A Sunless Sea

CHAPTER 2

“Sir Oliver?” the judge said inquiringly.

Oliver Rathbone rose to his feet and stepped to the center of the courtroom floor. It was almost like an arena; he was surrounded by the gallery behind him, the jury on his left in their two rows of high seats, and the judge in front in the great carved chair, mounted as if it were a throne. The witness stand was almost above him, up the steps in its own little tower.

He had stood here in major trials for most of his adult life, as one of England’s most brilliant lawyers. Usually he felt intensely about a case, whether he was acting for the defense or the prosecution. Often the battle was for a man’s life. Today he was committed to the defense because it was his job-but he was still uncertain in his own mind if the accused was guilty or not. That gave him a rare feeling of emptiness. He could put no passion into this work, no fierce care for the sake of justice. He would be no more than competent, and that was far from enough to satisfy his nature.

But very little had been going well lately. The things that mattered seemed to have slipped beyond his control ever since the Ballinger case, and all the miserable decisions that had led to the final split between his wife, Margaret, and himself.

He concentrated on the witness, making himself recall the details of his testimony and one by one attack each point that was vulnerable, forcing the man to contradict himself so the jury would think him devious and unreliable.

He succeeded. This was the last witness of the day and the court was adjourned. Rathbone rode home in a hansom cab and arrived comparatively early. It was one of those calm, still evenings of deepening winter when the storms are all yet to come. It was not cold enough for frost. As he stepped out of the cab and paid the driver, there was no bite in the air. The last of the neighbor’s chrysanthemums were still heavy with bloom, and their earthy smell was sweet as he passed them.

A year ago he would have been happy to be home with this extra time to spend. But that was before the whole business of the barges on the river with their obscene pleasures, their abuse of children, and their final descent into murder.

He and Margaret had been happy before all that-in fact increasingly so with each passing week. There had been tenderness, an understanding between them that filled all kinds of longings he had hardly acknowledged he felt earlier in his life.

Now, as he went in through the front door and the butler took his hat and coat, he felt the heavy silence in the house.

“Good evening, Sir Oliver.” The man was polite as always.

“Good evening, Ardmore,” Rathbone replied automatically. The butler, and the cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Wilton, might be the only people whose voices he would hear until he left his house again tomorrow morning. The soundlessness would grow thick and oppressive, almost like another presence in the home.

It was absurd. He was becoming maudlin. Silence had never bothered him when he was single, which had been a long enough time. In fact, back then he had found it rather pleasant after the constant noise of his chambers, or the courtroom. An occasional dinner with his friends, especially Monk and Hester, had been all the companionship he wished for-apart, of course, from visiting his father out at Primrose Hill. But just at the moment Henry Rathbone was traveling in Europe-Germany, to be precise-and he would be there until well into the new year.

Oliver would have liked to see him this evening. His father was still his dearest friend, as he had always been. But one did not visit friends with one’s own emptiness; right now, there was no interesting problem to challenge Henry with, not even any specific loss or difficulty for which to seek his comfort. Just a sense of having failed. And yet, Oliver did not know what he would have or could have done differently.

He sat in the beautiful dining room that Margaret had designed. As he ate his dinner he went over it all yet again in his mind.

If he had fought harder to prove Ballinger’s innocence, even if he had been able to think of some trick, honest or dishonest, surely it would have made no difference to the eventual verdict? All it would’ve done was tarnish his sense of honor.

But Margaret had never seen it that way. She believed that Rathbone had put his ambition before loyalty to his family. Ballinger was Margaret’s father, and regardless of the evidence, she would not believe his guilt.

Was it better or worse that he had been murdered in prison before he could be hanged?

She had blamed Rathbone for that, too, believing that some sort of appeal could have been made, and Ballinger would have lived.

That was not true, though. There had been no grounds for appeal, and Rathbone, at least, knew that Ballinger had been guilty. In the end, privately between the two of them, Ballinger had admitted it. Rathbone could remember the arrogance in Ballinger’s face as he had told the full story. In his own mind, Ballinger felt his actions were justified.

