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His hands were trembling, his fingers clumsy as he unlocked the box containing the photographic plates. He opened the lid and it nearly slid out of his grasp. He clutched with the other hand and let the lid fall backward.
The heavy sheets of glass were stacked neatly next to each other but not so close as to prevent them being removed one at a time. The printed paper copies were kept separately in a heavy brown envelope. He had looked at them only once. They held images he would rather not have known about.
He slid the paper out of the envelope onto the table, glancing at the door, needing to reassure himself it was locked. He did not want even the most trusted servant to know of these. How could he explain looking at such things to anyone? Evidence? Yes, they had been, but not in any current case. So why had he kept them? Why not destroy them as soon as they were his and he had the right to? They were obscene and dangerous, the key to blackmailing some of the most important men in the land. There were people he could destroy with these, careers, families he could ruin.
That was not how he had thought of them, though. They were revolting, but they were indelible proof of crimes against children, so repellent and so compulsively woven into the nature of most of those who committed them that they would almost certainly happen again and again.
But what he saw now was the power to humble the men who had had the bravado, the arrogance to be photographed, the power to make them repay some of the debt they owed. They could never make it up to the children themselves-too many were missing or dead-but there were other causes.
Ballinger had begun the whole hideous performance by using the photograph of a senior judge to make him command an industrialist to stop the pollution that had spread disease and death to an entire community. Usurers had been forced to forgive debt caused by exorbitant interest. Other wrongs had been redressed. Then finally the power had become its own end, and all the original passion for justice or mercy was swallowed up-the only thing that had mattered was survival.
Not that Ballinger had survived. His deeds had destroyed him.
But there was a saying that Rathbone could never forget: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Was he going to do nothing while Robertson Drew destroyed Bicknor and Sawley? They might be weak in some ways, but wasn’t that true of every single person? And if Squeaky Robinson had said Taft was a fraudster, then Rathbone firmly believed that he was.
But he had sworn to himself that he would never use these pictures again, unless someone’s life was in jeopardy, and there was no other way out. This case was only about money.
Or was it? It was also about faith and honor, belief in a church and a God who was both just and merciful … a God who loved his people. Taft was not only robbing them of a quality of life, he was robbing them of their faith. Surely that was a sin almost as terrible as stealing their lives?
What does a good, simple man suffer if he is betrayed by the servants of the God he trusted? Who does he turn to then?
The law. And if the law not only allows the injustice to stand but also permits him to be mocked by his peers and ridiculed by those who have robbed him, who then can he turn to?
One by one Rathbone looked through the photographs. Perhaps his memory had led him astray and Drew was not here, only someone who looked a bit like him. Then there was no dilemma.
He was halfway through and the sights in front of him were vile enough to turn his stomach. He could not imagine subjecting an animal to the pain and humiliation these children endured. It was some comfort to know that Jericho Phillips had died hideously, in terror. But that was only revenge; it did not undo what had happened.
If Drew were among these pictures, was that justification for Rathbone to punish him? No, of course it wasn’t.
Should he have handed over all the photographs as soon as he had them from Ballinger’s estate? No. Too much of society would collapse under the weight, and the horror, of what they revealed. There were pictures of prominent men in this small, heavy box-judges, members of Parliament, of the Church, high society, the army and navy. All were weak men, but perhaps some were guilty of only one drunken excursion into this cesspit of indulgence, a moment they would deeply and painfully regret for the rest of their lives. Did they deserve to be ruined?
Then there it was in his hands, a clear, completely unmistakable photograph of Robertson Drew. It was as he had remembered, Drew staring at the camera, defying it to curb his pleasure.
Rathbone could not look at the child’s face.
He separated the photograph from the others, moved it to the front of the pile and put them all away. He closed the lid of the box and locked it again. He replaced it where it had been in the safe, completely concealed. He hid the key, also in a place he believed no one would look, in plain sight, and yet unrecognizable.
He was sweating, and yet he was cold.
He took the brandy dec
anter and poured himself a stiff drink, then stood by the window with the curtains undrawn and gazed at the evening breeze stirring the branches of the trees. In the last light the leaves fluttered and turned, one moment pale, the next shadowed.
He had never felt more alone.
He finished the brandy and put his glass down again. He had not tasted it; it could have been cold tea.
What was the right thing to do?
Not to act is to condone what is happening, tacitly even to become part of it. He alone had the power to act-he had the photograph.
Later, he lay awake, alone in the big bed, battling with himself. Should he intervene or not? What was the brave thing to do? What was the honorable thing?
Whatever he did it was a decision both he and others would have to live with for the rest of their lives.
By morning, tired, head aching, he had still reached no definite conclusion.
