anyone else in this crowded room, but he was not insane in any sense that he did not understand either the law, or the nature of his acts. There was nothing whatever to suggest he suffered delusions.
'Thank you, Dr. Wade,' he said with confidence he was far from feeling. 'I believe you have known Rhys most of his life, is that correct?”
'I have,' Wade agreed.
'And been his physician, when he required one?”
'Yes.”
'Were you aware of there being a serious and violent disagreement with his father, and if so, over what subject?”
It was a question to which Wade would find it extremely difficult to answer in the affirmative. If he admitted it, it would seem incompetent that he had not done anything to forestall this tragedy. It would seem like wisdom after the event, and Sylvestra would see it as a betrayal, as indeed so might some of the jury.
'Dr. Wade?' he prompted.
Wade raised his head and stared at him resolutely.
'I was aware of a certain tension between them,' he answered, his voice stronger, full of regret. 'I thought it the normal resentment a son might have for the discipline a father naturally exerts.' He bit his lip and drew in a deep breath. 'I had no idea whatever it would end like this. I blame myself. I should have been more aware. I have had a great deal of experience with men of all ages, and under extreme pressure, during my service in the Navy.' A ghost of a smile touched his mouth and then vanished. 'I suppose closer to home, in people for whom one has affection, one is loath to recognise such things.”
It was a clever answer, honest and yet without committing himself. And it earned the jury's respect. Rathbone could see it in their faces. He would have been wiser not to have asked, but it was too late now.
'You did not foresee it?' he repeated.
'No,' Wade said quietly, looking down. 'I did not, God forgive me.”
Rathbone hesitated on the brink of asking him if he thought Rhys insane, and decided against it. No answer, either way, could help enough to be worth the risk.
'Thank you, Dr. Wade. That is all.”
Goode had already established the violence of the fight, and the fact that Leighton Duff and Rhys had been involved, and there was no reason to suspect anyone else being there. He called the Duff household servants, deeply against their will, and obliged them to testify to the quarrel the evening of Leighton Duffs death, and the time both men had left the house. At least he spared Sylvestra the distress of testifying.
All the time Rhys sat propped up in the dock, his skin ashen pale, his eyes seeming enormous in his haggard face, a prison warder on either side of him, perhaps more to support him than to restrain. He did not look capable of offering any resistance, let alone an attempt to escape.
Rathbone forced himself to put the thought of him out of his mind. He must use intelligence rather than emotion. Let anyone else feel all the compassion they could, his brain must be clear.
There seemed no way of casting the slightest doubt, reasonable or unreasonable, on Rhys's physical guilt, and he was struggling without a glimmer of hope to think of any mitigation.
Where was Monk?
He dared not look at Hester. He could imagine too clearly the panic she must be feeling.
Through the afternoon and the next day Goode brought on a troop of witnesses who placed Rhys in St. Giles over a period of months. Not one of them could be cast doubt upon. Rathbone had to stand by and watch. There was no argument to make.
The judge adjourned the court early. It seemed as if there was little left to do but sum up the case. Goode had proved every assertion he had made. There was no alternative to offer, except that Rhys had been whoring in St. Giles, and his father had confronted him, they had quarrelled and Rhys had killed him. Goode had avoided mentioning the rapes, but if Rathbone challenged him that the motive for murder was too slender to believe, then he would undoubtedly bring in the beaten women, still bearing their scars. He had said as much. It was only Rhys's desperate condition which stayed his hand. Fortune had already punished him appallingly, and the conviction for murder would be sufficient to have him hanged. There was no need for more.
Rathbone left the courtroom feeling he had been defeated without offering even the semblance of a fight. He had done nothing for Rhys.
He had not begun to fulfill the trust Hesterand Sylvestra had placed in him. He was ashamed, and yet he could think of nothing to say which would do Rhys the slightest service.
Certainly he could harass witnesses, object to Goode's questions, his tactics, his logic, or anything else; but it would serve no purpose except to give the effect of a defence. It would be a sham. He knew it, Hester would know it. Would it even be of comfort to Rhys? Or offer him false hope?
At least he should have the courage to go to Rhys now, and not escape, as he would so much rather.
When he reached Rhys, Hester was already there. She turned as she heard Rathbone's step, her eyes desperate, pleading for some hope, any hope at all.
They sat together in the grey cell below the Old Bailey. Rhys was in physical pain, muscles clenched, broken hands shaking. He looked hopeless. Hester sat next to him, her arm around his shoulders. Rathbone was at his wits end.
'Rhys!' he said tensely. 'You have got to tell us what happened! I want to defend you, but I have nothing with which to do it!' His own muscles were knotted tight, his hands balled into fists of frustration.
'I have no weapons! Did you kill him?”
Rhys shook his head, perhaps an inch in either direction, but the denial was clear.
'Someone else did?”
Again the tiny movement, but definitely a nod.
'Do you know who?”
A nod, a bitter smile, trembling-lipped.
'Has it anything to do with your mother?”
A very slight shrug of the shoulders, then a shake. No.
'An enemy of your father's?”
Rhys turned away, jerking his head, his hands starting to bang on his thighs, jolting the splints.
Hester grabbed his wrists. 'Stop it!' she said loudly. 'You must tell us, Rhys. Don't you understand, they will find you guilty if we cannot prove it was someone else, or at least that it could have been?”
He nodded slowly, but would not face her.
There was nothing left but the violence of the truth.
'They will hang you,' Rathbone said deliberately.
Rhys's throat moved as if he would say something, then he swung away from them again, and refused to look at them any more.
Hester stared at Rathbone, her eyes filled with tears.
He stood still for a minute, then another. There was nothing to say or do. He sighed, and left. As he was walking along the passage he passed Corriden Wade going in. At least he might be able to offer some physical relief, or even a draught of some sort strong enough to give a few hours' sleep.
Further along he encountered Sylvestra, looking so distraught she seemed on the verge of collapse. At least she had Fidelis Kynaston with her.
Rathbone spent the evening alone in his rooms, unable to eat or even to sit at his fire. He paced the floor, his mind turning over one useless fact after another when his butler came to announce that Monk was in the hall.
'Monk!' Rathbone grasped at the very name, as if it had been a raft for a drowning man. 'Monk! Bring him in… immediately!”
Monk looked tired and pale. His hair dripped and his face was shining wet.
'Well?' Rathbone demanded, finding himself gulping air, his hands stiff, a tingling in his arms. 'What have you?”
'I don't know,' Monk answered bleakly. 'I have no idea whether it makes things better, or even worse. Leighton Duff was one of the rapists in Seven Dials, and then later in St. Giles.”
Rathbone was stunned. 'What?' he said, his voice high with disbelief. It was preposterous, totally absurd. He must have misunderstood. 'What did you say?”
