A Sunless Sea

CHAPTER 14

Oliver Rathbone was eating his breakfast when the maid interrupted him to announce that Mrs. Monk had called to see him regarding a matter she said was urgent.

Rathbone put down his knife and fork and rose to his feet. “Ask her to come in.” He gestured toward his half-finished food. He had no taste for it anyway. He ate it at all simply because he knew he required the nourishment. “Thank you, I don’t need any more, but please bring fresh toast and tea for Mrs. Monk,” he requested.

“Yes, Sir Oliver,” the maid said obediently, and left, taking the plate with her.

A moment later Hester came in, her cheeks flushed from the wind.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, her eyes taking in the table and the obvious fact that she had interrupted. “I had to catch you before you left for court.”

“Sit down. More tea is coming.” He gestured toward the chair where Margaret used to sit, then, as she took it, he sat also. “You must have left home very early. Has something happened? I’m afraid I have no good news to tell you.”

“Bad news?” she asked quickly, anxiety shadowing her face.

He had learned not to lie to her, even to soften a blow.

“I’m beginning to think Mrs. Lambourn could be right, at least insofar as there being a government agreement not to allow Lambourn’s report to be given any credibility,” he answered. “I’ve tried to question his suicide, and the judge has cut me off every time. I think Coniston has also been briefed to head off any mention of it at all.”

“But you’ll not let him get away with that.” It was half a question; the doubt was still there in her voice, and in her eyes.

“We’re not beaten yet,” he said ruefully. “In a sense their possible agreement in keeping it out of the evidence suggests that there is something to hide. It certainly isn’t in order to spare anyone’s feelings, as they say it is.”

The maid came in with fresh tea and toast, and Rathbone thanked her for it. He poured for Hester without asking, and she took it with a smile, then reached also for toast and butter.

“Oliver, I’ve been doing a little asking around among people I know. I had a long talk with a prostitute near Copenhagen Place. She knew Zenia Gadney, possibly as well as anyone did.”

He heard the pity in her voice and found himself knotted inside. He wished he were more convinced of Dinah Lambourn’s innocence. But even if Joel Lambourn had been murdered, it did not prove that Dinah had not killed Zenia out of revenge for her betrayal during all the years before.

Except, of course, if anyone had betrayed Dinah, it was Joel himself. But he was already dead, and beyond her reach. The only things that made Rathbone question Dinah’s guilt at all were the senseless timing of Zenia’s death, and the fact that Pendock and Coniston both seemed so determined to block Rathbone from raising any doubt, however reasonable, about Joel’s suicide.

Hester knew she did not have his attention.

“Oliver?”

He concentrated again. “Yes? I’m sorry. What did you learn that you need to tell me before I go into court again?”

She spread marmalade on her toast. “That Zenia was a very quiet woman, kept very much to herself. She used to walk often, especially by the river. She stood and gazed southward, watching the water and the sky.”

“You mean toward Greenwich?” he asked curiously.

“Well, toward the south bank anyway. She had a past that she spoke of very seldom, once to Gladys, the girl I mentioned.”

Rathbone felt a little chilled. “What kind of a past? Is it one that could provide another motive for killing her with such violence?”

Hester shook her head. “Not as far as I can see. She said she was married once, but apparently she drank so hard she ruined her life, and possibly she left him, or he left her.”

“Who was he?” Rathbone asked quickly, feeling a lift of hope he hardly dared acknowledge. “Where can we find him? Could he have followed her to Limehouse and killed her? Perhaps he wanted to marry again, and she was standing in his way?” His mind was racing. At last there were other possibilities surfacing, which had nothing to do with Dinah Lambourn.

“Gladys guessed at it, based on something Zenia said once, when a woman was falling down drunk in the street,” Hester answered. “She didn’t even know if it was true, and no one has ever seen another man in Copenhagen Place, visiting her, or even looking for her. He could be dead by now, if he ever existed at all.”

Her voice dropped and she looked sad, and apologetic. “She could have invented him, to make herself sound more respectable, or even more interesting. It could have been daydreaming, a bit of wishing that it had been so.”

He felt the sadness inside him also, a sudden understanding of the woman’s wistful dreams that he would prefer not to have understood. “Then why did you come to tell it to me so urgently before I went into court?” The sharp edge of disappointment was raw in his voice.

