even on the blood-soaked battlefields. She had eased pain, saved lives. And she had loved her father more than Margaret could ever know.
And she loved Monk. She would have wanted children to please him, to give him everything love can ever give, but she did not ache for them for herself. Yes, she loved Scuff. Why should she deny that? But for who he was, not to ease an emptiness within herself. Monk alone was sufficient-companion, ally, lover, and friend.
Had she made mistakes, perhaps even profound ones? Yes, of course. But never through indifference.
She stood still, dizzy, the room blurring in her vision, and waited until she was sufficiently composed to return to the courtroom and observe the afternoon’s trial.
Rathbone was fighting for the defense as Hester had known he must do. He had no choice, legally or emotionally.
He called witnesses who, one by one, painted a picture of the trade Parfitt had run, and its patrons among the rich and dissolute, including, most pointedly, Rupert Cardew.
“Only the rich?” He pressed the witness, an oily, devious-looking man who stood very straight in the witness box, his hands by his sides.
“Course,” the man replied. “No point in blackmailin’ the poor!”
There was a faint snicker around the gallery, which died immediately.
“And the fashionable?” Rathbone continued. “The socially prominent?”
The witness regarded him witheringly. “In’t no need ter pay if yer got no position to lose. If yer nobody, yer tell ’im ter sod off an’ sell the pictures to whoever ’e wants.”
“Quite,” Rathbone agreed succinctly. “Thank you, Mr. Loftus.” He turned to Winchester. “Your witness, sir.”
Winchester rose to his feet. He moved just as elegantly as before, but Hester noticed the pallor of his face, and that the hand resting at his side was clenched.
“Mr. Loftus, you seem to be very well informed about this whole business. Far more, for example, than I am, even though I have had to learn as much about it as I can, for this trial. How is that, sir?”
“Oh, I know all sorts.” Loftus tapped the side of his nose, as if to suggest some extraordinary sensory awareness.
“I accept that you do, sir, but how?” Winchester pressed. He smiled very slightly. “For example, how much are you involved in it yourself?”
Loftus drew in his breath, then caught Winchester’s eye and apparently changed his mind. “Well … I see things.”
“ ‘See things,’ ” Winchester repeated dubiously. “What things, Mr. Loftus? Well-dressed men coming from and going to a boat moored on the river, would you say?”
“That’s right. Late at night, an’ believe me, they in’t there ter fish.”
There was another titter of laughter around the gallery. A juror raised his hand to hide a smile.
“Late at night?” Winchester said gently. “In the dark, then?”
“O’ course,” Loftus sneered. “You don’t think they’re gonna be about when folks can recognize ’em, do yer? Yer in’t bin listenin’, sir.” He exaggerated the “sir” slightly. “They in’t there for any good.”
“Too dark to be recognized. And yet you know who they were?” Winchester smiled back at him, eyebrows raised inquiringly.
Loftus knew he had been trapped. “All right!” he said angrily. “I ’elped now an’ then. On the outside only! I never done nothing to those boys!”
“You helped on the outside,” Winchester echoed him. “Out of the goodness of your heart? Or you were paid in kind, perhaps? A few pictures to sell on to others? After you’d had a good look at them yourself? Perhaps to sell back to the miserable wretches in them, caught in acts that would ruin them if their friends knew? Is that how you were so sure that Rupert Cardew was involved?”
Rathbone rose to his feet. “Might we have no more than two questions at a time, my lord? I am going to have trouble working out which answer fits which question.”
There was another nervous ripple of laughter around the room.
“I’m sorry,” Winchester apologized. “My confusion must be contagious.” He looked back at Loftus. “Your reward for this help, sir? What nature did it take?”
“Money!” Loftus said indignantly. “Pure money, like you own, sir.”
“You have none of my money, Mr. Loftus,” Winchester responded with a smile. “But since you know Mr. Cardew was there, you must surely know the names of others. Who else attended those … parties?”
Loftus made a movement across his mouth. “Code o’ silence, sir. You understand? All kinds o’ gents like their excitement a bit on the spicy side. Ruin ’alf o’ London if I were to speak out o’ turn, I could.”
“Not to mention your own future income, and that of the man behind the business, who will have to find another manager, now that Parfitt is dead. Could that be you, Mr. Loftus?”
Suddenly the courtroom was silent. All the small rustles of movement stopped. One could almost hear the rasp of breathing.
Rathbone rose to his feet. “My lord, Mr. Winchester is assuming facts that no one has proved. He keeps making suggestions as to this gray presence behind Parfitt, but no one has shown that he exists, let alone is going to pay Mr. Loftus for anything.”
“My lord, someone sent the letter of instruction to Mickey Parfitt, so that he was alone on his boat the night he was killed,” Winchester pointed out. “Someone put forward the money to buy and to furnish the boat. Someone found, watched, and then tempted the men susceptible to this kind of indulgence. Someone blackmailed them and drove at least one to suicide, and it appears, one to murder. And since Mr. Loftus has sworn that Rupert Cardew was a victim of this trade, and other witnesses have told us very graphically of his descent from bystander and gullible friend to witness of degraded and revolting scenes, it cannot have been him. One does not blackmail oneself.”
The judge considered for a moment, then lifted one heavy shoulder in a gesture of resignation.
“Mr. Winchester appears to be right, Sir Oliver. You cannot have it both ways with Mr. Cardew. Either he was the blackmailer or he was the victim who struck back.”
“My lord,” Rathbone bowed. “It seems to me beyond a reasonable doubt that Mickey Parfitt was a vile man who provided a ready path to total degradation, a depravity that must disgust all decent people. He charged his victims for it twice over: once to purchase it, and then a second time to keep themselves from the disgrace of having it known to their friends and to society in general. How he was able to target those vulnerable to such weakness we do not know. Many answers are imaginable. If there was indeed a mastermind behind it, we do not know who that is. Personally, I should like to see him hang, as I dare say so would you. But it is repulsive to me that in our disgust we should vent our anger by hanging the wrong man!”
There were smiles of approval in the gallery. One voice even cried out in agreement.
The judge looked around, but did not reprove him.
Rathbone allowed a moment for them to settle down again. Then he resumed. “We are here to try Arthur Ballinger on the charge of murdering Mickey Parfitt. I put it to you that for all Mr. Winchester’s elegance and his masterly exposure of the deeply vile nature of Mickey Parfitt’s trade, he has not shown us that Mr. Ballinger had anything to do with it, either as investor or as victim.”
He looked specifically at the jury.
“I propose in the next day or so to demonstrate to you the violent and deceitful nature of others involved on the edges of this trade, and how easy it would have been for any of them to have killed Parfitt. I shall show you a score of reasons why they might have, primarily involving greed. As has been amply demonstrated, there is a great deal of money to be made and lost in blackmail. Men’s reputations are destroyed, fortunes ruined, and lives ended. Such circumstances breed murder.”
Hester did not stay to listen. Rathbone would carefully lay all kinds of suggestions that would make the issue even less certain. He would probably not try to prove specifically that Rupert Cardew was guilty, but it might not be difficult to create at least sufficient belief that it was possible, so no jury would convict Ballinger. Then it would all begin again, perhaps only to end in more doubt.
She walked out into the late afternoon, the noise of the street, the traffic, almost another world. She tried not to think what it would mean for Monk if the trial ended in acquittal. Margaret would not forgive him. What would the
