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“Camborne said there were fortunes to be made and lost,” he said. Monk was aware as he did so that perhaps he was taking too much of a risk in revealing this. He had no idea of Juniver’s deeper loyalties. Perhaps he should have investigated the lawyers concerned as well as the facts of the case regarding Habib Beshara. Was Beshara not a prime mover at all, but possibly just a pawn?
Suddenly the cold game pie in its rich pastry lost its flavor. He could have been eating cold porridge. Camborne’s advice not to probe too deeply would be cowardly to follow, but perhaps wise.
Juniver put down his knife and fork and leaned forward a little. “Camborne would say that,” he replied very quietly. “He has to. He’s a decent enough man, or he used to be, if a bit pedestrian. His wife is very handsome, but more importantly, heiress to a great deal of money.”
“In shipping?” Monk asked.
But Juniver did not add any more. He was unhappy to have said even as much. It sat like a mask of embarrassment on his face, and Monk liked him for that. It was not envy when he spoke of Camborne, but pity for a certain kind of captivity.
“So both Camborne and Beshara are pawns in the game?” he said, picking up his own fork again.
“Willing pawns,” Juniver replied. “Both could have chosen otherwise, even if at a certain cost.”
“In order to pay a high price for freedom you have to be aware that you are not free,” Monk pointed out. “Sometimes that knowledge comes too late.”
“For trapped animals, yes,” Juniver agreed with a touch of bitterness. “But if you’d met Beshara before the trial, you would believe as I do, that he was perfectly willing. And you would have disliked him as much as I did, and been quite aware of it, and the reasons. I believe he knew what was going to happen to the Princess Mary, and was perfectly willing that it should.”
“That is a sin,” Monk agreed. “B
ut it is not a crime. I dare say many of those with shares in the Suez Canal were quite aware of how many people were going to die needlessly in the digging of it, and yet they do not protest.”
Juniver drew in his breath, and let it out again. He too appeared to have lost an appetite for his meal. “There’s nothing useful I can tell you, Monk. I couldn’t prove anyone else guilty because there was no one else involved that I could point to. I didn’t have the evidence you dug up to prove Beshara was in the wrong place. All I could do was try to raise reasonable doubt. That was pretty well doomed from the start, because of the horror of the crime. Most of our eyewitnesses couldn’t tell one middle-aged Egyptian from another. But far more importantly than that, they didn’t want to.”
He took a sip of his ale and set the tankard down again, shaking his head as if he could loosen the grip of memory.
“They were horrified, grief-stricken, and quite honestly afraid of being blamed for disloyalty, cowardice, even sympathy, with the enemy, if they didn’t stick to the testimony they’d given in the first place—in the heat of the moment. The more I pushed them, the more threatened they felt, and the more they clung to what they’d said. No one wants to be accused by his neighbors of being an apologist for the man who sank the Princess Mary!”
Monk made no reply. Juniver was right. By the time of the trial they had all entrenched themselves so deeply they could not move. They would be destroyed before they could recant willingly. Honest men, frightened, grieved, confused by hatred they could not possibly understand.
Monk finished his ale and set the tankard down.
“Thank you. I wish I didn’t have to prove them wrong, but someone else is guilty of this crime, far more than Habib Beshara.”
THE FOLLOWING DAY MONK was sent for again by Lord Ossett. He took the long hansom ride without pleasure, in spite of the sunlit streets, and the sight of the open carriages containing ladies in gaily colored dresses, drawn by horses whose harness brasses gleamed and winked in the sun.
He went up the steps and into the government buildings’ shade with no sense of relief from either heat or noise. He did not have anything to report that was worth Ossett’s time, or his own. All he knew was a mass of details, many of which conflicted with each other. He had little choice but to tell Ossett as much.
Ossett looked tired. The lines around his eyes and mouth were more deeply etched and there was pallor to his skin. He nodded slowly. “I am very much afraid that the whole issue is now so clouded with irrelevant evidence that there is little chance of learning the truth, far less proving it,” he said unhappily. “I had hoped that you might turn up something unexpected, but I admit that that is unlikely. I think I have too often been overoptimistic.”
“In all that I’ve found,” Monk replied, “there is nothing that would stand up in court to implicate anyone. The only certainty is that Beshara’s conviction is unsafe. There is no doubt of that.”
Ossett considered for several moments before replying, as if he might still find some thought to grasp on to.
“Then if we can find nothing at all,” he said finally, “even to prove him a conspirator, we shall be obliged to let him go.” He regarded Monk intensely. His eyes were shadowed, and the small muscles in his jaw tight. The depth of emotion in him was palpable.
“I haven’t given up,” Monk said quickly, then wished he had not. He felt obliged to add the only piece of evidence he had not yet mentioned. “I recall seeing a man jump off the Princess Mary moments before the explosion …”
“Before?” Ossett said quickly. “Are you absolutely certain he went before?”
“Yes. There was a ferry within yards of where he went in. They pulled him out straightaway.”
“Good man,” Ossett said absentmindedly, not as if he did not believe it, but as if it were now irrelevant. And perhaps it was. “What do you plan to do to find this man … assuming he survived? He may have been injured, or died from swallowing river water.”
That was the question Monk had been dreading. He had no answer that satisfied him, but silence would not do. Ossett needed and deserved more than that.
“I know. We are looking for him, but as you say, he may not have survived. We are comparing all the witness statements and finding the differences to see if they matter,” he answered. “We are also speaking to a few people who saw a great deal but were not questioned the first time. It was an inconsistency in connection with another case that proved a key eyewitness was not where he said he was when he supposedly spotted Beshara. And his guilt depended almost entirely on the testimony of eyewitnesses. If they were mistaken then the rest was irrelevant.”
“Yes … yes, I am aware of that,” Ossett said very quietly. The acknowledgment was clearly painful to him. Monk wondered how much he knew that he was not free to say. Who else was involved, perhaps innocently? Who else did he wish to protect, or maybe had no choice? What edifice might collapse, crushing the people who relied on it, were stones from the foundation to be removed?
