A Sunless Sea

CHAPTER 22

On Tuesday the trial reopened with Coniston looking considerably more relaxed, as if the end of a long and weary journey were almost reached. There was something in his face that could even have been sympathy for Rathbone.

Pendock brought them to order very quickly.

“Have you a witness, Sir Oliver?” he asked.

“Yes, my lord,” Rathbone replied. “I call the accused, known as Dinah Lambourn.”

Pendock looked slightly startled, as if he considered it a mistake, but he made no comment.

Dinah was brought down from the dock. Carefully, her whole body trembling, she climbed the steps to the witness stand, gripping the rails as if she was afraid of falling. Indeed, she might have been. She looked ashen; her face seemed to have no blood beneath the alabaster skin.

Rathbone walked out into the center of the court and looked up at her. How long would he have to keep her here? He must speak with Winfarthing before he put him on the stand. Any lawyer who did less than that was a fool. He trusted Hester, but he still needed his own preparation.

“You lived with Joel Lambourn for fifteen years as his wife?” he asked, his voice a little strained.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Did you ever marry him?”

“No.”

“Why not?” It seemed a brutal question, but he wanted the jury to understand her and be in no doubt whatsoever that she had always known of Zenia Gadney.

“Because he was already married to Zenia, his wife from before we met,” she answered.

“And he did not put her aside in order to marry you?” He tried to put surprise into his voice without cruelty, but it was impossible. He winced at the sound of it.

“I didn’t ever ask him to,” she replied. “I knew Zenia had had a bad accident and the pain had caused her to become addicted first to alcohol, and then to opium. She finally recovered from the gin, but never completely from the opium. There was a time when the one thing she clung to, and which saved her from suicide, was the fact that Joel did not abandon her. I loved him, I always will. I would not ask him to do something he believed to be cruel and wrong. I wouldn’t want him to be a man who wished to.”

“And was it not wrong to live with you, then?” he asked but only because he knew Coniston would if he did not.

“He didn’t ask me to live with him,” she replied. “I chose to. And yes, I suppose society would say that was wrong. I really don’t care very much.”

“You don’t care for right and wrong, or you don’t care what society thinks of you?” Rathbone asked.

“I suppose I care,” she replied with the ghost of a smile. “About society, I mean. But not enough to give up the only man I ever loved. We offended propriety, or we would have done, had they known. But we hurt no one else. Perhaps even they would not have cared a great deal. Thousands of people have mistresses or lovers. Thousands more make use of women of the street. As long as it is private, no one minds very much.”

What she said was perfectly true, but he wished she had not been quite so candid-although possibly Coniston would have made the same point if she had not. Now there was very little left for him to say.

Rathbone knew he must keep the questions going all morning. Better anything than silence, and Pendock putting the case to the jury. Had Hester really persuaded Winfarthing to come? What would he do if the man refused to testify?

“Were you happy?” he asked, looking up at Dinah.

Coniston rose to his feet. “My lord, my learned friend is yet again wasting the court’s time. If it will help to move the proceedings along, I shall willingly stipulate that the accused and Dr. Lambourn had an ideal life together, and until the last few weeks of his life they were as happy as any other husband and wife. There is no need whatever to call a procession of witnesses to that effect.”

“I had no intention of doing so, my lord,” Rathbone said indignantly.

Pendock was impatient. “Then please come to the point that you do wish to make, Sir Oliver.”

Rathbone kept his temper with difficulty. He must not allow himself to be distracted by anger or pride. “Yes, my lord.” He looked up at Dinah again. “Did Dr. Lambourn speak with you about his work, specifically that report he was asked to write on the sale and labeling of opium?”

“Yes, he did. It was something he cared about very deeply. He wanted to have all patent medicines clearly labeled, with numbers anyone could read, so they would know what doses were safe to take.”

“Is this a highly controversial matter, so far as you know?”

Coniston stood up again. “My lord, the accused has no expertise on the subject, as my learned friend is well aware.”

Pendock sighed. “Your objection is noted. Sir Oliver, please do not ask the witness questions you are perfectly aware she has no expertise from which to answer. I will not permit you to drag this trial out any further with pointless time-wasting exercises.”

Rathbone bit back his anger. He turned to Dinah again.

“Did Dr. Lambourn ever tell you that he had met with any criticism or obstruction from the government, or any medical authorities while he was seeking to gather information on the subject of accidental deaths from opium?”

