“He sold them?” Winchester asked with a gesture of distaste. “I suppose there must be a market for such …” He searched for a word acceptable in court that would describe what he felt, and did not find it.
Monk smiled sourly. “Undoubtedly,” he agreed. “But the market that would pay most highly, again and again, is the men who are shown in the pictures.” There was rage in his voice, almost choking him, but looking up at him across the space of the open floor, Rathbone saw a pity in him also, and it took him by surprise.
“Oh.” Winchester bit his lips. “Of course. How dull-witted of me. Blackmail. And have you some reason to suppose that Parfitt did not commit the blackmail himself?”
“Parfitt came from a poor family of manual laborers and petty thieves on the riverside,” Monk answered. “He was uneducated and lived by his wits. According to those who knew him, he had neither good looks nor charm, and was not particularly eloquent. His skills were his cunning and his encyclopedic knowledge of human weakness and depravity. How could he find the victims for such blackmail? It is hardly his social circle, and one cannot advertise the goods he had for sale.”
Winchester looked as if he had been suddenly enlightened. His eyes widened. Then he smiled at his own attempt at playacting. He looked at the jury as if to apologize to them. Several of them smiled back at him.
“Of course,” he said mildly. “There has to be a man of more sophistication, higher social connections, and possibly money to have provided him with this boat, and obviously excellent photographic equipment, in the first place.”
“Yes.”
Rathbone considered objecting, but a look at the jurors’ faces, and he knew he would earn only their contempt. He would seem to be making ridiculous objections by which to try to distract them, which would only lend more credence to what Winchester was saying. And if he was honest, Rathbone himself believed there was someone behind Parfitt, pretty much as Monk and Winchester assumed.
“But you do not know who he is?” Winchester pursued.
“I believe that I do,” Monk contradicted him. “But the proof is what I came here to present.”
The jurors looked stunned. There was a buzz of excitement in the public gallery, rustles of movement and indrawn breath.
Winchester himself played it for all it was worth.
“Are you suggesting, Mr. Monk, that it was this … this investor who murdered Mickey Parfitt? Why, for heaven’s sake? Was the boat not making him a fortune?”
Rathbone stood up at last. “My lord, this is the wildest speculation!”
“It is indeed,” the judge answered tartly. “Mr. Winchester, you know better than this!”
“I apologize, my lord,” Winchester said humbly. “I’m sorry.”
It was only at that moment that Rathbone realized that Winchester had had nothing more to add anyway. Rathbone’s intervention had saved him from the jury’s realizing it.
“Have you anything else pertinent to say, Mr. Winchester?” the judge asked with evident impatience. “For example, something tangible, such as either of the weapons used in the attack of Mr. Parfitt, or a timetable of his movements? Or for that matter, a witness to anything at all? You have so far only a handful of obscene and repulsive photographs and a web of speculation, none of which you have connected to the accused.”
Winchester looked suitably chastened and once again addressed Monk. “Sir, his lordship has excellent points, and has graciously reminded me that I have yet to mention the weapons used to take the life of this repulsive man. Did you seek them, and did you find them?”
“I did not find the weapon with which his head was struck,” Monk replied. “It is difficult to know what that would have been, but any strong length of branch from a tree would have served, or a broken plank of wood, or an oar. There were many such lying on the bank, or floating in the water.”
Winchester looked faintly disconcerted, but he did not interrupt.
“However, we did find the weapon with which he was strangled,” Monk continued. “It was a dark blue cravat with an unusual pattern on it of leopards, very small and in threes, one above the other, in gold. It was made of silk, and there were six very tight knots in it, at slightly irregular distances matching the bruises perfectly.”
Winchester allowed the jury a few moments to absorb this information. “Really! And where did you find the cravat, Mr. Monk?”
“The police surgeon cut it from around Parfitt’s neck,” Monk answered.
There was a sigh of breath and a buzz of movement around the court.
“And did you trace its owner?” Winchester asked.
“Yes, sir. It belonged to a Mr. Rupert Cardew …” Monk could not continue because of the uproar.
When the judge had regained control, Winchester thanked him and invited Monk to proceed.
“Mr. Cardew said that the item had been stolen from him the previous afternoon, and we later found evidence that that was indeed so.”
“Did this evidence implicate Arthur Ballinger?”
“No, sir.”
“So what did, Mr. Monk? So far, as I’m sure Sir Oliver would be quick to point out, there is nothing in the course of your investigation to suggest his name to you, much less to imply his guilt in the matter at all!”
“A short handwritten note inviting Parfitt to meet the accused at the boat, on the evening of his death,” Monk replied.
Again there were gasps and cries in the body of the court, and it was several moments before the judge managed to restore order.
“And where did you find this extraordinary document?” Winchester inquired.
“Written above another note given to me, presumably without appreciating its importance, by Mr. Jones, one of Mr. Parfitt’s employees,” Monk told him. “Parfitt wrote down the time he wanted Jones to ferry him to his boat.”
“Indeed. And was this note signed by the accused?”
“No. It was written on the back of a piece of paper, on the front of which was a list of medicines to be purchased for the use of patients in the Portpool Lane Clinic.”
Winchester’s black eyebrows shot up. “Good heavens! Are you certain?”
“Yes. We took it to the clinic and asked those who work there to identify it.”
“Just a moment! What made you consider the possibility that it had anything to do with them, Mr. Monk?”
“I asked my wife, who is a nurse there, if she recognized the items on the list. She did. She also knew who had written the list and when, because of the writing and what was listed.”
The silence in the courtroom was so thick, someone wheezing in the back row was momentarily audible.
Thoughts raced through Rathbone’s mind as to what he could ask Monk, how he could tear this apart. And, looking at Monk’s face, he knew that he was already prepared, even waiting. Was it possible that this time he really was sure?
“She wrote this list?” Winchester asked skeptically. “And you did not immediately recognize her hand, Mr. Monk? That strains credulity.”
“No, she didn’t write it,” Monk replied with the vestige of a smile. “It was written by Mrs. Claudine Burroughs, a woman of good society who gives her time to helping the sick and the poor. I did not recognize her hand because I am not familiar with it, but my wife did.”
“I see. And how did you deduce from this recognition that the subsequent note on the same piece of paper was written by Mr. Ballinger?”
“Because Mrs. Burroughs said she gave the list to Lady Rathbone to purchase the-”
There was another explosion of sound in the courtroom.
The judge banged his gavel and commanded silence, on pain of people’s forcible removal from the room.
Rathbone felt the heat sear up his face until he could hardly breathe. He did not dare look at Margaret, or her family, although he knew exactly to the inch how far he would have to turn his head to do so.
“To purchase the medicines from the apothecary,” Monk continued. “Which Lady Rathbone did, for she gave the receipts to Mrs. Burroughs but did not return the original list. It seems reasonable, even inevitable, to assume that she discarded it where Mr. Ballinger, her father, found it and tore off a piece to use for this note to Parfitt, not knowing that what was on the back was so distinctive.”
