Weighed in the Balance (38 page)

“I imagine everyone here can conceive your distress, Doctor,” he said aloud and with sincere respect. “We can only be grateful we were not in your place. What happened next?”

“Prince Friedrich failed rapidly,” Gallagher answered. “He grew colder and weaker. The pain seemed to subside, and he slipped into a coma from which he did not recover. He died at about quarter to four that afternoon.”

“And you concluded from what you had seen, and what you already knew of the case, that he had bled to death internally?”

“Yes.”

“A not-unnatural conclusion, given the circumstances as they were then,” Rathbone agreed. “But tell me, Dr. Gallagher, looking back now, is there anything whatever in those symptoms which is indicative not of internal bleeding but of poison? For example, the poison from the bark or leaves of the yew tree?”

There was a sharp intake of breath around the room. Someone gave a little squeal. A juror looked very distressed.

Zorah fidgeted and frowned.

As always, Gisela remained impassive, but her face was so bloodless she might have been dead herself, a marble figure of a woman.

Rathbone put his hands in his pockets and smiled sadly, still facing the witness. “In case you have had no occasion recently to remind yourself of what those are, Doctor, let me enumerate them—for the court, if not for you. They are giddiness, diarrhea, dilation of the pupils of the eyes, pain in the stomach and nausea, weakness, pallor of the skin, convulsions, coma and death.”

Gallagher closed his eyes, and Rathbone thought he swayed a little in the stand.

The judge was staring at him intensely.

One of the jurors had his hand up to his face.

Gisela sat like stone, drained as if all that mattered to her, all that gave her life, had already left her.

In the gallery, a woman was weeping quietly.

Zorah’s face was pinched with unhappiness. She looked as if she had lived through the pain and grief of the day all over again.

“There was no diarrhea,” Gallagher said very slowly. “Unless it occurred before I arrived and I was not told. There were no convulsions.”

“And dilation of the pupils, Dr. Gallagher?” Rathbone almost held his breath. He could feel his own pulse beating.

“Yes …” Gallagher’s voice was little more than a whisper. He coughed, and coughed again. “Yes, there was dilation of the pupils of the eyes.” He looked wretched.

“And is that a symptom of bleeding to death, Doctor?” Rathbone kept all criticism from his voice. It was easy … he did not feel it. He doubted any man in Gallagher’s place would have thought of it.

Gallagher breathed out with a sigh. “No. No, it is not.”

There was a gasp in the gallery.

The judge’s face tightened, and he watched Rathbone gravely.

“Dr. Gallagher,” Rathbone said in the prickling silence, “are you still of the opinion that Prince Friedrich died as a result of bleeding to death from the wounds sustained in his fall?”

The jurors stared at Gisela and then at Zorah.

Zorah clenched her fists and moved forward an inch.

“No sir, I am not,” Gallagher answered.

There was a shriek from the gallery and the gasping of breath. Apparently someone fainted, because several people started to rise to their feet and jostle to make space.

“Give her air!” a man commanded.

“Here! Smelling salts,” someone else offered.

“Burn a feather!” came the call. “Ushers! Water!”

“Brandy! Has anyone a flask of brandy? Oh, thank you, sir!”

The judge waited until the woman had been assisted, then gave Rathbone leave to continue.

“Thank you, my lord,” Rathbone acknowledged.

“Can you name the cause of death, Dr. Gallagher, in your best judgment? So long after the event, and without any further examination, we appreciate you can only guess.”

The movement in the gallery ceased abruptly. The fainting woman was ignored.

“I would guess, sir, that it was the poison of the yew tree,” Gallagher said wretchedly. “I profoundly regret that I did not realize it at the time. I tender my apologies to Princess Gisela and to the court.”

“I am sure no person of sensibility blames you, Doctor,” Rathbone said frankly. “Which of us would have thought on the death of a prince, in the home of a respected member of the aristocracy, to look for poison? I most certainly would not, and if any man here says he would, I would beg leave to take issue with him.”

“Thank you,” Gallagher said painfully. “You are very generous, Sir Oliver. But medicine is my duty and my calling. I should have observed the eyes and had the courage and the diligence to pursue the discrepancy.”