“No. It was the government who asked him to write the report,” she replied.

“Who in the government, specifically?” he asked.

“Mr. Barclay Herne.” Carefully she refrained from saying that he was her brother-in-law. She had been about to, and checked herself just in time.

“Dr. Lambourn’s brother-in-law?” Rathbone clarified.

“Yes.”

Pendock was growing impatient. He scowled and his large-knuckled hands fidgeted in front of him on the polished surface of the bench.

“Is Mr. Herne in charge of the project for the government?” Rathbone asked.

“I believe so,” Dinah replied. “It was Barclay to whom Joel reported.”

Aware of Pendock’s irritation, Rathbone hurried on, resenting the pressure. “So it was Barclay Herne who told him that his report was unacceptable?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Was Dr. Lambourn very distressed by this?”

“He was angry and puzzled,” she replied. “The facts were very carefully recorded and he had all the evidence. He didn’t understand what Barclay considered the problem to be, but he was determined to rewrite it with some detail and notation so that it would be accepted.”

“He did not feel himself rejected, or his career ruined?” Rathbone affected surprise.

“Not at all,” she answered. “It was a report. The rejection distressed him, but it certainly did not drive him to despair.”

“Did he mention to you having discovered anything else distressing during his research?” Rathbone asked.

Coniston stood again. “My lord, the details of Dr. Lambourn’s research and what may have saddened him or not are hardly relevant. We are trying the accused for the murder of Dr. Lambourn’s first wife-”

“I take your point, Mr. Coniston.” Pendock turned to Rathbone.

Before he could speak, Rathbone swung around to face Coniston, as if he were unaware of the judge.

“On the contrary,” Rathbone said loudly. “You claim that Dr. Lambourn took his own life in despair at something that occurred during this period of time. At first you said that it was some sexual deviancy and his consequent use of a prostitute in Limehouse, and the possibility that his wife would find this out. Now that you know the ‘prostitute,’ as you called her, was in fact a perfectly respectable woman who was once, and legally still was, Dr. Lambourn’s wife, you have had to withdraw that!”

Coniston looked startled, even discomfited.

“Then you said that the accused killed the victim out of jealousy because she had just discovered Dr. Lambourn’s visits to her,” Rathbone went on. “Only as soon as you said that, you discovered that she had known of his visits for the last fifteen years; so that reasoning was clearly absurd. Now you are saying that he killed himself because an important but very detailed report he made was refused, and he had to go back and write it again. I am trying to establish whether or not that was actually so. I intend to call other professional witnesses in that field to give evidence on the subject.”

“Sir Oliver!” Pendock’s voice was so forceful there was a sudden, total silence in the courtroom. “We are trying the accused for the murder of Zenia Gadney Lambourn, not for the death of Joel Lambourn, which has already been ruled by the courts to be suicide. His reasons for taking his life, however tragic, are not relevant here.”

“I submit, my lord, that they are acutely relevant, and I shall show the jury that that is so,” Rathbone said recklessly.

“Indeed,” Pendock replied skeptically. “We wait impatiently. Please proceed.”

Heart pounding, Rathbone turned back to Dinah.

“I know that you find it hard to believe that Dr. Lambourn took his own life,” he began, “but during the last week before his body was found, was he at any time unusually distressed, angry, at a loss to know what to do? Was he different from his normal self?”

Coniston moved in his seat, but he did not rise, although he made ready to.

Reading Rathbone’s cue, Dinah replied. “Yes. He returned home from questioning people in the dockside areas, about two or three days before his death. He was most distraught by something he had learned.”

“Did he tell you what that was?” Rathbone asked.

There was total silence in the room. The gallery seemed to be holding their breath. Not a juror moved so much as a hand.

“No.” Dinah sighed the word, then made an effort to speak more clearly. “I asked him, but he said it was something too terrible to tell anyone until he knew who was behind it. I asked him again, but he said it was something I should not know about, for my own sake, since such suffering was involved. Once it was in my mind, I would never be able to forget it, he said. It would haunt my dreams, waking and sleeping, for the rest of my life.” The tears were running down her face unchecked now. “I saw the grief in him, and I knew that he spoke the truth. I didn’t ask him again. I don’t know which was easier for him, my knowing, or not knowing. I never learned, because two days later he was dead.”

