A Breach of Promise (23 page)

R
ATHBONE WENT INTO COURT
on Monday morning with not a scrap more evidence than he had possessed on the previous Friday afternoon. He had spoken with Monk and listened to all he could tell him, but it offered nothing he could use. Thinking of it now, he had given Monk an impossible task. It was foolish of him to have allowed himself to hope, but sitting at his table in the half-empty courtroom, he realized that he had.

The gallery was filling only slowly. People were not interested. They had no feeling that the case was anything but the rather shabby emotional tragedy Sacheverall had made it seem and, to be frank, Rathbone had been unable to disprove. If Melville were hiding any excuse, no whisper of it showed.

Rathbone looked sideways at him now. He was sitting hunched forward like a man expecting a blow and without defense against it. There seemed no willingness to fight in him, no anger, even no spirit. Rathbone had seldom had a client who frustrated him so profoundly. Even Zorah Rostova, equally determined to pursue a seemingly suicidal case, had had a passionate conviction that she was right and all the courage in the world to battle her cause.

“Melville!” Rathbone said sharply, leaning forward to be closer to him.

Melville turned. His face was very pale, his eyes almost aquamarine colored. He had a poet’s features, handsome yet delicate; the fire of genius in him was visible even in these
miserable circumstances, a quality of intelligence, a light inside him.

“For God’s sake,” Rathbone urged, “tell me if you know something about Zillah Lambert! I won’t use it in open court, but I can make Sacheverall speak to his client, and they might withdraw. Is it something you know and her father doesn’t? Are you protecting her?”

Melville smiled, and there was a spark of laughter far behind the brilliance of his eyes. “No.”

“If she’s worth ruining yourself over, then she won’t let you do this,” Rathbone went on, leaning a little closer to him. “As things are, you can’t win!” He put his hand on Melville’s arm and felt him flinch. “You can’t avoid reality much longer. Today, or tomorrow at the latest, Sacheverall will conclude his case, and I have nothing to fight him with. Just give me the truth! Trust me!”

Melville smiled, his shoulders sagging, his voice low. “There is nothing to tell you. I appear to have given you an impossible case. I’m sorry.”

He got no further because Sacheverall came across the floor, looking at them with a faint curl to his lips, his head high, a swagger in his walk. He was even more satisfied with himself than he had been when they adjourned. He sat down in his chair, and the moment after the clerk called the court to order. It was still half empty.

McKeever took his place.

“Mr. Sacheverall?” he enquired. His face was almost devoid of expression, his mild blue eyes curious and innocent. If he had come to any conclusions himself he did not betray them in his manner.

Sacheverall rose to his feet. He was smiling. There was satisfaction in every inch of him. Even his floppy hair and protruding ears seemed cavalier, a mark of individuality rather than blemishes.

“I call Isaac Wolff,” he said distinctly. He half turned towards Melville, then resisted the temptation. It was a sign of how sure he was of himself. Rathbone recognized it.

“Who is Wolff?” he said under his breath to Melville.

“A friend,” Melville replied without turning his head.

“Of whose? Yours or Lambert’s?”

“Mine. Lambert has never met him, so far as I know.” His voice was so soft Rathbone had to strain to hear it.

“Then why is Sacheverall calling him?” Rathbone demanded. Sacheverall was not bluffing. He showed that in every inch of his stance, his broad shoulders, the angle of his head, the ease in him.

“I don’t know,” Melville answered, lifting his eyes a little to watch as a tall man with saturnine features walked across the open space of the floor and climbed the steps of the witness-box. He faced the court, staring at Sacheverall. His eyes seemed black under his level brows, and his thick hair, falling sideways over one temple, was as dense as coal. It was a passionate, compelling face, and he stared at Sacheverall with guarded dislike. No one could mistake that he was there against his will.

“Mr. Wolff,” Sacheverall began, relishing the moment, “are you acquainted with Mr. Killian Melville, the defendant in this case?”

“Yes.”

Rathbone looked across at the jury to see their reaction. There was a stirring of interest, no more. They were inexperienced in courtroom tactics. They did not understand Sacheverall’s confidence and were only half convinced of it.

“Well acquainted, sir?” Sacheverall’s voice was gentle and he smiled as he spoke.

