Blind Justice: A William Monk Novel (29 page)

Rathbone wondered whether Beata York would be loyal to Ingram, if he were to find himself in trouble, accused, maligned, perhaps even charged. He did not understand why he kept thinking of her, but he couldn’t help it. Almost certainly they would never meet again. Pass on the street, perhaps, but not meet as equals, even less as friends. That was another price to pay.

He was still thinking of that when Ardmore, the butler, came to tell him that Monk and Hester were here to see him.

Suddenly his spirits lifted. Some of the tension eased out of his body, and he realized with surprise and some shame that he had feared they would wish to avoid him. Monk had been to visit him in prison, but what did Hester feel?

One glance at her face answered his anxieties. She might be angry,
worried, confused as to what to do, but she had not changed. She was a fixed star in a world turned upside down. Friendship was at the core of every relationship that mattered—allies, parent and child, lovers. On its foundation could be built all the other palaces of the heart.

They sat down and began to weigh the situation and consider what could be done. Rathbone repeated all the points Henry had made, and they spoke of other concerns as well, including the death of Taft.

“There’s a great deal we don’t know about that,” Monk observed. “Even if he had been found guilty, the punishment would have been prison, but not for life. He could even have begun again, changed his name and gone somewhere he wasn’t known. For heaven’s sake, the whole world was open to him.”

“That point aside, how could he kill his wife and daughters?” Hester’s face puckered with distress. “It’s … not sane. I think he was suffering some sort of madness.” She looked from Monk to Rathbone and back again. “He just seemed pompous to me, and revoltingly self-satisfied. If he believed anything of what he preached, he wouldn’t kill his family, whatever happened to him.”

“If he believed what he preached he wouldn’t have stolen the money in the first place,” Monk said tartly. “But you’re right, there is something missing from the facts. I need to know a great deal more about him.”

“Do you think it will make any difference to my blame, in the law?” Rathbone asked unhappily. “I can’t see how it would, much as I would like to think so.”

“I don’t know,” Monk admitted. “But the reason he killed himself has to be part of the case, and it cannot be coincidence that it was immediately after Drew was exposed. I’ll keep looking.”

Rathbone nodded, and the conversation moved on to other areas.

Even late in the afternoon, after they had left, some of the warmth Rathbone had felt seemed to linger. Then Ardmore was at the door again, his face as carefully blank as he could make it.

“Lady Rathbone has called, sir. What do you wish me to say?”

How diplomatically phrased. Even while his heart raced and all his
muscles knotted up, Rathbone’s mind admired Ardmore’s grasp of tact, his delicacy of feeling. There was no choice but to see her. It would be childish to refuse.

What did she want? Was it even imaginable she had come out of some kind of loyalty, a remnant of the closeness they had once had? He had thought they had loved each other, but the first real test in their marriage had ripped them apart.

If the tragedy of Ballinger had not happened, would they have lived out the rest of their lives imagining they were happy, never enjoying anything deeper than superficial affection?

Ardmore was still waiting.

“Please ask her to come in,” Rathbone replied. “And … and ask her what she would like as refreshment.”

“Yes, sir.” Ardmore bowed, still expressionless, and went out.

A moment later Margaret came in. She was still dressed in black, with only the relief of a pale fichu at the neck and a cameo brooch. He remembered her telling him that it had been a gift from her father for her eighteenth birthday. She looked like a grieving widow. It was irrelevant, but he wondered if she wore black all the time, or if this was to make the point to him that she still felt totally bereaved, of husband as well as father.

She looked as handsome as he had ever seen her. There was fire in her blue eyes and a faint flush to her skin.

“Good evening, Oliver,” she said, stopping a good yard and a half away from him. “I suppose it would be foolish to say that I hope you are well, and I think we are long beyond the point where politeness would be anything less than a farce. You can’t be well, in the circumstances. Prison is extremely unpleasant, as it is intended to be.” She raised her delicate eyebrows slightly. “Not that you have acquired a prison pallor yet. I imagine it will come, when they have found you guilty. From the advice I have received, that seems to be inevitable.”

He was surprised by this remark. “You sought advice on the subject? From whom?”

“My lawyer, of course. To whom else would I take such a matter?”

“I don’t know why you should take it to anyone.” His mind raced, trying to think why she had come at all. There was nothing gentle in her, nothing anxious or concerned. It seemed impossible that they had once made love, lain in each other’s arms.

She stood ramrod stiff, her shoulders square, her chin high. He looked at her. At first glance, he thought anger became her. It gave her a vitality, even a passion she did not normally have. Only when he looked more closely did he see a hardness in her, an absence of the warmth he used to see. There was a probing edge to her gaze, a searching for the place most vulnerable to drive the blade home.

He waited for her to explain her purpose.

“It will be a very public trial,” she went on. “Just as my father’s trial was. Perhaps even more so. It is spectacular, as justice goes, that a judge should answer for himself in court. An irony, don’t you think?” She did not wait for his answer. “What you are accused of is despicable because apart from anything else, it is a betrayal of the profession that has given you all you have … in fact, all that you are. If we cannot trust judges, then what is the law itself worth? You have damaged anyone who ever trusted you.”

He drew in his breath to try to explain, but the fury in her eyes made him realize the futility of that. The hope that she might have come in any manner of kindness faded away. He was foolish to have entertained it in the first place. The whole world had altered for him, erupted and caved in on itself. How he must be an embarrassment to her, even an encumbrance.

When Ballinger had been tried her world had been destroyed. Rathbone’s had not. It had hurt, certainly. He had been confused, desperate to find some defense for him, torn between loyalty to Margaret and loyalty to his own duty and beliefs. When it all ended he had been left with a sense of loss, but he was still whole. It was she who had suffered a permanent injury.

