Funeral in Blue

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The upcoming trial of Kristian Beck caused a certain amount of public interest. It was not exactly a cause celebre. He was not famous, and certainly far from the first man to have been accused of killing his wife. That was a charge with which everyone was familiar, and not a few felt a certain sympathy. At least they withheld their judgment until they should hear what she had done to prompt such an act. The charge of killing Sarah Mackeson as well was another matter. Opinion as to her style of life, her values or morality, varied from one person to another. There were those who considered she might have been little better than a prostitute, but even so, the brutality of her death filled them with revulsion.

The first picture of Elissa, taken from one of Allardyce’s best sketches, that was published in the newspapers changed almost everyone’s view, and any tolerance or compassion for Kristian vanished. The beauty of her face, with its ethereal sense of tragedy, moved men and women alike. Anyone who killed such a creature must be a monster.

Hester was with Charles when she saw the newspaper. She had heard Monk’s description of Elissa, but she was still unprepared for the reality.

They were standing in her front room, which was robbed of its life for her because Monk was in Vienna and not returning tonight, or tomorrow, or any date that had been set. She was disconcerted by how profoundly she missed him. There was no point to the small chores she had to perform daily, no one with whom to share her thoughts, good and bad.

Charles had come because he was still desperately worried about Imogen, but he was also concerned for Kristian, and for her, too.

“I was uncertain whether to bring the newspaper,” he said, glancing at it where it lay open on the table. “But I felt sure you would see it sometime. . and I thought it might be easier if it were here. . ” He still looked uncomfortable at his assumption. “And if you had someone with you.”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. She found she was quite suddenly moved by his care. He was trying so hard to reach across the gulf they had allowed to grow between them. “Yes, I am glad you are here.” Her eyes moved to the picture of Elissa again. “William tried to describe her to me, but I was still unprepared for a face that would touch me so closely.” She looked across at him. “I never met her, and I suppose I imagined someone I would dislike, because in my mind she. .” She stopped. She should not expose Callandra’s vulnerability to anyone at all. She ignored his look of confusion. “But when I see her, I feel as if I have lost someone I knew.” She went on as if no explanation were necessary. “I wonder if other people feel like that? It’s going to make it far worse for Kristian, isn’t it?”

His face pinched a little. “I think so. I’m sorry. I know you admire him a great deal. But. .” He hesitated, obviously uncertain how to say what he was thinking, perhaps even if he should say it at all. And yet it was equally plainly something he believed to be true.

She helped him. “You are trying to tell me he might be guilty, and I must be prepared for that.”

“No, actually I was thinking that one can never know another person as well as one thinks one does,” he replied gently. “Perhaps one cannot even know oneself.”

“Are you being kind to me?” she asked. “Or are you equivocating the way you always do?”

He looked a little taken aback. “I was saying what I thought. Do you think I always equivocate?” There was a thread of hurt in the question.

“I’m sorry,” she answered quickly, ashamed of herself. “No, you are just careful not to overstate things.”

“You mean I am unemotional?” he pressed.

She could hear Imogen’s accusation in that, and unreasonably it angered her. She would not have been happy married to a man as careful and as guarded of his inner life as Charles was, but he was her brother, and to defend him was as instinctive as recoiling when you are struck. If she sensed capacity to be hurt, she tried to shield it. If she sensed failure, and she hardly admitted even the word, then she lashed out to deny it, and to cover it from anyone else’s sight.

“Being self-controlled is not the same thing as having no emotions,” she said with something approaching anger, as if she were speaking through him to Imogen.

“No. . no.” He was watching her closely. “Hester. . don’t. .”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could help, but. .”

She smiled at him. “I know. There is nothing. But thank you for coming.”

He leaned forward and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then suddenly put his arms around her and hugged her properly, holding her closely for a moment before letting her go, coughing to clear his throat, and muttering good-bye before he turned to leave.

Sitting alone at the breakfast table, Callandra also was deeply shaken by the picture of Elissa in the newspaper. Her first thought was not how it might affect the jury in the court, but her own amazement that Elissa should look so vulnerable. She had found it difficult enough when Hester had told her that she was beautiful, and then that her actions in Vienna had been passionate and brave. Callandra had created in her mind the picture of a hard and brittle loveliness, something dazzling, but a matter of perfect bones and skin, dramatic coloring, perhaps handsome eyes. She was not prepared for a face where the heart showed through, where the dreams were naked and the pain of disillusion clear for anyone to see. How could Kristian have stopped loving her?

Why do people stop loving? Could it be anything but a weakness within themselves, an incapacity to give and go on giving, somewhere a selfishness? Her mind raced back over all she could remember of Kristian, every time they had met in the hospital, and before that the long hours they had spent during the typhoid outbreak in Limehouse. Every picture, every conversation, seemed to her tirelessly generous. She could see, as if it were before her now, his face in the flickering lights of the makeshift ward, exhausted, lined with anxiety, his eyes dark and shadowed around the sockets. But he had never lost his temper or his hope. He had tried to ease the distress of the dying, not only their physical pain but their fear and grief.

Or was she recalling it as she wished it to have been? It was so easy to do. She thought she was clear-sighted, a realist, but then perhaps everyone thought he was.

And even if Kristian were all she believed in, his work with the sick, that did not mean he was capable of the kind of love that binds individuals. Sometimes it is easier to love a cause than a person. The demands are different. With a blinding clarity like the clean cut of a razor, so sharp at first you barely feel it, she saw the inner vanity of experiencing the uncritical dependence of someone profoundly ill who needs your help, whose very survival depends upon you. You have the power to ease immediate, terrible physical pain.