“Could it have been the number of deaths caused by accidental overdose of opium in some new area he was researching?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t see how. Had there been something appalling, a large number of deaths in one place, then surely that would have been something Mr. Herne would have wished to know about, and it would not have been secret. It must have been something else.”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” Rathbone agreed. “Did he at any time say to you what he intended to do about this terrible thing that brought about so much suffering?”

Dinah was silent for several moments.

One of the jurors moved uncomfortably; another leaned forward as if to look at her more closely.

Coniston stared at Rathbone, then looked up at the judge.

Rathbone wanted to know if Barclay Herne was in the court or not. He had his back to the gallery and did not dare disturb his concentration to look.

“I am trying to think back on what he said,” Dinah replied at last. “To think of his words, and what he might have meant. He was very disturbed by it, very distressed.”

“Did he know who was involved in this abomination?” Rathbone asked. “Or anything about the nature of it?”

“Only that it concerned opium,” she replied quietly. “And that he cared about it passionately.”

This time Coniston did rise to his feet. “My lord! We have not in any way whatever established that there was any abomination to discover, only that something happened that Dr. Lambourn was disturbed about.” He spread his hands out wide. “It could have been an accident, a misfortune of nature, anything at all. Or for that matter, it could have been nothing. We have only the accused’s word that we are talking about anything more than an excuse to drag this trial out as long as possible.”

“You are quite right, Mr. Coniston,” Pendock agreed. “I have no more patience with your time-wasting, Sir Oliver. If you have no further evidence to bring forward, then we shall put the matter to the jury.”

Rathbone was desperate. He had nothing else to ask Dinah. She had pleaded not guilty when she was charged. There was not even a denial to add.

“I have two more witnesses, my lord,” he said, hearing his own voice sound hollow, even faintly ridiculous. Where the devil was Monk? Where were Hester and her Dr. Winfarthing?

Pendock turned to Coniston. “Have you any questions to ask the accused, Mr. Coniston?”

Coniston hesitated, then either in cowardice not to take any chances, or in mercy not to drag out the pointless ritual, he answered quietly.

“No, my lord, thank you.”

Rathbone was beaten. “I wish to call Dr. Gustavus Winfarthing, my lord, but he is not yet in court. I apologize, and ask-”

The doors at the back of the court burst open and a huge figure strode through, jacket flying, his mane of graying hair standing on end as if he had come in from a high wind.

“Don’t you dare apologize on my behalf!” he cried loudly. “I most certainly am here. Good heavens, sir, a blind man on a galloping horse could not miss me.”

There was a ripple of laughter around the gallery, perhaps as much a release of tension as any amusement. Even one or two of the jurors smiled widely, then suddenly realized that perhaps it was inappropriate, and forced their faces into expressions of gravity again.

Winfarthing walked right up to the edge of the table where Rathbone sat, and then stopped.

“Are you ready for me, Sir Oliver? Or shall I wait outside again?”

“No!” Rathbone controlled his relief and his anxiety with an effort. “We are perfectly ready for you, Dr. Winfarthing. If you would take the stand, sir, you will be sworn in.” He was not at all ready for him. He needed to speak to him alone, learn what he had to say and keep some grasp on the testimony, but he dared not try Pendock’s patience, or he might lose even this chance.

Winfarthing obeyed, climbing with some difficulty up the narrow, curving steps to the witness box, finding it awkward to get his bulk between the railings. He swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then stood meekly waiting for Rathbone to begin.

Rathbone had never seen the man before. In fact he knew nothing of him except the little that Hester had told him, and the rather larger amount he deduced from the warmth with which she had spoken. Even the mention of his name had made her smile. Rathbone now had almost nothing left to lose. He set out with a bravado he was far from feeling.

“Dr. Winfarthing, were you acquainted with Joel Lambourn?”

“Of course I was,” Winfarthing replied, raising his eyebrows and staring at Rathbone as if he were a peculiarly inept student in front of him for some childish prank. “Excellent man, both professionally and personally.” Then, as if anticipating Coniston’s objection to the fact that he had not been asked to assess Lambourn’s character, he turned toward him and glared ferociously.

“Thank you,” Rathbone said quickly. “Did he seek your opinions or experiences regarding the use of opium when he was doing research for his report in the three or four months before he died?”

“Of course he did,” Winfarthing said with surprise in his face and his voice again, as if the question were redundant.

Already the gallery was silent. Behind him Rathbone could not hear even the rustle of movement in the seats. Please heaven, Winfarthing had something to say, more than the details, with which he could take the afternoon until Monk would find and bring Agatha Nisbet.