“I’m sorry, that was misleading.” She brushed it away with a slender hand. “What I really came to tell you was that I also found a woman called Agatha Nisbet, who runs something of a makeshift hospital on the south bank of the river, near Greenland Dock. It is mainly for injured dockers, lightermen, and so on. She has a pretty steady supply of opium …”

“Opium?” Now he was listening, his attention quickened.

“Yes.” She smiled bleakly. “I made a deal with her to buy the best quality myself, for the clinic. She spoke to Joel Lambourn several times. He sought her out in his inquiries into opium. He wasn’t out to stop the trade, just to get it properly labeled so people knew what they were taking. Agnes Nisbet said it was the deaths of children that upset him especially.”

Rathbone nodded. He knew that already.

“But she warned me that a lot of people make money out of opium, ever since the Opium Wars,” Hester went on. “They are quite happy, some of the worst of them, to get people addicted so they will have a permanent market.” Her face was pinched with misery and anger as she said it. “A lot of very powerful families built their fortunes on opium, and they wouldn’t be at all happy with the exposure Lambourn’s report would inevitably have brought when it was argued in Parliament. All kinds of ghosts would’ve been dug up.”

“You can’t dig up a ghost,” he said irrelevantly. “Do you think Dinah is right, at least as far as Lambourn’s report is concerned?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “It makes sense, Oliver. We don’t even know whose fortune comes from opium, and what they could lose if it’s all brought out into the open, and regulated. Some companies are going to go out of business, simply because they wouldn’t make the same level of profit if they are forced to measure and label.”

He thought about it for a moment or two. It opened up new, alternative explanations for the death of both Joel Lambourn and Zenia Gadney-but they had no proof of anything. Great fortunes had always been made in appalling ways: through buccaneering-which was only another name for piracy-slaving, before the abolition half a century ago; and then in opium. Few wealthy families were free from one stain or another. With the fear and anger running rampant in the courtroom, and far beyond it, he did not think that “reasonable doubt” was going to save Dinah Lambourn.

“Do you know anything about the Opium Wars?” Hester interrupted his thoughts.

“Not much,” he admitted. “It was all in China. Trade war of some sort, as far as I know. Our part in it has been justified by some, but it was pretty ugly. I believe we introduced opium into China and now hundreds of thousands of people are addicted to it. Not something to be proud of.”

“Perhaps we should find out more, just in case it matters,” she said quietly.

“Did you believe this woman, this Agatha?” he asked her. “Not her honesty, but her knowledge?”

“Yes … I think so. It compared in ways to my own experience in the Crimea.”

“Are there any wars that aren’t ugly?” He thought bitterly of all he knew and had heard of the Crimean War, its violence, futility, and loss. “This Civil War in America-God knows what those losses will be by the end-pretty good market for opium there, too. I hear the slaughter is appalling, and the injuries to those who survived. I don’t suppose they even know the extent of it themselves yet. And it’s not just the dead, it’s the ruin of the land, and the hatred left behind.”

“I think there’s a good deal of hatred left behind the Opium Wars, too,” Hester replied. “And money, and guilt. A lot of secrets to bury.”

“Secrets don’t stay buried,” Rathbone said quietly. He wanted to tell her about his own secret, those photographs still sitting in his home, waiting to be stored in a bank vault where only he could disinter them.

She was staring at him. “Oliver?” she said with concern. “Do you know something about Dinah that we don’t? Something bad?”

“No!” he said with a rush of relief. “It … it was … I was thinking about something else entirely.”

She looked doubtful. “It?” she asked. “What are we talking about?”

“It was … it …” He breathed in and out deeply. The weight of the knowledge he carried was almost unbearable alone. “Do you know what happened to Arthur Ballinger’s photographs after he was killed?”

Her face paled a little, and there was pain in her eyes.

“I have no idea. Why? Are you afraid someone has them?” She reached across the table and touched his hand gently. “There’s no point in worrying. They’re probably locked up somewhere where nobody will ever find them. But if they’re not, there’s still nothing you can do about it.” Her hand was warm on his. “If somebody has them they can only blackmail the guilty, and do you really have any sympathy for men who abused children like that? I know they may have been fools more than villains to begin with, but you still can’t protect them.”

“I would have no sympathy if it were about money, Hester, but it isn’t. It’s about power,” he said simply.

“Power?” There was sharper fear in her face now, and perhaps the beginning of understanding as to what he meant.