The needs of a wife are nothing like that. A close human bond demands a tolerance, an ability to adjust, to moderate one’s own actions and to accept criticism, even unreasonable behavior at times, to listen to all kinds of chatter and hear the real message behind the words. Above all, it needs the sharing of self, the dreams and the fears, the laughter and the pain. It means taking down the defenses, knowing that sooner or later you will be hurt. It means tempering ideals and acknowledging the vulnerable and flawed reality of human beings.

Perhaps, after all, Kristian was not capable of that, or simply not willing. She thought back to earlier in the year, to the men from America who had come to buy guns for the Civil War which was even now tearing that country apart. They had been idealists, and one at least had permitted the general passion to exclude the particular. Hester had told her of it in one of their many long hours together, of the slow realization, and the grief. It was a consuming thing, and allowed room for nothing and no one else. It sprang not from the justice of the cause but from the nature of the man. Was Kristian like that, too, a man who could love an idea but not a woman? It was possible.

And perhaps she herself had been guilty of falling in love with an ideal, not a real man, with his passions that were less bright, and his weaknesses?

Then it would not matter what Elissa was like, how brave and beautiful, how generous or how kind, or funny, or anything else. It could have been she who was trapped in the marriage, and sought her way out through the lunacy of gambling.

And all the thoughts filling her mind did not succeed in driving out the image of the other murdered woman, the artists’ model whose only sin had been seeing who had killed Elissa. No rationalization could excuse her death. The thought that Kristian might have killed her was intolerable, and she thrust it away, refusing even to allow the words into her mind.

There were things to be done. She closed the newspaper, ate the last of her toast and ignored the cold tea in her cup. Before the trial opened she had one visit to make which was going to require all her concentration and self-control. She had no status whatever in the matter. She was not a relative, employer or representative of anyone. To attend every day with no duty, no reason beyond friendship, and to be obliged to be nothing but a helpless onlooker would be excruciating. If she were there representing the hospital governors, who very naturally had a concern for Kristian as his employers, and for their own reputation because of that, then her presence was explained, even her intervention, if any opportunity presented itself.

To do this she must go and see Fermin Thorpe, and persuade him of the necessity. It was an interview she dreaded. She loathed the man, and now she had not her usual armor of assurance, or the indifference to what he thought which her social position normally provided. She needed something only he could grant her. How could she ask him for it while hiding her vulnerability so he did not sense it and take his chance to be revenged for years of imagined affront?

The longer she thought about it the more daunting it became. She had no time to waste, the trial would begin tomorrow. Better she go now, before too much imagination robbed her of what courage she had left.

She walked out of the dining room across the hall and went upstairs to prepare herself, collect her costume jacket and the right hat.

The journey out to Hampstead took her over an hour. Progress was sporadic because of the traffic and the drifting fog, and she had far too much time to think and play the scene in her mind a dozen times, none of them less than painful.

When she arrived at the hospital, she told her coachman to wait for her as she did not intend to remain, then was obliged to sit for nearly an hour while Fermin Thorpe interviewed a new young doctor with, apparently, a view to employing him. She kept her temper because she needed to. On another occasion, as a governor herself, she could simply have interrupted. Today she could not afford to antagonize him.

When Thorpe finally showed the young doctor out, smiling and sharing a joke, he turned to her with satisfaction shining in his face. He hated Kristian, because Kristian was a better doctor than he, and they both knew it. Kristian did not defer to him. If he thought differently-which he often did in moral and social matters-he said so, and Thorpe had lost the issue, for which, in his stiff, frightened mind, there was no forgiveness. Now he was on the brink of getting rid of Kristian forever, and the taste of victory was sweet on his lips. He was going to be proved right before the world in every bitter or critical thing he had ever said about Kristian, beyond even his most far-fetched dreams.

“Good morning, Lady Callandra,” he said cheerfully. He was almost friendly; he could afford to be. “A bit chilly this morning, but I hope you are well?”

She must playact as never before. “Very,” she said, forcing herself to smile. “The cold does not trouble me. I hope you are well also, Mr. Thorpe, in spite of the burden of responsibility upon you?”

“Oh, very well,” he said forcefully, opening his office door for her and standing aside for her to enter. “I believe we will rise above our temporary difficulties. Young Dr. Larkmont looks very promising. Good surgical experience, nice manner, keen.” He met her eyes boldly.

“Good,” she responded. “I am sure your judgment is excellent. It always has been. You have never allowed an incompetent man to practice here.”

“Ah. . well. .” He was not sure whether to mention Kristian or not, to argue with her and let himself down, or agree with her and box himself into a corner of approving Kristian, even implicitly. “Yes,” he finished. “My task. . my. .”

“Responsibility,” she finished for him. “The reputation of the Hampstead Hospital rests largely upon the excellence of our doctors.”

“Of course,” he agreed, moving around behind his desk and waiting until she had taken the seat opposite, then he sat down also. “And, of course, discipline and organization, and the highest moral standards.” He emphasized the word moral with a very slight smile.

She inclined her head, too angry for a moment to control her voice. She breathed in and out, telling herself that Kristian’s life might depend upon this. What was her pride worth? Nothing! Nothing at all. “Yes,” she agreed. “That is one of our highest assets. We must do everything we can to see that it is not taken from us. The damage that could do would be tragic, and perhaps irretrievable.” She saw the shadow in his eyes and felt a tiny lift of confidence. “It is our duty. . well, yours. I do not wish to presume, but I would offer all the assistance I can.”

