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Warne kept his voice calm. “Then how has this not come to notice before, Mr. Sawley? It would appear rather a gaping hole in Mr. Taft’s accounting.”
Sawley shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It isn’t there right now so as you can see it. It’s all very complicated,” he explained.
“Then how is it that you are able to see it, when others haven’t?” Warne persisted.
Rathbone wondered why Warne was directing the jury’s mind to this. Then he realized it must be because Warne needed to draw out the answer before Gavinton did so, far less gently, when Sawley would not have the chance to tell the court in his own words, or perhaps in Warne’s words.
“I didn’t,” Sawley admitted uncomfortably. “Somebody asked me to look into it, because he was suspicious. And he told me what to look for.”
“Who would that someone be?” Warne asked.
No one in the jury box moved.
Sawley avoided meeting his gaze. “I don’t know. He did it anonymously. But I was so angry and distressed myself that I took him at his word … at least …”
“At least what, Mr. Sawley?” Warne was motionless, as gentle as he dared be. “Even if I believe you, and the financial evidence is incontrovertible, my learned friend Mr. Gavinton is going to want to know exactly how you came by it. Who was it that gave it to you? Who started you on the course of your investigations?”
Sawley looked trapped. Everyone in the courtroom listened intently. The jurors were staring at him. Even Rathbone found himself leaning forward slightly as if afraid he might miss a word.
Sawley drew in a deep breath, and his glasses slipped right off and clattered onto the floor of the witness stand. He did not dare bend down to search for them, but stood blinking.
“I didn’t really see him. He came to my door one evening, late, well after dusk, and he stood away from the light of the lamp. I just knew that he was at least fifty, to judge from what I could see of his face, and his hair was gray, nearly white. I could see his hair, even though he had a hat on, because it was long. He was clean shaven, hollow cheeked. He was about my height, and thin.”
“What did he say to you, Mr. Sawley?” Warne prompted.
Sawley shook his head. “He didn’t ask me anything about myself. As soon as he made sure who I was, he held out a package of papers and said that the information inside was what I was looking for. I didn’t know what he meant.” He shrugged thin shoulders. “I told him I wasn’t looking for anything. He told me that I was. I needed to expose what Mr. Taft was doing, before he ruined me and all my friends. He pushed the packet into my hands then turned around and left.”
“On foot?” Warne asked. “Did you see any carriage? Any hansom cab?”
Sawley shrugged again, looking bewildered.
“No. But I live on a short street, and he turned on the first corner. He could have got a hansom within a hundred yards. There’s no point asking me who he was, or how he knew what I wanted, because I have no idea.”
“And the papers he handed you?” Warne asked.
No one moved in the courtroom; there was not the rustle of fabric or the crack of a whalebone corset, not a sigh.
Rathbone found himself with hands clenched, muscles tight as he sat forward, waiting.
Sawley made a movement to fiddle with his glasses and remembered they were on the floor by his feet. He looked oddly helpless without them.
“Copies of the accounts and certain public charities, of Mr. Taft’s Church,” he answered. “Lots of figures and calculations. At first it didn’t make sense to me, then I looked at them more carefully and crosschecked those with a red pencil mark beside them, and gradually I understood. It was very clear. You’d have to understand fraud to see it, th
e way the money was all moved around from one place to another. Everything seemed to be paid out honestly, until you followed it all the way, and saw how it came back around again. Hardly any of it really went to the people in Africa it was supposed to help.”
“I see. And why would this mysterious stranger bring all this to you, Mr. Sawley?”
Sawley looked totally confused. “I’ve no idea, sir. I just know that he did.”
Warne retired on that note, and Gavinton rose to try to undo some of the damage. He walked out into the middle of the floor without his usual slightly cocky swagger. Then he was obliged to wait to begin while Sawley crouched on the floor of the witness box and retrieved his glasses. When he stood up at last Gavinton spoke.
“Terribly convenient for you, Mr. Sawley,” he observed with an acute edge of sarcasm to his voice. “Did anybody else see this … this apparition?”
Warne rose to his feet immediately.
“Yes,” Rathbone agreed before he could voice his objection. “Mr. Gavinton, if you can prove that this was an apparition and not a real person, then please do so. Otherwise do not present assumptions as if they were facts.”
Gavinton’s face tightened in irritation, but he obeyed because he had no choice.
