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“It is not over, my lord, until all the evidence has been heard, and the jury has delivered a verdict,” he replied. He drew in his breath and let it out very slowly.
“Due to circumstance,” he continued, “and entirely against my wish, I have recently inherited a very remarkable collection of photographs, which I keep in a safe place, away from my home.” That would soon be true.
“For God’s sake, Rathbone, I don’t care what you’ve inherited!” Pendock said with disbelief. “What on earth is the matter with you? Are you ill?”
Rathbone reached into his pocket and pulled out the sheets of paper and the photograp
h between them. Once he showed it to Pendock he would, like Caesar, have crossed the Rubicon, the line marking one side from the other; and he would, like Caesar, have declared war on his own people.
Pendock made a move to stand up, in effect a dismissal.
Rathbone took the top sheet off and laid the photograph bare.
Pendock glanced at it. Perhaps he did not see it clearly. His face filled with revulsion.
“God Almighty, man! That’s obscene!” He raised his eyes. “What on earth makes you imagine I might want to look at such filth?”
“I would not have thought so until yesterday,” Rathbone answered, his voice shaking in spite of his intense effort to control it. “Then I saw the same young man’s face in that picture over there.” He looked toward the silver-framed photograph on the table.
Pendock followed his gaze and his face flooded with scarlet. He seized the photograph where Rathbone had left it and held it close enough to the silver frame to compare one with another. Then the blood drained from his skin, leaving him as gray as the dead ashes in the morning fireplace. He staggered back and all but collapsed into his chair.
Rathbone felt worse than he could ever remember in his life, worse than when he had faced Ballinger in his cell, or found his murdered body so soon after; worse than when Margaret had left, even, because this was his own deliberate doing. It was open to him to have chosen differently. But what alternative could he have chosen?
Pendock lifted his head and looked at Rathbone with the same contempt with which he had regarded the small photograph when he had not known who it portrayed.
“I will not find Dinah Lambourn not guilty!” he said slowly, his voice a croak from a dry throat. “I … I’ll pay you anything you want, but I will not mock the law!”
“Damn you!” Rathbone shouted at him, half rising to his feet. “I don’t want your bloody money! And I don’t want a directed verdict. I’ve never looked for one in my life, and I’m not now. I just want you to preside over this trial fairly. I want you to allow my witnesses to testify and the jury to hear what they have to say. Then I’ll give you the original of the photograph, and all copies, and you can do what you like with them. Whether you speak to your son or not is your own choice and God help you.”
He leaned across the table toward Pendock. “You were willing to give me money to keep your son from paying the price of his criminal use of children, revolting as you find it. Is it so repellent to you to give Dinah Lambourn at least the justice of a fair hearing? She’s somebody’s child as well; somewhere there are people who love her. And if there weren’t, would that make her any less deserving?”
“It’s the natural … the natural instinct,” Pendock stammered. “This slander will damage the government, good men. We cannot change the law to alter people’s freedom to take whatever ease of pain they can, for the sake of the few who abuse it.”
“I love my freedom as much as the next man,” Rathbone answered. “But not at the cost this is to the weaker and more vulnerable, and those who exploit them for gain. Do you love your son more than you love justice?”
Pendock sank his head into his hands. “It looks like it, doesn’t it?” he whispered. “No. No, I don’t. I think. But …” He opened his eyes slowly, his face now that of an old man. “Bring on your witnesses, Rathbone.”
Twenty minutes later Rathbone was standing in the open space before the witness stand, which was occupied by the largest woman he could ever remember having seen. She was not immensely fat, and only just over six foot tall, but at the top of the steps as she was, she seemed to tower above them all. She was broad-shouldered like a stevedore, huge-chested, her arms heavy and muscular. Thank heaven, she was soberly dressed, even though her expression was fierce, as if defying the ritual and establishment of the law to intimidate her.
Rathbone knew what she was going to say because he had spoken to her himself. He knew her passion to ease the pain of those who had nowhere else to turn, her knowledge of opium addiction and withdrawal, and her pity for Alvar Doulting and what he had once been. Hester had warned him that Agatha might be difficult to handle. Rathbone had a powerful feeling that that would prove to be an understatement. Still, he had used the means he dreaded most to force this chance and there was no turning back.
The court was waiting, the gallery hushed, the jurors surprised that there was still something to hear. Coniston was more than surprised. He looked confused. Obviously Pendock had not attempted to explain anything to him. How could he?
Rathbone cleared his throat. He must win. The cost had already been too high.
“Miss Nisbet,” he began, “it is my understanding that you run a voluntary clinic on the south bank of the river for the treatment of dockworkers and sailors who are injured or have illnesses due to the dangerous nature of their work. Is that correct?”
“Yes it is,” she answered. Her voice was unexpectedly gentle for so large a woman. One would not have been surprised were it baritone, like a man’s.
“Do you use opium to treat their pain?” He was asking his way gently toward the connection with Lambourn.
“Yes, course I do. There in’t nothing else as’ll do it. Some of them is hurtin’ very bad,” she answered. “Break ’alf a dozen bones an’ yer’ll know what pain is. Crush an arm, or a leg, an’ yer’ll know even better.”
“I was going to say that I can imagine,” Rathbone spoke gently, too, “but that would be a lie. I have no idea, for which I am profoundly grateful.” He hesitated a moment to allow the jury to place themselves in the same situation, facing pain beyond their nightmares, grasping some concept of what this woman dealt with every day.
“So you use a great deal of opium. You must know where to buy it, and perhaps something about opium dealing in general?” He made it a question. “And, of course, its effects on people after the pain is healed?”
Coniston was looking puzzled, but he had not yet interrupted. Surely he would any moment now.
