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“Does the record also say how many times he risked his life for me? Or any of the other men?” Hooper demanded. “Don’t suppose your job has room for sticking your neck out for any of the men you work with. More likely have a knife in your hand!”
“Hear, hear!” someone shouted from the gallery, and there were a couple of catcalls and a whistle.
“Mr. Wingfield!” the judge said sharply. “Will you please at least attempt to control your witness?”
“May he be noted as hostile, my lord?” Wingfield said angrily.
“I’m sure we have already observed that he is hostile, Mr. Wingfield. You seem a little late in remarking it,” the judge replied.
Wingfield smiled bleakly. “You have made your loyalties and your predispositions in this case more than clear, Mr. Hooper. I warn you to be very careful indeed that you do not allow your emotions, or your obvious personal interests and ambitions, to cloud your veracity. That means your ability to recollect and speak only the truth…the exact truth, do you understand?”
Hooper’s face tightened in anger that must have been visible to the jury. Monk in the dock could see it quite clearly.
“I’ve no reason to tell you lies, even if I wasn’t under oath,” Hooper said quietly. “Speak plain, and I’ll speak plain back to you.”
Two of the jurors nodded in agreement.
“So you were waiting at Skelmer’s Wharf?” Wingfield prompted. “What happened, Mr. Hooper?”
“Two men appeared, one from each side of the row of buildings,” Hooper answered. “They saw each other and began to fight. No use asking me which one attacked first ’cos I don’t know. They went at each other, hammer an’ tongs. All the time they were moving closer to the water’s edge—”
“A moment, Mr. Hooper,” Wingfield interrupted. “Do I understand it that you and the accused did nothing to stop this battle? Nothing to intervene and apprehend your escaped prisoner? Who did you imagine the other man was?”
“Regular police, or customs man,” Hooper replied. “Both Commander Monk and I intervened, but then each man started fighting us. I took on the smaller man and we fell into the water. While I was occupied with that, the big man fell in and started thrashing around. He wasn’t much of a fighter, and we thought he was the prisoner.”
“Indeed?” Wingfield raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “So you had no idea as to the identity of the prisoner, or his description? A bit lax of you, wasn’t it? Might you not very easily have apprehended completely the wrong man?” He smiled. “Oh…that is what you are claiming you did—isn’t it? Completely the wrong man? Didn’t you, in fact, drown the customs officer and allow the prisoner to swim right across the river and escape to…God knows where? France, for all any of us can say?”
Hooper’s lips closed into a thin line and he swallowed his temper with difficulty.
“The smaller man fought like a polecat, and he swam away from me. Mr. Monk tried to help the big fellow with the beard, but he panicked, thrashing around like a madman. Nearly took Mr. Monk down with him. You have to stop someone like that, or they’ll drown the both of you. You can’t swim, and save a man that’s swinging his arms. But maybe you’ve never tried that. Doesn’t go with your horsehair wig an’ the fancy robes. You’d drown in minutes in all o’ that.”
Again there was a gust of laughter from the gallery, but it was nervous, and then the jury twisted in their seats uncomfortably.
Wingfield kept his temper this time. “I seldom wear this attire when I go swimming, Mr. Hooper. And I have never jumped into the Thames to save a customs officer, or to drown one. Tell me, after the smaller man had struck out to swim across the river, what did you do?”
“I helped Mr. Monk pull the big man out of the water and up onto the wharf. We tried to get the water out of his lungs and bring him round but he was too far gone.”
“A sufficiently hard blow to the side of the head will do that, don’t you agree?”
“If he hadn’t panicked an’ tried to drown Mr. Monk, he’d have been all right.”
“Maybe he was frightened because he couldn’t swim, and he knew Mr.
Monk wanted to drown him?” Wingfield suggested mildly.
“If he was as deep into letting the prisoner go, and trying to blame us for it, then he’d be more use to us alive,” Hooper pointed out.
“Your loyalty is to be commended,” Wingfield responded. “Unless, of course, it amounts to complicity? Could that be the case, Mr. Hooper?”
Rathbone stood up again. “My lord, since that is not the case, the question is hypothetical. Mr. Hooper has not been charged with anything, and the jury should not be misled into thinking he has. My learned friend is accusing him at once of loyalty…and of disloyalty.”
“Misplaced loyalty,” Wingfield corrected him a trifle condescendingly.
“Loyalty to the truth,” Rathbone replied.
“That remains to be seen,” Wingfield snapped, but he dismissed Hooper, passing him over to Rathbone.
Rathbone hesitated only slightly. Probably Monk, sitting high up in the dock, was the only one who knew him well enough to notice it.