A flicker of annoyance crossed Wolff’s eyes and mouth but he did not allow it into his words.

“I have known him for some time. I do not know how you wish me to measure acquaintance.”

Sacheverall held up his hand in a broad gesture. “Oh! But you will, Mr. Wolff, you will. It is precisely the point I am coming to. Give me leave to do it in my own way. How did you meet Mr. Melville?”

The judge glanced towards Rathbone, half inviting him
to object that the question was irrelevant. Rathbone knew there was no point in doing so. To challenge would only show Rathbone’s desperation. He shook his head momentarily and McKeever looked away again.

“Mr. Wolff?” Sacheverall prompted. “Surely you recall?”

Wolff smiled, showing his teeth. “It was some years ago, about twelve. I’m not sure that I do.”

It was not the answer Sacheverall had wished. Rathbone could tell that from the sharp way he moved his arm back. But he had opened the way for it himself.

“Was it a social occasion, Mr. Wolff, or a professional one?”

“Social.”

“You have recalled it, then?”

“No. We have no professional concerns in common.”

Rathbone rose to his feet, more as a matter of form than because he thought it would actually affect Sacheverall’s case. The tension was becoming palpable. Beside him at the table, Melville was rigid.

“My lord …”

“Yes, yes,” McKeever agreed. “Mr. Sacheverall, if you have a point to this, please come to it. Mr. Wolff has conceded that he is acquainted with Mr. Melville. If there is something in that which bears upon his promise to marry Miss Lambert, then proceed to it.”

“Oh, a great deal, my lord,” Sacheverall said impassively. “I regret to say.” He swung around to face the witness-box. “Are you married, Mr. Wolff?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been?”

“No.”

McKeever frowned. “Mr. Sacheverall, I find it hard to believe that this is indeed your point.”

“Oh, it is, my lord,” Sacheverall answered him. “I am about to make it.” And disregarding McKeever, he swung back to Wolff, on the stand. “You live alone, Mr. Wolff, but you are not a recluse. In fact, you have a close and enduring friendship, have you not … with Mr. Killian Melville?”

Wolff stared back at him unflinchingly, but his face was set, his eyes hard.

“I regard Mr. Melville as a good friend. I have done for some time.”

Rathbone knew what Sacheverall was going to say next, but there was no way in which he could prevent it. Any protest now would make it worse, as if he had known it himself and therefore it must be true. He felt hollow inside, a strange mixture of hot and cold.

“Is that all, Mr. Wolff?” Sacheverall raised his eyebrows very high. “Would you not say an intimate friend, with all the subtle and varied meanings that word can carry? I use it advisedly.”

There was a hiss of indrawn breath in the gallery. One of the jurors put his hand to his mouth, another shook his head, his lips compressed into a thin line. A third was pale with anger.

McKeever cleared his throat but said nothing.

Rathbone looked at Melville. His eyes were hot with misery and his fair skin was flushed. He was staring straight ahead. He refused absolutely to look back at Rathbone.

“You may use what word you like, sir,” Wolff replied steadily, his voice thick. “If your implication is that my relationship with Killian Melville is of an unnatural kind, then you are mistaken.” There was a rush of sound in the gallery, exclamations, sudden movement, a cry of disgust. A journalist broke a pencil and swore. “The acts lie in your imagination, and nowhere else,” Wolff continued more loudly to be heard. “I am under oath, and I swear to that. I have never had an intimate relationship with another man in my life, nor can I imagine such a thing.” This time the noise was louder, sharper voices. Someone shouted an accusation, another an obscenity.

McKeever banged his gavel angrily, commanding silence.

“I do not expect you to admit it, Mr. Wolff.” Sacheverall did not appear disconcerted. He gave a very slight shrug as he walked a few paces away and then swiveled on his heel and suddenly raised his voice accusingly. “But I shall call witnesses, Mr. Wolff! Is that what you want, sir? Never doubt I
will, if you force me to! Admit your relationship with Killian Melville, and advise him, as your friend, your lover, to yield in this case.” He said the word
lover
with infinite disgust, his lips curled. “Stop defending the indefensible! Do not put it to the test, sir, because I warn you, I shall win!”