Rathbone ate mechanically, pushing the roast beef and vegetables around the porcelain plate and tasting little. It was an insult to Mrs. Wilton, but she would never know. He would thank her exactly as if he had thoroughly enjoyed it. The staff were all trying so hard to please him. It was touching and a little embarrassing. They saw him more clearly than he would have wished. It was said that no man was a hero to his valet; that acute perception seemed to extend to the butler and the housekeeper as well. It might even extend to the maids and the footman for all he knew.

Now that Margaret was gone, he had too large a staff, but he could not bring himself to let any of them go-not yet, anyway. Was that for their benefit? Or was it a refusal on his part to accept the situation as final?

His mind returned to Ballinger, and that last interview they had had together. Had Ballinger been justified, a little, in the very beginning? Clearly he believed so. The descent had come after that.

Or had the first step been wrong, and the rest always bound to follow?

Rathbone finished dessert: a delicate baked custard with a crisp, sweet crust. Mrs. Wilton was trying very hard. He must remember to compliment her for it.

He set his napkin beside his plate and rose to his feet. Without doing it consciously, he had made up his mind to go to see Margaret one more time. Perhaps it was the unfinished feeling that carved such a hollow inside him and made it impossible to close the acrimoniousness and begin to heal, whatever that might mean. He had not yet done everything he could to resolve the bitterness between them.

She was mistaken. He had not set his ambition before family. Ambition had not been on his mind at all. He had never flinched, even for an instant, from representing Ballinger. Moreover, he had believed, at least in the very beginning, that he could and should win the case. Margaret’s accusation was unfair. He still stung from the injustice of it. Perhaps now, with a little time passed, she would know that.

He told Ardmore he would be out for an hour or two. After collecting his hat and coat, he went into the lamplit streets to look for a hansom.

He arrived at the new, far smaller house that Mrs. Ballinger had taken after her husband’s death. It was the fifth place down on a very ordinary terrace, a dramatic fall from the wealth and fashion of the house in which they had lived before, the one in which Margaret had grown up.

As Rathbone stood on the pavement and looked at it, he felt a stab of pity, almost of shame, for the beautiful home he had moved into when he first married Margaret. She had done the interior, choosing the colors and fabrics, which were subtle and beautiful. They were more daring than he would have picked, but once they were in place he liked them. They made his previous conservative taste seem bland. She had placed the pictures, the vases, the best of the ornaments. Some of them were wedding gifts.

She had enjoyed being Lady Rathbone. He knew with sadness, and a bitter humor, that she had now stopped using the title, although she could hardly call herself Mrs. Rathbone. There was no such person. Neither of them had mentioned the subject of divorce, although the question of it hung between them, waiting for the inevitable decision. When would that be?

Perhaps he should not have come. She might raise it now, and he was not ready. He did not know what he wanted to say. Neither of them had sinned in the way usually accepted as making a marriage intolerable. Sometimes one or the other party invented an affair and admitted to it, but Margaret would never do that, and Rathbone realized as he stood on the front doorstep, that neither would he. Neither had wronged the other, in that sense. They were simply morally incompatible, and perhaps that was worse. It was not a matter of forgiving. The division was not in what either had done, but in what they were.

A parlor maid opened the door and her face registered her dismay when she recognized him.

“Good evening,” Rathbone said, unable to remember her name, if he had ever known it. “Is Mrs. Ballinger at home?”

“If you’ll come in, Sir Oliver, I’ll ask if she’s able to see you.” She stood back to allow him into the narrow hall, so different from the handsome, spacious one in the old house. It was darker, somehow shabbier, in spite of the homely touches and the clean smell of polish.

There was no place for him to wait except there. The house had no morning room or study, just a simple parlor, dining room, and kitchens, probably just one to cook in, and a scullery for washing dishes. There was hardly need for more than a cook/housekeeper, one maid and a manservant of some sort, and perhaps one lady’s maid for both Margaret and her mother. Rathbone wondered wryly how much of this was paid for by his very generous allowance. Wherever she chose to live, she was still his wife.

The maid appeared again, her face careful to show no expression.

