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Rathbone noticed the curious use of the past tense, as if Margaret were dead. As far as love was concerned, or loyalty, perhaps she was. That still hurt. Why? Why did he allow it to? He did not know her now.
“She never believed her father guilty.” Rathbone said quietly. “I could not shatter what was left of her faith in him by telling her more than she needed to know. And I would not have shown them to her anyway. And without the physical evidence, I know she could have gone on disbelieving me, even if I had told her the truth.”
“But you did not feel such a need to protect Mrs. Monk?” Brancaster questioned.
For the first time Rathbone laughed, a hard, jerky sound torn out of him. “Hester saw the live victims,” he said witheringly. “She would hardly be thrown into a fit of the vapors by photographs. She was an army nurse. She has seen men blown to bits on the battlefield and gone in to help those who were left alive. For any man I know to protect her from the truth is a laughable idea. Perhaps that’s why Warne chose her to identify Drew in court.”
“That was rather well done,” Brancaster remarked with respect in his voice. “I shall be very sorry if I find it was he who brought you to the attention of the authorities. Have you any connections with Drew or Taft that I should know about?”
Rathbone tried to think of anything. He realized how much he was impressed with Brancaster. It would be a very hard blow indeed if Brancaster declined to take the case.
“Only that Hester-Mrs. Monk-decided to investigate Taft, and it was her inquiries, employing her bookkeeper from the Portpool Lane clinic, that uncovered the main details of Taft’s fraud. But I didn’t know anything of that at the time.”
“And your acquaintance with Mrs. Monk?” Brancaster asked. He did not need to explain his precise meaning; it was perfectly clear from his expression.
“Friends,” Rathbone replied, not avoiding his eyes. “At one time I was in love with her. I decided she was not the right sort of wife for me, and she was in love with Monk, whom she married not long after that. We have remained friends.”
Brancaster waited for him to add more, perhaps to justify himself, to insist that there was nothing inappropriate in the relationship. Rathbone knew that to do so would be a mistake. Explaining, protesting too much always was. He knew that from his own experience in questioning witnesses.
Brancaster relaxed with a smile. It lit his face and made him look quite different: younger and more vulnerable.
“I cannot promise victory, Sir Oliver, but I can promise an exceedingly good fight.” He stood up. “I don’t have anything more to ask you at the moment, but I expect I will soon think of things.” He walked the short distance to the door and called for the guard. He straightened his suit jacket, and, with the very slight inclining of his head, he went out as the door opened. He did not ask if Rathbone wished to keep his services or not. That was a degree of hubris not unlike his own, Rathbone thought. Perhaps Brancaster was exactly the lawyer he needed.
As he walked back to his cell with the guard at his side, he thought how short a time ago it was that he had sat at Ingram York’s dinner table in his magnificent house and celebrated his own handling of another, infinitely different case of fraud.
He had looked at Beata York and thought how beautiful she was, not the superficial loveliness of regular features or delicate coloring, but the deep, inner beauty of humor, gentleness, vulnerability, and the power to understand and forgive.
He was sure she would not understand or forgive this if she could see him now!
CHAPTER 9
Assistant Commissioner Byrne of the Metropolitan Police stood by the window of his office and regarded Monk unhappily.
“I didn’t say abandon him entirely,” he said with patience. “Just keep a reasonable distance. Dammit, Monk, the man has let the power of his office go to his head.”
Monk wanted to argue, but Byrne was right, at least on the surface of things.
“It’s when you are actually in the wrong, or at least in part, that you need your real friends.” Monk framed his answer carefully. “That’s the time they’re probably the only people who’ll stand by you.”
“He perverted the course of justice,” Byrne repeated, his face puckered in distaste. “He has delusions of grandeur we can’t permit. If judges don’t keep the law, precisely what standard can you hold the rest of us to? You cannot afford to be associated with him.”
“And if he’s not guilty?” Monk asked. “Wouldn’t I then be doing exactly what you say he did-taking the law into my own hands and prejudging a man before he’s tried?”
Byrne’s eyebrows rose, making his face look oddly imbalanced. “Isn’t that what you’re doing anyway, deciding he’s not guilty before you have the evidence?”
“I’m deciding he’s innocent until proven guilty,” Monk retorted. He was being argumentative, and he knew he was on thin ice. “Personally I think he’s behaved like an i
diot-but an idiot who wanted to see an evil man brought to account for his greed and his manipulations of people’s gullibility. I think he very possibly used poor judgment in the means he employed. I don’t have to debate or weigh and measure whether he’s a friend or not. He has been for years, and the fact that that is currently a trifle inconvenient for me has nothing to do with anything.”
“I don’t know whether you find that easy to say,” Byrne observed, “but you may find it harder to live up to. It’s inconvenient now; I promise you it is going to get a great deal more so.” He shook his head. “Be careful, Monk. I admire your loyalty, but not everyone will. Oliver Rathbone has made a great many enemies, and most of them would be very well pleased to see him brought down.”
Monk looked straight at him. “I dare say you and I have also made a few enemies, sir. I would like to believe that my friends would stand by me, were I in his place. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that that decision would define who was a friend and who was not.”
Byrne waved his hand in a gesture so small it was barely there at all. “I thought you would say something like that. Don’t complain that I didn’t warn you.”
“No, sir. Is that all?”
Byrne shook his head and turned away, but there was a brief smile on his face, there and then gone again. He had fulfilled his duty.
