Blind Justice: A William Monk Novel (44 page)

The morning began as the one before had, a breakfast of bread he could barely swallow and tea that was revolting. He took it all, to steady himself. He could not allow his nerves to betray him now.

Even so, he was sure his legs were shaking as he walked across the open floor to climb up the steps to the witness stand. Certainly he had to grip the railing to keep his balance. How ridiculous he would look if he fell down the stairway. Worse than that, he might injure himself, break an ankle. He would be vulnerable enough in prison without having broken bones.

But the humiliation of being carried off, unable even to testify, would be the worst. Was Beata York here today? He did not want to know. Would he look for Henry Rathbone’s face in the gallery? He was not even certain about that.

He had reached the top of the steps and held onto the rail, taking the Bible in his other hand and swearing on it to tell the truth.

What was the point of that? Didn’t accused men usually lie? Wasn’t that somewhat taken for granted? He could tell the truth as exactly and
honorably as he wished, and most of the people here would still think him a liar.

He must look at Brancaster and concentrate. This was his only chance. The rest of his life depended on what he said now.

Brancaster was standing in front of him, looking up, his face intensely serious.

“Sir Oliver,” Brancaster began. “You have heard Mr. Wystan suggest that there might be a number of obscene photographs similar to the one of a witness in the trial of Abel Taft, a trial over which you presided. Do you know if indeed there are other such photographs?”

Rathbone cleared his throat. It was so tight he gulped before he could find his voice.

“Yes. There are nearly three score that I know of.”

“Really? So many. How do you know of them?”

“I … I have them.” How bold and ugly that sounded.

There was a rustle of movement in the gallery, gusts of breath let out, murmurs of disgust.

“I see,” Brancaster pursed his lips. “Do you know who is in them?”

“Not all of them. Of course, the one I gave Mr. Warne in the Taft trial, and one or two others.”

“How is it that you don’t know who is in all of them, if you own them?” Brancaster tried to look curious and succeeded only in looking wretched.

No one objected or interrupted, though York was drumming his fingers on the bench.

“I looked at them once,” Rathbone replied, remembering the incident with revulsion. “I should have destroyed them then, but I did not.”

“Why not?” Brancaster asked.

Rathbone thought back. “I recognized some of the faces. I was … stunned, horrified. As Mr. Wystan suggested, there are among the abusers men of great power and privilege. The man who possessed them before I did used them—at first to force those men into doing the right thing, saving lives rather than destroying them. I thought I might do the same. That was a mistake. Such power corrupts more than I realized.
And—” He stopped abruptly. Was he telling the whole truth? Did he really wish he had destroyed them all? After all, he had done some good with them. Exactly as Arthur Ballinger had done, in the beginning. It was Ballinger’s final revenge: to make Rathbone into what he himself had become. Exquisite. If he were somewhere in a hell of his own and could see this, he would be savoring it. There was a perfect irony to it.

“You were going to say …?” Brancaster pressed him.

“And I am not immune,” Rathbone said bitterly.

“You spoke of a previous owner,” Brancaster observed. “Who was it? And how did you come to own them?”

York looked sharply at Wystan, but Wystan did not move.

Rathbone realized with a flood of amazement that Wystan intended Brancaster to uncover this story. He had perceived a greater purpose than merely convicting Rathbone of having transgressed the law in the trial of Taft. There was a greater issue at stake. Had that been Brancaster’s game all along? If so, it was dangerous, but perhaps brilliant.

“Sir Oliver?” Brancaster prompted. “However unpleasant the truth, and whoever it implicates, this matter is too grave to remain secret any longer. It is not your own innocence you are protecting, or that of any other individual. The honor and integrity of all our institutions is at stake. Perhaps it would not be too extreme to say it is the core of justice itself, for which you have fought all your professional life, at no matter what cost to yourself. Over and over again you have risked your reputation to defend those whom others had condemned or abandoned.”

Wystan stirred in his seat.

Brancaster knew he would be allowed no more latitude.

Rathbone knew it also.

“I don’t know how much detail you wish me to tell,” he began, then had to stop and clear his throat.

“All that is necessary for the court to understand is the nature of the photographs, and how it is that you possess them,” Brancaster instructed.

There was no escape. The truth must be told publicly. Rathbone
could see Margaret in the gallery, well toward the front. She was here to watch his humiliation, the end of the career she thought he had placed before honor or loyalty. He could not protect her from the facts anymore.

When he began, his voice was surprisingly steady.

“There was a club created by a man of very comfortable means,” he said. “So far as I know he did not indulge in obscene pastimes himself, but he understood the excitement some men feel when they deliberately expose themselves to intense danger. The photographs I have mentioned were the initiation rite to this particular club. It was in a way a safeguard to each member; a way to ensure no one spoke about the obscenities being practiced by all of them.”

No one moved. No one even attempted to interrupt him.

He took a deep breath and swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. Then he continued. “They were also a perfect tool for blackmail. The man who created the club told me that the photographs were never used merely to extort money, and I believed him. It was always about power. He said that the first time he used one, it was to oblige a senior judge to rule on a case in such a way that a factory owner would be forced to stop the effluent from his works polluting the drinking water of a large number of poor people who were becoming diseased, even dying, as a result.” Again he took a deep breath. He felt as if his pounding heart was shaking his whole body. “At first I was repulsed by the idea of such blackmail, no matter the ultimate outcome. Then I thought of the children dying of the poison in the water, and the factory owner’s refusal to sacrifice some of his profit to clean it up.” His voice was growing stronger, the pain inside him easing. “I wondered—if I had the same power, would I refuse to use it and let the children die? Would it be better to cost many innocent people their health, merely to keep my hands clean of such methods?”