“Why, Dr. Winfarthing?” Rathbone prompted. “Have you some expertise in the study of infant deaths from opium overdose?”

“Tragically, yes,” Winfarthing replied. “I was able to confirm a good deal of what he had found, and add my own figures to his, which incidentally were almost exactly the same.”

Coniston rose to his feet. “My lord, if it will save the court’s time, I am willing to agree that Dr. Lambourn’s figures were honestly obtained, and may well have been accurate regarding the misuse of opium in dosing children. Whether that is a tragedy that can be overcome by better dispensing is not within our remit. But since Sir Oliver himself has implied, properly or not, that the reason for Dr. Lambourn’s death had nothing to do with his report on opium labeling, I do not see how it has even the remotest relevance to the murder of Zenia Gadney, even in the unlikely, and totally unproven, event that she was privy to any part of this report. Or, for that matter, that she could have had a copy of part of it in her keeping.”

“Your point is well taken, Mr. Coniston,” Pendock replied. “Sir Oliver, you are wasting time again. I will not allow it. If Dr. Winfarthing has nothing to add except his opinion that Lambourn was a good doctor, then we have heard it, and it is, as Mr. Coniston has said, irrelevant. If Mr. Coniston has no questions of this witness, call your next witness, whoever it is, and let us proceed.”

Winfarthing’s eyes widened and his large face flushed red with anger. He swung around in the confines of the witness box with some difficulty, and glared at the judge in his scarlet robes and white, full-bottomed wig.

“Sir, I have a great deal of evidence to give,” he thundered, “though I am very aware that it may not be pleasant to hear, since it concerns the most exquisitely degrading and painful ways of abusing the human body and spirit known to man. It concerns the abuse of the relief for pain, turning it into blood money in another’s hands. But if we want to be counted as men of virtue, or even of honor-indeed, to be included in the bonds of humanity-then we do not have the luxury or the right to say we prefer not to distress ourselves by listening to the truth.” Then he swiveled around a quarter turn, gripping the rails, and glared equally fiercely at the twelve men of the jury.

The jury gave him not only their attention but their obvious respect.

Pendock was very clearly taken aback. He avoided looking at Winfarthing, glanced at Coniston and saw nothing that helped him, and turned at last to Rathbone.

“Will you keep your witness in order, Sir Oliver,” he said angrily. “I will not have chaos in my courtroom. If you have something to ask that is relevant to the murder of Zenia Gadney, and I warn you to be careful that it is so, then please get to it without further rambling or delay.”

“Rambling?” Winfarthing hissed a stage whisper so loud it must have been audible at the back of the gallery.

Rathbone could feel the last shred of control slipping out of his grasp. He looked back at Winfarthing. He could see why Hester liked the man; he was totally ungovernable. That would appeal to her own anarchic nature.

“Dr. Winfarthing,” he said sternly, “did you give Dr. Lambourn any information that he might have included in his report, and with which, at that point, he was unfamiliar? I am asking specifically about something that might have disturbed him sufficiently to account for his deep concern shortly before his death, but which he refused to confide in the accused, because it was too distressing?”

Winfarthing regarded him with amazement. “Of course I did!” he said loudly. “I told him that opium you swallow, even the damn stuff you smoke, is less than half your problem. The Pharmacy Act, if it sees the light of day, will be a toothless hag to deal with the problem that is now beginning-”

Pendock leaned forward, his hatchet face pale. “Sir Oliver, if you cannot keep your witness to the point, then I-”

“The needle!” Winfarthing said very loudly, his voice sharp with exasperation. He held up both huge hands, looking now straight at the jury. “A little contraption with a hollow down the middle and a point sharp enough to prick the human skin all the way to the veins. They attach the other end of it to a kind of vial or tiny bottle, with a solution of opium in it. Has to be pure, no cough mixture or stomach remedies. They push the plunger …” He made a dramatic gesture, closing his huge fist as if there were something inside it. “And the opium is in the blood in your veins, carried throughout your body, into your heart and lungs, into your brain! You see? Ecstasy-and then madness. The beast bites you once, and slowly, through tortures you cannot imagine-agony, vomiting, cramps, cold sweats, trembling and gooseflesh and chills-brings on nightmares no sane man has to endure. Of course you don’t want to hear it.”

He leaned forward over the railing as if peering into the jury’s faces.

