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“Do you know anything about the Opium Wars?” Hester interrupted his thoughts.
“Not much,” he admitted. “It was all in China. Trade war of some sort, as far as I know. Our part in it has been justified by some, but it was pretty ugly. I believe we introduced opium into China and now hundreds of thousands of people are addicted to it. Not something to be proud of.”
“Perhaps we should find out more, just in case it matters,” she said quietly.
“Did you believe this woman, this Agatha?” he asked her. “Not her honesty, but her knowledge?”
“Yes … I think so. It compared in ways to my own experience in the Crimea.”
“Are there any wars that aren’t ugly?” He thought bitterly of all he knew and had heard of the Crimean War, its violence, futility, and loss. “This Civil War in America-God knows what those losses will be by the end-pretty good market for opium there, too. I hear the slaughter is appalling, and the injuries to those who survived. I don’t suppose they even know the extent of it themselves yet. And it’s not just the dead, it’s the ruin of the land, and the hatred left behind.”
“I think there’s a good deal of hatred left behind the Opium Wars, too,” Hester replied. “And money, and guilt. A lot of secrets to bury.”
“Secrets don’t stay buried,” Rathbone said quietly. He wanted to tell her about his own secret, those photographs still sitting in his home, waiting to be stored in a bank vault where only he could disinter them.
She was staring at him. “Oliver?” she said with concern. “Do you know something about Dinah that we don’t? Something bad?”
“No!” he said with a rush of relief. “It … it was … I was thinking about something else entirely.”
She looked doubtful. “It?” she asked. “What are we talking about?”
“It was … it …” He breathed in and out deeply. The weight of the knowledge he carried was almost unbearable alone. “Do you know what happened to Arthur Ballinger’s photographs after he was killed?”
Her face paled a little, and there was pain in her eyes.
“I have no idea. Why? Are you afraid someone has them?” She reached across the table and touched his hand gently. “There’s no point in worrying. They’re probably locked up somewhere where nobody will ever find them. But if they’re not, there’s still nothing you can do about it.” Her hand was warm on his. “If somebody has them they can only blackmail the guilty, and do you really have any sympathy for men who abused children like that? I know they may have been fools more than villains to begin with, but you still can’t protect them.”
“I would have no sympathy if it were about money, Hester, but it isn’t. It’s about power,” he said simply.
“Power?” There was sharper fear in her face now, and perhaps the beginning of understanding as to what he meant.
“Power to make the men in those photographs do anything, which they would, out of fear of being exposed,” he elaborated.
“Do you think there are other people in those pictures who are … judges and politicians, or …?” She saw it in his face. “You do! Did Ballinger say there were?”
“No. He did far worse than that, Hester. He left them to me.” He looked at her intently, waiting for the horror in her eyes, even the revulsion.
She sat motionless and very slowly the full impact of it settled over her, like a shadow. She studied him. Perhaps she saw in him something of the burden he felt, and the bitterness of the irony. It was both Ballinger’s legacy and his revenge. He might not know what it would do to Rathbone, but he must have relished the possibilities.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “If you had destroyed them you would have told me differently, wouldn’t you.” It was not a question; she was letting him know that she understood.
“Yes,” he confessed. “I would. I will hide them. If I die then they will be destroyed. I meant to do it at the time I saw them; then when I saw who was in them, I couldn’t. Maybe I still will. The power of it is … so very great. Ballinger began by using them only for good, you know? He told me. It was to force people to take action against injustice or abuse, when they wouldn’t do it any other way.” Was he making excuses for Ballinger? Or for himself, because he had not destroyed the pictures? He looked at Hester’s face and saw the confusion in her, and the comprehension. He waited for her to ask if he would use them, and she did not.
“Do you think Dinah is innocent?” she asked instead.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “At first I thought it was possible, then after the beginning of the trial, I seriously doubted it. Now I don’t know whether she killed Zenia Gadney or not, but I’m beginning to have very serious doubts as to whether Lambourn committed suicide. And if he was murdered, then that opens up a lot of other doubts, and questions.”
There was a sound of footsteps outside the door to the hall. A moment later Ardmore came in and very courteously reminded Rathbone that it was time for him to go.
Hester smiled and rose to her feet. There was no need for further discussion, simply a quiet good-bye.
Lambourn’s suicide was still in Rathbone’s mind as the trial resumed an hour and a half later, when he met Sorley Coniston in the hall and they exchanged brief greetings.
“Morning,” Coniston said with a slight smile. “Tough one for you, Rathbone. Whatever made you take it? I used to wonder if you accepted cases for notoriety sometimes, but I always decided you didn’t. Haven’t changed, have you?”
“Not that much,” Rathbone replied drily. He did not know Coniston well, though they had been acquainted for years, but thought he might like the man if he did. He was unpredictable, and occasionally his opinions were startlingly honest. “This time I can’t make up my mind myself.”
“For heaven’s sake!” Coniston said, shaking his head. “The only question in this one is how far you can bring in the damn opium question. Lambourn might have gone off the rails in his personal life, but he was a decent man, and honest. Don’t drag his private mistakes out in front of the world. His children don’t deserve that, even if you think he does.”
