"Of course. I pleaded with her to tell me, in total confidence, if she knew anything to Miss Lambert's discredit or if there was anything in her own life which prevented her marrying..."

He heard the faint rustle in the courtroom, but no one laughed.

"She told me there was not." He took a breath. "I did not accept her word. I employed an agent of enquiry to research into both Miss Lambert's past and hers. He found nothing." He owed Monk something better than a bare statement. "If there had been longer, I daresay he would have learned the truth, but events overtook us. It appeared Melville's affair with Mr. Wolff was reason enough. Of course, we now know it was ... a love between man and woman, not illegal, not abnormal." He had nearly said "not scandalous," but perhaps since they were not married, there would be those who would consider it so. "Such  as is usual enough," he said instead.

"What was her frame of mind, as far as you could judge, when Mr. Sacheverall brought Isaac Wolff to the stand and accused him of a homosexual relationship with Melville?" There was a chill in the coroner's voice, and he did not look towards where Sacheverall was sitting.

"She was deeply distressed," Rathbone answered truthfully. "Very deeply. But she denied it to me."

"Did you believe her?"

"I... I don't know. I neither believed nor disbelieved. I was concerned with trying to rescue what I could from the situation. I hoped I might persuade Miss Lambert to settle for a small amount of damages, so at least Melville might not be financially ruined, as well as socially and professionally." He found the words difficult to say. They still hurt. The failure was deep and twisting inside him.

"Did you tell Miss Melville your hopes?"

"Of course."

"Do you know of anything that occurred that afternoon t which would so alter the circumstances as to make her despair and take her own life?"

"Sacheverall had called a prostitute to the stand in the morning who had sworn that the affair she had observed was of a sexual nature," Rathbone said bitterly, "not the friendship both Wolff and Melville had insisted. But if that was the final incident, then I would have expected her to have taken the poison during the luncheon adjournment, and according to the surgeon she did not."

"Did Miss Melville at any time speak of taking her life, or I say anything which led you, even in hindsight, to suppose she was thinking of it?"