“Mrs. Ballinger will see you, Sir Oliver, if you will come this way, please.” She led him not to the parlor but to an unexpected small room next to the baize door into the kitchen. Possibly it was the housekeeper’s room.

Mrs. Ballinger was standing inside. She wore black. Incredibly, it was only weeks since Ballinger had died-it felt like months had passed. Rathbone felt a wave of pity as he looked at her. She seemed smaller, as if everything in her life had shrunk. Her hair had faded and looked thinner; her shoulders sagged so that her gown hung awkwardly, even though it was an excellent one, kept from happier times. She did not fill it out as she used to. Her face was pale but there was a flicker of hope in her eyes.

Rathbone found himself floundering for words. He knew she wanted a reconciliation between himself and Margaret, hoped that their happiness could be rebuilt, even if her own could not. Margaret’s anger and misery must weigh even more heavily on her than any other. Rathbone was certain of that as he looked at her face now. He had never really liked her. She had seemed to him self-absorbed, unimaginative, in many ways superficial in her judgments. Now he was overwhelmed with compassion for her, and he knew he could do nothing to help, except perhaps keep his temper, try harder to reach some accommodation with Margaret.

Had Margaret ever thought what her bitterness was costing her mother? Or was she too filled with her own pain to consider anyone else’s? Rathbone realized with a cutting self-awareness that the very anger he wanted to control for Mrs. Ballinger’s sake had welled up inside again, scalding him.

They were standing, facing each other in silence. It was up to him to speak first, to explain why he had come, uninvited and at this hour of the evening. Without planning to be, he was uncharacteristically gentle.

“I wanted to see how you were,” he began, as if that were the kind of emotion he often felt. “There might be something I could do that I haven’t thought of. If you would permit me?”

She was silent for several moments, weighing his intention behind the words.

“For Margaret’s sake?” she asked finally. “You must still hate Mr. Ballinger and me because of him. I had no idea …” It sounded like an excuse, and she stopped as soon as she realized it.

“I never imagined that you knew,” he said quickly, and honestly. “The shock of finding out such a thing, and beginning to understand what it meant is enough to paralyze almost anyone. And you had no alternative except loyalty. By the time you knew of it there was nothing to be done to save anyone.”

She looked puzzled for a moment, as if trying to distinguish between his judgment of her, and his judgment of Margaret.

“You were his wife,” he said, in self-defense as well as by way of explanation.

“Have you come to see Margaret?” Hope refused to die in her.

“If I may?” That was a polite fiction. Mrs. Ballinger had never refused him access to Margaret; it was Margaret herself who would not speak to him.

She hesitated. He knew she was considering not whether to take the message, but how; what manner would offer any chance of success.

“I will go to ask her,” she said at last. “Please wait here. I …” She swallowed with difficulty. “I would rather not have a scene that would embarrass any of us.”

“Of course,” he agreed.

It was nearly a quarter of an hour before she returned, which showed a measure of the difficulty she had had in persuading Margaret. As Rathbone thanked her and followed her back across the hall, he found himself increasingly angry with Margaret, not on his own behalf but on her mother’s. He could not even imagine the blow Mrs. Ballinger had taken from her husband’s guilt, and then his murder cutting off all hope of a reprieve. Not that there had been any. He would have died with the hangman’s noose around his throat. Her entire world had collapsed hideously. She had no one but her children on whom to lean. The failure of Margaret’s marriage and her refusal to accept her father’s guilt must keep all the wounds open and bleeding.

Margaret was standing in the middle of the overcrowded parlor, waiting for him. She was very plainly dressed. Like her mother, she was still in black, although hers was relieved by jet jewelry and a brooch set with seed pearls, a tiny glimmer of white against the darkness. As always, she stood with grace, her head high, but she was thinner than the last time he had seen her, and very pale, almost colorless.

She did not speak.

To ask how she was would be absurdly formal, setting a tone that would be hard to break. Her health had always been excellent and it was hardly the issue between them; any distress she felt now was emotional.

He felt awkward and knew that in his immaculately tailored clothes he must look out of place in this room with its drab walls, and too many family pictures on every surface. What could he say that was honest? Why had he come?