Now the tables were turned. This time she would lose very little,
actually perhaps nothing at all. He was legally bound to look after her financially, and he would have done it whether the law required it of him or not. But she would not accept anything from him. She would rather live in near poverty with her mother than take his money. If he were sent to prison and therefore had nothing, she would not lose.

Then why had she come? Not to assuage his anxiety for her, but to rejoice in his downfall.

Margaret was regarding him now with contempt, waiting for him to find his tongue.

“Nothing to say, Oliver?” she asked finally. “Did you not know before what it feels like to be accused, unable to prove your innocence and having to depend on someone else to do it for you? Suddenly you’re helpless too. Now you know how your clients felt, their fear, and why they trusted you. They did so because they were desperate, terrified, and had nowhere else to turn.” She smiled tightly. “To you the law is a way to show off your skills, to win publicly, and of course to make money. To them it’s survival or death. It looks a little different from the side you’re on now, doesn’t it?”

She was being unfair. He had taken every case seriously and given every single one his all, even when in the end he lost, as he had with Ballinger.

“I can give a defense, Margaret,” he said with as much self-control as he could. His voice sounded rasping. “Sometimes I can prove a man innocent, sometimes I can mitigate a sentence. I cannot save a guilty man. Are you suggesting that I should? If everyone is to be set free at the end, regardless, why bother with a trial?”

“So that the lawyer can strut around, show off, and earn money, of course!” she snapped. “And the public can have its entertainment.” Then she waved her hand sharply, as if she could brush the subject out of the way. “But you are guilty, aren’t you? Or are you going to say that it was not you who gave obscene pictures to Warne so that Drew would be destroyed as a witness?” The look of disbelief on her face was savage.

“You think the picture should be suppressed, and the jury have no
idea what kind of a man Drew is”—he put all his incredulity and contempt into his voice—“so he can go on slandering the other members of the congregation and be believed?”

Her temper snapped. “Don’t answer every question with another question, Oliver! For the love of heaven, be honest for once!”

He felt as if he had been slapped. He knew the color burned up his face. “That is honest, Margaret. I gave Warne the picture so he had a choice of defending the ordinary, trusting men and women whom Drew was slandering and holding up to public mockery. They deserved that.”

“You hypocrite!” Her voice was very nearly a shout, her face dark with fury. “You can introduce that filthy photograph into the courtroom and sit there full of righteous indignation as if you knew nothing about it. I’m glad they found out that it was you who gave it to Warne. You can’t hide anymore. Everyone will know you for what you are.”

The lash of her tongue hurt so sharply that for a moment he could hardly draw breath to defend himself.

She mistook his silence for weakness. “I wish my father were alive to see this,” she went on, choking a little on her own words. “It would be perfect. Well, at least I am here. And believe me, I will watch with pleasure.”

“I’m sure your father’s appreciation would be the sharpest of all,” he said bitterly. “That is why he had the pictures in the first place, to bring about justice that could be forced no other way. I understood that in him—obviously far more than you did, or do even now.”

She froze, her face white. “Liar! How dare you suggest such a thing to me? Is that your defense? To blame a dead man you have made sure cannot speak for himself? Well, I can speak for him, and I will. The world will see you for what you are—a man who places pride and opportunism before everything else: before family or honor, or even human decency.”

He struggled for something to say that would put them back on common ground, some shared belief. They had cared for each other once.

She was not prepared to wait for him.

“I will not discuss my father with you. For you to suggest you are alike in anything is an insult to him, and I won’t listen. I came to tell you that I am consulting a lawyer—a friend of my father’s, who still has some regard toward the family—because I do not wish to remain connected to you in any way, least of all in the public mind. I don’t think it will be difficult, in the circumstances you have created, for me to obtain a divorce. I will revert to my maiden name. I no longer wish to be known as Margaret Rathbone. I imagine you can understand that, but if you don’t it really doesn’t matter to me. I am informing you simply as a matter of courtesy.”

He should have been expecting it. It was the perfect opportunity for her to set herself free. She did not have to accuse him of anything, not that there were many excuses for a woman to divorce her husband. She could not claim infidelity, as a man could against his wife. But society would never blame her if she did not want to be associated with him when he was standing trial for perverting the course of justice.

Perhaps some would have admired her loyalty had she remained with him. He thought of other women he had known who had risked everything they possessed, even their lives, to prove the innocence of the husbands they loved. But then the key to that loyalty was their love.

And those husbands had loved their wives with a matching depth and devotion.

He felt weary, as though his body were bruised from blow after blow. He did not want to go on fighting a battle he could not win. What would winning be, anyway? He could not persuade her to see the truth, still less care for him again. And if he were to tell himself the hard, bare truth, he no longer wanted her to care.

He looked at Margaret. Was there even any point in protesting, saying that it would have been nice had she at least given him the benefit of the doubt first, and got her blow in only after he was found guilty? There was nothing left to salvage: he hoped only to avoid sinking to the lowest in himself. He could force her to reason her way to the truth: that he could have gotten the pictures only from Ballinger, but she did not want to see that.

Anger and bitterness were twisting her face. She had once been so much better than that. She had known gentleness, laughter, purpose. Whether the loss of any of it was his fault or not didn’t really matter now.

“Do whatever you think is best,” he said quietly. “I shall instruct my solicitor to accommodate you.”

For a moment there was victory in her face; then it faded, as if the taste had not been what she expected it to be.

“Thank you,” she said in acknowledgment. “Good night.”

“Goodbye, Margaret,” he replied.

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