“But what you really don’t want, my friends, is to live it! Or your children to live it … or, if you claim to be God-fearing men, any fellow human being on the face of this fair earth.”

He ignored Pendock, who seemed about to speak, and Coniston now standing, ready to interrupt.

“I know! I know.” Winfarthing would not be stopped. “Not relevant to the death of this wretched woman in Limehouse-Gadney, or whatever her name was, poor creature.” He leaned forward over the railing, peering at Rathbone. “But maybe it was, you see? Uncomfortable to talk about it. Makes us face the fact that we are responsible. My God, if you’re man enough to allow it, for the love of heaven, be man enough to stand up and look at what it is!” His voice had risen until the volume of it, and the outrage in it, filled the room.

“We brought opium into this country. We take the money for its sale. We use it to ease our own pain when we are injured. We drink it to stop our coughs, our bellyaches, and our sleeplessness. Thank God for it-used wisely.”

His voice sank to a growl. “But that does not give us the right to turn away from the misuse, the horrific knowledge of what it is like for those whose ignorance allows them to stumble into the living death of addiction. They’re drowning in it! A great ocean of gray, endless half-life.

“And those who sell it to them, put this magic needle into their hands, peddle hell for a profit, are not breaking any laws! Then is it not our duty before God and man to change those laws so that it is?”

No one moved in the gallery. The jurors stared at him, ashen-faced.

Coniston looked wretched. He gazed at Pendock, then at the jury, then finally at Rathbone, but he did not say anything.

Rathbone cleared his throat. “Did you tell Dr. Lambourn the horror of addiction through taking opium by needle, Dr. Winfarthing?”

“Goddamnit, man!” Winfarthing roared. “What the devil do you think I’ve been telling you?”

Pendock suddenly jumped into life, shouting, “Order!”

Winfarthing swiveled around and glowered at him. “What now?” he demanded. “My lord,” he added with just a whisper of sarcasm.

“I will not have blasphemy in my court, Dr.… Winfarthing.” He affected to forget his name and find it only with an effort. “If you repeat that offense I shall hold you in contempt.”

A look of incredulity filled Winfarthing’s face. Quite clearly a suitable retort came to his mind, and with an equally clear effort he restrained himself from giving it.

“I apologize to the Almighty,” he said without a shred of humility. “Although I am certain He knows in what sense I call on His name.” He looked again at Rathbone. “To answer your question, sir. I told Dr. Lambourn about the sale of opium fit to let into the blood, and the use to which these needles are put. Which is that a man-or woman, for that matter-may enter into their own private hell after only a few days on the poison, and be captive for ever afterward until death releases them to whatever damnation eternity offers-please God-to the seller of this nightmare and to those of us who deliberately choose not to distress ourselves with knowledge of it!”

Coniston was on his feet, his voice sharp and high above the hubbub in the room. “My lord! I must speak with you in chambers. It is of the utmost importance.”

“Order!” Pendock roared. “I will have order in my court!”

Very gradually the uproar subsided. People shifted uncomfortably, angry, frightened, wanting someone to tell them that it was not true.

Pendock was furious, his face purple.

“Sir Oliver, Mr. Coniston, I will see you in my chambers immediately. The court is adjourned.” He rose to his feet and strode out, his scarlet robe swirling wide, as if he were oblivious of what he brushed past or knocked into on the way.

Feeling a little sick, Rathbone followed Coniston and the court usher out of the side entrance and across the hall. As soon as the usher had knocked and received permission, they went into Pendock’s chambers.

The door closed behind them. They both stood before Pendock, who barely glanced at Rathbone before looking up at Coniston.

“Well, what is it, Mr. Coniston?” he demanded. “If you are going to tell me that this man Winfarthing is outrageous, I am acutely aware of it. And if Sir Oliver cannot keep him in some kind of control then I shall hold him in contempt, and that will be the end of his evidence. So far it seems to me to be inflammatory, unproven, and irrelevant to this case.”

Rathbone drew in his breath to defend Winfarthing on all counts, but before he could speak, Coniston cut across him.

“My lord, all you say is perfectly true, and I imagine that the jury can see it as the last ploy of a desperate man, as well as we can. However, there is another, more urgent and serious issue at stake here.” He leaned forward just a fraction, as if he could impress the importance of it on Pendock even more. “Winfarthing was suggesting high crimes committed by certain men, without proof, or names, but leaving the implication with which to brand innocent men, simply because they have been mentioned as knowing this wretched Lambourn. There are matters of state concerned, my lord, great dangers of bringing Her Majesty’s Government into disrepute, at home and abroad.”

