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* * *
—
MONK SPENT THE NEXT days still working every angle he could think of to prove both Exeter’s innocence and, in its place, Doyle’s guilt. He even tested Latham’s account of his time, but he could not find a weakness. The first day of the trial dawned without any new evidence of value.
“I’m coming,” Hester said. She was not asking him or making a gesture of support. It was simply a statement of something she took to be unarguable. She was dressed in a blue jacket and skirt, very plain but well cut. Monk looked at her with appreciation, although she had never been traditionally beautiful. Her face was too strong for that. The only really tender thing in it was the curve of her mouth, and for him, the gentleness and the passion in it made her all the more lovely.
“Thank you,” he said simply. He was the first witness. Rathbone had warned him that the prosecutor was a clever man, but far more than that, he was a decent man who would not be carried away by emotion or vanity. This made him more difficult to trip up than a man more interested in his own reputation. Rathbone regarded him as a friend outside of the courtroom.
Monk looked at Hester for a moment, hesitating inside the front door. She was smiling at him, but her look was guarded, as if she were trying not to let her emotion come through. She was afraid for him; he knew her well enough to see it. She was afraid he was going to lose and be hurt by it. He was glad she did not say so aloud.
She was not in any way a witness to the case, so she was allowed to be in the court the whole time, and she had promised, unless there was some crisis in the clinic, that she would be there every day. He was not sure he was pleased by that. It was not the savagery of the crime that he would protect her from; she had seen war, dozens of deaths, perhaps even scores of them, injuries worse than any normal man or woman’s most terrible nightmares. But there was something impersonal about war. You were a soldier on one side or the other. This was intimate, one to one. This had happened unexpectedly, to people who knew each other.
But she was outside already, waiting for the carriage that would take them to the Old Bailey. The wind was pulling at her skirts, and behind her the Thames was gray, dotted with breaking whitecaps on the rough water. He must go.
* * *
—
ALL THE USUAL PRELIMINARIES were over by the time Monk was called and went into the packed courtroom. He walked across the open space to the steep, twisting steps up to the witness stand. The stand itself stood well above the level of the floor, and he looked slightly down on Rathbone, who was dressed very formally in his black robes and barrister’s wig.
Across from him in the dock, also above the body of the court, he could see Harry Exeter. He looked the way he had the day after Kate’s death: gray-faced, the life drained out of him. Monk wanted to smile at him, but it would be ill-advised. It might give the jury the idea that he knew the man, even liked him. He must appear neutral. Exeter’s life might hang on Monk’s testimony. Who knew what word or gesture, what fleeting expression of the face, made a man believe or disbelieve what you said?
After Monk had taken the oath to speak the truth, and nothing but, and testified to his name and occupation, the crown prosecutor, Peter Ravenswood, rose to question him. He was a mild-looking man, one a person might not have taken seriously had they not noticed the expression in his eyes and the marks of a sense of humor in the lines of his face. And Monk had the feeling already that that would have been a mistake.
“Commander Monk,” Ravenswood began calmly, “would you tell the court how you came to be involved in this terrible case? It has to be harrowing for you, but we need to know, and justice is not always easy for any of us.” There was no overt emotion in his voice. It might have been easier if there had been. There was nothing for Monk to fight against. And yet this was the man who was going to get it all so tragically wrong and hang Exeter for the crime that had cost him all that was most dear to him already. Now it threatened to take his life as well.
Monk drew in a deep breath and began. He did not even attempt to be impartial. He remembered the depth of his feelings that night.
“Sir Oliver Rathbone, whom I have known for years, came to my house and said that he had a client who needed my help, or more specifically, the help of the Thames River Police. He was waiting at Sir Oliver’s house and would I go there immediately. I went. There I met with Mr. Exeter for the first time.”
Ravenswood interrupted him. “What was his manner? His appearance?”
“He was extremely distressed. Much as he looks now. He told me that his wife had been kidnapped. He was willing to pay the ransom. Enormous as it was, he had managed to get the money together. It was to be handed over the following day. All he wanted from me was to accompany him to Jacob’s Island, a place he was afraid to go alone. Very particular instructions had been given him, which he was unable to follow, since he did not know the area. Few people do. It is one of the worst Thames-side slums, slowly sinking beneath the mud. The place specified was below the high tide mark, and the appointment was at dusk.” He let the image hang in the air, sink into the jurors’ imaginations.
“I have heard of it,” Ravenswood remarked. “Indeed: vile. I can see why he would not want to go alone, and possibly not even be able to find it. Nor, perhaps, take a boat there by himself. How far did you go?” He looked interested.
Monk tried to remember exactly what Exeter had said. The memory of the journey came unbidden to his mind. The cold, the evening light, the sound of the water at slack tide, everything dripping. “All the way,” he answered.
“With a lot of men?” Ravenswood asked. “Were you not afraid the kidnappers would see you?”
“The boats are all large, but easily managed by two men,” Monk answered. “And they are not an unusual sight on the river. More usual than a boat with one man.”
“Although a fisherman might go alone.” Ravenswood lifted his eyebrows.
“In
the Pool of London?” Monk looked even more amazed. “Nothing lives in that water. The estuary, perhaps.”
Ravenswood gave a slight, acknowledging smile. “How many men did you take?”
“There were six of us altogether. Two to remain in the boats, four to go with Mr. Exeter. He had already decided that he would not come alone.”
“Did you not think that strange?”
“No. He did not intend to fight with them, only to give them the money and get his wife back unharmed. That was all he cared about.” Monk looked at Ravenswood’s smooth, artless face and realized he had believed Exeter was innocent, but he wanted Monk to prove it. “I saw the money myself,” he added. “It was real, and it was all there. If he had meant to fight, he could have hired men. Easy enough to find on the dockside. I think he took police to assure it was a smooth exchange.”
“Is that what he said?”
