"If you can think of anything," Rathbone said with a bitter smile, "so help me God, I'll do it. Apart from the monumental injustice of it, I can't think when I have hated a man so much." He closed his eyes, the muscles in his cheeks and jaws tight. "He stood there with that bloody smile on his face-he knows I have to defend him, and he was laughing at me!"
Hester stared at him helplessly.
"I beg your pardon." He apologized automatically for his language. She dismissed it with an impatient gesture. It was totally unimportant.
Monk was lost in concentration, not seeing the room around them but something far in his inner mind.
On the mahogany mantel the clock ticked the seconds by. The sun shone in a bright pool on the polished floor between the window and the edge of the carpet. Beyond in the street someone hailed a cab. There were no clerks or juniors in the office yet.
Monk shifted position.
"What?" Hester and Rathbone demanded in unison.
"Stanhope was performing abortions," Monk said slowly.
"No proof," Rathbone said, dismissing it. "Different nurse each time, and always women too ignorant to know how to do anything but pass him the instruments he pointed at and clean up after him. They would accept that the operation was whatever he told them-removal of a tumor seems most obvious."
"How do you know?"
"Because he told me. He is perfectly open about it, because he knows I can't testify to it!"
"His word," Monk pointed out dryly. "But that isn't the point."
"It is," Rathbone contradicted. "Apart from the fact that we don't know which nurses-and God knows, there are enough ignorant ones in the hospital. They won't testify, and the court wouldn't believe them above Sir Herbert even if they would. Can you imagine one of them, ignorant, frightened, sullen, probably dirty and not necessarily sober." His face twisted with a bitter, furious smile. "I would rip her apart in moments."
He assumed a stance at once graceful and satirical. "Now, Mrs. Moggs-how do you know that this operation was an abortion and not the removal of a tumor, as the eminent surgeon, Sir Herbert Stanhope, has sworn? What did you see-precisely?" He raised his eyebrows. "And what is your medical expertise for saying such a thing? I beg your pardon, where did you say you trained? How long had you been on duty? All night? Doing what? Oh yes-emptying the slop pail, sweeping the floor, stoking the fire. Are these your usual duties, Mrs. Moggs? Yes I see. How many glasses of porter? The difference between a large tumor and a six-week fetus? I don't know. Neither do you? Thank you, Mrs. Moggs-that will be all."
Monk drew in his breath to speak, but Rathbone cut him off.
"And you have absolutely no chance at all of getting the patients to testify. Even if you could find them, which you can't. They would simply support Sir Herbert and say it was a tumor." He shook his head in tightly controlled fury. "Anyway it is all immaterial! We can't call them. And Lovat-Smith doesn't know anything about it! And his case is closed. He can't reopen it at this point without an exceptional reason."
Monk looked bleak.
"I know all that. I wasn't thinking of the women. Of course they won't testify. But how did they know that Sir Herbert would perform abortions?"
"What?"
"How did-" Monk began.
"Yes! Yes I heard you!" Rathbone cut across him again. "Yes, that is certainly an excellent question, but I don't see how the answer could help us, even if we knew it. It is not a thing one advertises. It must be word of mouth in some way." He turned to Hester. "Where does one go if one wishes to obtain an abortion?"
"I don't know," she said indignantly. Then, the moment after, she frowned. "But perhaps we could find out?'
"Don't bother." Rathbone dismissed it with a sharp return of misery. "Even if you found out, with proof, we couldn't call a witness, nor could we tell Lovat-Smith. Our hands are tied."
Monk stood near the window, the clarity of the sunlight only emphasizing the hard lines of his face, the smooth skin over his cheeks, and the power of his nose and mouth.
"Maybe," he conceded. "But it won't stop me looking. He killed her, and I'm going to see that sod hang for it if I can." And without waiting to see what either of them thought, he turned on his heel