“Power to make the men in those photographs do anything, which they would, out of fear of being exposed,” he elaborated.

“Do you think there are other people in those pictures who are … judges and politicians, or …?” She saw it in his face. “You do! Did Ballinger say there were?”

“No. He did far worse than that, Hester. He left them to me.” He looked at her intently, waiting for the horror in her eyes, even the revulsion.

She sat motionless and very slowly the full impact of it settled over her, like a shadow. She studied him. Perhaps she saw in him something of the burden he felt, and the bitterness of the irony. It was both Ballinger’s legacy and his revenge. He might not know what it would do to Rathbone, but he must have relished the possibilities.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “If you had destroyed them you would have told me differently, wouldn’t you.” It was not a question; she was letting him know that she understood.

“Yes,” he confessed. “I would. I will hide them. If I die then they will be destroyed. I meant to do it at the time I saw them; then when I saw who was in them, I couldn’t. Maybe I still will. The power of it is … so very great. Ballinger began by using them only for good, you know? He told me. It was to force people to take action against injustice or abuse, when they wouldn’t do it any other way.” Was he making excuses for Ballinger? Or for himself, because he had not destroyed the pictures? He looked at Hester’s face and saw the confusion in her, and the comprehension. He waited for her to ask if he would use them, and she did not.

“Do you think Dinah is innocent?” she asked instead.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “At first I thought it was possible, then after the beginning of the trial, I seriously doubted it. Now I don’t know whether she killed Zenia Gadney or not, but I’m beginning to have very serious doubts as to whether Lambourn committed suicide. And if he was murdered, then that opens up a lot of other doubts, and questions.”

There was a sound of footsteps outside the door to the hall. A moment later Ardmore came in and very courteously reminded Rathbone that it was time for him to go.

Hester smiled and rose to her feet. There was no need for further discussion, simply a quiet good-bye.

Lambourn’s suicide was still in Rathbone’s mind as the trial resumed an hour and a half later, when he met Sorley Coniston in the hall and they exchanged brief greetings.

“Morning,” Coniston said with a slight smile. “Tough one for you, Rathbone. Whatever made you take it? I used to wonder if you accepted cases for notoriety sometimes, but I always decided you didn’t. Haven’t changed, have you?”

“Not that much,” Rathbone replied drily. He did not know Coniston well, though they had been acquainted for years, but thought he might like the man if he did. He was unpredictable, and occasionally his opinions were startlingly honest. “This time I can’t make up my mind myself.”

“For heaven’s sake!” Coniston said, shaking his head. “The only question in this one is how far you can bring in the damn opium question. Lambourn might have gone off the rails in his personal life, but he was a decent man, and honest. Don’t drag his private mistakes out in front of the world. His children don’t deserve that, even if you think he does.”

Rathbone smiled back at him. “Cold feet?” he asked wryly.

“Going to hold them to the fire,” Coniston replied. “Yours, I mean.”

“Really?” Rathbone shrugged with confidence he did not feel, and they went into the courtroom.

Twenty minutes later, Coniston rose to question his first witness of the day, Dinah’s sister-in-law, Amity Herne.

Rathbone watched as she walked across the open space toward the witness box. With one hand delicately lifting her skirt so she did not trip, she climbed up the steps to the top and stood facing the body of the court.

Rathbone would like to have looked across at Dinah to see her expression, but he did not want to draw the jury’s attention to her, when they were all watching Amity Herne so closely. He could not imagine the pain of seeing your own family testify against you. Did they blame her for Lambourn’s death? For any degree of the unhappiness that they believed had led to his suicide? He might soon know. He realized his hands were knotted in his lap beneath the table where they could not see them, his muscles aching already, at the very beginning of the morning.

Amity Herne swore to her name, and to tell the truth, all of it, and nothing but. She acknowledged that she was the sister of the accused woman’s late husband, Joel Lambourn.

“I offer my condolences for the recent loss of your brother, Mrs. Herne,” Coniston began. “And I apologize for being obliged to open up so publicly a subject that must be additionally painful to you in the recent tragedy that has afflicted your family.”

“Thank you,” she said graciously. She was an attractive woman, although not beautiful, and now appeared a little too unemotional for Rathbone’s taste. Perhaps in the circumstances a certain stiffness was the only defense she had to preserve any composure at all, when all privacy was denied her. There was something in the dignity with which she stood waiting for Coniston to open up the wounds that reminded him of Margaret. He should have admired her more. How much was his own disillusion warping his views of the people around him?

