Blind Justice: A William Monk Novel (11 page)

“And have you now, Mr. Raleigh?”

“No, sir, I have not. I am ashamed to say it, but I am dependent upon my daughter’s kindness—and, God knows, she has little enough money to share.”

“And has Mr. Taft seen your need and offered to help you?” Warne asked, with an edge to his voice like an open blade.

“No, sir,” Raleigh whispered.

Warne thanked Raleigh for his evidence and said nothing more.

Gavinton had the sense not to make his situation even worse. He could see in the jurors’ faces, and when he glanced behind him in the gallery also, that if he attacked Raleigh in any way, he would lose even the small hope he had left.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, F
RIDAY
, Warne called his final witness. Gethen Sawley was a quiet, rather studious young man with horn-rimmed glasses, which kept sliding down his nose. He was bony, as if somehow in the making of him the sculptor had been interrupted before he was finished. Sawley took the oath nervously and faced Warne, appearing as though he had to struggle to hear him.

“Mr. Sawley,” Warne began gently, “what is your occupation, sir?”

“I’m a clerk at Wiggins & Martin, but mostly I do the bookkeeping since Mr. Baker left.” Sawley pushed his glasses back up his nose.

“Are you a member of Mr. Taft’s congregation?”

“I was. I don’t go there anymore. I can’t take being badgered for more money all the time.” He said it apologetically. Clearly he felt as if such a thing should not have bothered him so deeply.

“Is that your only reason, Mr. Sawley?” Warne pressed.

“Er … no.” Sawley colored. “I … er …” He stopped again. He fiddled with his glasses, gulped, and then continued. “I was embarrassed because I’d been inquiring into their finances behind their backs, and … and I couldn’t look them in the eye, for what I thought of them.”

The jurors appeared mildly interested.

“We do not want to know your thoughts, Mr. Sawley,” Warne said gravely. “Only what you did, and what you discovered that led to your opinions. The gentlemen of the jury will come to their own conclusions. How did you obtain access to these accounts?”

“I know how much I gave to the church,” Sawley said carefully,
watching Warne all the time. “I had a fair idea how much other people did. Some who gave were not always discreet, if it was a large amount. Not that I believe everything I’m told.”

“That is hearsay, Mr. Sawley. What can you tell us that is fact?”

“The name of the main charity that the congregation’s money was to go to, sir. Brothers of the Poor. They minister to people in desperate straits, especially in parts of Africa. That is where Mr. Taft said our money was going. Because they are a charity, their accounts are open to inspection, if you know where to go.”

Several of the jurors straightened a little in their seats. One rather large man leaned forward.

“And you looked into their affairs?” Warne pressed Sawley. “To what degree? Are you qualified to do this?”

Sawley blinked. “I have no qualifications, sir, but I can do arithmetic. The Brothers of the Poor have sent less to Africa in all their time than our congregation gives them in a month.”

“Perhaps they had certain expenses to meet in handling the money?” Warne suggested.

“You weren’t listening, sir!” Sawley was becoming agitated, his glasses wobbling down his nose. “In the whole ten years of their existence, the Brothers of the Poor have sent only a few hundred pounds to Africa, or anywhere else. The poverty referred to in their title is their own. They are simple men who labor and pray.”

“Are you sure you have the right people?” Warne would not be easily put off. “It seems a simple name. Perhaps theirs is not the only group that uses it?”

Sawley jammed his glasses up his nose again.

“Yes, I am sure. They take some money from Mr. Taft, and they are in regular touch with him.”

Warne kept his voice calm. “Then how has this not come to notice before, Mr. Sawley? It would appear rather a gaping hole in Mr. Taft’s accounting.”

Sawley shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It isn’t there right now so as you can see it. It’s all very complicated,” he explained.

“Then how is it that you are able to see it, when others haven’t?” Warne persisted.

Rathbone wondered why Warne was directing the jury’s mind to this. Then he realized it must be because Warne needed to draw out the answer before Gavinton did so, far less gently, when Sawley would not have the chance to tell the court in his own words, or perhaps in Warne’s words.

“I didn’t,” Sawley admitted uncomfortably. “Somebody asked me to look into it, because he was suspicious. And he told me what to look for.”

“Who would that someone be?” Warne asked.

No one in the jury box moved.

Sawley avoided meeting his gaze. “I don’t know. He did it anonymously. But I was so angry and distressed myself that I took him at his word … at least …”

“At least what, Mr. Sawley?” Warne was motionless, as gentle as he dared be. “Even if I believe you, and the financial evidence is incontrovertible, my learned friend Mr. Gavinton is going to want to know exactly how you came by it. Who was it that gave it to you? Who started you on the course of your investigations?”

Sawley looked trapped. Everyone in the courtroom listened intently. The jurors were staring at him. Even Rathbone found himself leaning forward slightly as if afraid he might miss a word.

Sawley drew in a deep breath, and his glasses slipped right off and clattered onto the floor of the witness stand. He did not dare bend down to search for them, but stood blinking.

“I didn’t really see him. He came to my door one evening, late, well after dusk, and he stood away from the light of the lamp. I just knew that he was at least fifty, to judge from what I could see of his face, and his hair was gray, nearly white. I could see his hair, even though he had a hat on, because it was long. He was clean shaven, hollow cheeked. He was about my height, and thin.”

“What did he say to you, Mr. Sawley?” Warne prompted.

Sawley shook his head. “He didn’t ask me anything about myself.
As soon as he made sure who I was, he held out a package of papers and said that the information inside was what I was looking for. I didn’t know what he meant.” He shrugged thin shoulders. “I told him I wasn’t looking for anything. He told me that I was. I needed to expose what Mr. Taft was doing, before he ruined me and all my friends. He pushed the packet into my hands then turned around and left.”