“I wanted to talk to you …,” he began. “To see if we could understand each other a little better, perhaps move toward some kind of reconciliation …” He stopped. Her face gave nothing away, and he felt both foolish and vulnerable.

Her fair eyebrows rose. “Are you saying what you think you ought to, Oliver?” she asked quietly, no lift in her voice. “Paving the way to justify yourself because you want to set me aside with a clear conscience? After all, you need to be able to tell your colleagues that you tried. It would reflect poorly on you if you didn’t. Everyone would understand that an eminent lawyer like you would not wish to be married to the daughter of a criminal, but you should at least not make that offensively clear.”

“Is that how you think of yourself: the daughter of a criminal?” he said with far more edge to his voice than he had meant to.

“We were talking about you,” she responded. “You are here; I did not come to you.”

That also hurt, although he should not have expected her to come to him. Right or wrong, it was always the man who pursued-except perhaps with Hester. If she had quarreled with someone she cared for, whether she had been right or wrong, she would have sought them out. He knew that from the past. Was he unfairly comparing Margaret with her? Hester had faults as well, but big, brave ones, never a pettiness of mind. He was the one who had not been daring enough for her. He should not be petty now.

He took a deep breath. “I came hoping that if we spoke, we might heal at least some of the breach between us,” he said as gently as he could. “I have no idea what the future will bring, and I was certainly not trying to make excuses for it. I don’t need to explain myself to anyone else-”

“Which is as well, because you can’t!” She cut across him. “Not to me, or to my family.”

He kept his temper with difficulty. “I was not thinking of you as someone else.” They were both still standing, as if physical ease were impossible. He thought of asking if he could sit down, or even simply doing it, but he decided not to. She might take it as an implication that he thought he belonged here, and that he saw it as a right, not a privilege.

“How were you thinking of me, then?” she asked.

“As my wife, and-at one time at least-also as my friend,” he said.

Without warning the tears filled her eyes.

For an instant he thought that there was hope. He started to take a step toward her.

“You threw that away,” she said quickly, raising her head a fraction, as if to ward him off.

“I did what I had to do!” he protested. “Everything the law allowed me, to defend him. He was guilty, Margaret!”

“How often do you repeat that to yourself, Oliver?” she said bitterly. “Have you convinced yourself yet?”

“He admitted it to me,” he said wearily. They had been over all of this before. He had lived out the whole wretched tragedy for her-Ballinger’s desperate fight for life, then finally his admission of guilt. He had given her few details, to spare her distress, and her knowledge of details that were ugly and cruel, things she need never know.

“And that’s enough for you?” She flung the words at him like an accusation. “What about the reasons, Oliver? Or didn’t you want to know them? Can’t you for once be honest and stop hiding behind the law? Or is it all you know, all you understand? ‘The book says this! The book says that!’ ”

“That’s not fair, Margaret,” he protested. “I can’t work outside the law-”

“You mean you can’t think outside it,” she corrected him, her eyes burning with contempt. “You are a liar, perhaps first to yourself; you can consider actual morality when you want to. You can for Hester. You’ll bend all your own precious rules when she asks you to.”

“Is that what this is?” he said with painful understanding. “Jealousy of Hester, because you think I would have done differently for her? Can’t you understand that she would never have asked me to?”

Margaret gave a harsh, bitter laugh. The sound of it lacerated the last of his emotions. “You’re a coward, Oliver! Is that why you care for her so much? Because she’ll fight the battles for you, and never expect anything of you but to follow? What about Monk? Would you fight for him?”

He did not know how to answer her. Could any of what she said be true?

“Did you ask my father why he did all those things you accused him of?” she went on, perhaps sensing her victory. “Or did you not want to know? It might disturb your comfortable world of right and wrong where everything is decided for you by generations of lawyers from the past. No need to think! No need to make any difficult decisions, or stand alone. Certainly no need to take any dangerous action yourself, question any of your own comfortable certainties, or risk anything.”

At last he was angry enough to reply. “I’ll risk my own safety, Margaret, but not anyone else’s.”

Her eyes widened in amazement. “That man, Mickey Parfitt, he was filth!” she said with scorching contempt. “Worse than vermin. You know what he did.”