Now he was confused, uncertain what she meant. “Thank you, but I am not at all sure what you could do. We are about to suffer a very serious blow, if Dr. Beck is found guilty, and it looks as if that is now inevitable.” He ironed out the satisfaction from his face and composed it into lines of suitable gravity. “Of course, we must hope it is not so. But if it is, Lady Callandra, for the sake of the hospital, which is our principal responsibility, regardless of our personal distress or the loyalties we would wish to honor, we must act wisely.”

The words nearly choked her, but she said them steadily, as if she meant it. “That is exactly my point, Mr. Thorpe. We must do all we can to preserve the reputation of the hospital, which, as you say, is more important than any of our individual likes or affections.” She did not say “dislikes,” still less “jealousies.” “We must be aware hour by hour of exactly what the evidence is, and do all we can to make sure we respond the best way possible-for our reputation’s sake.”

It was clear in his face that he did not know what she meant, and the possibility that he might make a wrong judgment made him distinctly uneasy. “Yes. . yes, of course we must be. . right,” he said awkwardly. “We would not wish to be misunderstood.”

She smiled at his puzzled expression as if he had been totally lucid. “I know how extremely busy you must be in these appalling circumstances, with decisions to make, more doctors to interview. Would you like me to attend the court on behalf of the Hospital Governors, and keep you informed?” She could feel her heart beating as the seconds passed while he weighed the repercussions of his answer. What did he want? What was safe? Could he trust her? The hospital’s reputation was inextricably bound with his own.

She dared not prompt him.

“Well. .” He breathed out slowly, staring at her, trying to gauge what she wanted and why.

“I would not speak on the hospital’s behalf, of course,” she said, hoping it was not too subservient. Would he suspect her meekness? “Except as you directed me. I think extreme discretion is the best role at the moment.” It was a promise she had no intention of keeping if Kristian’s freedom or his life hung in the balance. She gave the lie no thought now.

“Yes, I. . I think it would be wise for me to be as fully informed as possible,” he agreed cautiously. “If you would report to me, that would save me a great deal of time. Forewarned is forearmed. Thank you, Lady Callandra. Most dutiful of you.” He made as if to rise, in order to signify to her that the interview was over.

She stood up, taking the cue so that he did not appear to have hurried her, and she saw the flash of satisfaction in his face. In every other circumstance she would have sat down again simply to annoy him. Now she was eager to escape while she still had what she wanted. “Then I shall not take up more of your time, Mr. Thorpe,” she said. “Good day.” She went out without looking back. If she were too civil it would cause him to think the matter over, and perhaps change his mind.

She was not certain whether she wished to go to the trial with Hester or alone. She did not consider her emotions to be transparent generally, but she did not delude herself that Hester would be unaware of the turmoil inside her. Still, it might be too hard to find an excuse not to go together. And whether she wished it or not, they might need each other deeply before it was over.

She and Hester were in court side by side when the trial opened and the two protagonists faced each other. Pendreigh was magnificent merely in his presence, even before he needed to speak. He was a most striking figure with his height and his elegance of movement. His mane of shining hair was largely concealed by his wig, but the light still caught the golden edges of it. To those who knew he was the victim’s father, and thus the father-in-law of the accused, his presence was like the charge of electricity in the air before a storm.

Up in the dock, which was set at a height and quite separate from the body of the court, Kristian was white-faced, his eyes hollow, looking dark and very un-English. Would that tell against him? She looked again at the jury. To a man they were concentrating on the counsel for the prosecution, a diminutive man with a quite ordinary face of intense sincerity. When he spoke briefly his voice was gentle, well-modulated, the kind that almost immediately sounds familiar, as if you must know him but simply have forgotten where and how.

The indictment was read. Callandra had been to trials before, but there was a reality about this one that was almost physical in its impact. When she heard the word murder, not once but twice, she could feel the sweat break out on her body, and the packed room seemed to swim in her vision as if she were going to faint. Dimly, she felt Hester’s fingers grasp her arm and the strength of it steadied her.

The witnesses were brought on one by one, starting with the police constable who had first found the bodies. The shock and sense of tragedy were still clear in him, and Callandra could feel the response to it in the room.

There was nothing Pendreigh or anyone else could have done to alter either the facts or the compassion. At least he was wise enough not to try.

The constable was followed by Runcorn, looking unhappy but perfectly certain of himself, and suitably respectful both of the court and of the subjects of passion and death. Callandra was startled at the anger in him when he spoke of Sarah Mackeson, as if in some way he did not understand himself and it outraged him. There was a gulf of every kind of difference between her and this relatively uneducated, certainly unpolished, policeman with his prejudices and ambitions. He had been an enemy to Monk all the time she had known him, and long before that, and she thought him pompous, self-absorbed and thoroughly tiresome.

And yet looking at him now, she could see that his anger was honest, and cleaner than any of the ritual words of the legal procedure being played out. He would have hated anyone to know it, but he cared.

The jury heard it, and Callandra saw with cold fear how an answering anger was born in them. Because Sarah was real to Runcorn, with a life that mattered, she became more real to them also, and their determination to punish someone for her death the greater.