Surely Coniston, standing gracefully and even a little deferentially, realized that the jury would not take kindly to anyone who was unnecessarily rough with Amity Herne. He would begin gently, set a pattern Rathbone would have no choice but to follow.

“Mrs. Herne,” Coniston began, “were you aware of the nature of the work that your brother, Dr. Lambourn, was doing for the government?”

Rathbone sat up a little straighter. Surely Coniston was not going to allow that subject to be raised?

“Only in the vaguest terms,” Amity replied calmly, her voice soft and very precise. “It was a medical investigation of some kind, that is all he would say.”

“Confidential?” Coniston said.

“I imagine so,” she agreed. She kept her gaze fixed on him, never allowing it to wander toward the gallery and not once even glancing over to the dock, where Dinah sat between her jailers.

“But I did not ask him further anyway,” she continued. “I do know that it troubled him. He felt very deeply about it, and I was concerned that he was allowing himself to become too involved in it.”

Rathbone rose to his feet. “My lord, Mrs. Herne has just said that she has very little idea what the work was concerned with. How, then, could she judge whether his involvement was too great?” He would like to have argued that it was also completely irrelevant to Zenia Gadney’s death, but he intended to introduce the exact point later on, and this opened the door for him nicely.

Coniston smiled. “She might not have known specifically what the work was, but she can judge if it had bearing on the state of his mind. And if it bears on his state of mind, my lord, it will automatically bear on the state of mind of the accused.”

“My lord!” Rathbone was still on his feet. “How can Dr. Lambourn’s concern for his work have been on the accused’s state of mind two months after he was dead? Is my learned friend suggesting there was some kind of communicable madness involved?”

There was a ripple of nervous laughter around the gallery. One juror sneezed and put his handkerchief up to his face, hiding his expression.

“I will permit this kind of questioning,” Pendock said, clearing his throat, “on condition that you reach some relevance very soon, Mr. Coniston.” He did not look at Rathbone.

“Thank you, my lord.” Coniston turned again to Amity Herne. “Mrs. Herne, was Dr. Lambourn more involved with this task, whatever it was, than was usual for him?”

“Yes,” she said decisively, a look of grief shadowing her face. “He became completely absorbed in it.”

“What do you mean by that, Mrs. Herne? What is unusual about a doctor being absorbed in his work?” Coniston was still overly polite.

“When the government did not accept his conclusions he was distraught. At times he was almost hysterical. I …” She looked uncomfortable. Her hands gripped the rail in front of her and she gulped, as if to control tears. “I believe that was why he took his own life. I wish I had been more aware how serious it was. Perhaps I could have said or done something! I didn’t realize that everything he valued in his life was disintegrating in front of him. Or he believed it was.”

Coniston stood perfectly still in the middle of the floor, an elegant figure, even kindly. “Disintegrating, Mrs. Herne? Isn’t that rather extreme? Because the government did not accept his views on … whatever it was?”

“That and …” Her voice dropped so low it was difficult to hear her. No one in the room moved. The crowd in the gallery were still, as if frozen.

Coniston waited.

“That, and his personal life,” Amity finished in no more than a murmur.

Pendock leaned forward a little. “Mrs. Herne, I realize this must be appallingly difficult for you, but I must ask you to speak a little more loudly, so the jury may hear you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “I find this … most embarrassing to mention in public. Joel was a very quiet man, very private. I am not sure how to put this delicately.” She stared at Coniston; never once did her eyes stray to Rathbone. It was as if she were not aware that he was there, and would question her next. In fact, it seemed as if she was deliberately excluding the rest of the court altogether.

“His personal life?” Coniston prompted her. “He was your brother, Mrs. Herne. If he confided in you, even indirectly, you must tell the court. I am sorry to force you, but this is a murder case. One woman has lost her life, hideously, and another stands accused of her murder, and if found guilty will assuredly also lose hers. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of being delicate at the expense of truth.”

With an immense effort Amity Herne raised her head. “He implied to me that he had needs that his wife was not willing to meet, and that he visited another woman for that purpose.” She said the words clearly and distinctly, like delivering knife wounds to herself. “The pressure of living up to his wife’s vision of him as a perfect man was becoming more than he could bear.” She bit her lip. “I wish you had not made me say that, but it is true. It should have been allowed to die with him.” She could no longer stop the tears spilling down her cheeks.

