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Hester kept on walking over to the stove without glancing back to see Monk’s smile. She knew it would be there.
IT WAS STILL OVER another week and well into June before the police arrested Habib Beshara, an Egyptian currently living in London. They charged him with the murder of one hundred and seventy-nine people by laying and detonating the explosive that blew up and sank the pleasure boat the Princess Mary.
There was jubilation throughout the city. Newspapers praised the police and looked forward to a speedy trial. Justice would be served. Order and faith in the rule of law returned. Many people even held parties.
Monk felt a wave of relief, and yet it was not absolute. No formality of a trial, no certainty or pain or fear of an execution could drive out of his mind the memories of the night of the drownings, or the corpses floating inside the hollow of the sunken ship.
CHAPTER
4
AS THE DAYS PASSED leading up to the opening of the trial of Habib Beshara, Monk busied himself even more diligently on the river. He continued stretching his imagination and will to make his force excel, in order to keep up the reputation and morale of his men. The Thames River Police was the oldest force in the country, possibly in the world. It was even older than the “Peelers,” and it deserved every word of praise it had gained over the years. The government’s choice to take the Princess Mary case from them might have been politically expedient, but it was still an insult that was
deeply felt.
There was plenty to do. There had been a major robbery from one of the waterside warehouses along the Blackwall Reach, and several minor thefts from docksides, lighters, and other vulnerable places. There was always smuggling, often of brandy, especially farther down by Bugsby’s Marshes, beyond Greenwich, where small boats came and went under cover of darkness.
There were drunken fights, most of which inflicted little injury and were easily settled, but there were bad ones as well. A knife could make it lethal. One moment a fight could be wild, but with only a punch here and there landing; the next someone was bleeding to death and it was murder.
Added to that, every few days a piece of wreckage from the Princess Mary washed up, bits of wood carved and elegant, made for pleasure, not utility.
Monk stood in the sun beside the water now, hearing it slurp on the steps below him as the tide rose slowly, each ripple a little higher. He held a carved leg and part of a strut in his hand. It had been turned on a router, making it smooth, showing off the grain. It had once been part of something useful.
There was no reason to stand here holding it. It was not evidence of anything. Everyone already knew what had happened. He just felt that if he threw it back into the water he was abandoning it, clogging up the river with more detritus. It was too small to salvage, good only to burn in someone’s fire. And yet it had been beautifully made. Somebody had taken time and care with it.
He put it down on the dockside. Someone would find and make use it. He did not want to burn it on his own fire. Right at this moment, as the trial was starting, he was glad the government had given the case to someone else. It would be Lydiate, and not he, who would have to give evidence and relive the whole thing, witness by witness. Lydiate had not seen the disaster and Monk had, but the salvage crew would be the ones testifying. No one had sent for Monk, probably because they would then have to explain why the case had been taken from him—a fact that would undoubtedly be exploited by Beshara’s defense.
He turned and walked with his back to the sun, feeling its midsummer heat on his shoulders.
If Rathbone were here, and still able to practice, would he have taken the case for the defense? Or would he have wanted to prosecute? It was all irrelevant; they were none of them involved. Maybe that was not entirely bad. Rathbone had been promising his father for years that they would spend some time traveling together. One case or another had always intruded. He might have gone on delaying until it was too late. Then his grief would be with him always.
And, in an oblique way, Monk was feeling a new sense of loyalty to his own men. They had served in the River Police long before he came to it. They were as good as any police in the world, better than most, and they deserved recognition of that, not this cavalier bypassing as if they were less than the regular police. Few of them had said anything, but he saw it in their eyes and heard it in the silences. There was an edge of bitterness to the usual jokes. Everyone worked even harder, most of all Monk himself, as if to prove something.
He increased his pace across to the warehouse entrance, his attention fully returned to this present robbery.
HESTER DID NOT FIND it easy to gain a seat in the gallery for the trial of Habib Beshara. After several failed attempts through the normal routes, she called on Rufus Brancaster, who had so ably defended Rathbone when he needed it. In pleading for volunteers or money to support the clinic in Portpool Lane, she was no longer abashed to state a case; but when asking a favor for herself she found it much harder. However, as it happened, Brancaster was both able and very willing to assist. He asked after Rathbone’s well-being with respect and some degree of feeling.
“He’ll hate missing this,” she said honestly. “That’s really why I’m here, so I can write and tell him what I see. But on the other hand, for years he has been wanting to travel with his father, and always changed his mind at the last moment, or had it changed for him. Do you know Mr. Henry Rathbone?”
“No,” Brancaster admitted. “But I have seen in Sir Oliver’s face how fond of him he is. And frankly, I think this case has become so political that it’s going to be something of a mess.”
She smiled agreement, but refrained from adding her opinion. She had said nothing to Monk about her sense of betrayal at the case having been taken from the River Police but only because she knew that would make it even harder for him to deal with. And perhaps also she was a little wiser in political matters than he, having tried so hard when she had returned from the Crimean War to alter some of the worst habits in nursing. She had had high ideals then, like her mentor, Florence Nightingale. Both of them had largely failed, learning lessons as to the power and immovability of the Establishment, especially where its vested interests were concerned. It still raised her anger to explosive levels, if she allowed it to, but she had long discovered that loss of temper more often damaged oneself than anyone else.
She thanked Brancaster warmly, and on the first day of the trial arrived in plenty of time to claim her seat.
The very first shock of the morning came with the arrival of the judge, before the case was even introduced. Hester was watching without particular interest when they were asked to rise and the judge entered, robed in scarlet and wearing the customary full-bottomed wig. As he took his seat in the high, carved chair and faced the court, she felt a stab of recognition so sharp as to be almost physical. It was Ingram York, the senior judge who had first favored Rathbone, then sought to destroy him.
He still had the same sheen of complacency on his broad face, but the lines of quick temper were deeper around his mouth than she remembered. To some he might look pleasantly avuncular, but to Hester he was a dangerous man, his loyalties ready to turn in an instant.
Thank heaven Rathbone was not here—or worse, involved in the case!
Who was? She turned to the defense table and saw a lean man. She realized he was of average height, although he looked taller at first glance, perhaps because of the elegance with which he rose to his feet, and gave a slight bow. It was impossible to tell the color of his hair beneath his obligatory barrister’s wig, but his skin and brows suggested it would be fair. His expression was unreadable. But then he was in an impossible situation. To satisfy the law, he must attempt to defend the indefensible. The court clerk addressed him as Mr. Juniver.
The prosecution was led by Sir Oswald Camborne. He was a thickset man, powerful, heavy-shouldered. His bushy eyebrows and the shadow around his broad jawline suggested dark hair, beginning to gray. At the moment he looked satisfied, and he had good cause.
Finally Hester made herself look up at the dock where the accused man sat, well guarded on either side by uniformed wardens. He was dark-skinned and his thick hair was black, gray at the temples. He appeared to be in his late forties, which she had not expected. Somehow she had imagined a younger, more fanatical-looking man. She could see no passion in his face, no fire at all. He looked more ill than frightened. It was hard to imagine that he had exacted such a terrible revenge on the people of a country he possibly hated. It seemed not to have brought him satisfaction. But then perhaps revenge never did.
At last the jury were sworn in and the proceedings began in earnest. Both prosecution and defense gave powerful and lengthy statements of their respective cases before Camborne called his first witness, a ferryman who had been on the river the night of the atrocity.
