Rathbone could imagine it more easily than he wished. There had been some days at university when he himself had been less than sober, less than discreet. He would greatly prefer that his father did not know about those days, even if he might guess. His excesses had never been of this magnitude, but the hot burn of shame was just as real.
“Please go on,” he said more gently.
“I staggered back toward the gangway downstairs again, and one of Parfitt’s men came up behind me. We collided, and somehow the next thing I knew I was falling downward, thumping and bashing myself against the walls, until I landed at the bottom. I can remember faces peering at me in a sort of haze, and I felt dreadful. Then I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew I was lying on a bed in one of the cabins, and Mickey Parfitt himself was looking at me, sneering.
“ ‘Shouldn’t drink so much, Mr. Cardew,’ he said with satisfaction oozing out of him. ‘Fell downstairs, you did. But had your bit of fun first.’ At the time I didn’t remember the staged show with the little boys, or the photograph, so I didn’t feel anything much. He gave me a stiff jolt of brandy and helped me to my feet. I went back over the river with my friends-what a damn stupid word for them!” For a moment bitterness flashed across his face.
Rathbone felt himself sympathizing and, to his amazement, also believing him. “Then what happened?” he asked, although he knew.
Rupert looked down again. “About a week later Parfitt sent a letter to my home, inviting me to join them on the boat again. I burned the letter.”
“But he wrote again?”
“Yes. I ignored it the second time. Burned it without opening it, actually. The third time he sent a letter to my father. I recognized the writing. I burned the one to my father, but I read the one to me. He said that I had entered into a contract with him, and there was a photograph to prove it. Whether I went to the boat again or not, I still owed him the money.”
“Blackmail.” Rathbone nodded. It was cleverer than he had thought, much harder to prove in court. How could he show that there had been no “gentleman’s agreement”? Such things were often unwritten, especially regarding something like gambling, or the services of a prostitute. No one put those “agreements” in writing.
Rupert nodded. “I realized it only then. God, I was so stupid!” His voice was heavy with self-disgust.
“Did you pay?”
Rupert’s face tightened. “With that photograph? Of course I did. I meant to buy myself a little time, and then think what to do. I knew if I didn’t do something, the bastard would have me paying for the rest of my life.”
Rathbone looked at him, searching his eyes. He saw desperation, profound embarrassment, even shame, but curiously, no awareness of having just admitted to the perfect motive for murder. Was that because he felt himself justified? And if he did, could Rathbone disagree with him? If ever a man deserved to be gotten rid of, it was Mickey Parfitt. Thinking of him, it was as if Jericho Phillips had risen from the dead.
“Well, you’re rid of him now,” he said with asperity.
“Hardly,” Rupert said bitterly. “He’ll take me down to the grave with him. It almost makes me wish I had killed him!”
“Didn’t you?”
Rupert’s head jerked up, his eyes hot. “No, I didn’t!”
Rathbone was used to denial. Almost everyone claimed either that they did not do it at all or that, if they did, it was either an accident or the victim deserved it. And yet he was on the brink of believing Rupert Cardew, which was totally unreasonable. Every scrap of evidence pointed to him.
“Then, who did?” he said grimly. “With your cravat?”
“I don’t know. Whoever found it, I suppose.”
Rathbone opened his eyes wide. “They chanced on your cravat, lying wherever it was, and thought, ’Ah, I know what I’ll do with this. I’ll tie a few knots in it, and then I’ll strangle someone. What about Mickey Parfitt? We’d all be better off without him.’ ”
Rupert flushed hotly. “I don’t know who killed him, or why. There could be a dozen reasons, and fifty men with one at least as good as mine. I only know that I didn’t. I’ve never been so drunk that I couldn’t remember what I’d done-just not always where, or with whom.” He gave a slight shrug, and a flicker of humor lit his eyes for an instant, then vanished.
Rathbone’s mind raced. Was it conceivable that Rupert really was innocent, at least of the murder? A reasonable doubt would prevent his conviction, but not remove from people’s minds the belief that he was guilty. Some might praise him for it, but the stain would still be indelible. The only good answer would be to prove someone else’s guilt.
“What do you know about Parfitt?” he asked. “Apart from what you have told me. Where did he come from? Who are his partners in the boat? He didn’t find the money to buy it in the first place without help. Who was it? Who else shares the profit? Who are his other clients whom he might have pushed over the edge into ruin? And did he blackmail only for money, or for favors also?”
“Favors?” Rupert blinked. “You mean-”
“Political favors,” Rathbone corrected him. “Or worse, perhaps, judicial favors?”
“Judicial …?” Rupert began, and then stopped as understanding swept over him. “God, I never thought of that. Would he really?”
“I don’t know. But you see the possibilities?”
Rupert was pale now. Was he thinking of his father, and the power he had in the House of Lords, the influence on members who fought for reform? If Rupert’s own reputation were in the balance, what might Cardew have been coerced into doing to save him?
“What made you think of that?” he asked. “Do you know something?” There was fear in his voice now, no anger left.
“No,” Rathbone said truthfully. “But that is what Jericho Phillips did, and it seems an obvious thing.”
“Phillips?” Rupert asked.
“Yes.”
“Then Parfitt would too. He learned all his skills from Phillips. He started by working for him, downriver from Chiswick, nearer Westminster and that way.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then, you know more about him than the one visit you’re telling me about.”
Rupert paled. “Look … I went three times, and I’m ashamed of it. The first time, it wasn’t so bad. Or the second. Young men, but we all know that kind of thing goes on. A bit of gambling, and a hell of a lot to drink. If I’d had any sense, I’d have known that wasn’t all there was to it, but I didn’t think. I … I wanted to stay in with the friends I had. I haven’t been back, ever.”
Against all his experiences of frightened men lying when accused, Rathbone believed him. But at the same time, it robbed him of a defense that he could hope to succeed with, or at least use to mitigate the sentence sufficiently to avoid the rope. He shrank from telling Rupert this now. He could not work with him paralyzed with fear. He had to have as much of the truth as possible in order to defend against the evidence the Crown would bring. Mickey Parfitt’s death was not a cause celebre, but Rupert Cardew in the dock most certainly would be.
“Do you know who has been?” Rathbone asked.
Rupert was stunned. “I can’t tell you the names of my friends who were there! For God’s sake, that would be a despicable thing to do.”
“Even if one of them murdered Mickey Parfitt?”
“Betray them all because one of them might have killed him? Is that what you would do, Sir Oliver?” Suddenly the challenge was sharp and very personal.
Rathbone admired him for it. “You want me to answer that truthfully?” he asked.
“Yes, I do. Would you?”
“No, Mr. Cardew. But, then, my friends don’t frequent places like that, so far as I know. But I wouldn’t know, because I don’t. I’ve seen what men like Phillips and Parfitt do to children, and I’d be happy if the law allowed anyone who wished to get rid of them all. But if we permit people to make their own decisions as to who should live and who should die, it would be a license to murder at will. We can always find excuses when we want them. All of which you know as well as I do.”
