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Rathbone thought for several moments. “They might suggest it was you who were blackmailing him to stop seeing Zenia?”
“Or I would do what?” she said with a rare spark of humor. “Humiliate myself by making his affair public? Don’t be ridiculous.”
He smiled back, reluctantly. He admired her courage. “Then why did he kill himself, Mrs. Lambourn?”
“He didn’t.” All the light vanished from her face again and grief washed through it. “They killed him, because he was going to fight for his report to be accepted by the people, if not by the government. They made it look like suicide, to discredit him once and for all.”
It sounded hysterical, a wild fiction to save herself from the shame and the rejection of her husband’s suicide, and yet he could not dismiss the idea out of hand.
“You truly think it was murder?”
“How many people have already drowned in the dark sea of the opium trade?” she asked. “Killed in the Opium Wars, murdered in its aftermath of trade and piracy, dead of overdoses? How many fortunes made or lost?”
“And who killed Zenia Gadney?” Rathbone asked, suddenly more serious. “Was her death really only coincidence?”
“That seems so unlikely as to be impossible.” She shook her head. The fear in her was palpable. He looked at her with intense sorrow. He knew exactly why Monk had asked him to see her and to take the case.
“I wanted to do all I could to clear Joel’s name,” she continued. “But his papers are all gone. Someone took everything and destroyed it. I was still trying to see if there were any other doctors who had the courage and resources to take up the issue.”
“Even believing that he was murdered to silence him?”
“He was right,” she said simply.
Rathbone returned to the earlier question. “Who killed Zenia?” he said again.
“They did,” she answered. “Whoever killed Joel.”
“Why? What did she know? Did she have copies of his report?” Copenhagen Place would not have been an unreasonable place to hide such a thing, if it existed.
“Maybe.” She said it as if it had not occurred to her until then.
He could not let her get by with an answer the prosecution would tear to pieces. “Then why not simply burgle her house? That would draw much less attention. Or if she had hidden it and would not tell them where, why not beat her? And if they did have to kill her, why would they do it so grotesquely? This murder is so appalling that it has shaken all London into fear. It is in every newspaper and on everyone’s lips. It makes no sense, in conjunction with your theory.”
Dinah Lambourn put her hands up to her face in a gesture of weariness. “It makes excellent sense, Sir Oliver. As you have observed, all London is drawn into the horror of it. When the evidence ties it back to me, and to Joel, and if I cannot prove my innocence, then I will be hanged and Joel will be completely disgraced, once and for all. His report will be forgotten, and the bill will die quietly. What is Zenia’s life, or mine, worth in comparison to the millions of pounds made from opium, and the continued burial of the secrets and sins of the Opium Wars?”
Rathbone did not know how much he believed her. The more he listened to her, the more credible the possibility seemed that, at the very least, Lambourn’s report had been suppressed because it did not say what those who commissioned it had wished it to.
But could such a failure have led to first Lambourn’s murder, and then Zenia’s, in order to silence Dinah? Unquestionably the wealth at stake was enough to provoke murder. But could there really be such a hideous conspiracy at play?
Or was he being made a complete fool of because she was a beautiful woman, and her loyalty to her husband had caught him in the uniquely vulnerable place of his own wound? Was he losing his sense of perspective?
&
nbsp; Was Dinah Lambourn risking her own life to save her husband’s reputation? Or was she insanely jealous, had killed Zenia out of uncontrollable resentment, and was now lying desperately in order to try to save herself from the rope?
He honestly had no idea.
He wanted to believe her. Or, more truthfully, he wanted to believe that a woman would have that kind of loyalty to her husband. That even after his death, and his fifteen-year attachment to another woman, she would fight for him, for her memories of him, and all that they had shared.
Her own wounded feelings meant nothing. Not once had she spoken against him, or for that matter against Zenia Gadney.
She was obviously laboring in the grip of extreme emotion. She faced hanging if she was found guilty. After the manner of Zenia’s death, and the public furor, there could be no question of mercy.
“I will take your case, Mrs. Lambourn. I cannot promise success; all I can commit to is that I will do everything I can to defend you,” he said gravely.
She smiled at him and the tears of relief spilled down her cheeks.
Rathbone shook her hand and then turned for the door. What on earth had he done?
