to their neighbors.

Rathbone found himself watching Barton Lambert. He too was sunk in a weight of grief. Looking at him now it was naked in his face how fond of Melville he had been—as a friend, as an artist, as a colleague in creating lasting, individual and innovative beauty. It was also clear that his sorrow was touched with an acute awareness of how large his own part had been in this tragedy. His shoulders slumped forward. He did not look to either side of him, as if he preferred to remain islanded away from even those closest to him.

Delphine, on the contrary, sat upright, her eyes wide, her attention sharp and clear. It could not be supposed she was comfortable, but she was enduring the temporary embarrassment with stoicism, knowing the important victory was hers. This was merely part of the price. And there were other battles ahead. Her glance, when it strayed towards Sacheverall, was venomous in the extreme. Rathbone would not be surprised if in due course stories and whispers began to circulate not
entirely to Sacheverall’s credit. Nothing specific would be said, only looks, intonations of the voice, a question in the eyes. Neither, actually, would he be sorry. In fact, he thought of it with some satisfaction.

After Wolff had finished the coroner called Monk, but only to assure himself that Monk could add nothing. Monk corroborated what he had heard and stepped down again.

The coroner did not retire to consider. There was no need.

“I have listened to all that has been said today.” He frowned as he spoke. “It is a case which disturbs me greatly for the loss of a young and brilliant life which had already been an ornament to our culture and would undoubtedly have been more so in the future, had she lived. I have not been satisfied as to exactly how it happened, nor precisely what particular incident turned the balance from discouragement to despair, but there is no other conclusion possible except that Keelin Melville took her own life by swallowing the poison of belladonna while in the courthouse during the case against her for breach of promise.” He breathed in and out slowly. “One may only presume that the ruin which the suit brought to her life and career, and to the life of the man she loved, was a pain more than she felt able to bear. We must all live with our own responsibility for our individual parts in that.” He picked up his gavel and touched it lightly to its stand. “This court is adjourned.”