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“I’ll fetch you a clean nightshirt, and a stiff whisky.”
Monk smiled. “Thank you.”
Runcorn stood still for a moment. “Like the way it used to be, isn’t it?” he said with a bleak satisfaction. “Only better.”
CHAPTER 12
Oliver Rathbone sat in his chamber in the Old Bailey trying to compose his mind to begin the defense of Dinah Lambourn, on the charge of murdering Zenia Gadney. It was the highest-profile case he had appeared in for some time. He had already received considerable criticism for taking it at all. Of course, the remarks had been oblique. Everyone knew that all accused persons had the right to be represented in court, whoever they were and whatever they were charged with, regardless of the certainty of their guilt. That was the law.
Personal revulsion was an entirely different matter. Acknowledging mentally that somebody should represent her was quite different from actually doing it yourself.
“Not a wise move, Rathbone,” one of his friends had said, shaking his head and pursing his mouth. “Should have let some hungry young beggar take it, one who has nothing to lose.”
Rathbone had been stung. “Is that who you’d want defending your wife?” he had demanded.
“My wife wouldn’t hack a prostitute to death and dump her in the river!” the man had replied with heat.
“Maybe Dinah Lambourn didn’t, either,” Rathbone had responded, wishing he had not been foolish enough to allow himself to be drawn into this discussion.
Perhaps the man had been right. As he sat in the big, comfortable chair and looked at the papers spread out on his desk, he wondered if he had been rash. Had he accepted this as a sort of suicide of his own, a self-inflicted punishment for failing Margaret?
The newspapers were running banner headlines about the trial. Some journalists had described Dinah as a woman consumed with hatred toward her own sex. They suggested she was insanely jealous, given to delusions, and had driven Lambourn to suicide with her possessiveness.
Another paper’s editorial pointed out that if the jury sanctioned a woman committing a hideous and depraved murder because her husband had resorted to a prostitute, there was no end to the slaughter that that might lead to.
And of course Rathbone had heard some women siding with Dinah, saying that men who consorted with prostitutes defiled the marriage bed, not only by the betrayal of their vows, but more immediately and physically by the possibility of returning to a loyal wife and bringing to her the diseases of the whorehouse, and thus of course to their children. And what about the money such men lavished on their own appetites, even while in the act of denying their wives household necessities?
To some men whom Rathbone had overheard at his club, Dinah was the ultimate victim. To others she was the symbol of a hysterical woman seeking to limit all a man’s freedoms and to pursue his every move.
One writer had presented her as the heroine for all betrayed wives, for all women used, mocked, and then cast aside. The heat of emotion carried away reason like jetsam on a flood tide.
Rathbone had prepared everything he could for this defense, but he knew he had far too little. Neither Monk nor Orme had been able to find a witness who had seen Zenia with a man near the time of her death. The one person she had been seen with, briefly on the road by the river, was unquestionably a woman. He had no wish to draw attention to that.
All he really had to defend Dinah with was her past loyalties to both Lambourn and Zenia, and her character. He would rather not put her on the witness stand to testify. She was too vulnerable to ridicule because of her belief in a conspiracy for which there was no proof. But in the end he might have to.
Monk and Hester were still searching for solid evidence, as was Runcorn, when he had the chance. The trouble was, everything they had found so far could just as easily be interpreted as evidence of her guilt as her innocence.
The attack on Monk had been brutal, and well organized, but there was nothing to tie it to the murder of Zenia Gadney. There had been no second attack, so far.
Rathbone was glad when the clerk came to interrupt his growing sense of panic and call him to the courtroom. The trial was about to begin.
All the usual preliminaries were gone through. It was a ritual to which Rathbone hardly needed to pay attention. He looked up at the dock, where Dinah sat between two wardens, high above the floor of the court. On the left-hand wall, under the window, were jury benches, and ahead was the great chair in which the judge sat, resplendent in his scarlet robes and full-bottomed wig.
Rathbone studied them one by one while the voices droned on. Dinah Lambourn looked beautiful in her fear. Her eyes were wide, her skin desperately pale. Her thick, dark hair was pulled back a little severely to reveal the bones of her cheeks and brow, the perfect balance of her features, her generous, vulnerable mouth. He wondered if that would tell against her, or for her. Would the jury admire her dignity, or misunderstand it for arrogance? There was no way of knowing.
The judge was Grover Pendock, a man Rathbone had known for years, but never well. His wife was an invalid and he preferred to remain away from the social events to which she could not come. Was that in deference to her, or an admirable excuse to avoid a duty in which he had no pleasure? He had two sons. The elder, Hadley Pendock, was a sportsman of some distinction, and the judge was extremely proud of him. The younger one was more studious, it was said, and had yet to make his mark.
Rathbone looked up at Grover Pendock now and saw the general gravity of his rather large face, with its powerful jaw and thin mouth. This was a very public trial. He must know all eyes would be on his conduct of it, expecting-indeed, requiring-a swift and completely decisive conclusion. The sooner it was ended, the sooner the hysteria would die down and the newspapers turn their attention to something else. There must be no doubt as to justice being done, with no unseemly behavior, and above all, absolutely no chance for an appeal.
The counsel for the prosecution looked grim and full of confidence, as if already spoiling for a fight. Sorley Coniston was in his late forties, taller than Rathbone and heavier, smooth-faced. When he smiled there was a slight gap between his front teeth, which was not unattractive. He was almost handsome. Only a certain arrogance in his manner spoiled the grace with which he rose to call his first witness.
As expected, it was Sergeant Orme of the Thames River Police. Rathbone had known it would be, but it still puzzled him that Coniston had chosen Orme rather than Monk.
Then, as he saw Orme’s solid, calm face when he climbed the steps to the witness box and looked down at the floor of the court, he understood the choice. Monk was lean and elegant. He couldn’t help it. The air of command was in him: in the angle of his head, the bones of his face, his remarkable eyes. Orme was ordinary. No one would think him devious or overly clever. He would be believed. Anyone attacking his honesty would do more harm to themselves than to him.
Coniston walked out into the center of the floor and looked up at Orme, who was already sworn in and had given his name and his rank.
“Sergeant Orme,” Coniston began courteously, as if they were equals. “Will you please tell the court of your experience on the morning of the twenty-fourth of November, as you approached