There seemed to be not even a breath drawn in the room.

“He chose to use the weapon he had,” Rathbone said. “I do not blame him for that.”

There were murmurs now, voices in the gallery.

“That was the only specific example he gave me, but he said there
were others like it,” Rathbone continued. “I did look up that case, and the judgment. He was speaking the truth. The industrialist he mentioned had steadily refused to yield until the judgment went against him. I also know the photograph existed because I have seen it.”

“That is very frightening indeed,” Brancaster said grimly. “But it does not explain how you come to have these photographs now.”

“I was still horrified,” Rathbone went on. He knew there was no escape now. It was far too late. “I participated in the closure of the two different clubs involved. The whole situation included the murder of a man who ran one of them, a man named Mickey Parfitt. It was investigated by the police. The man was of the dregs of humanity, but murder is still a crime, no matter who the victim or who the offender.”

He looked at last at Margaret, and saw her staring back at him. Her face was twisted in anger and so white she seemed bloodless. There was no going back now.

“Sir Oliver …” Brancaster prompted him again.

“The man accused of the murder was prosecuted,” Rathbone resumed. He was finding it difficult to speak. His mouth was so dry it was blurring his words. “I was asked to defend him, and to begin with I believed him innocent. Then another person was also murdered, a young woman who was no more than a witness. It soon became clear that her death was planned by this man, in order to keep her from testifying. But I still did all I could to defend him, because that was my duty before the law, no matter what my own feelings. I tried everything I could think of, but I failed. He was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged.”

Brancaster did not move or speak. No one in the entire court seemed to do more than breathe.

“He asked me after the sentence was handed down to visit him,” Rathbone went on. His voice suddenly sounded loud in his own ears. “I did so. That was when he told me of the existence of scores more photographs. He said that if I did not find a way to save him from the rope they would fall into the hands of someone he trusted, and the blackmail would go on. I would have no power to stop it, and the foundations of everything we value would be undermined. He told me there were
judges; government ministers; bishops; leaders of industry, science, and the army and navy; even distant members of the royal family involved, if not captured in the pictures themselves.”

Rathbone felt again the desperation with which he, Hester, and Monk had searched everywhere they could think of for those damned photographs.

“And you found them?” Brancaster asked in the total silence that followed.

“No,” Rathbone replied. “I went back to plead with him, and … and I found him murdered in prison.” The horror of that scene crept over his skin again like an infestation of lice. “It … it made me realize just how wide and how deep this circle of corruption went. The police never found out who killed him.”

“But you did not find the photographs?” Brancaster’s voice cracked as he spoke.

“No,” Rathbone answered. “That was the bitter irony. They found me. The man had left them with his solicitor, left them to me in his will, to be delivered to me as a final punishment for not having saved him.”

Brancaster smiled bitterly. “And this man you refer to—that would be your father-in-law, Arthur Ballinger?”

“Yes,” Rathbone said huskily. “It would.”

In her seat in the second row, Margaret sat like stone, as if she would never move again.

Rathbone would have spared her that. But there was nothing he could do. The reality was there in the courtroom like something alive, unstoppable.

“Thank you, Sir Oliver,” Brancaster said with a sigh. He turned to Wystan.

Wystan rose to his feet stiffly.

“It paints a very clear picture, my lord. I imagine Mr. Brancaster will be calling other witnesses to verify your story. For the sake of many people who may be implicated, I would like to reserve my questions until that has been done.”

York, his face full of anger, adjourned the court.

17

T
HE NEXT PERSON TO
testify was Monk. He walked across the floor and climbed up the steps, trying to look grave but unconcerned. He certainly did not feel that way. Brancaster was taking an extraordinary gamble, but it was perhaps the only move they had. He had a strong idea of what Brancaster was going to do, but Brancaster had deliberately not prepared him. He said he wanted it to sound unrehearsed, almost as if Monk, too, had been taken by surprise.

The one thing he hoped would not come out in any way was the fact that they suspected Margaret had been the one to turn Rathbone in. Scuff had told him what had happened the second time he snuck into the courtroom. Monk, for better or worse, had decided that it was not relevant to the murder of Taft. Margaret had been blighted by what had happened with her father; she had sought revenge, and she had been in the right place at the right time to get what she had wanted. Rathbone, already so hurt, would be wounded even more deeply to
learn how she had betrayed him. Maybe there would be a time to tell him, but it wasn’t now.

Monk swore as to his name, occupation, and rank in the Thames River Police, and of course to tell the truth. Then he faced Brancaster.

“Commander Monk,” Brancaster began, “were you in charge of the investigation into the murder of Mickey Parfitt, whose body was found in the Thames?”

“Yes, I was.”

Brancaster nodded.

“I will be as brief as possible in establishing your connection with this present case, so forgive me if I appear to leap over great areas of your earlier involvement. What was Mr. Parfitt’s occupation, Commander?”

“He ran a club for wealthy men with a taste for child prostitution and pornography,” Monk replied. “He based it on a barge moored on the river, which is how it fell under my jurisdiction. He also blackmailed several of his clients, vulnerable because exposure would ruin them.”

“How did he do that? What evidence did he have of their involvement?” Brancaster managed to sound as if he did not already know.