She knew it would go on like this, day after day. For all his sharpness of intellect, the legion of words at his command, and his understanding of the law, there was nothing Fuller Pendreigh could do against the facts which would be displayed one by one. Where was Monk? What had he learned in Vienna? There must be some other explanation, and please heaven he would find it. Please heaven it would be soon enough.

She sat sick and shivering as the trial went on around her as relentlessly as if it were a play being acted from a script already written and there was no avoiding the climax at the end, or the tragedy.

Monk went to see Father Geissner in his home as Magda Beck had suggested. The first time, the housekeeper told him that the Father was occupied, but he made an appointment for the following day. Fretting at the time lost, he spent the remaining hours of daylight wandering around the city looking at the areas which had featured most heavily in the uprising, trying to picture it in his mind, event by event, as he had been told it.

Nothing in the calm, prosperous streets told him that the cafes and shops, the comfortable houses, had witnessed desperation and violence, nor was there anything reflected in the faces of people hurrying about their business, buying and selling, gossiping, calling out greetings in the sharp, cold air.

In the evening, Monk did as everyone had been so keen to suggest to him, and went to hear the young Johann Strauss conduct his orchestra. The gay, lyrical music had caught Europe by storm, delighting even the rather staid and unimaginative Queen Victoria, and set all London dancing the waltz.

Here in its own city it had a magic, a laughter and a speed that forgot politics, the cold wind across Hungary from the east beyond, or the losses and mistakes of the past. For three hours Monk saw the heart of Vienna, and past and future were of no importance, swallowed in the delight of the moment. He would never again hear three-quarter time without a lurch of memory and a sweetness.

He returned to his hotel long after midnight, and at ten o’clock the next morning, after an excellent cup of coffee, he set out to keep his appointment with Father Geissner.

This time he was shown in immediately, and the housekeeper left them alone.

Father Geissner was a quiet, elderly man with an ascetic face, which was almost beautiful in its inner peace.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Monk?” he asked in excellent English, inviting him with a wave of his hand to be seated.

Monk had already considered any possible advantage it might give him to approach the subject obliquely, and had discarded it as more likely to lose him the priest’s trust if he were discovered. This man spent his professional life listening to people’s secrets. Like Monk, he must have learned to tell truth from lies and to understand the reasons why people concealed their acts and often their motives. “You were recommended to me by Frau Magda Beck,” Monk answered, barely glancing around the comfortable, book-lined office where he had been received. “She told me that you knew her brother-in-law, Kristian Beck, when he lived here, especially during the uprising in ’48.”

“I did,” Geissner agreed, but his expression was guarded, even though he looked directly at Monk and his blue eyes were candid. “Why is that of interest to you?”

“Because Elissa Beck has been murdered in London, where they lived, and Kristian has been charged with the crime.” He ignored the startled look in Geissner’s face. “He is a friend of my wife, who is a nurse.” Then he added quickly, “She was in the Crimea with Miss Nightingale,” in case Geissner’s opinion of nurses was founded upon the general perception of them as domestic servants whose moral character precluded their obtaining an ordinary domestic position. “And he is also a friend of Lady Callandra Daviot, whom I have known for many years. We all feel that there is another explanation for what happened, and I have come to Vienna to see if it may lie in the past.”

A brief flash of pity crossed Geissner’s face, but there was no way to tell whether it was for Elissa because she was dead, Kristian for his present situation, or even for Monk because he had set out on a task in which he could not succeed.

“I used to be in the police force,” Monk explained, then realized instantly that that also might be little recommendation. “Now I investigate matters privately, for people who have problems beyond the police’s interest or on which they have given up.”

Geissner raised white eyebrows. “Or have an answer which they find unacceptable?”

“They might be forced to accept it,” Monk said carefully, watching Geissner’s face and seeing no reaction. “But not easily, not as long as there is any possibility at all of a different one. Those who know Dr. Beck now cannot believe he would do such a thing. He is a man of remarkable self-discipline, dedication and compassion.”

“That sounds like the man I knew,” Geissner agreed with a faint smile which looked to be more sorrow than any reluctance to feel admiration.

Monk struggled to read his emotions, and knew he failed. There was a world of knowledge behind his words, far more subtle than merely the passage of events.

“Did you know Max Niemann also?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“And Elissa von Leibnitz?”

“Naturally.” Was that a shadow in his voice or not? The priest was too used to hiding his feelings, keeping the perfect mask over his response to all manner of human passions and failings.

“And Hanna Jakob?” Monk persisted.

At last there was a change in Geissner’s eyes, in his mouth. It was slight, but an unmistakable sadness that also held regret, even guilt. Was it because she was dead, or more than that?

“How did she die?” Monk asked, expecting Geissner to tell him it could not have any connection with Elissa’s murder. But there was the slightest tightening in the muscles of his neck, a hesitation.

“It was during the uprising,” he answered. “But I imagine you know that already. Both she and Elissa were remarkably brave. I suppose Elissa was the more obvious heroine. She was the one who risked her life over and over again, first exhorting people to have the courage to fight for what they believed in, then going to the authorities quite openly, pleading for reform, for any yielding of the restrictions. Finally, when real violence erupted, she stood at the barricades like any of the men. In fact, she was frequently at the front, as if she felt no fear. She was far from being a stupid woman; she must have been aware of the dangers as well as anyone.”