“I wish it had been possible,” Coniston said contritely. “This other woman that you speak of, did you know who she was? Did he mention her name, or anything about her? Such as where she lived?”

“He said her name was Zenia. He did not say where she lived, at least not to me.” The implication that she might have said so to someone else was left delicately in the air.

“Zenia?” Coniston repeated. “You are certain?”

Amity stood very stiffly. “Yes. I have never heard of anyone else with the name.”

“And was his wife, Dinah Lambourn, aware of this … arrangement?” Coniston asked.

“I was told that she learned of it,” Amity replied.

“How did she learn?”

“I don’t know. Joel didn’t say.”

“Did he say when she learned?”

“No. At least not to me.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Herne. Again, I am deeply sorry that I had to raise this distressing subject, but the circumstances left me no choice.” He turned to Rathbone. “Your witness, Sir Oliver.”

Rathbone thanked him and rose slowly to his feet. He walked out across the floor toward the witness stand. He could feel the jury’s eyes on him, cautious, ready to blame him if he was the least bit insensitive. They were naturally predisposed against him because he represented a woman accused of a bestial crime. And now, added to that, he was about to ask pointed and cruel questions, adding to this innocent woman’s grief and very natural embarrassment.

“You have already suffered more than enough, Mrs. Herne,” Rathbone began gently. “I shall be as brief with you as I can. I commend you for being so honest regarding your brother’s … tastes. That cannot have been easy for you. You and your brother were close?” He already knew the answer to that from Monk’s questioning of her.

She blinked. In that instant he knew she was considering a lie, and as their eyes met, she decided against it.

“Not until recently,” she admitted. “My husband and I lived some distance away. Visiting was difficult. But we always kept in touch. There were just the two of us, Joel and I. Our parents have been dead a long time.” There was an ache of sadness in her voice, and a loneliness in her face. She was the perfect witness for Coniston.

Rathbone changed his tactics. There was very little, if anything at all, that he could win.

“Did you at that time also come to know your sister-in-law better?”

She hesitated again.

He felt his stomach knot. Should he have asked her that? If she said yes, then she would either defend her, or be seen to betray her. If she said no, she would have to give a reason. He had made an error.

“I tried,” she said guiltily, a slight flush in her cheeks. “I think if things had been different, we might have become close. But when Joel died, she was beside herself with grief, as if she blamed herself …” She tailed off.

In the gallery several people moved, sighed, and rustled fabric or paper.

“Did you blame her?” Rathbone asked clearly.

“No, of course not.” She looked startled.

“It was not her fault that Dr. Lambourn’s work was rejected?”

Coniston made as if to stand up. Rathbone turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. Coniston relaxed again.

“Mrs. Herne?” Rathbone prompted.

“How could it be?” she answered. “That isn’t possible.”

“Should she have … complied with his needs? The ones for which he went to the woman named Zenia?” he suggested.

“I … I …” At last she was stuck for words. She did not look to Coniston for help but lowered her gaze modestly.

Coniston stood up. “My lord, my learned friend’s question is embarrassing and unnecessary. How could Mrs. Herne be-”

Rathbone gave a gracious little wave. “That’s all right, Mrs. Herne. Your silence is answer enough. Thank you. I have no further questions.”

Coniston next called Barclay Herne, and asked him to give the briefest possible account of Lambourn’s being asked by the government to make a confidential report on the use and sale of certain medicines. Herne added the now-accepted fact that, to his profound regret, Lambourn had become too passionately involved in the issues and it had warped his judgment to the degree that the government had been unable to accept his work.

“How did Dr. Lambourn take your rejection of his report, Mr. Herne?” Coniston said somberly.

Herne allowed grief to fill his expression. “I’m afraid he took it very badly,” he answered, his voice soft and a little husky. “He saw it as some kind of personal insult. I was worried for the balance of his mind. I profoundly regret that I did not take more care, perhaps persuade him to consult a colleague, but I really did not think it would affect him so … frankly, so out of proportion to reality.” He looked miserable, forced publicly to expose his family’s very personal tragedy.