“And the girl?” he said quietly.

“What girl?” She looked blank.

“The girl he killed as well?”

“The prostitute!”

“Yes, the prostitute,” he replied coldly. “Was she vermin, too?”

“She would have had him hanged!” she exclaimed.

“So that justified him killing her? That’s your courage, your brave morality? Personally deciding who lives and who dies, rather than leaving it to the law?”

“He had reasons, terrible choices to make.” Now the tears ran freely down her cheeks. “He was my father! I loved him.” She said it as if that explained it all. He began to realize at last that for her, it did.

“So I should forgive him, no matter what he did?” he asked.

“Yes! Is that so difficult?” It was a challenge, demanded in fury and despair.

“Then what a pity you did not love me also.” He said the words so softly, they were little more than a whisper.

She gasped. Her eyes went wide. “That’s not fair!”

“It’s perfectly fair,” he replied. “And since I cannot place your family before what is right, then perhaps I did not love you, either. That seems to be your conclusion, and by your way of measuring love, you are right. I am sorry. I truly believed otherwise.” He stood still for a moment, but she did not say anything. He turned to leave. He had reached the door when finally she spoke.

“Oliver …”

He stopped, then looked back at her. “Yes?”

She made a helpless little gesture with her hands. “I thought I had something to say, but I don’t.” It was an admission of failure, a closing of the door.

The pain overwhelmed him, not for something lost so much as for the fading of a dream that had once seemed completely real. He walked out of the room.

The parlor maid was waiting in the hall, as if she had known he would not be staying. She handed him his coat, and then his hat. Mrs. Ballinger was not in sight, and it seemed faintly ridiculous to go looking for her to tell her he was leaving. It would only embarrass them both. There was nothing to say. Better simply to go.

He thanked the parlor maid and went out into the darkness. The air was cold now, but he barely noticed. He walked briskly until he came to the nearest cross street where he could find a hansom to take him home.

Rathbone walked into his own wide, gracious hall to be told by Ardmore that there was someone waiting for him in his withdrawing room.

“Who is it?” he asked with some irritation. Whatever it was, he was in no mood to deal with it tonight. Even if some client had been arrested and was in jail, there was nothing he could do about it at this hour.

“Mr. Brundish, sir,” Ardmore replied. “He says he has something of great importance to give you, and he is unable to return in the morning because of other commitments. I explained to him that you were out, and that I did not know at what time you might return, but he was adamant, sir.”

“Yes, you did the right thing,” Rathbone said wearily. “I suppose I had better go and take delivery of whatever it is. What is it, do you know? A letter of some sort, I suppose.”

“No, Sir Oliver, it is quite a large parcel, and from the way he carried it, it seems to be of considerable weight.”

Rathbone was surprised.

“A parcel?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like me to bring whisky, sir? Or brandy? I offered him both earlier, but he only accepted coffee.”

“No, thank you. It will only incline him to stay.” He was aware it sounded ungracious, but all he wanted was to accept the package and see the man leave. And very possibly, Brundish was as keen to get to home as Rathbone was to be left in peace.

He walked into the withdrawing room and Brundish rose from the chair he had been sitting in. He was a stocky man dressed in a striped suit. He looked tired and a little anxious.

“Sorry to call at this time of the night,” he apologized before Rathbone had a chance to speak at all. “Can’t come tomorrow, and I needed to … deal with this.” His glance slid to the box on the floor beside his chair. It was approximately a foot in height and breadth, fifteen inches long. It appeared to be some kind of case.

“Deal with it?” Rathbone asked, puzzled. “What is it?”

“Your legacy,” Brundish replied. “From the late Arthur Ballinger. I’ve been holding it in trust for him. At least, I held the key and the instructions. I only retrieved this today.”

Rathbone froze. Memory came flooding back. Ballinger’s message to him: that he had bequeathed him the blackmail photographs in a final irony as bitter as gall. Rathbone had assumed it was a dying joke, a threat empty of meaning.