He smiled, and there was a terrible sadness in him. When he spoke his voice was rough-edged, as if the pain still tore at him. “I remember once when a young man fell before the rifle fire, far out in front of the piled-up wagons, chairs and boxes that had been set across the street. It was Elissa who called out for them to climb to the top and hold the soldiers at bay while she ran out to try to save him, pull him back to where they could treat his wounds. The army were advancing towards them, about twenty hussars with rifles at the ready, even though they were reluctant to slaughter their own people.” He shrugged very slightly. “Of course, the army lived in barracks, and didn’t even know their neighbors. But it is still different from attacking foreigners who speak another language and are soldiers like yourself.”

Monk wondered for an instant, a flash there and then gone again, how many times Geissner had heard the confessions of soldiers, perhaps trying to justify to themselves the unarmed civilians they had shot, trying to live with the nightmares, make sense of duty and guilt. But he had no time to spare for that now. He needed to understand Kristian, and to know if he could have killed Elissa-or if Max Niemann could have. “Yes?” he said sharply.

Geissner smiled. “Kristian went to the top of the barricade and fired at the advancing soldiers,” he answered.

Monk was surprised, and perhaps saddened. “He didn’t try to stop Elissa from going?”

Geissner was watching him closely. “You don’t understand, Mr. Monk. It was a great cause. Austria labored under a highly repressive regime. For thirteen years before we had been effectively ruled by the aging Prince Metternich. He was conservative, reactionary, and used the vast civil service to stifle all reform. Intellectual life was suffocated by the secret police and their informers. Censorship stifled art and ideas. There was much to fight for.”

He sighed. “But as you know, the uprising was crushed, and most of our burden was left still upon us. But then we had hope. Kristian was the leader of his group. Personal feelings of love or tenderness had no place. Where is an army’s discipline if each man will make special allowances for a friend or a lover? It is dishonorable, but above all it is ineffective. How could anyone trust you, or believe that you, too, set the cause above life or safety? Kristian did as he should have done. So far as I know, he never failed to, even afterwards.” There was a catch in his voice, and again the moment of darkness in his eyes.

“Afterwards?” Monk said quickly, trying to retrieve and catch the nuance of something more.

Geissner took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “After Hanna’s death,” he said softly.

“Why do you say that? Did something change?” Monk’s voice fell into a charged silence.

“Yes.” Geissner did not look at him. “Something changed, one way or another, but. . but I can tell you little of it. They all made their confessions, as good Catholics, but some troubles were spoken of, others lay deeper than words, I think deeper than their own understanding. Knowledge of such things sometimes comes slowly, if at all.”

Monk strained to keep his manner calm and the first leap of real hope from betraying him, and perhaps breaking the priest’s train of recollection. “What things?” he said gently.

“Regret for what was not done, for perceptions too late,” Geissner replied. “For seeing something ugly in others, and realizing that perhaps it was in yourself also.”

Monk felt warning like a prickling on the skin. He must speak slowly, indirectly. This man held confidences dearer than life. Even to ask that he break one would be an insult which would slash the understanding between them as with a sword.

“How did she die?” Monk asked instead.

Geissner looked up at him. “As well as fighting on the barricades, she was the one who took messages to other groups in different parts of the city. It was difficult, and became more and more dangerous. I don’t know if she was afraid. Naturally, I didn’t know her as I did the others. They were all Catholic, and she was Jewish.”

“Are there many Jews in Vienna?”

“Oh, yes. We have had Jews here for about a thousand years, but we have tolerated them only when it suited us. Twice we have driven them all out and confiscated their goods and property, of course, and burned at the stake those who remained. Although that is several hundred years ago now. We let them back in again when we needed their financial skills. Many of them have changed their names to make them sound more Christian, and hidden their faith. Some have even become Catholic, in self-defense.”

Monk searched Geissner’s face but could see nothing in it to betray his feelings, either about someone who denied his faith and converted to that of his persecutors, leaving his roots and his heritage behind, or about the society which drove him to do it in order to survive. Did Father Geissner feel any guilt in that? Or was his own faith such that it held every means acceptable to bring more people to what was for him the truth? Monk found the thought repellent. But then he was not Catholic, at least not as far as he knew. In fact, he was not anything at all. But was there any truth he felt so passionately-a truth of mind, an honor, courage, pity or any other virtue-that he strove to share it with others, to preserve and pass it on at any cost to himself? Shouldn’t there be? If he had any beliefs at all, were they not to be shared, strengthened, widened with all men?

Why was this occurring to him only now? He should surely have been conscious of the gap in his life, in his thought, where some kind of faith should have been.

He forced his mind from himself back to the present, and the need for justice. “How did Hanna Jakob die?” he said again.

If Geissner sensed the anger or the urgency in him there was nothing in his face to show it. “She was carrying a message of warning,” he replied. “She was captured by the army and tortured to tell them where part of Kristian’s group was and what they were planning. She would not reveal it, and she was killed.”

“Was she betrayed?” Monk asked harshly. He wanted both the possible answers, and neither. If she had been, it might somehow explain Elissa’s murder, and yet it would be so repellent, so hideous a sin in his mind, that for Hanna’s sake, he could hardly bear it. And even more for the sake of whoever had done it. Surely the brave, idealistic Elissa could not have soiled herself with such an act of jealousy?

“You know I cannot answer you with what I know from the confessional, Herr Monk,” Geissner said softly. “All that Hanna did was always a risk. She knew it, but she still went.”

“They still sent her!” Monk challenged, his voice catching in his throat. He had expected Geissner to deny even the possibility of betrayal, firmly and with anger, and he had not. That was almost a confirmation in itself. Suddenly he was cold, shivery, sick inside.

