They were both of them oblivious to others in the hallway.
"If she'd told me the truth!" Lambert protested, his hands sawing in the air. "If she'd just trusted us!"
"We would what?" Rathbone asked, raising his eyebrows.
"I… well, for God's sake, I wouldn't have sued her!"
Rathbone laughed with a startlingly bitter sound. "Of course you wouldn't! You would have appeared ridiculous. You would have been ridiculous. But if she had come to you as a woman with those new, extraordinary designs for buildings, all light and curves, would you have put up the money to build them?"
"I… I…" Lambert stopped, staring at Rathbone, his cheeks white. He was too innately honest a man to he, even to himself, now the truth was plain. "No… I doubt it… no, no, I suppose not. I thought hard as it was. He was… she was… so revolutionary. But by God, Rathbone, they were beautiful!" he said with a sudden, fierce passion, his eyes brilliant, his face translucent, alight with will and conviction.
"They still are," Rathbone said quietly. "The art is the same. It remains within the creator if it stands or falls."
"By God, you're right!" Lambert exploded savagely. "Heaven help us all… what a bigoted, shortsighted, narrow, self-seeking lot we are!" He stood in the corridor with his shoulders hunched, his jaw tight, his fists clenched in front of him.
"Sometimes," Rathbone agreed. "But at least if we can see it, there is hope for us."
"There's no bloody hope for Melville! We've finished that!" Lambert spat back at him.
"I know." Rathbone did not argue his own guilt. It was academic. Lambert's greater guilt did not absolve anyone else. "Now, if you will excuse me, Mr. Lambert, I have people I desire to inform, and regrettably, other cases." He left Lambert standing staring after him and hurried towards the doors, pushing past people, ignoring them. There was no purpose to be served anymore, but he wanted to tell Monk personally rather than leave him to read it in the newspapers.
Monk was shattered by the news, although he too felt that he should at least have considered the possibility, but it had never occurred to him. He made no trite or critical comments to Rathbone, who was apparently already castigating himself too fiercely. And for once Monk felt a sharp compassion for him. He understood guilt very well; it was a familiar emotion since rediscovering himself after the accident. It is a uniquely distressing experience to see yourself only through the eyes of others, too often those you have injured in some way, to know irrefutably what you have done but not why you did it, not the mitigating circumstances, the beliefs you held at the time which made your actions seem reasonable then.
After Rathbone had gone, he took a hansom to Tavistock Square to tell Hester and-if he was interested-Gabriel Sheldon the outcome.
He was welcomed at the door by the maid, Martha Jackson, and immediately remembered the impossible job he had promised her he would do. It was not the fruitless work that he dreaded, or even the waste of time he could have spent earning very necessary money, but the fact that anything he discovered, even supposing he was able to, would be distressing. Then he would have to make the decision what to tell her and what to tell Hester, who would be less easily deceived.
"Good evening, Miss Jackson," he said with forced cheerfulness. "The case of Mr. Melville"-he did not need to explain the truth here on the doorstep; it was simpler to say "Mr."-"has concluded very tragically, and in a way we could not have guessed. I should like to tell Miss Latterly-and Lieutenant Sheldon, if he cares to know."
She looked surprisingly harassed, and less than interested herself. She stood in the doorway, hesitating as to how she should answer.
"Is something wrong, Miss Jackson?" He felt a sudden wave of apprehension and realized with surprise how much Melville's death had disturbed him. The whole story left him with a sense of loss he did not know how to dispel.
"No!" she said too firmly. She made herself smile, and it was so painful he became more worried. "No…" she went on. "Lieutenant Sheldon is not very well today. He had a poor night, that is all. Please come in, Mr. Monk. I shall inform Miss Latterly that you are here. I hope you won't mind if you have to wait a little while? The withdrawing room is quite warm."
"Of course not," he answered; it was the only possible thing to say. He had called uninvited. He followed her obediently into the pleasant, rather ordinary withdrawing room, and she left him to possess himself in patience.
The wait was indeed long, about half an hour, and when Hester finally arrived she too looked tired and a little flustered, her attention not wholly with him.
"Martha told me the Melville case is over," she said, coming in and closing the door behind her. She met his eyes and then saw the tragedy in them. Her expression changed. Now she was filled with apprehension and pity. "Is he ruined? Could Oliver not do anything for him? What happened? Did he change his plea?"
"I suppose so… in effect, yes." He found the words suddenly difficult to say. "He killed himself. Isaac Wolff found him last night."
Her face crumpled as if she had been physically hit.
"Oh, William… I'm so sorry!" She closed her eyes tightly. "How damnable! Why do we do that to people? If he loved another man, what business is it of ours? We'll all answer to God in one way or another. If we are not hurting each other, isn't that enough?"
"He wasn't homosexual," he said with a jerky laugh. "He committed a greater offense than that, in most people's view."
She opened her eyes. "What?" Then the tears spilled over. "What did he do? Jilt Zillah Lambert? He never accused her of anything. He was scrupulous not to. That was Oliver's problem. What did he do?"
"He deceived the world… man and woman," he replied. "Totally effectively. All except Isaac Wolff… he knew. But the rest of them were completely fooled… all taken in. They can't forgive that. Some of the women might be laughing, a very few, secretly, but none of the men."
"I don't know what you are talking about. You aren't making any sense."
"Killian Melville was a woman."
"What did you say?" she protested.
"You heard what I said. Keelin was her real name, and she was a woman." The anger rang through his voice. "She dressed as a man because no one would allow her even to study architecture, let alone practice it, as a woman. She fooled everyone, except Isaac Wolff, who loved her."
"How terrible!" Her face was filled with amazement and anguish.
For a moment he did not understand. Surely Hester, of all people, could not be so quick to judge automatically and cruelly. His sense of disillusion was so sharp for an instant he could think of nothing else. It was not the Hester he knew, who was so close that her loyalty and her compassion were part of the framework of his world.
Hester was not even looking at him. "It must have been there every day," she said softly. "Pulling at her both ways, until it tore her apart. She was a woman, she loved Isaac Wolff, but she could never marry him. Even by being with him she risked branding him as a criminal." She focused her gaze, meeting Monk's eyes demandingly. "Can you imagine it? Can you imagine the scenes between them? She mast have been terrified for him, not knowing which way to turn. And he would have loved her enough to take love, take time together, the sharing of dreams, great things, aspirations and the wonder of thought and idea and passion." She winced as she said it, her eyes bright. "And little things that hurt, the small disappointments." Her voice cracked. "The sudden ache for no reason, the tiredness, the confusion, just the need not to be alone… and the jokes, the silly things that make you laugh, something beautiful, a splash of sunlight, a particular flower, a kind act, the ironies and the absurdities, the little victories which can mean so much."