“You have had the courage now, sir, and we are obliged to you for it. That is all I have to ask you.”

Harvester rose to his feet. He looked pale and less certain than at the beginning of the day. He did not move with the same ease.

“Dr. Gallagher, you are now of the opinion that the poison of the yew tree was the cause of Prince Friedrich’s death. Can you tell us how it was administered?”

“It would have been ingested,” Gallagher replied. “In either food or drink.”

“It is pleasant to the taste?”

“I have no idea. I should imagine not.”

“What form would it take? Liquid? Solid? Leaves? Fruit?”

“A liquid distilled from the leaves or the bark.”

“Not the fruit?”

“No sir. Curiously enough, the fruit is the one part of the yew tree which is not poisonous—even the seeds themselves are toxic. But in any case, Prince Friedrich died in the spring, when trees do not fruit.”

“A distillation?” Harvester persisted.

“Yes,” Gallagher agreed. “No one would eat yew leaves or bark.”

“So it would have been necessary for someone to gather the leaves, or the bark, and boil them for a considerable time?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you told us that the Princess never went to the kitchens. Did she have apparatus in her rooms in which she could have done such a thing?”

“I believe not.”

“Could she have done it over the bedroom fire?”

“No, of course not. Apart from anything else, it would have been observed.”

“Was there a hob on the bedroom fire?”

“No.”

“Did she go out and gather the bark or the needles of the yew trees?”

“I don’t know. I believe she did not leave the Prince’s side.”

“Does it seem to you reasonable to suppose that she had either the means or the opportunity to poison her husband, Dr. Gallagher? Or, for that matter, any motive whatsoever?”

“No, it does not.”

“Thank you, Dr. Gallagher.” Harvester turned away from the witness stand to face the courtroom. “Unless the Countess Rostova knows some major fact of which we are unaware, and she has chosen to keep it from the authorities, it would seem she cannot believe so either, and her accusation is false, and she knows it as well as we do!”

*   *   *

Henry Rathbone had been in court that day, as he had the day before. Oliver visited him in the evening. He had an intense desire to get out of the city and as far away as was practical from the courtroom and all that had happened in it. He rode through the sharp, gusty late autumn evening towards Primrose Hill. The traffic was light, and his hansom made swift progress.

He arrived a little after nine and found Henry sitting beside a blazing fire and looking at a book on philosophy, upon which he seemed unable to concentrate. He put it down as soon as Oliver entered the room. His face was bleak with concern.

“Port?” he asked, gesturing towards the bottle on the small table beside his chair. There was only one glass, but there were others in the cabinet by the wall. The curtains were drawn against the rain-spattered night. They were the same brown velvet curtains that had been there for the last twenty years.

Oliver sat down. “Not yet, thank you,” he declined. “Maybe later.”

“I was in court today,” Henry said after a few moments. “You don’t need to explain it to me.” He did not ask what Oliver was going to do next.

“I didn’t see you. I’m sorry.” Oliver stared into the fire. Perhaps he should have taken the Port. He was colder than he had thought. The taste would have been good, its heat going down his throat.

“I didn’t want to distract you from your task,” Henry replied. “But I thought you might want to talk about it later. Easier if I had been there. It isn’t only what is said, it’s the way people react to it.”

Oliver looked across at him. “And you are going to tell me that the crowd is with Gisela … the poor bereaved widow. I know. And as far as I can see, they are right. Monk thinks it is political and whoever did it actually intended to kill Gisela, to free Friedrich to return home and lead the party for
independence, but somehow the plan misfired and the wrong person took the poison.”

“Possibly,” Henry said with a frown puckering his forehead. “I hope you aren’t going to say anything so foolish in court?”

“I don’t think it’s foolish,” Oliver said immediately. “I think he’s probably right. The Queen hated Gisela with a passion, but she had an equal passion to have Friedrich back, both to lead the party of independence and to marry a wife who would give him an heir to the throne. The other son has no children.”

Henry looked puzzled. “I thought Friedrich had several sisters.”

“Doesn’t pass through the female line,” Oliver replied, easing himself a little more comfortably in the chair.