“Yes.” Geissner went on, breathing softly, his eyes down, away from Monk’s. “It was important, and she was the best at finding her way through the back streets, especially of Leopoldstadt, the old Jewish quarter. Had she been able to get through and warn the others, she believed it would have saved their lives. . at least until next time.”

“Believed?” Monk seized on the word. “Was it not true?”

“Someone else warned them also.” The answer was so quiet Monk barely caught it.

“So her death was unnecessary!” Monk found his fury choking him so he could not speak the sentence clearly.

Geissner looked up, his eyes pleading not to be asked, and yet to be understood, so Monk might share with him a terrible truth without his betraying anyone by speaking it aloud.

Monk stumbled towards it in growing horror. “She was in love with Kristian?” he said, repeating what Magda Beck had told him.

“Yes.” Geissner said only the one word.

“And could he have felt more deeply for her than only friendship and loyalty?” Monk asked him.

“He did not say so to me,” Geissner replied, gazing at Monk steadily.

Was that a deliberate omission, to imply that it had been so? For a long moment Monk allowed the silence to remain, and Geissner did not interrupt it. The certainty settled with Monk, heavy as stone.

“Did Elissa believe that he did?” Monk asked finally.

“Mr. Monk, you are asking questions I cannot answer.”

Why? Because he did not know, or because the confessional bound him? He had very carefully refrained from saying that he did not know. Or was that his way with English? Monk studied his face and saw pain in it, pity, and silence. What could he ask that Geissner could answer?

“You were there yourself?” he said. “With them at the barricades, and in the times before. . and after?”

Geissner smiled, a wry twitch of the lips. “Yes, Mr. Monk, I was. Being a priest does not prevent me from believing in the greater freedom of my people. I did not hold a gun, but I carried messages, tried to argue and persuade, and I tended the troubled and the injured, and heard confession from those who had done physical harm to others in the cause they believed in.”

“And those who from their own passions had done things, or omitted them, which gravely harmed others?” Monk urged, this time directly looking into Geissner’s eyes.

“I know what you are asking me, Herr Monk,” Geissner said very quietly. “And you know that my oath as a priest prevents me from answering you. I would give a great deal to be able to help you learn the truth as to what happened to Elissa von Leibnitz. I grieve for her, for the bright flame that has been quenched. I grieve still more for Kristian. As I knew him, he was a man of remarkable inner courage, an honesty to look at himself and measure his failings against his dreams. He did not run away from truth, even when it hurt him profoundly.”

“You are speaking of Hanna’s death?” Monk said quickly.

Geissner blinked and drew in his breath slowly. “Do not misunderstand me, I am speaking of the regret he felt afterwards, the self-doubt he suffered because they had chosen Hanna for the errand. He came to believe that they had done so because she was Jewish, and therefore, in some way deeper than conscious thought, not entirely one of them. I don’t know if that was true, but he feared it was, and he was horrified with himself for it.”

“And the others? Elissa? Max?”

He shook his head. Fractionally. “No. That was the beginning of a subtle difference between them, a divergence of inner paths, but not outer. Kristian married Elissa. Max Niemann remained his friend. I think Kristian only ever spoke of it to me. I tell you because it reflects on the kind of man he was, and I believe will always be. It was that core of strength in him that Elissa saw, and loved.”

“And Hanna?” Monk asked. He was not certain how far he could push Geissner, but he could not leave it as it was. He was almost certain that Elissa had betrayed Hanna, but almost was not enough. “Was that what she loved in him, too, and trusted?”

Something shivered inside Geissner. “She was not my parishioner, Herr Monk. She did not confide such things in me.”

Monk chose his words very carefully. “Father, if someone had betrayed Hanna Jakob to the authorities, would they have expected that she would be tortured to death and yet keep silent? That seems a very terrible thing. Is there any alternative, other than that the people whose whereabouts she kept secret would have been killed?”

Geissner was silent for so long Monk thought he was not going to reply, then at last he spoke. “I think it would be possible that they had made provision that the people concerned were warned, and were safe, so that if Hanna should break, to save herself, she would not, in fact, have betrayed anyone, except in her own mind.” He bit his lip, as if the cruelty of it only just came fully to him as he spoke the words aloud and heard them. “It was a time of great passions, Herr Monk. Perhaps we should not judge people for acts committed then by the calmer and colder light of today, when we sit here comfortably talking together of things we know only partially.”

“And you cannot tell me if this thing even happened. Does anyone else know of it? Max Niemann, for example? Or Kristian himself?”

“No. There is no one you can ask, because no one else knows of it, and I cannot speak of it any further. I am sorry.” He lifted his chin a little. “But if you imagine it has to do with Elissa’s death, I believe you are wrong. I alone know what happened, and I have told no one.” A little smile touched his lips. “Nor does anyone else ever come to me with guesses, such as you have.”

Monk waited.

Geissner leaned forward a little. “Kristian’s guilt was for himself. He did not hold anyone else responsible. He understood not only what he had done in sending Hanna, but why. They did not. The difference was one of understanding, and he did not expect it of Elissa or of Max.” He looked at Monk with intensity. “One does not have to imagine people perfect in order to love them, Mr. Monk. Love acknowledges faults, weaknesses, even the need now and again for forgiveness where there is no repentance and no understanding of fault. We learn at different speeds. Elissa had many strengths, many virtues, and she was unflinchingly brave. I think she was the bravest woman I ever knew. I am truly sorry she is dead, but I cannot believe Kristian killed her, unless he has changed beyond all recognition from the man I knew.”