“On foot?” Warne asked. “Did you see any carriage? Any hansom cab?”

Sawley shrugged again, looking bewildered.

“No. But I live on a short street, and he turned on the first corner. He could have got a hansom within a hundred yards. There’s no point asking me who he was, or how he knew what I wanted, because I have no idea.”

“And the papers he handed you?” Warne asked.

No one moved in the courtroom; there was not the rustle of fabric or the crack of a whalebone corset, not a sigh.

Rathbone found himself with hands clenched, muscles tight as he sat forward, waiting.

Sawley made a movement to fiddle with his glasses and remembered they were on the floor by his feet. He looked oddly helpless without them.

“Copies of the accounts and certain public charities, of Mr. Taft’s Church,” he answered. “Lots of figures and calculations. At first it didn’t make sense to me, then I looked at them more carefully and crosschecked those with a red pencil mark beside them, and gradually I understood. It was very clear. You’d have to understand fraud to see it, the way the money was all moved around from one place to another. Everything seemed to be paid out honestly, until you followed it all the way, and saw how it came back around again. Hardly any of it really went to the people in Africa it was supposed to help.”

“I see. And why would this mysterious stranger bring all this to you, Mr. Sawley?”

Sawley looked totally confused. “I’ve no idea, sir. I just know that he did.”

Warne retired on that note, and Gavinton rose to try to undo some of the damage. He walked out into the middle of the floor without his usual slightly cocky swagger. Then he was obliged to wait to begin while Sawley crouched on the floor of the witness box and retrieved his glasses. When he stood up at last Gavinton spoke.

“Terribly convenient for you, Mr. Sawley,” he observed with an acute edge of sarcasm to his voice. “Did anybody else see this … this apparition?”

Warne rose to his feet immediately.

“Yes,” Rathbone agreed before he could voice his objection. “Mr. Gavinton, if you can prove that this was an apparition and not a real person, then please do so. Otherwise do not present assumptions as if they were facts.”

Gavinton’s face tightened in irritation, but he obeyed because he had no choice.

“I apologize, my lord. Mr. Sawley, did anyone besides yourself see the extraordinary person?”

Sawley put his glasses back on his nose.

“No, sir, not as far as I know. But the papers are real, and I didn’t write them. I’m fairly good with figures, but I’m not anywhere near good enough to have worked out a fraud like this, or to have uncovered one. I had to read it half a dozen times before I saw what’d been done.”

“We have only your word for that, sir,” Gavinton pointed out.

Sawley shook his head. “If I were that good I’d be bookkeeper to some big company, not just a clerk who fills in for the accountant now and then.”

“How do we know you’re not good?” Gavinton asked, but there was desperation in his voice, and the jury heard it. His usual confidence was gone. Even in the gallery there was an echo of hollow laughter.

“ ’Cos if I could make that kind of money, I would,” Sawley said simply.

“So you are quite a simple, very average, makeshift bookkeeper,” Gavinton responded. “So why on earth did this brilliant stranger who can understand and expose a fraud as complex and cleverly planned as
you say this one is—why did he seek out you, and not the police, or some other figure of authority and reputation? How do you explain such an extraordinary and eccentric choice, Mr. Sawley?”

“Maybe ’cos I was one of the congregation, and I know the people who are being cheated, some of them ruined, and I care,” Sawley replied. “I’m angry at my friends being made fools of, when they thought they were sacrificing to help the poor, in the name of Christ, and I won’t let that drop, however long it takes me, or however much you want to make me look like a fool too. There’s nothing wicked about being a fool—there’s a lot wicked about making fools of other people.”

Rathbone himself, in spite of all his years of courtroom experience, felt a sudden hard tug of emotion. It cost him an effort of will not to voice his fierce agreement. He actually drew in his breath, and then let it out silently. The prosecution had already won.

4

T
HE NEW WEEK BEGAN
with Blair Gavinton rising to present the case for the defense. He looked more confident than Rathbone had expected him to. Rathbone felt a shadow of anxiety that perhaps Gavinton had discovered something over the weekend that threw a different light on events, but he could not think what that might be.

The jurors regarded Gavinton with stony faces. To them he represented a man who abused and then mocked good-hearted, ordinary people who had acted with generosity and were now reaping the bitter harvest of disillusion. They would want Taft to pay an appropriately heavy price.

Surely as he stood and called his first witness, Gavinton had to be aware of that?

The witness’s name was Robertson Drew. He walked across the floor and climbed the steps to the witness box with assurance. He was dark-haired, well-dressed, a man who was good-looking and not unaware
of it. There was power in his hawk-nosed face and confidence in his voice when he took the oath.

Gavinton began quietly, without drama, as if they were two men whose conversation happened to be overheard by an entire courtroom.

“Mr. Drew, are you a member of Mr. Taft’s congregation?”

“I am,” Drew acknowledged. “I have been for many years. About ten or eleven, I think. I would like to believe I have been of some help to him in his ministry.”

“Are you paid for this, sir?”

Drew looked surprised, even a trifle indignant, although he must have been prepared for all Gavinton’s questions.

“Certainly not. It is a privilege that is its own reward.”

“Have you had any dealings with the financial side of the ministry?” Gavinton asked, his tone still conversational. “Specifically the collection of donations to be offered to various charities for the poor?”

“I have, a great deal.”

Rathbone saw the jurors paying close attention, but their expressions were hostile, ready to disbelieve him. “And did you find anything amiss in the accounting?” Gavinton inquired.

Drew smiled very slightly. “The occasional arithmetical error, usually to the amount of a few pennies. I dare say it would count to shillings, one way or the other, over a year or so. Such errors are always put right when the books are balanced.”

“Once a year?” Gavinton inquired.