Rathbone was surprised to feel a touch of pity for him. He turned as discreetly as he could to see if his wife had remained in the gallery, now that her own evidence was given. He saw her after a moment of searching, when a large man bent forward. Amity Herne was sitting immediately behind him, next to Sinden Bawtry. His handsome head was turned sideways, as if speaking to her.

The next moment the man in front straightened up again, and Rathbone drew his attention back to the witness stand.

“I wondered afterward if perhaps he had indulged in the use of opium far more than we guessed at the time.” Herne was answering the next question. “I’m sorry to say that. I feel very guilty that I did not take his whole breakdown far more gravely than I did.”

“Thank you, Mr. Herne.” Again Coniston bowed to Rathbone. “Your witness, Sir Oliver.”

Rathbone thanked him and took his place in the center of the floor, like a gladiator in the arena-exposed. “You mentioned opium, Mr. Herne. Were you aware that Dr. Lambourn was using it?”

“Not until after his death!” Herne said quickly.

“But you just said that you blamed yourself for not having realized that he was using it so much. How could you be expected to do that, if you were not aware that he was using it at all?”

“I meant that maybe I should have been aware,” Herne corrected himself.

“Could he have used more than he was aware of himself?” Rathbone suggested.

Herne looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Wasn’t his research into the issue of opium being available in patent medicines, purchasable on any high street in the country, but without labeling to allow the person buying to know-”

Coniston jerked up to his feet. “My lord, Dr. Lambourn’s work was confidential. This is not an appropriate place to debate what has not yet been proved as to its accuracy.”

“Yes, your objection is noted, Mr. Coniston.” Pendock turned to Rathbone. “This kind of questioning is irrelevant, Sir Oliver. You cannot connect it with the murder of Zenia Gadney. Are you suggesting that Mrs. Lambourn was somehow affected by taking opium incorrectly labeled, to the extent that she is not guilty for her acts?”

“No, my lord. But my learned friend raised the question of taking opium-”

“Yes,” Pendock said quickly. “Mr. Coniston, Sir Oliver did not object to your reference, but I do. It has nothing to do with the murder of Zenia Gadney. Please restrict yourself to that subject. You are wasting the court’s time and patience, and run the risk of confusing the jury. Proceed, Sir Oliver, if you have anything more to ask the witness that has bearing on the issue at trial.”

Rathbone stood in the middle of the floor and stared up at Pendock in his magnificent seat. His full-bottomed white wig and scarlet robes marked him out as a man set apart, a man with superior power. He saw in Pendock’s face that he was immovable on the subject. It was a strange, chill moment of understanding. Pendock was not impartial; he had his own agenda, perhaps even his orders.

“No more questions, my lord,” Rathbone replied. He turned and walked back to his seat. It was at that moment, facing the gallery, that he saw Sinden Bawtry staring across the heads of the people in front of him, directly at Pendock.

At the end of the day Rathbone went to see Dinah in the prison. As her lawyer, he was allowed to speak to her alone. As soon as the cell door clanged shut, closing them into the narrow space with its echoing stone and stale smell, he began. Time was short, and precious.

“When did you first know about your husband and Zenia Gadney?” he asked. “You are fighting for your life. Don’t lie to me now. Believe me, you cannot afford it.”

She looked ashen pale, her eyes hollow, her whole body tense, but there was no wavering in her. He could not imagine what effort that cost her.

“I don’t remember exactly. About fifteen years ago,” she replied.

“And is what your sister-in-law said true? He wanted certain practices from you that you were not prepared to give?”

A quick anger flared up in her eyes. “No! Joel was … gentle … perfectly normal. He would never have said anything like that to Amity. One does not discuss such a thing, even if it were true!”

Rathbone looked at her closely. She was angry, defensive-but of Joel, or of herself? Did she deny it so fiercely because it was a lie, or because it was horribly and painfully true? He wanted to believe her.

“Then why did he go to her for all those years, and pay her?” he asked. Everything might hang on that answer.

She blinked, but she did not lower her eyes. “She was a friend. She … used to be respectable, married. She had an accident, and was in a lot of pain. She became addicted to opium. She …” Dinah drew in a deep breath, and began again. “Her husband was a friend of Joel’s. When Zenia took to the streets, Joel helped her, financially. He did not tell Amity because she was living elsewhere at that time, and it was none of her concern. Anyway, she and Joel were never close, even growing up. He was seven years older than she and they had little in common. He was always studious, she was not.” She shook her head briefly. “And why would he tell her such a thing? He was a doctor. He kept confidences. He told me only to explain why he went to Limehouse, and why he gave her money to live on.”

