Monk heard him out in silence. He should not have been surprised. In fact, he should have found it himself. He should have looked harder at Melville. If he had found it, then he could have warned Rathbone so he would have made Melville withdraw.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I was looking for women. I never thought of that. I should have."

Rathbone shrugged. "So should I." He looked around and smiled. "We didn't do very well, did we?"

They stood together watching the fire die for several moments, until the manservant came to the door again. He opened it and stood in the entrance, his face white, his eyes wide and dark.

"Sir Oliver." His voice shook a little. "I am afraid, sir, you have just received a message... sir..."

"Yes?"

Monk clenched his fists and felt his body chill.

"I'm sorry, sir," the manservant went on, now in little more than a whisper. "But Mr. Melville has been found dead."

Rathbone stared at him.

"I'm sorry, Sir Oliver. I am afraid there is no doubt."

Rathbone closed his eyes and looked for a moment as if he were about to faint.

Monk took a step towards him.

Rathbone put his hands up and waved him back. He rubbed his eyes. "Thank you for telling me. That will be all."

"Yes sir." The man withdrew discreetly.

Rathbone turned to Monk, his face devoid of any shred of color, his eyes hollow with grief and guilt.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Rathbone entered court on Monday exhausted from one of the most deeply miserable nights he could remember. He and Monk had gone immediately to Melville's lodgings, where Isaac Wolff, gray-faced, had met them at the door. There had been nothing anyone could do to help. He had called a doctor, who had assumed death to have been caused by some form of poison and had guessed belladonna, but it would require a full postmortem examination to be certain.

No one mentioned suicide, but it hung unspoken like a darkness over them all. One does not take belladonna by accident, and Wolff was too naked in his grief to make any pretense at lying. Melville had had excellent health, better than most people's. He took no medication of any sort.

Naturally the police had been called. There must be certainty. Even this could not be allowed to pass in private. Suicide was a crime.

Now there was nothing left but loss, not only personal but of one of the greatest, most luminous creative minds of the age. For Rathbone there was also shame for his own failure to have prevented this, a weighing down of guilt, and the last legal formalities of closing the issue. And there was also a colossal rage. He was clenched up inside with it. As he strode up the steps and along the hallway of the courthouse, he scarcely saw the colleagues he passed, the clerks and ushers, the litigants.