“I think he has,” Monk said slowly. “But to someone even less likely to have killed anyone at all. . even a soldier of the Hapsburg army.”

“That does not surprise me.”

“What about Max Niemann?”

“Max? He was in love with Elissa. I am not telling you anything that is a confidence. It was no secret then, or now. He never married. I think no one could take her place in his mind. No other woman could be as brave, as beautiful, or as passionate in her ideals. She was so intensely alive that beside her anyone else would seem gray.”

“Did Hanna Jakob have family?”

Geissner looked surprised. “You think one of them might have traveled to London after all these years and exacted some kind of revenge?”

“I’m looking for anything,” Monk admitted.

“Her parents still live here, in Leopoldstadt. On Heinestrasse, I believe. You could ask.”

“Thank you.” Monk rose to his feet. “Thank you for your frankness, Father Geissner.”

Geissner stood also. “If there is anything I can do to help Kristian, please let me know. I shall pray for him, and say a mass for Elissa’s soul, and her abiding peace at last. There will be many who revere her memory and would wish to come. Godspeed to you, Herr Monk.”

Monk went out into the street, deep in troubled and painful thought.

In London, the trial of Kristian Beck continued, each day seeming worse than the last, and more damning. Mills was spending less time with his witnesses for the prosecution, sensing that Pendreigh was desperate to stretch out the evidence.

Sitting in the seats reserved for the general public, not daring to look at Callandra in case she should read her growing sense of despair, Hester tried to tell herself that that was ridiculous. Mills could not know that Monk was in Vienna. He was amply experienced and intelligent enough to have read the signs that the defense had no case, no disproof, not even a serious doubt to raise that any jury would be obliged to consider. One did not need any more than observation of human nature to know that; an eye to see Pendreigh’s face, the concentration, the slightly exaggerated gestures as he strove to keep the jury’s attention, the increasing sharpness in his voice as his questions grew longer and more abstruse.

Mills had already called all the police and medical evidence, and Pendreigh had argued anything that was even remotely debatable, and several things that were not. Mills had called witnesses who said that Kristian had originally told the police he had been with patients at the time that Elissa and Sarah had been killed, then more witnesses to prove that he had lied.

Pendreigh had tried to show that it was an error, the mistake of a man hurrying from one sick person to another, preoccupied with suffering and the need to alleviate it.

Hester had looked at the faces of the jurors. For a moment she convinced herself she saw genuine doubt. She looked up to Kristian. He was so pale he appeared ghostly. Even the full curve of his cheek, the sensuous line of his lips, could not give his face life. He may have known that what Pendreigh said was true, but there was no hope in his eyes that the jury would believe it.

She could not look at Callandra. Perhaps it was cowardly of her, possibly it was a discretion not to intrude on what must be a double agony. No matter what courage she had, she could not deny the possibility-the probability-that Kristian would be found guilty, unless Monk returned with a miracle. Did she also now begin to wonder in her shivering, darkest fears if perhaps he was? Who could say what emotions had filled Kristian when he was faced with ruin, not only personally, but of all the good he could do for those who suffered poverty and disease, pain, loneliness and bereavement? He had done so much, and it would all come to an end if he were ruined by debt.

Of course, killing Elissa was no sensible solution. He could not ever, in a sane, rational moment, have thought it was. But in the heat of desperation, knowing what she was doing, perhaps being told of a new and even more crippling loss, that the gamblers were after her and perhaps even the house would have to go, maybe he had finally lost control, and his violent, revolutionary past had swept back to him. One quick grasp, a twist of the arms, and her neck was broken.

And then Sarah the same?

No! Nothing made that understandable. She shivered convulsively, even though in the press of bodies the courtroom was warm. Kristian could surely never have done that!

Pendreigh’s voice filled her ears as he called yet another witness as to Kristian’s character, and the jury were already bored. They knew he was a good doctor. They had heard a dozen witnesses say so, and they had believed them. It was irrelevant. The defense was fumbling, and they saw it. It was in the air like the echo of a sound just died away.

Hester sat through day after day longing for Monk to return, wondering what he was doing, even if he was safe. She tried to imagine where he was, what kind of rooms he had, if he was well cared for, if he was cold or ill-fed, if Callandra had given him sufficient money. It was all only a way of avoiding thinking about the real issue: what he was learning about Kristian. Even the loneliness of missing him with an almost physical pain was better than the fear and the bitter disillusion, the inability to offer any help at all.

She tried not to turn and stare up at the dock, and felt intrusive. What would Kristian see in her face if he looked? Doubt. Fear for him, and for Callandra. She was terrified of the hurt Callandra would feel if he were found guilty. Would she go on believing in his innocence, make herself believe it no matter what happened? Or would she finally yield and accept that he could have been guilty, with all the terrible shattering of faith that that would bring?

Then would she ever be the same again? Or would something inside her be broken, some hope, an ability to trust not only people, but life itself?

Hester sat on the hard seat, pressed in on either side by the curious and critical, aware of their breathing, of their slight movement, the creak of corsets and faint rustle of fabric, the smell of damp wool and the sweat of tension and excitement.

She looked across at Callandra and saw the exhaustion in her face. Her skin was papery and without any color, gray, almost as if it were dirty. The lines between nose and mouth were deeply etched. As almost always, her hair was escaping its pins. She looked every day of her years.

