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He turned, paced back, and then faced the jury again. “He chose William Monk to succeed him. Why? He is a good detective. No one knows that better than I. But did Durban, who knew him only a few months, choose him because he saw in Monk a man of profound convictions like his own, of pity for the weak, rage against the abusive, and an unstoppable dedication? A man who would seek to close his own unfinished cases, out of honor and to pay a personal debt?”
The jurors’ eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Rathbone. He knew it.
“You must judge the power and the compulsion that drove Monk to follow precisely the course that Durban had taken,” he told them. “You have listened to Mrs. Monk and must have formed some opinion of her courage and her passion. This is a woman in the same mold as Florence Nightingale, a woman who has walked the fields of battle among the dead and the dying, and has not fainted or wept, or turned away, but has steeled her courage and made her decisions. With knife and needle, bandages and water, she has saved lives. What would she not do to bring to justice the man who abused and murdered children—including a boy so like the very mudlark she has all but adopted as her own?”
He lowered his voice. “Are you prepared to hang Jericho Phillips in the certainty, beyond any reasonable doubt, that those passionate, justifiably enraged people have made no error in their detached and analytical reasoning, and have found the right man, among all the teeming many who make their livings on this busiest river in the world?”
He stood motionless in the center of the floor. “If you are not certain, then for all our sakes, you must find him not guilty. Above all for the sake of the law, which must protect the weakest, the poorest, and the least loved of all of us, as much as it protects the strong, the beautiful, and the good. If you do not, then it becomes no protection at all, simply the instrument of our power and our prejudice. Gentlemen, I leave the judgment to rest not with your pity or your outrage, but with your honor to the sacred principle of justice, by which one day we will all be judged.”
He sat down in total silence. Not another person moved even to rustle in their seats.
After a moment, in a hushed voice, Lord Justice Sullivan invited the jury to retire to consider its verdict.
They came back within the hour, looking at no one. They were unhappy, but they were resolute.
Sullivan asked their foreman to speak for them.
“Not guilty,” he said in a low, clear voice.
FOUR
itting in the courtroom Monk was stunned. Beside him Hester was rigid. He could feel it as if he were touching her, although actually there were several inches between them. Then he heard her move and knew she had turned to look at him. What could he say to her? He had been so certain of the verdict that he had not even suggested that the prosecution charge Phillips with the attempted murder of the ferryman. Now, as if he had dissolved into the air, Phillips had escaped.
They walked out of the courtroom and through the crowds in silence, then instead of looking for a bus, as if by unspoken agreement, they went along Ludgate Hill and left down to Blackfriars Bridge. The river was bright in the low, late-afternoon sun. Pleasure boats had bright flags up and streamers rippling in the wind. The sound of a barrel organ drifted from the bank, somewhere just out of sight.
They were less than a mile upstream from the Southwark Bridge. They walked over slowly, watching the bright wake of boats below them, and caught a bus on the farther bank. They sat still without speaking until they alighted a quarter of a mile from Paradise Place, and walked uphill, a longer way around than they needed, for the pleasure of the air.
The park was quiet, a faint breeze moving the leaves, like someone breathing softly in their sleep.
Half a dozen times, Monk had wanted to speak, but each ti
me the words he had been going to say seemed clumsy, like an attempt at self-justification. What did she think of him? Rathbone had called him as a witness. He must have counted on Monk saying and doing exactly what he had.
“Did he know I was going to do that?” he said at last as they passed under one of the towering trees, the shade deep beneath the boughs. “Am I so predictable, or did he manipulate me into it?”
She thought before she answered. “Both, I think,” she said finally. “That's his skill, to ask the question in such a way that you can really give only one answer. He painted a picture of Durban as overemotional, and then asked if you cared just as much. You could hardly say that you didn't.” She was frowning. “I understand the principle that the law must be based on evidence, not love or hate. That's hard, but it's true. You can't condemn him because you don't like him. But I don't understand why he chose this case to demonstrate it. I could have sworn that he would find Phillips as repulsive as the rest of us do. It seems …” she searched for the right word. “Perverse.”
It solidified Monk's thoughts. “Yes, it does. And that is not the man he used to be … is it?”
They crossed the road and walked side by side up towards Paradise Place.
“No,” she said at last as they reached their own door and he took out the key to let them in. It smelled closed up in the warmth of the day, but the faint aroma of lavender and beeswax was pleasing, as was the cleanness of freshly laundered linen hanging on the airing rail in the kitchen. There was a maid who came twice a week for the heavy work, and she had obviously been there today.
“Do you think he's changed as much as it seems?” Hester stopped and turned to face him.
He did not know how to answer. He realized only now how much he had liked Rathbone, in spite of the difference between them. If Rathbone no longer held the beliefs he used to, then Monk had also lost something. “I don't know,” he said honestly.
She nodded, lips closed tightly, eyes suddenly sad. She walked through to the kitchen and he followed, sitting on one of the hard-backed chairs as she picked up the kettle and filled it before setting it on the stove. He knew the change in Rathbone would hurt her also, even more than it would him. People did change when they married, sometimes only a little, but it could be a great deal. He was different since marrying Hester, although he believed that was entirely for the good. He did not like to admit it, but looking back, he had formerly been harder to please, quicker to lose his temper and to see the ugly or the weak in anyone. Happiness had made him kinder. That was something to be grateful for, though not proud of; he should have managed it anyway. Pride might have been justified if he had been gentler, without his own inner peace or safety from the wounds of loneliness.
If this change in Rathbone were to do with Margaret then it would be an even deeper loss to Hester, because Margaret had been her friend also. They had worked hard together, shared pain and fear, and more than a little of each other's dreams.
He watched Hester now as she worked quietly at preparing supper. It was simple, but then in the warmth of summer, cold food was not only easier, it was pleasanter. It was supremely comfortable looking at her as she turned from one bench to another, finding what she wanted, chopping, slicing, carrying. Her hands were slender and quick, and she moved with grace. Some men might not have thought her beautiful; in fact, he had not himself when they first knew each other. She was too thin. Far richer curves were fashionable, and a face with less passion or strength and with more demureness and an inclination to obedience.
But he knew her in all her moods, and the play of laughter and sorrow in her features, the flare of anger or the quick pain of contrition, and the stab of pity were all familiar to him. He knew how powerfully they worked in her. Now the shallower emotions of bland, pretty women seemed empty, leaving him starving for reality.
What did Margaret Rathbone offer, compared with Hester? What did she want that had made Rathbone defend Jericho Phillips so brilliantly? And Monk would be dishonest were he to say that it was less than brilliant. Rathbone had turned an untenable situation into one of dignity, even some kind of honor, at least on the surface.
But what about afterwards? What was underneath the momentary victory in the courtroom, the amazement of the crowd, the admiration for his skills? What about the question why? Who had paid him to do this? If it were a favor, then to whom? Who could ask something, or offer something, that could be wanted by a man such as Rathbone used to be? In the past, Hester, Monk, and he had fought great battles that had taxed every ounce of their courage, imagination, and intelligence, because they believed in the causes.