“Rubbish!” Rathbone exploded in fury and frustration. “That’s a ridiculous excuse to present-”

“No, it isn’t!” Coniston was speaking to him, momentarily ignoring Pendock. “I give you credit for not knowing what this man was going to say, but now that you do, you must dismiss him, with an apology to the court, and a denial of the truth of any of it-”

“I will not deny the truth of it,” Rathbone cut across him. “I can’t, and neither can you. And if that is what he said to Lambourn, then it is relevant, whether it is true or not. It is what Lambourn then believed.”

“You don’t know whether Lambourn believed it or not!” Coniston protested, his face flushed. “You have only Winfarthing’s word for any of it. This seller of opium, if he exists at all, could be … anybody! This is totally irresponsible, and terrifies the public for no good reason at all.”

“What is irresponsible is to condemn Dinah Lambourn without giving her the best possible defense,” Rathbone retorted. “And hearing every argument and witness who-”

“Enough!” Pendock held up his hand. “This issue of needles is irrelevant to the murder of Zenia Gadney. She was beaten and disemboweled. Whatever Winfarthing thinks he knows, or has heard about opium selling or addiction, it has nothing to do with the obscene murder of one woman on Limehouse Pier. She was not buying or selling opium, and you have not proved that she had any connection to this mystery seller, or any other buyer, whatsoever.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Coniston said gratefully, his face at last ironed smooth of anxiety. He did not look at Rathbone.

Pendock’s face was pinched, but he acknowledged Coniston’s thanks. He turned to Rathbone. “Tomorrow you will begin closing arguments and we will put the matter to the jury. Is that understood?”

Rathbone felt crushed. “I have two more witnesses, my lord,” he began.

Coniston jerked upright, almost to attention. “Witnesses to what?” he asked sharply. “More horrors of degradation in our backstreets by those who choose to addict themselves?”

“Are there more?” Rathbone snapped back at him. “Then it seems you know more of it than I do!”

“I know there’s a lot of loose talk and scandalmongering,” Coniston replied. “A lot of sensationalism and seeking to frighten the public and drag their attention from the murder of Zenia Gadney, poor woman. You talk about justice! What about justice for her?”

“Justice for her would be finding the truth,” Rathbone said equally angrily. When he swung round to face Pendock again, for the first time he noticed the framed photograph on the table a little to his right, normally in the judge’s line of sight, not his visitor’s. It was of a woman and two young men, one not unlike Pendock himself. It might have been him, thirty-five years earlier. The other boy bore a resemblance also, but far less so. Brothers?

But the woman’s fashionable gown was modern. And when Pendock had been twenty-two or — three, as the young man was, it would have been 1832, or thereabouts. There was no such photography as this then. They had to be Pendock’s wife and sons. Rathbone was almost certain he had seen one of them, the son who did not look like Pendock, in a photograph before, in a very different setting from this elegant pose with his mother. In the other photograph he had been wearing far fewer clothes, his nakedness had been erotic, and the other person in the image had been a small, narrow-chested boy, perhaps five or six years old.

Coniston was talking. Rathbone turned to face him, waiting for him to speak again. He felt numb, as if he were at sea and the room were swaying around him. His face was hot.

Coniston was staring at him, his eyes narrowed in concern.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“Yes …” Rathbone lied. “Thank you. Yes. I’m … I’m quite well.”

“Then you will begin your closing argument tomorrow morning,” Pendock said stiffly.

“Yes … my lord,” Rathbone answered. “I’ll … I’ll be here.” It was a dismissal. He glanced one more time at the photograph in its ornate silver frame, then excused himself and walked out of the office, leaving Coniston and Pendock alone.

Rathbone went home in a daze. The hansom could have taken him almost anywhere and he might not have been aware of it. The driver had to call out to him when he reached his own door.

He alighted, paid the man, and went up the steps. He spoke only briefly as he went in, thanking Ardmore and asking him not to allow anyone to disturb him until he should call.

“Dinner, sir?” Ardmore asked with some concern.

Rathbone forced himself to be polite. The man more than deserved that much. “I don’t think so, thank you. If I change my mind, I’ll send for a couple of sandwiches, or a slice of pie, whatever Mrs. Wilton has. I’ll have a glass of brandy. In an hour or two. I need to think. I doubt anyone will call, but unless it is Mr. Monk, I cannot see them.”

