Blind Justice

“Exactly what is wrong with Mr. Gavinton?”

“Greasy, sir. There’s just something about him, but the minute you put your finger on it, it slips away.”

“Indeed. And what do you know about Mr. Abel Taft? I’ve never heard of him.”

“Does very well, sir,” Patmore replied, all expression very carefully ironed out of his voice. “I’ve taken the liberty of looking him up. He has a nice house, very handsome wife, two young daughters just about the right age to be looking for husbands. Dresses very well, does Mr. Taft, at least so I hear. Dines even better. Belongs to some good clubs too. I wouldn’t care to pay his tailor’s bill.”

“Interesting,” Rathbone conceded. “Do you know who is prosecuting this case?”

“No, sir, not yet. But I have made discreet inquiries. He’ll have to be very good indeed to catch Mr. Gavinton out.”

“We must assume the police have concrete evidence, or they would not be wasting everyone’s time or risking looking incompetent.”

Patmore inclined his head very slightly. “Precisely, sir. I shall keep you informed. I believe we have three weeks yet before the trial begins. Rather depends on the Warburton case, and how long that takes.”

“Not three weeks, please heaven!” Rathbone exclaimed.

“Indeed not, sir.”

Rathbone gave him a wry look, and Patmore withdrew, his expression unreadable.

After the door had closed Rathbone stood still for quite some time. This had to be the case York had been referring to. He had said it would require considerable legal skill to keep it under control and make it clear enough for justice to be truly served. Was there a reason York had brought it up in the first place? Had he wanted the church exonerated? Or did he consider this to be a sect richly deserving a setback?

Rathbone wondered who would be prosecuting. It certainly would have been decided already. There would be a great deal of paperwork to go through, many witnesses. Presumably the victim was the entire body of the congregation, or at the least, all those who had contributed. There would be bookkeepers and accountants as witnesses of bank records and whatever financial proof of donation the various parishioners had kept-if any.

The more Rathbone thought about it, the more he agreed with Patmore that presiding over such a trial was an unenviable task. His task was to see justice prevail, but in order to do that he would have to make certain that the jury understood exactly what had happened. One could very easily become exhausted with detail, confused by the sheer weight of facts and numbers, and fall back on the faith that a churchman couldn’t possibly be guilty of such a crime.

Was there any way Rathbone could control the testimony without denying due process of law to either side?

The defense would fight hard. A man’s freedom and his reputation were in the balance. It was not quite his life, but it was his way of life that was at stake.

Would the prosecutor try equally hard? He had less to gain, or lose.

What about the religious loyalties of either of the lawyers? Would that matter? Would anyone be angry that the name of religion in general was being blackened in the public eye?

Rathbone would have to be very careful not to overstep the boundaries of his discretion if his own prejudices were attacked.

He thought of the cases he had defended in his long career. Some of the criminals had been accused of appalling acts; some of tragic ones, painfully understandable. In certain cases he had thought that in the same circumstances, he might have made the same judgments and ended up in the same disastrous position.

He had always cared a little too much, and he had not always been right in his judgment. One of the worst villains he had ever defended was Jericho Phillips, a fearful man accused of blackmail, child pornography, and murder. He winced as he recalled it now, standing in this old wood-paneled chamber with its rows of leather- bound books and its rich rugs on the floor.

It was in Newgate Prison that he had first met Phillips, alive and well, his vulpine face full of satisfaction, all but certain that he would escape the rope. The last time he had seen him had been months later, after the acquittal, and after Monk had hunted him down again. It was as the Thames tide receded, leaving the hideous iron cage of Execution Dock naked above the water. Inside it had been the drowned corpse of Jericho Phillips, his mouth stretched wide in his final scream.

Should Rathbone have defended him? There was no serious doubt in his mind about that. He had thought Phillips guilty, but he had also thought other men guilty in the past and been proven wrong.

If someone harms a stranger, then it is usually the fault of the thief and the misfortune of the victim. But if the victim and the perpetrator know each other, both of them need to be considered carefully in order to find justice. Extortion, bullying, and consistent cruelty are so often practiced that sometimes there is no course of action short of violence-a reaction born out of desperation, because the so-called criminal was terrified, exhausted, and at wits’ end. It did not justify murder, but it raised complicated questions of self-defense, where no answer was fair to all.

Many cases had come to him through Monk, and of course through Hester. Some of those from the time when she was a nurse for private patients had tested him to what he had believed were his limits, showing him tragedies with no simple or just answer. Nature and society between them created Gordian knots impossible to unravel.

The case of Phillips, which had seemed at the beginning a simple matter of serving the law, had become so entangled in violence and in Rathbone’s own conflicted emotions that even the death of Phillips had been only a brief respite before the continuation of the crimes connected to his life.

It had ended in the destruction of Arthur Ballinger, and of Rathbone’s marriage. Even that was not as simple as it appeared. For a while Ballinger had seemed to Rathbone an irredeemable man. Then, in that final encounter, he had told Rathbone not only what had happened, but why; he had explained his slow descent from idealism, step by step downward to the conscienceless brutality that marked his character at the end of his life.

It all made a case of a clergyman embezzling money seem cut-and-dried-the evidence would be complex, full of detail that would need to be explained with great clarity-but essentially, it was a matter of simple greed. He certainly would not attempt to pass the case off to anyone else.

Hester was also looking forward to the trial of Abel Taft. She had worked extraordinarily hard to bring it about. It was extra-good news to her that it was Oliver Rathbone who had been appointed to try the case.

“What a good thing I didn’t say anything to him. I had thought about it, a few weeks ago,” she said as she and Monk walked under the trees in Southwark Park, a mere stone’s throw from their own house. “I suppose that could have compromised him so he wouldn’t have been allowed to hear the case, couldn’t it?”

“Possibly,” he agreed, smiling in the evening sun. Below them in the distance the light was mirror-bright on the water, making the ships stand out almost black. “Is that why you didn’t tell him? In case he was chosen to hear it?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “I rather thought he wouldn’t approve.”

“When on earth has that ever stopped you?” he asked incredulously, turning to look at her with amusement and a sudden surge of affection.

“Since he was placed in a position to be able to stop me,” she said frankly.

How very practical. How like her-a mixture of the wildly idealistic and the totally pragmatic. He put his arm around her and walked a little closer.

“Of course,” he agreed.

Approximately two weeks later the trial of Abel Taft began. It was a hot, almost windless day in mid-July, and the courtroom of the Old Bailey was uncomfortably warm. Even though the public gallery was not full, the atmosphere seemed airless.

The proceedings began as usual. The court had been called to order, the jurors were sworn in. As always the gravity of it gave Rathbone a sudden sharpening of his awareness of exactly who he was, and-more importantly-what his responsibilities were toward the people in this old, beautiful, and frightening chamber. Lives had been ripped apart here; dreams shattered, guilt and tragedy exposed, and, please God, justice done.

He should never forget that sometimes it could be the opposite. Lies had covered truth, oppression had crushed freedom, and violence beyond the walls had reached inside and silenced protest.