He almost believed her. But there was something in the tension of her neck, the way her eyes never wavered from his, that left him fearing it was only part of the truth, and there was something vital that she had deliberately left out.

Yet Hester had told him that Zenia had said to Gladys that she had been married at one time, and her drinking had ended it. If the problem had been opium, why had she not said so? Or had Gladys simply assumed it was drink because of Zenia’s pity for the woman drunk in the street?

It fitted together perfectly-almost!

“Mrs. Lambourn,” Rathbone said earnestly, “you have no more time left to keep secrets, no matter how painful. You are fighting for your life, and believe me, the fact that you are a woman will not save you. If you are found guilty, three Sundays after the verdict is passed, you will walk to the gallows.”

She was so white he thought she was going to faint. He felt brutal, and yet she left him no choice if he was to have any chance at all of saving her.

“For God’s sake, tell me the truth!” he said desperately.

“That is the truth!” Her voice was so strangled in her throat he could barely hear it. “Joel took money to her every month, so she could survive without resorting to prostitution.”

“Can you prove that? Any part of it?” he demanded.

“Of course not. How could I?”

“Did you know the money went regularly?” He was clutching at straws.

Her eyes widened a fraction. “Yes. It was paid on the twenty-first of every month. It was in the household ledger.”

“Entered as what?”

“Under her initials-Z.G. He did not lie to me, Sir Oliver.”

He could see that that was what she believed. But then how could she bear to believe differently? What woman in her place would?

“Unfortunately there is no proof of that which we could show the court,” he said quietly. “The fact that he told you he gave her the money as an act of friendship does not prove that that was the truth. What happened to Zenia’s husband? Why did he not provide for her?”

“He’s dead,” she said simply, an unexpected finality of grief in her face.

“What was his name?”

“I … I don’t know.”

This time he was sure she was lying; he just could not understand why.

He changed the subject. “Why did you tell the police that you were at a soirée with Mrs. Moulton when you knew she would not support that? It was not only a lie; it was one you were bound to be caught in.”

She looked down at her hands. “I know.”

“Did you panic?” he asked more gently.

“No,” she whispered.

“What on earth did you hope to gain by speaking to Zenia?” he persisted. “What did you think she would tell you about your husband? Did you think he left papers from his report with her? Or that somehow she had helped him? Did she know something about opium that would have validated his findings?”

She faced him again. “I didn’t go to Copenhagen Place. I don’t know who that woman was. Clearly she tried to look like me. There’s not much point in bringing the shopkeeper and other people in to testify, because they’ll say what everybody expects them to-and what they will now believe is the truth. But I did not go. That I know as well as I know I’m sitting here.”

She took a deep, shaky breath. “And I will never believe that Joel killed himself. He knew his report was right and he was determined to fight his detractors. You have no idea of the evil and the shame of the opium trade, Sir Oliver, or of the people who are involved in it.” Her voice was trembling now. “Joel wept for what we have done in China. It is a very hard thing to acknowledge that your own country has committed atrocities. Many people cannot do that. They will go on to create more lies to cover the first.” There was a curious look in her eyes, almost a challenge.

Suddenly a new truth became shatteringly clear to him, bringing the sweat out on his body and choking the breath in his throat. She had lied about being with Helena Moulton quite deliberately, knowing it would be exposed, and that Monk would have no choice but to charge her with Zenia’s murder-and she would stand trial for her life. She had meant it to happen. She had asked Monk to have Rathbone to defend her because she believed he would force the truth of Joel’s murder into the open, and clear his name. Perhaps his work would even be continued by someone else. That was the depth of her belief in him-and her love.

Ridiculously, he found his mouth dry and he had to swallow hard in order to speak. He looked away from her, blinking rapidly to stop the tears in his eyes.

“I’ll do everything I can.” It was a promise he would keep, but he had no idea if it would be enough to save her, let alone to restore Joel Lambourn’s reputation. She must have seen that Pendock was against them, just as he had. And yet she had not given in.

How different she was from Margaret! How brave, reckless, and loyal. Beautiful and a little frightening. What must Joel Lambourn have been like to be worthy of such a woman?

He stood up very slowly. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said a little hoarsely. “I know somewhere I can at least try to get help.”