Hester ached to be able to comfort her, to offer anything at all that would help, but there was nothing. She knew the bruising and terrible pain she had felt when she believed it could have been Charles. She was almost ashamed of her relief to know that it was not, no matter how humiliating the truth. Platitudes would only make it seem that she did not understand, and it was not the time to reach out and touch, even take a hand. She thought about it, and once she moved as if to lean across, then changed her mind. What might be read into it that she did not mean? Hope, a false importance to what was being said at that instant, even a despair she did not intend.

Pendreigh was still calling character witnesses, but he was now reduced to Fermin Thorpe. They had debated whether to call him or not. He hated Kristian, but he would occupy time, which was now their only hope. He loved to talk, reveling in the sound of his own voice. He was a conserver, frightened of change, frightened of losing his power and position. Kristian was an innovator who challenged him, questioned things, jeopardized his authority. There had been particular instances, not long enough ago to forget, when Thorpe had lost. The memory and the resentment were there in his face as he took the stand. Pendreigh had known it; both Hester and Callandra had made certain he had no illusions. They had even told him the story in detail. But the only alternative was to end the defense with Monk still not here, and that they could not do.

So, Fermin Thorpe stood in the high witness box, smiling, a tight, narrow little grimace, staring down at Pendreigh in the middle of the floor, and the judge and jury waited for them to begin; impatiently, it was time-wasting.

Pendreigh smiled. He understood vanity and he knew his own power.

“Mr. Thorpe,” he said cautiously. “So the court can understand the value of your testimony, the years of experience you have had upon which to base any judgment, both of men and of medicine, perhaps you would tell me the details of your career?”

There was a sigh of impatience from the judge, and Mills half rose to his feet, but it would be pointless to object, and he knew it. Pendreigh had every right to establish his witness, to give every ounce of weight to his testimony that he could.

Thorpe was grateful. It showed in the easing of his body, the way he relaxed his shoulders and began to speak, at some length, of his achievements.

Pendreigh nodded without once interrupting him or hastening him on. Finally, when they came to the point of his offering an opinion on Kristian’s character, Hester found herself aching with the tension in her body. Her shoulders were stiff, her hands knotted so tightly her nails hurt her palms. There had been no alternative, but still she was sick with fear. This was Thorpe’s chance to savor revenge. Had Pendreigh the skill to control him? She dared not look at Callandra.

“So you have worked with many physicians and surgeons and had the responsibility for their behavior, their skill, ultimately even their employment by the hospital?” Pendreigh said graciously.

“Yes. Yes, I have,” Thorpe answered with satisfaction. “I suppose you could say that in the end it was all my responsibility.”

“An extraordinary burden for one man,” Pendreigh agreed deferentially. “And yet you never flinched from it.”

Mills stood up. “My lord, I think we are all agreed that Mr. Thorpe has a great responsibility, and that he has discharged it with skill and conscience. I feel we are now wasting the court’s time by going over that which is already established.”

“I have to agree, Mr. Pendreigh,” the judge said a trifle sharply. “Please ask your questions regarding Mr. Thorpe’s estimate of Dr. Beck’s character, not his medical skills. We have no doubt of them. You have given them to us abundantly over the last few days.” His impatience and lack of sympathy were only too apparent.

“Yes, my lord, of course,” Pendreigh conceded. He turned to Thorpe. “You have always selected your staff with the utmost care, not only for their medical skill but for their moral character as well, as is your charge. May the court assume that in keeping Dr. Beck you did not alter those high standards, or make any exception?”

Thorpe was caught. He had been planning to damn Kristian, to taste a very public revenge for past defeats, but he could not do so now without ruining himself. The anger of it, the momentary indecision even at this date, as he saw his victory sliding away, was all so clear in his face Hester could have spoken his thoughts aloud for him.

“Mr. Thorpe?” Pendreigh frowned. “It is surely an easy question. Did you maintain the same high standards as you always have in keeping Dr. Beck in your employ and allowing him to operate on the sick and vulnerable men and women who came to your hospital for help. . or did you, for some personal reason, allow a man you did not trust to keep such a position?”

“No! Of course I didn’t!” Thorpe said, then instantly realized he had been forced into committing himself. He flushed dark red.

“Thank you,” Pendreigh accepted, moving backwards and indicating that Mills might now question the witness.

Mills stood up, dapper and confident. He opened his mouth to speak to Thorpe.

Hester froze. Thorpe was bursting to undo what he had said, his eyes pleading with Mills somehow to create the chance for him.

The entire room was silent. If only it mattered as much as it seemed to. Whatever Thorpe said would make little real difference. It was emotional; the facts were not touched.

“Mr. Thorpe,” Mills began.

“Yes?” Thorpe leaned a little forward over the rail of the witness box, staring down at Mills below him.

“Thank you for sparing us your time,” Mills said flatly. “I don’t think I can ask you to add to what you have said. Your loyalty does you credit.”

It was sarcastic. It was also a tactical error.

“It is not loyalty!” Thorpe said furiously. “I loathe the man! But personal feelings did not alter my judgment that he is an excellent and dedicated surgeon, and a man of high moral character. Otherwise I would not have kept him in the hospital.” He did not have to add that if he could have found an excuse to dismiss him he would have taken it; it was only too unpleasantly evident in his furious bright eyes and snarling mouth.

“Thank you,” Mills murmured, returning to his seat. “I have no further questions, my lord.”