Execution Dock (18 page)

“I accepted,” he said aloud. “Obviously, or I would have no problem.”

“Wouldn't you?” Henry asked. “Surely you would then have denied a friend, to whom you owed something. Or at least you felt as if you did. What had this accused man been charged with doing?”

“Killing a child.”

“Deliberately?”

“Very. He tortured him first.”

“Allegedly?”

“I am almost certain that he did. In my own mind I have no doubt.”

“At the time you took the case?” There was no judgment in Henry's voice.

Oliver stopped for a moment, trying to remember how he had felt when Ballinger had first asked him and he had reviewed the facts.

Henry waited in silence.

“My reasoning was sophistry,” Oliver admitted unhappily. “I thought he was very probably guilty, but that the law, to be perfect, must convict him only if it was proven. And I sensed an emotional vendetta against him as the driving force behind the case. I took the opposing side in order to give it some… balance.”

“And perhaps out of a little hubris, because you have the skill to do it?” Henry asked gently. “And to show off a little, to the man who had asked you? You wished to impress him, or someone else who will come to know of it?”

“You know the case?” Oliver felt foolish, as if he had been playacting and been caught at it half-clothed.

Henry smiled. “Not at all, but I know you. I know your strengths and your weaknesses. If you did not feel guilty about it you would not be troubled. I assume you won? You would always try your best; you are incapable of anything else. Losing justly would not disturb you, if the man were guilty. Winning unjustly is another matter.”

“It wasn't unjust,” Oliver said immediately, and just as immediately knew that he had spoken too quickly “It was not by dishonest means,” he corrected. “The prosecution was sloppy, too governed by emotion to make certain of all its facts.”

“Which weakness you knew, and used,” Henry extrapolated. “Why does that trouble you?”

Oliver looked down at the long-familiar carpet, its reds and blues like stained-glass windows in the last of the sunlight slanting low in through the open doors. The evening scent of the honeysuckle was now stronger than the wine.

Again Henry waited.

The silence grew deeper. Homing birds fluttered up across the darkening color of the sky.

“I knew some of the chief witnesses well enough to use my understanding of them to their disadvantage,” Oliver admitted at last.

“And lost their friendship?” Henry asked very gently. “Did they not understand the necessity that you defend the man to the best of your ability? You are his advocate, not his judge.”

Oliver looked up, surprised. The question cut closer to the truth than he wished, because now he must answer honestly, or deliberately choose to lie. Lying to his father had never been an option. It would unalterably destroy the foundation of his own identity, his belief in the goodness of what mattered. “Yes, they both understood that. What they didn't and still don't understand is why I chose to take that case when I didn't have to, knowing that the man now cannot be tried again, although he will certainly go back to the river, and continue with his filthy trade. If I am honest, I know he will almost certainly kill again. I could have left his defense to someone else who would not have had the privileged knowledge I had, and would have given him a defense adequate before the law, and gained a verdict of guilty, which I believe would have been the right one. I think that is what an equal contest would have produced.”

Henry smiled. “You credit the man's escape to your superior ability?”

“Superior knowledge of the emotional involvement of the chief witnesses for the prosecution,” Oliver corrected him.

“Are they not, by definition, always involved?”

Oliver hesitated.

“Police?” Henry asked. “Monk?”

“And Hester,” Oliver said quietly, staring down at the carpet. “They cared about the boy's murder too much to be thorough. It was Durban 's one unfinished case, before he died. Too many debts of love and honor involved.” He looked up and met his father's eyes.

“And you used them,” Henry concluded.

“Yes.”

“And your own debt of honor that caused you to take the case? Does Monk know of that? I imagine he will find out. Perhaps you had better find out first yourself? Have you perhaps caused Monk to pay your debt to someone?”

“No. No, I paid more than I owed, because I wanted to be comfortable,” Oliver said with sudden lacerating honesty. “It was to Margaret's father, because I wanted to please her.”

“At Hester's expense?”