Ardmore was in no way comforted. “Are you quite well, Sir Oliver? Are you certain there is nothing else I can do for you?”

“I am perfectly well, thank you, Ardmore. I have to make a very difficult decision about this case. I need time to consider what the right thing to do is, for a woman accused of a murder she did not commit-at least I don’t believe she did-and for the woman who was very brutally killed, I think merely to serve a purpose. For a man or men who committed these crimes, and for the sake of a larger justice altogether.”

“Yes, sir.” Ardmore blinked. “I shall see that you are not disturbed.”

Rathbone sat alone for nearly an hour, weighing up in his mind if he even wished to be certain that the young man in Ballinger’s photograph was Pendock’s son. If he did not use it then it did not really matter who it was.

If it was Hadley Pendock, then how would he use it? Not to get a particular verdict. There was no question in his mind that that would be irredeemably wrong. But Grover Pendock had ruled against Dinah all the way through the trial where it had mattered. Now he was attempting to end the trial before Agatha Nisbet could testify, and even if she did come on the following day, she would then not be allowed to say anything that could expose Herne, or Bawtry, or whoever it was who had brought about the murder of Joel Lambourn, Zenia Gadney, and thus also the murder of Dinah Lambourn.

That must not be allowed to happen.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in?” he called, surprised to be glad of the interruption he had specifically asked should not occur.

Ardmore came in with a tray of sandwiches, brown bread with roast beef and some of Mrs. Wilton’s best, sharp sweet pickles in a little dish. There was a wedge of fruit cake and a glass of brandy.

“In case you feel like it, sir,” he said, putting it on the table at Rathbone’s side. “Would you like a cup of tea as well, perhaps? Or coffee?”

“No, thank you, that’s excellent. Please tell Mrs. Wilton I appreciate her care, as well as yours. You may retire now. I shan’t need you again.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Ardmore withdrew and closed the door gently behind him. Rathbone heard his footsteps, a mere whisper of sound, tap across the hall floor toward the kitchen.

He picked up the first sandwich. He could use a few minutes’ respite from thought, and he realized he was hungry. The sandwich was fresh, the pickles very pleasant. He ate one, then another, then a third.

Had Arthur Ballinger begun this way, feeling and thinking exactly what he was-a dirty tool to save an innocent person? What use was an advocate who was more concerned with his own moral comfort than his client’s life? If Rathbone used the photograph of Hadley Pendock, if it was indeed he, then he would feel soiled afterward. Judge Pendock would hate him. He would not tell others what had been the instrument Rathbone had used, but he might tell them it was unusual, not a thing a gentleman would ever stoop even to touch, let alone injure another by wielding. He would not tell them Rathbone was able to do so only because Pendock’s son had seduced and violated vulnerable, homeless children.

And if he did not use it and Dinah Lambourn was hanged, how then would he feel? What would Monk and Hester think of him? More important than that, what would he think of himself?

What would he ever fight for again? He would have abdicated his responsibility to act. Could anything excuse that?

Either way, whether he used the photographs or not, what was Rathbone making of himself? A safe, morally clean coward who acquiesced while an innocent woman walked to the gallows? A safe man who would have nightmares for the rest of his life as he lay alone in his magnificent bed, in a silent house?

Or a man whose hands were soiled by the use of what amounted to blackmail, to force a weak judge to be honest?

He finished the last sandwich and ate the cake, then drank the last drop of the brandy. Tomorrow he was going to carry out a decision that would change his life-and maybe Dinah’s, and that of whoever had murdered Lambourn, and Zenia Gadney.

He stood up and went to the safe where he kept Arthur Ballinger’s photographs. One day he must find a better place for them, not in this house. But for now, he was glad they were still here.

He opened the safe and took out the case. He opened that, calm now that the decision had been made. He went through the images slowly, one by one. He was disgusted, sickened by the coarseness of them, by the cruelty, the indifference to the humiliation and pain of children.

He found it. It was the same face as that in Pendock’s silver-framed photograph. And on the bottom of this one, in Ballinger’s hand, was written “Hadley Pendock,” and the date and place in which it was taken.

Rathbone put it back again, made a note in his diary, checked that it was correct, then locked the case and put it back in the safe.

He knew what he must do tomorrow morning before the trial resumed, however hard, however painful and repellent. Shame was bitter, but it was a small thing compared with the hangman’s noose.