Melville sat as if frozen. His face was ashen white and the freckles stood out like dark splashes. He did not take his eyes from Wolff, and the pain in him was so powerful Rathbone could all but feel it himself. He was unaware for seconds that his own hands were clenched till his nails gouged circles in his palms.

The courtroom prickled with silence.

Isaac Wolff stood perfectly motionless. His look towards Sacheverall was scorching with contempt. A man less arrogant would have withered under it, would have faltered in self-doubt, instead of smiling.

“If it is your intention to attempt to blacken my name, or anyone else’s, through calling people up to this stand to say whatever it is they wish, then you will have to do so,” Wolff said very carefully, speaking slowly, as if he had difficulty forming the words and keeping his voice steady. “That is a matter for your own concern, not mine. I am not going to admit to something which is not true. I have already sworn that I have never had an intimate relationship with another man, only with women.” There was a buzz of titillation and embarrassment at the use of such frank words.

“I cannot and will not alter that statement, whatever threats you may make,” Wolff went on. “And if you persuade someone to forswear or perjure themselves, that is your responsibility, and you are a great deal less than honest, sir, if you try to make anyone believe the answer, for that lies with me.”

Sacheverall pushed his large hands into his pockets, dragging the shoulders of his coat.

“You force me, sir! I do not wish to do this to you. For heaven’s sake, spare yourself the shame. Think of Melville, if not of yourself.”

“By admitting to a crime of which neither of us is guilty?” Wolff said bitterly.

Rathbone rose to his feet. “My lord, may I ask for an adjournment so I may speak with my client and with Mr. Sacheverall? Perhaps we can come to some understanding which would be preferable to this present discussion, which is proving nothing.”

“I think that would be advisable,” McKeever agreed, reaching his hand towards the gavel again as there was a murmur of disappointment in the gallery and several of the jurors muttered, whether it was in agreement or disagreement, it was not possible to say. “Mr. Sacheverall?” He did not wait for the answer but assumed it. “Good. This court is adjourned until two o’clock this afternoon.”

Rathbone leaned towards Melville, still sitting motionless. He grasped his arm and felt the muscles locked.

“What can he prove?” he whispered fiercely. “What is Wolff to you?”

Melville relaxed very slowly, as if he were waking from a trance.

A smile with a hint of hysteria in it touched his lips and then vanished.

“Not my homosexual lover!” he said with a gasp of disbelief, as if the idea had a kind of desperate humor to it. “I swear that in the name of God! He is as normal, as masculine, a man as ever drew breath.”

“Then what? Is he some relative by blood or marriage?” Even as he asked, Rathbone could not believe it was blood. The two men were physically as unalike as possible. Wolff must have been four or five inches the taller and two stones heavier. He was as dark as Melville was fair, as brooding, mystic and Celtic as Melville was open, direct and Saxon. “What?” he repeated firmly.

But Melville refused to answer.

The bailiff was beside the table.

“Mr. Sacheverall is waiting for you, Sir Oliver. I’ll take you to him, if you come with me.”

“Do you want to withdraw?” Rathbone demanded, still facing Melville. “I can’t make that decision for you. I don’t know what Sacheverall will find or what these witnesses may say.”

“Neither do I!” Melville said jerkily. “But I am not going to marry Zillah Lambert.” He closed his eyes. “Just do what you can….” His voice cracked and he turned away.

Rathbone had no choice but to go with the bailiff and meet with Sacheverall, not knowing what he could salvage of the chaos he had been thrown into. Except that if he were honest, he had not been thrown, he had leaped, more or less open-eyed. His own lack of thought had earned him this.

Sacheverall was half sitting on the bare table in the small room set aside for just this sort of meeting. He did not stand when Rathbone came in and closed the door. His fair eyebrows rose quizzically.

“Ready to retreat?”

Rathbone sat in one of the chairs and leaned back, crossing his legs. He realized he disliked Sacheverall, not because he was losing—he had lost cases before, to adversaries he both liked and admired—but for the way in which Sacheverall savored the misfortune this would bring to Melville, and his own part in making it happen. The prosecutor was not serving justice but some emotion of his own. Rathbone resented giving him anything.

“If you mean ready to capitulate, no, I’m not. If you mean discuss the situation, then of course. I thought I had already made that plain in asking for an adjournment.”