Oliver knew why his father had asked that, and exactly why the hurt was there in his voice. Henry had always liked Hester better. He tried to hide it. He was fond of Margaret, and would have been kind to any woman Oliver had married. But Margaret could never make him laugh as Hester had, nor would he feel comfortable enough with her to argue for fun, or tell long, rambling tales of gentle adventure and dry humor. Margaret had dignity and grace, morality and honor, but she had not Hester's intelligence, nor her passion. Was she less, or more vulnerable?

Henry was watching his son closely. He saw the change in his eyes. “Hester will survive anything you can do to her, Oliver,” he said. “That is not to say that she may not be hurt.”

Oliver remembered Hester's face as she had stood in the witness box, the pain and surprise on it. She had not expected him to do such a thing, either to her or to Monk.

“Guilt?” Henry asked him. “Or fear that you have forfeited her good opinion of you?”

That was the crux of it. He was startled at how sharply it cut. He had frayed a tie that had been part of his happiness for a long time. He was not sure if it would eventually break altogether.

“She asked me if I knew where the money to pay me had come from,” he said aloud. “And how it had been earned.”

“Do you?”

“I know who paid it to me, of course, but I don't know who his client is, or why he should wish the accused man to be defended. And since I don't know who Ballinger's client is, naturally I don't know where the money came from.” He looked at the floor. “I suppose I'm afraid it could be the accused man's own money, and I certainly know how that was made, by extortion and pornography.”

“I see,” Henry said quietly. “What is the decision you have to make?”

Oliver looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

Henry repeated the question.

Oliver thought for several moments. “Actually, I'm not sure. Perhaps there is no decision, except how I am going to come to terms with myself. I defended the man, and I took the money for it. I can't give it back. I could donate it to some charitable cause, but that doesn't undo anything. And if I am remotely honest, it wouldn't salve my conscience either. It smacks of hypocrisy.” He smiled very slightly, a small, self-mocking gesture. “Perhaps I simply wanted to confess. I wanted to not feel alone in my sense of having done something vaguely questionable, something I think I may well be increasingly unhappy about.”

“I believe so, Henry agreed. To admit that you are unsatisfied is a step forward. It takes far less energy to confess an error than it does to keep trying to hide it. Would you like another glass of Medoc? We might as well finish the bottle. And the pie too, if you care to. I think there is a spot more cream.”

Rathbone arrived home quite late and was startled to find Margaret still up. He was even more surprised, unpleasantly so, to realize that he had counted on her being asleep, so that any explanation of his absence could be put off until the following morning. By that time he would be in a hurry to leave for his office, and could avoid the subject again.

She looked tired and anxious, yet she was trying to conceal it. She was worried because she did not know what to say to him.

He knew it, and wanted to touch her, tell her that such worries were superficial and of no lasting importance, but it seemed an unnatural thing to do. He realized with a jarring loneliness that they did not know each other well enough, intimately enough, to overcome such reservations of the mind.

“You must be tired,” she said a little stiffly. “Have you had supper?”

“Yes, thank you. I dined with my father.” Now he would have to find an explanation as to why he had gone to Primrose Hill without taking her. He could not tell her the truth, and he resented having put himself in the position where he needed to lie. This was undignified and ridiculous.

He was also suddenly and painfully aware that he would have told Hester the truth. They might have quarreled over it, even shouted at each other. In the end they would have gone to bed at opposite ends of the house, desperately miserable. Then at some point he would have gotten up and gone to her and resumed the quarrel, because he could not bear to live with it as it was. Emotion would have overridden sense, and pride. Need of her would have been stronger than the need for dignity, or the fear of making a fool of himself. Her ability to be hurt would have been more important than his own.

Margaret was more self-controlled. She would ache quietly, within, and he would never be certain of it. It would not show on her calmer, prettier, more traditional face. That was what made her safer for him, a far more comfortable and suitable wife than Hester would ever have been. He had never needed to worry that Margaret would say or do anything that would embarrass him.

