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Rathbone felt ridiculous. He was making this even more unpleasant than it had to be by being less than honest.
“I’m sorry,” Rathbone said. “The photograph is for you to do with as you think fit. You may need some time to decide, which is why I felt it necessary to disturb you with it tonight. I’m sorry. I debated whether to come to you at all, or if I should take the decision out of your hands by not showing it to you, but it has a strong bearing on the value of the evidence in the case against Taft, and I believe the decision must be yours.”
“I don’t understand.” Warne looked deeply unhappy. “What decision? What is this photograph? Is it of Taft? Who took it?”
Rathbone was bitterly aware that he was about to increase Warne’s unhappiness a hundredfold.
“Before I pass it to you I would like to retain your services as my legal counsel,” Rathbone said. How ridiculous the words sounded, in the circumstances, and yet it was critical that he pursue this course of action. “It is to protect you, as well as me,” he added.
Warne stared at him, uncomprehending.
Rathbone reached into his pocket and pulled out five guinea coins. “Please?”
Warne nodded, his eyes never leaving Rathbone’s face, but he took the coins and set them on the table.
“I now represent you legally.”
Rathbone held out the brown envelope.
Warne took it and after a moment’s hesitation, opened the flap and picked out the stiff paper of the photograph. He stared at it, blinked, then his face reflected vividly the wave of revulsion that must’ve welled up inside him. His paramount emotion seemed to be acute distress.
Rathbone wished he had not made this choice. He had done the wrong thing, and it was too late to take it back. Now he was as chilled as if his heart had stopped pumping blood around his body.
Warne looked up at him, his eyes unreadable.
“Where in God’s name did you get this? Did someone send it to you?”
There was no possible way out of this. He must plunge through it-with the truth.
“My father-in-law owned these photographs, about fifty of them. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. I defended him, partly because of family obligation, partly because anyone at all is worthy of a defense, as Gavinton has been at pains to remind me. And in the beginning I believed he was innocent. Only too late did I discover that he was not.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He always blamed me for not having defended him adequately. As a bitter irony he bequeathed me these damnable pictures.”
Warne stared at him, blinking.
Rathbone knew he should not go on, making bad even worse, but he heard his own voice as if it belonged to someone else and he had no control over it.
“He told me that to begin with he used one of them to force a corrupt judge to make an industrialist clean up his factory’s waste, which was spreading cholera in a poor area of the city. It saved the lives of hundreds of people. And cholera is a vile way to die.”
Warne winced as if he had felt a wave of that pain himself.
“He went on using them,” Rathbone continued. “For a while it was always to force justice where it would otherwise be denied. Then he began to do it for less clear-cut reasons. In the end he was thoroughly corrupt. I hesitated whether to give you this or not. You will notice the date on it-after Drew joined Taft’s Church. You can see from it that Robertson Drew is very far from being the minister of Christ that he professes to be. He has slandered at least three good men, and probably the finest woman he is ever likely to meet. If the jurors were aware of his nature, I think they would attach a very different weight to his testimony than they do now.”
“Indeed,” Warne replied, his voice little above a whisper.
“Do whatever you think just,” Rathbone told him. “If you believe the man is telling the truth, then the picture is irrelevant. I know Mrs. Monk, and I know Squeaky Robinson. Squeaky is a devious sod and has been on the wrong side of the law most of his life, but I trust him to keep the books of the Portpool Lane clinic. I think he knows fraud when he sees it and knows how to find it-the places where a man who has always been honest would never think to look. If he says Taft is crooked, then I believe he is. And if you are able to take a little time to look more closely at Hester Monk, you will find she has more courage and honor than many a decorated army officer and has done more to help the poor and outcast of society than Taft can have ever imagined.”
Warne almost smiled.
“I imagine much of what Gavinton said was aimed at you. He seems to have studied your past cases, and your personal friendships, quite closely.”
Rathbone felt his lips curl in a sneer. “A great deal more closely than he has some of the personal friendships of Robertson Drew, from the look of it.” Then he looked at Warne’s eyes. “But none of that has anything to do with the fact that, in spite of the financial evidence, you have failed to convince the jury that Abel Taft is a fraud and a manipulator of innocent and vulnerable people who trust him because he says he comes in the name of Christ. They believe him because they would not lie about such a thing themselves, and they find it impossible to believe that anyone else would. Perhaps they don’t want to. No one wants to acknowledge himself a fool, and maybe a decent man wants even less to admit that the faith he placed in his church was hideously false.”
“Most of all in front of his neighbors, and aloud, where they can remind him of it again and again,” Warne added. He held the photograph in one hand, by his fingertips, as if touching it soiled him. “Would you use this?”
Rathbone thought for several moments before replying. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “If I did, I would be tormented by it forever. And if I didn’t, then everything that Taft gets away with from now on is at my door, whether I want to own it or not. Every innocent man defrauded of his money or his trust is one more victim I could have prevented, had I not placed my own peace of mind first.”
“Damn you,” Warne said quietly. There was no enmity in his voice, just fear and exhaustion, and a touch of revulsion, for the picture, for the choice he now had.
There was no need for more words. Silently Rathbone took his leave and went out into the night. He walked toward the main road. He had left the photograph behind him, but he felt, if anything, even more heavily weighed down.