He looked now at the case sitting on the beautiful carpet (another choice of Margaret’s), and wondered if that was really what was in the box: pictures of men, important men, powerful men with money and position, indulging in the terrible vice that Ballinger had photographed and with which he had then blackmailed them. At least his blackmailing had usually been for good; Rathbone thought of the judge who had been disinclined to close down a factory polluting the land and causing terrible disease. The threat to make public his taste for the violent sexual abuse of small boys had changed his mind.

Each member of that hideous club had had to pose in a picture so lewd, so compromising, that the publication of it would ruin him. After this initiation, exercise of the vice was relatively free-until Ballinger needed their help in some favor or other.

Only after some years had it degenerated into payment with money rather than action. And then-when possession of the riverboat on which it had all taken place had satisfied Ballinger’s own power for gain-finally to murder.

Rathbone did not know beyond doubt of Ballinger’s guilt in, or even his knowledge of, the murders of the boys grown too old to please the tastes of such patrons, or too unwilling to be coerced anymore. He preferred to think that of those additional crimes, perhaps Ballinger was innocent.

None of this Margaret believed, and she had never seen or even imagined the pictures. Rathbone would fight with everything he had in order that she never did. Such things seared themselves into the mind and could not be erased. Rathbone himself still woke in the night soaked with sweat when he dreamed of them, of going into the boats themselves and feeling the pain and the fear drown him, like filthy water closing over his head.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I suppose you have to leave them here?”

“Yes,” Brundish replied, his brows lifted slightly in surprise. “I assume from that remark that you do not wish for … whatever it is?” He pulled a small sheet of paper from his inside pocket. “However, I need you to sign this to confirm that I have delivered it to you.”

“Of course you do.” Wordlessly Rathbone took the paper over to the writing table in the corner, picked up a pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and signed. He blotted the signature lightly and handed the paper back.

After Brundish had gone, Rathbone sent Ardmore to fetch brandy, then he dismissed him for the night and sat in the armchair thinking.

Should he destroy them, now, without even opening them? He looked down at the box and realized it was metal, and locked. The key was tied to it on a ribbon, presumably by Brundish. He would have to open it and take them out before he could destroy them. Inside that box they were invulnerable, probably even to fire.

What else would destroy pictures? Acid? But why bother? Fire was easy enough. There was a fire in the grate now. All he needed to do was pile more coal on it, get it really hot, and he had the perfect method. By morning there would be nothing left.

He bent down and took the key, put it in the lock, and turned it. It moved easily, as if it were well cared for and often used.

The contents were not only paper as he had expected, but photographic plates, with paper prints beside, presumably duplicates used to prove their existence. He should have foreseen that. These were the originals from which Ballinger had printed the copies he had used to blackmail people. He had nearly said “the victims” in his own mind, but these men were not the victims. The true victims were the children, the mudlarks, orphans, street urchins taken and kept prisoner on the boats.

He looked at the pictures one by one. They were horrific, but obscenely fascinating. He barely looked at the children-he could not bear it-but the faces of the men held him totally, however much against his will. They were men whose features he knew, men of power in government, in law, in the Church, in life. That the sickness ran through them with such power that they would stoop to this shook him till his stomach clenched and his hand holding the plates trembled.

If they had paid prostitutes, or even done such things with adult men, or other men’s wives, it would have been a private matter that he could perhaps shut out of his mind. But this was entirely different. This was the rape and torture of children, and-even to the most tolerant-it was a bestial crime. To the society in which they moved, which respected them and over which they had power, it was a sin beyond forgiveness.

The plates were glass. They would not burn. The fire in the hearth, however hot, would not be enough.

Acid? A hammer and blows violent enough to smash them to rubble? But should he? If he destroyed this evidence, then he was complicit in the crimes they had committed.

Should he take them to the police?

But some of those men were police. Some were judges, some advocates in the courts. He would overturn half of society. And if word of his possession got out, perhaps he would not even survive. Men had killed for infinitely less.

He was too tired to make any irrevocable decisions tonight.

He closed the box and locked it again. He must find a safe place to keep it until he could decide. It must be somewhere that no one else could find it, or ever think to look.

Where had Ballinger kept it? A bank vault or something of that nature?

He would deal with it tomorrow. Tonight he was too weighed down with grief.