Dinah looked at him with contempt. “She had known him for over fifteen years, and she did not know that?” Before he could point out the inconsistency of her argument she hurried on. “Of course she didn’t know that- because it isn’t true. Joel never would have killed himself over money, and I don’t believe she was so greedy or so stupid as to have threatened him. She was in her mid-forties! Where on earth was she going to find another man to support her and ask nothing in return?”
“Nothing?” he questioned, a little surprised at the assertion. Did she really believe that? Could she possibly?
She flushed and lowered her eyes. “A visit once a month,” she said quietly. “I know the prosecution may not believe that but even if they don’t, the logic still holds. Whatever he asked, or she gave, it would still be easier than walking the streets of Limehouse looking for casual customers.”
Rathbone thought for several moments. “They might suggest it was you who were blackmailing him to stop seeing Zenia?”
“Or I would do what?” she said with a rare spark of humor. “Humiliate myself by making his affair public? Don’t be ridiculous.”
He smiled back, reluctantly. He admired her courage. “Then why did he kill himself, Mrs. Lambourn?”
“He didn’t.” All the light vanished from her face again and grief washed through it. “They killed him, because he was going to fight for his report to be accepted by the people, if not by the government. They made it look like suicide, to discredit him once and for all.”
It sounded hysterical, a wild fiction to save herself from the shame and the rejection of her husband’s suicide, and yet he could not dismiss the idea out of hand.
“You truly think it was murder?”
“How many people have already drowned in the dark sea of the opium trade?” she asked. “Killed in the Opium Wars, murdered in its aftermath of trade and piracy, dead of overdoses? How many fortunes made or lost?”
“And who killed Zenia Gadney?” Rathbone asked, suddenly more serious. “Was her death really only coincidence?”
“That seems so unlikely as to be impossible.” She shook her head. The fear in her was palpable. He looked at her with intense sorrow. He knew exactly why Monk had asked him to see her and to take the case.
“I wanted to do all I could to clear Joel’s name,” she continued. “But his papers are all gone. Someone took everything and destroyed it. I was still trying to see if there were any other doctors who had the courage and resources to take up the issue.”
“Even believing that he was murdered to silence him?”
“He was right,” she said simply.
Rathbone returned to the earlier question. “Who killed Zenia?” he said again.
“They did,” she answered. “Whoever killed Joel.”
“Why? What did she know? Did she have copies of his report?” Copenhagen Place would not have been an unreasonable place to hide such a thing, if it existed.
“Maybe.” She said it as if it had not occurred to her until then.
He could not let her get by with an answer the prosecution would tear to pieces. “Then why not simply burgle her house? That would draw much less attention. Or if she had hidden it and would not tell them where, why not beat her? And if they did have to kill her, why would they do it so grotesquely? This murder is so appalling that it has shaken all London into fear. It is in every newspaper and on everyone’s lips. It makes no sense, in conjunction with your theory.”
Dinah Lambourn put her hands up to her face in a gesture of weariness. “It makes excellent sense, Sir Oliver. As you have observed, all London is drawn into the horror of it. When the evidence ties it back to me, and to Joel, and if I cannot prove my innocence, then I will be hanged and Joel will be completely disgraced, once and for all. His report will be forgotten, and the bill will die quietly. What is Zenia’s life, or mine, worth in comparison to the millions of pounds made from opium, and the continued burial of the secrets and sins of the Opium Wars?”
Rathbone did not know how much he believed her. The more he listened to her, the more credible the possibility seemed that, at the very least, Lambourn’s report had been suppressed because it did not say what those who commissioned it had wished it to.
But could such a failure have led to first Lambourn’s murder, and then Zenia’s, in order to silence
Or was he being made a complete fool of because she was a beautiful woman, and her loyalty to her husband had caught him in the uniquely vulnerable place of his own wound? Was he losing his sense of perspective?
Was Dinah Lambourn risking her own life to save her husband’s reputation? Or was she insanely jealous, had killed Zenia out of uncontrollable resentment, and was now lying desperately in order to try to save herself from the rope?
He honestly had no idea.
He wanted to believe her. Or, more truthfully, he wanted to believe that a woman would have that kind of loyalty to her husband. That even after his death, and his fifteen-year attachment to another woman, she would fight for him, for her memories of him, and all that they had shared.
Her own wounded feelings meant nothing. Not once had she spoken against him, or for that matter against Zenia Gadney.
She was obviously laboring in the grip of extreme emotion. She faced hanging if she was found guilty. After the manner of Zenia’s death, and the public furor, there could be no question of mercy.
“I will take your case, Mrs. Lambourn. I cannot promise success; all I can commit to is that I will do everything I can to defend you,” he said gravely.
She smiled at him and the tears of relief spilled down her cheeks.
Rathbone shook her hand and then turned for the door. What on earth had he done?
CHAPTER 10
Outside the prison, Rathbone stood on the icy pavement in the rising wind, astonished at his own rashness. He was stepping out into quicksand, and already it was too late to retreat. He had given his word.
Then perhaps rather than going to his chambers this early, to think on what he had committed to, he should continue on eastward and cross the river at Wapping, so he could go on to Paradise Place and tell Monk that he had taken the case. He would need more information from him than the minimum he had been given yesterday. Monk had talked Rathbone into this. Now Rathbone needed to talk him into helping untangle the almighty mess.
He walked briskly out to the main thoroughfare and took a hansom, directing the driver to go all the way to Wapping Stairs. He sat back as they weaved through the morning traffic and he thought about what he needed to know. How on earth could he raise reasonable doubt in any jury’s minds without another suspect? In the sane light of a winter day, would he even have reasonable doubt himself?
Was Dinah Lambourn a woman who loved her husband in spite of all his weaknesses, the betrayal with another woman over fifteen long years, and finally his preposterous story about the government’s refusal to acknowledge the truth about the use and abuse of opium? Surely if Lambourn’s facts were even close to the truth, about opium or any other medicine, there would be no way for the government to ignore that truth indefinitely. All Lambourn’s death would’ve achieved was a delay; an act would be passed eventually. Was that delay worth anyone’s death, let alone an insane murder like that of poor Zenia Gadney?
Did Dinah simply refuse to believe in failure, her husband’s or her own? The most likely answer of all was that she was touched by insanity herself, a victim of the facts she refused to acknowledge. Perhaps to survive she needed any answer at all that left her make-believe world unbroken.
He rode all the way to the ferry deep in other people’s delusions, his own credulity swaying one way, then
