you understand. Mr. Monk" - he gestured towards Monk, beside him - "is trying to help us deal with this abysmal business of the Countess Rostova's accusations."
Gallagher looked blank.
"Oh, you haven't heard?" Stephan pulled a face expressing chagrin. "I am afraid she has behaved quite... quite extraordinarily. The whole affair will have to come to trial."
"What affair?"
"Prince Friedrich's death," Monk said, stepping in. "I regret to say she has started spreading the charge around society that it was not an accident but deliberate poison."
"What?" Gallagher was aghast. He seemed almost unable to believe he had heard correctly. "What do you mean? Not... not that... that I..."
"No, of course not!" Monk said immediately. "No one even thought of such a thing. It is the widow, Princess Gisela, whom she is accusing."
"Oh, my God! How perfectly fearful." Gallagher stepped back and all but collapsed into the chair behind him. "How can I help?"
Stephan was about to speak, but Monk cut across him.
"You will no doubt be called to give evidence, unless we can gather sufficient proof to force her to withdraw the charge and offer the fullest apology. The greatest assistance you could give would be to answer all our questions with the utmost candor, so we know precisely where we stand, and if she has clever counsel, what is the worst we must fear."
"Of course. Of course. Anything I can do." Gallagher pressed his hand to his brow. "Poor woman! To lose the husband she loved so profoundly and then to face such a diabolical slander, and from one she must have supposed her friend. Ask me anything you wish."
Monk sat down opposite the doctor in a well-worn brown chair. "You understand I am speaking as a sort of devil's advocate? I shall probe for weaknesses, so if I find them, I shall know how to defend."
"Of course. Proceed!" Gallagher said almost eagerly.
Monk felt a tinge of conscience, but only a slight one. The truth was what mattered.
"You were the only physician to treat Prince Friedrich?"
"Yes, from the accident until he died." His face was pale at the memory. "I... I honestly thought the poor man was recovering. He seemed to be considerably better. Of course, he had a great deal of pain, but one does from broken bones. But he was far less feverish, and he had begun to take a little nourishment."
"The last time you saw him alive?" Monk asked. "Before the relapse?"
"He was sitting up in bed." Gallagher looked very strained. "He seemed pleased to see me. I can picture it exactly. It was spring, as you know, late spring. It was a beautiful day, sunlight streaming in through the windows, a vase of lily of the valley on the bureau in the sitting room. The perfume of them filled the room. They were a particular favorite of the Princess's. I hear she cannot abide them since that day. Poor creature. She idolized him. She never left his side from the moment he was carried in from his accident. Distraught, she was, absolutely distraught. Beside herself with distress for him."
He took a deep breath and let it out silently. "Quite different from when he died. Then it was as if the world had ended for her. She simply sat there, white-faced, neither moving nor speaking. She did not even seem to see us."
"What did he die of?" Monk asked a little more gently. He was aware of conflicting emotions tearing inside him. "Medically speaking."
Gallagher's eyes widened. "I did not do a postmortem examination, sir. He was a royal prince! He died as the result of his injuries in the fall. He had broken several bones. They had seemed to be healing, but one cannot see inside the living body to know what other damage there may be, what organs may have been crushed or pierced. He bled to death internally. That is what every symptom led me to believe. I had not expected it, because he seemed to be recovering, but that may have been the courage of his spirit, when in truth he was injured so seriously that (he slightest movement may have ruptured some vessel and caused a fatal hemorrhage."
"The symptoms..." Monk prompted, this time quite softly. Whatever the cause of it, or whoever, he could not help feeling pity for the man whose death he was trying to examine so clinically. All he had heard of him suggested he was a man of courage and character, willing to follow his heart and pay the cost