Now he owed her an explanation, something resembling the truth, and yet not exposing her to the knowledge that her father had put him in the position of defending Phillips as a favor. She did not ever need to know that; in fact, unless Ballinger told her, she must not. It was a professional confidence.

“I needed to discuss a case,” he said aloud. “Hypothetically, of course.”

“I
see
,” she said coolly. She felt excluded, and the feeling was too raw for her to hide it.

He must say more. “If I had explained it to you, you would have known who it was, which would have broken a confidence,” he added. That at least was true. “I could not do that.”

She wanted to believe him. Her eyes widened, hope stirring. “Did it help?”

“Perhaps. At least I understand my problem a little more clearly. The process of thought required to explain sometimes clarifies the mind.”

She decided to leave it while she had some form of comfort, rather than press for more. “I'm glad. Would you like a cup of tea?” It was a politeness, something to say. She did not want him to accept; he could hear that in her tone.

“No, thank you. It is quite late. I think I shall simply go to bed.”

She smiled very slightly. “I too. Good night.”

While Monk was busy, with Scuffs help, searching for further evidence of the darker side of Phillips's trade, Hester set out to learn more about Durban's past, including such family as he might have had.

She needed to know because she was afraid of what Monk might find out that would hurt him, and by extension, eventually, the River Police, and that would hurt him even more.

She understood loyalty within a service, and how in dangerous circumstances where men's lives were often in jeopardy, loyalty must be absolute. Commanding officers were seldom afforded the luxury of time in which to ask or answer questions, and they did not explain themselves. They expected obedience. The army could not function without it. An officer who did not inspire loyalty in his men was ultimately a failure, whether or not that loyalty was warranted by either his ability or his character.

She walked down Gray's Inn Road towards High Holborn. It was hot and dusty, and her skirt was already grimed at the hem. She was passed by traffic, its wheels rattling over the cobbles, the sun glinting on polished harnesses and brass. Four huge shire horses passed, slowly pulling a brewers’ dray. Cabs clattered by in the opposite direction, their horses’ hooves loud, long whips curling in the air above the horses’ ears. An open landau offered a glimpse of summer fashion, pale parasols to keep skin fair, the sound of laughter, the bright silk of a puffed sleeve and satin ribbons in the breeze.

Hester thought of blind loyalty in the army, the unquestioning obedience. Perhaps the alternative was chaos, but she had seen the death and it had stunned her, bruised her heart and mind forever.

She had been on the heights of Sebastopol during the Crimean War, and watched the slaughter at the charge of the Light Brigade into the Russian guns. She had tried afterwards to rescue some of the few mangled but still alive. The senselessness of it still overwhelmed her. She was very uncertain that she would give blind loyalty to anyone. She had tasted its cost.

At the bottom of Gray's Inn Road she turned into High Holborn and walked to the left. When there was a lull in the traffic she crossed over, kept walking, and then turned right into Castle Street. She knew exactly where she was going and for whom she was looking.

Still it took her another half hour to find him, but she was delighted when she learned the reason. She was told at his lodgings that he had obtained a job as a clerk at a trading house, a skill he had acquired since losing a leg in the Crimea nine years ago. At that time even writing his name had been a challenge to his literacy.

When she arrived at the trading house she controlled her urgency as well as she could, but the head clerk still looked at her dubiously, chewing his lip as he considered whether he would give permission for one of his employees to stop work and speak with her.

She smiled. “Please?” she said with as much charm as she could muster. “I was the nurse who looked after him when he lost his leg at Sebastopol. I'm trying to find another man, or at least learn where to look, and I think Mr. Fenneman could help me.”

“Well… yes, of course,” the head clerk said nervously. “I… I suppose a few moments wouldn't hurt. Sebastopol? Really? He never said, you know.”

“People don't like talking about it,” she explained. “It was pretty dreadful.”

“I've heard others talk,” he argued.

“So have I,” she agreed. “Usually they were not there, they only heard about it from tales. The ones who saw it say nothing. I don't actually like talking about it myself, and I only experienced the aftermath, searching among the dead for those still alive that we might be able to help.”