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“I thought they worked very closely together,” Raleigh responded. “I saw no friction between them at all. Certainly there was no visible envy or criticism.”
Monk was disappointed. “And what was your impression of Mrs. Taft?”
“A very attractive woman, very agreeable. She deferred to her husband, but then perhaps most women do, at least in public. What she said in private I have no idea. Taft seemed deeply fond of her, and of his daughters, for that matter. He might have seemed a little oppressive at times, but he took the greatest care of them. That he should descend into this madness is a terrible tragedy.”
“Could his disillusionment in Drew have brought it about?” Monk asked.
Raleigh considered for several moments. “I suppose it is possible,” he said at last. “I would swear he trusted Drew. I have no idea what was in the photograph that turned Drew’s testimony on its head. It must have been something of extraordinary power. I inferred from the look on Taft’s face that he had had no idea. It seemed a terrible betrayal.” He shook his head a little. “Yes, yes, betrayal can make a man despair, especially if he is betrayed by someone in whom he had had complete belief, both professionally and on a personal level. Poor man. What a terrible way to end.”
Monk could not stop now. “Do you suppose Mrs. Taft was as deeply trusting in Mr. Drew? What was her manner with him?”
Clearly it was a new idea to Raleigh. He stopped for several moments to consider it before replying. “It seemed to me that she followed her husband’s lead in that, as in pretty well everything else.” He shook his head again, but this time not so much in doubt as apparently trying to clear muddled or displeasing thoughts. “He was a very … dominant man. He was always pleasant about it, but he knew exactly how he wished things to be done, and he insisted that they were done that way. But I thought she was a happy woman, despite that. Was I very foolish in my judgment?”
Monk smiled slightly and tried to imagine Hester being so placid, and knew at once he would hate it. Without her occasional dissent, her agreement would be meaningless. He would miss her ideas, her laughter, her occasional mocking and teasing, the whole sense of there being someone else around, a different person, close to him but not always like him. The loneliness would be devastating.
He looked again at Raleigh to try to judge how perceptive he was.
Raleigh smiled bleakly, more out of irony than amusement. “I admit I was deceived by the man and lost a great deal of money because I believed him, so now my opinions may be colored by that. I came to see him as both domineering and manipulative, a little drunk on his own importance. But please take my judgment as that of a man hurt by experience and therefore not impartial.”
Monk assured him that he would. However, when he spoke to others over the rest of that day and during the following one, their voices built up a portrait of a man who had such a sense of his own importance at the center of God’s great plan as to depart from the reality. Anyone who challenged him was very subtly made to feel as if he or she were inspired by selfishness more than good sense, by greed more than financial responsibility. No gift had ever been enough. Always within a few months, he came back for more. Smooth words of praise concealed the implicit charge of withholding from Christ were they to refuse the next request.
Taft never seemed to doubt himself. No argument was listened to. He did not quarrel. He stated his point of view as if it were fact; he condescended to hear the opposition or the doubts and then branded them as failures of faith, which could be forgiven with repentance. More often than not, the parishioners saw the weakness of their ways and rejoined the fold. Sometimes they even paid more, to cover their sins of dissent.
Monk tried to pity him for his shallowness but found it difficult. In his own way the man both fed others and consumed them, needing their dependence upon him for his own esteem. How would he handle failure, any failure at all? Badly enough to take his own life?
It was not impossible.
It was an emotional world that Monk had never truly looked into before, and it appalled him. The innate fear woven through it was terrible. Pull out one thread and the
whole thing unraveled.
Should Rathbone have seen that? Of course not! But that would make no difference to the charge against him. Taft was a prime example of a person who sees exactly what he wishes to see, whose mind distorts the evidence to prove what he needs to believe. A jury might also see what they expected to see-a judge who used evidence to which he alone had access in order to turn a trial the way he wished it to go, condemning a man of the Church.
Monk had gained understanding, but it had not yet helped his cause.
The day after that Monk spoke to Rufus Brancaster and told him what he had learned. Brancaster said exactly what he had expected him to.
“It doesn’t amount to a defense.” He looked tired, as if he were struggling to avoid giving in to defeat. “It does make sense of Taft’s actions, but only of the fact that he committed murder and suicide, where any other man would have been devastated but would have survived; perhaps drunk himself senseless, or collapsed with hysteria, but not taken his life. He thought he was necessary to the survival of his family,” Brancaster continued. “I’ve defended a few like that before. Imagine their families cannot live without them, convinced nobody else would protect and provide for their wives. I think it’s really a thinly disguised terror that they might not actually be as essential as they suppose. Can’t bear to think that anyone could manage without them. Their worst nightmare is to be forgotten.”
Monk said nothing. He had spent so much of the life he could remember alone. In the early days after his accident, what he had learned of himself did not encourage him to investigate more deeply. He had not been a necessary part of anyone’s life.
Now he was necessary to Hester in that she loved him, but it had never been that she was unable to stand on her own feet, make her own decisions, and, if need be, to earn her own living. She was independent-not a quality liked by all men. She was highly intelligent, articulate, brave, and had a very sharp sense of humor-again not qualities comfortable to all men. She was not beautiful in the traditional sense, but he could see in her a loveliness deeper and more lasting than mere prettiness. He had never deluded himself that she could not find someone else to love her, even if not as deeply or intensely as he did.
Brancaster interrupted his thoughts.
“You and I might see that Taft was self-obsessed, and deluded enough to kill himself rather than face the loss of his fame. But the jury is going to see a man driven-by evidence they have not seen and don’t understand-to the point of despair where he took not only his own life but that of his family. They have to blame someone for that.” His face was sad, his eyes hollow. “A judge who perverted justice for his own reasons is an easy solution. Nobody cares what those reasons might be. Possibly the prosecution will offer them a few choices.”
“Can’t we prove …?” Monk began, then saw the exhaustion in Brancaster’s face and realized the pointlessness of the question. The law had broken down. A judge had shown his partiality in a way that was extremely visible. If the law could fail, what protection had anyone? The jury would be, by definition, upstanding citizens who did not consider themselves vulnerable to just prosecution, only to injustice. For any argument to work, it must not only be true, it must be something they would have no choice but to believe.
“What can we do?” he asked. “What could help?”
“Something to prove that when Rathbone did this it was in the service of justice and that it was the only course open to him to avoid a severe miscarriage in this case,” Brancaster replied. “And believe me, I’ve been up most nights trying to think of the solution. It’s too late now for Taft to tell his side. And it’s not Drew on trial.”
“The possibility of exposure exists, for every man who posed for one of those photographs, and they must all be aware of that,” Monk said. “Not just Drew.”
Brancaster chewed his lip thoughtfully. “You have a point there, perhaps one we could use.”
Monk was puzzled. “How could we use it?”
