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“And moral integrity—you missed that,” Rathbone said with scalding sarcasm. “Was that when you killed her—when she threatened to expose you for performing illegal operations if you did not at least put in a recommendation for her?”
“Yes,” Sir Herbert said with total candor, meeting Rathbone’s eyes. “She would have done it. She would have ruined me. I was not going to permit that.”
Rathbone stared at him. The man was actually smiling.
“There is nothing you can do about it,” Sir Herbert said very calmly. “You cannot say anything, and you cannot withdraw from the case. It would prejudice my defense totally. You would be disbarred, and they would probably declare a mistrial anyway. You still would not succeed.”
He was right, and Rathbone knew it—and looking at Sir Herbert’s smooth, comfortable face, he knew he knew it also.
“You are a brilliant barrister.” Sir Herbert smiled quite openly. He put his hands in his pockets. “You have defended me almost certainly successfully. You do not need to do anything more now except give a closing speech—which you will do perfectly, because you cannot do anything else. I know the law, Mr. Rathbone.”
“Possibly,” Rathbone said between his teeth. “But you do not know me, Sir Herbert.” He looked at him with a hatred so intense his stomach ached, his breath was tight in his chest, and his jaw throbbed with a pain where he had clenched it. “But the trial is not over yet.” And without waiting for Sir Herbert to do or say anything else, to give any instructions, he turned on his heel and marched out.
12
THEY STOOD in Rathbone’s office in the early morning sun, Rathbone white-faced, Hester filled with confusion and despair, Monk incredulous with fury.
“Damn it, don’t stand there!” Monk exploded. “What are you going to do? He’s guilty!”
“I know he’s guilty,” Rathbone said between his teeth. “But he’s also right—there is nothing I can do. The letters are not proof, and anyway, we’ve already read them into evidence once, we can’t go back now and try to tell the court they mean something else. It’s only Hester’s interpretation. It’s the right one—but I can’t repeat anything Sir Herbert said to me in confidence—even if I didn’t care about being disbarred, which I do! They’d declare a mistrial anyway.”
“But there must be something,” Hester protested, desperately clenching her fists, her body rigid. “Even the law can’t just let that happen.”
“If you can think of anything,” Rathbone said with a bitter smile, “so help me God, I’ll do it. Apart from the monumental injustice of it, I can’t think when I have hated a man so much.” He closed his eyes, the muscles in his cheeks and jaws tight. “He stood there with that bloody smile on his face—he knows I have to defend him, and he was laughing at me!”
Hester stared at him helplessly.
“I beg your pardon.” He apologized automatically for his language. She dismissed it with an impatient gesture. It was totally unimportant.
Monk was lost in concentration, not seeing the room around them but something far in his inner mind.
On the mahogany mantel the clock ticked the seconds by. The sun shone in a bright pool on the polished floor between the window and the edge of the carpet. Beyond in the street someone hailed a cab. There were no clerks or juniors in the office yet.
Monk shifted position.
“What?” Hester and Rathbone demanded in unison.
“Stanhope was performing abortions,” Monk said slowly.
“No proof,” Rathbone said, dismissing it. “Different nurse each time, and always women too ignorant to know how to do anything but pass him the instruments he pointed at and clean up after him. They would accept that the operation was whatever he told them—removal of a tumor seems most obvious.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he told me. He is perfectly open about it, because he knows I can’t testify to it!”
“His word,” Monk pointed out dryly. “But that isn’t the point.”
“It is,” Rathbone contradicted. “Apart from the fact that we don’t know which nurses—and God knows, there are enough ignorant ones in the hospital. They won’t testify, and the court wouldn’t believe them above Sir Herbert even if they would. Can you imagine one of them, ignorant, frightened, sullen, probably dirty and not necessarily sober.” His face twisted with a bitter, furious smile. “I would rip her apart in moments.”
He assumed a stance at once graceful and satirical. “Now, Mrs. Moggs—how do you know that this operation was an abortion and not the removal of a tumor, as the eminent surgeon, Sir Herbert Stanhope, has sworn? What did you see—precisely?” He raised his eyebrows. “And what is your medical expertise for saying such a thing? I beg your pardon, where did you say you trained? How long had you been on duty? All night? Doing wh
at? Oh yes—emptying the slop pail, sweeping the floor, stoking the fire. Are these your usual duties, Mrs. Moggs? Yes I see. How many glasses of porter? The difference between a large tumor and a six-week fetus? I don’t know. Neither do you? Thank you, Mrs. Moggs—that will be all.”
Monk drew in his breath to speak, but Rathbone cut him off.
“And you have absolutely no chance at all of getting the patients to testify. Even if you could find them, which you can’t. They would simply support Sir Herbert and say it was a tumor.” He shook his head in tightly controlled fury. “Anyway it is all immaterial! We can’t call them. And Lovat-Smith doesn’t know anything about it! And his case is closed. He can’t reopen it at this point without an exceptional reason.”
Monk looked bleak.