“Then change it till it does!” Henry said impatiently. “A lot simpler and less dangerous than murdering Gisela and trying to deal with a bereaved Friedrich and put more backbone into him to make him lead a battle which will take all the courage and skill and determination anyone could have. And even then which may be a lost cause. You need a miracle for that, not a man who has just lost the love of his life and who may well be intelligent enough to realize who was responsible for that.”

Oliver stared at his father speechlessly. He had not thought so far ahead. If they had succeeded in killing Gisela, surely Friedrich would have at the very least been suspicious of them?

“Maybe it was not the Queen, or Rolf, but some fanatic without the brains to foresee what would happen?” he said hesitantly.

Henry raised his eyebrows. “And were there many of them at Wellborough Hall with access to the Prince’s food?”

Oliver did not bother to reply.

The fire caved in with a shower of sparks, and Henry picked up the tongs and placed several more coals in it, then sat back again.

“Who will Harvester call tomorrow?” he asked, fishing for
his pipe and putting it absentmindedly into his mouth without even pretending to light it.

“I don’t know,” Oliver replied, his mind almost numb.

“Could Gisela be guilty?” Henry pressed. “Is there any way in which it is possible … even supposing she did indeed have motive?”

“The servants,” Oliver said, answering the earlier question. “Harvester’ll call the household servants from Wellborough Hall. They’ll almost certainly testify that after the accident Gisela never left the suite of rooms they had.”

“Truthfully?”

“Yes … I think so.”

Henry took the pipe out of his mouth. His slippers were so near the fire the soles were beginning to scorch, but he had not noticed, his mind was so intent on the problem.

“Then she cannot be guilty,” he said frankly. “Unless one supposes she habitually carries distillation of yew about with her, or else that she planned this from before the accident. Either of which supposition would require total proof before anyone at all is even going to entertain it.”

“I know,” Oliver conceded quickly. “It wasn’t she.”

They sat in silence again except for the ticking of the tall clock against the wall and the comfortable flickering of the fire.

“Your feet are burning,” Oliver remarked absently.

Henry moved them, wincing as he became aware of the hot soles.

“Then you must find out who it was,” the older man said.

“Either Rolf or Brigitte, if it was meant to be Gisela in order to free Friedrich to return home, or Klaus von Seidlitz, if Friedrich was the right victim—to prevent his return.”

“You have not yet proved that there was a conspiracy,” Henry pointed out. “You can’t leave that to assumption. The jury won’t return any verdict which indicates that if you don’t show it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Oliver said miserably. “The charge is
slander, and they can only bring in a verdict that she is guilty, because she is guilty. I might manage to persuade them she did it to expose the fact that he was murdered and she dared not accuse anyone else—or that somehow she originally imagined it could have been Gisela, although I can’t think anyone would believe that. One would only have to ask her why she thought so; she does not provide a single coherent answer.”

He got up and went over to the cabinet, opened it and took out a glass. He returned to the fire, filled his glass with Port, and sat down.

“I daren’t call her to the stand. She’ll hang herself.”

Henry stared at him.

“Sorry,” Oliver apologized for the exaggeration. Henry hated overstatement. “Would you like some more?” He gestured towards the decanter of Port.

“She may indeed.” Henry ignored the Port as if he had not heard. “She may do exactly that, Oliver, if you are not very careful. If you don’t prove a plot to return Friedrich, and even if you do, the question is going to arise: Did Zorah kill him herself? Did she have the opportunity?”

“Yes.” Even the Port could not help the deepening chill inside him.

“Could she have obtained the yew and distilled it?”

“She could certainly have obtained it. Anyone could, except Gisela. We haven’t found out yet how it was distilled. That is the biggest break in the chain of evidence. The kitchen staff seem quite sure no one used the kitchen for it. But she is no better or worse than anyone else in that aspect.”

“Had she the motive?”

“I don’t know, but it won’t be hard to suggest several, from personal jealousy and resentment for Gisela’s marrying Friedrich twelve years ago,” Oliver answered, “to political hatred because Gisela was the one person stopping Friedrich from returning home to lead the battle for independence—or,
for that matter, stopping him from having filled his duty to be king in the first place.”