to expose what Mr. Taft was doing, before he ruined me and all my friends. He pushed the packet into my hands then turned around and left.”
“On foot?” Warne asked. “Did you see any carriage? Any hansom cab?”
Sawley shrugged again, looking bewildered.
“No. But I live on a short street, and he turned on the first corner. He could have got a hansom within a hundred yards. There’s no point asking me who he was, or how he knew what I wanted, because I have no idea.”
“And the papers he handed you?” Warne asked.
No one moved in the courtroom; there was not the rustle of fabric or the crack of a whalebone corset, not a sigh.
Rathbone found himself with hands clenched, muscles tight as he sat forward, waiting.
Sawley made a movement to fiddle with his glasses and remembered they were on the floor by his feet. He looked oddly helpless without them.
“Copies of the accounts and certain public charities, of Mr. Taft’s Church,” he answered. “Lots of figures and calculations. At first it didn’t make sense to me, then I looked at them more carefully and crosschecked those with a red pencil mark beside them, and gradually I understood. It was very clear. You’d have to understand fraud to see it, the way the money was all moved around from one place to another. Everything seemed to be paid out honestly, until you followed it all the way, and saw how it came back around again. Hardly any of it really went to the people in Africa it was supposed to help.”
“I see. And why would this mysterious stranger bring all this to you, Mr. Sawley?”
Sawley looked totally confused. “I’ve no idea, sir. I just know that he did.”
Warne retired on that note, and Gavinton rose to try to undo some of the damage. He walked out into the middle of the floor without his usual slightly cocky swagger. Then he was obliged to wait to begin while Sawley crouched on the floor of the witness box and retrieved his glasses. When he stood up at last Gavinton spoke.
“Terribly convenient for you, Mr. Sawley,” he observed with an acute edge of sarcasm to his voice. “Did anybody else see this … this apparition?”
Warne rose to his feet immediately.
“Yes,” Rathbone agreed before he could voice his objection. “Mr. Gavinton, if you can prove that this was an apparition and not a real person, then please do so. Otherwise do not present assumptions as if they were facts.”
Gavinton’s face tightened in irritation, but he obeyed because he had no choice.
“I apologize, my lord. Mr. Sawley, did anyone besides yourself see the extraordinary person?”
Sawley put his glasses back on his nose.
“No, sir, not as far as I know. But the papers are real, and I didn’t write them. I’m fairly good with figures, but I’m not anywhere near good enough to have worked out a fraud like this, or to have uncovered one. I had to read it half a dozen times before I saw what’d been done.”
“We have only your word for that, sir,” Gavinton pointed out.
Sawley shook his head. “If I were that good I’d be bookkeeper to some big company, not just a clerk who fills in for the accountant now and then.”
“How do we know you’re not good?” Gavinton asked, but there was desperation in his voice, and the jury heard it. His usual confidence was gone. Even in the gallery there was an echo of hollow laughter.
“ ’Cos if I could make that kind of money, I would,” Sawley said simply.
“So you are quite a simple, very average, makeshift bookkeeper,” Gavinton responded. “So why on earth did this brilliant stranger who can understand and expose a fraud as complex and cleverly planned as you say this one is-why did he seek out you, and not the police, or some other figure of authority and reputation? How do you explain such an extraordinary and eccentric choice, Mr. Sawley?”
“Maybe ’cos I was one of the congregation, and I know the people who are being cheated, some of them ruined, and I care,” Sawley replied. “I’m angry at my friends being made fools of, when they thought they were sacrificing to help the poor, in the name of Christ, and I won’t let that drop, however long it takes me, or however much you want to make me look like a fool too. There’s nothing wicked about being a fool-there’s a lot wicked about making fools of other people.”
Rathbone himself, in spite of all his years of courtroom experience, felt a sudden hard tug of emotion. It cost him an effort of will not to voice his fierce agreement. He actually drew in his breath, and then let it out silently. The prosecution had already won.
CHAPTER 4
The new week began with Blair Gavinton rising to present the case for the defense. He looked more confident than Rathbone had expected him to. Rathbone felt a shadow of anxiety that perhaps Gavinton had discovered something over the weekend that threw a different light on events, but he could not think what that might be.
The jurors regarded Gavinton with stony faces. To them he represented a man who abused and then mocked good-hearted, ordinary people who had acted with generosity and were now reaping the bitter harvest of disillusion. They would want Taft to pay an appropriately heavy price.
Surely as he stood and called his first witness, Gavinton had to be aware of that?
The witness’s name was Robertson Drew. He walked across the floor and climbed the steps to the witness box with assurance. He was dark-haired, well-dressed, a man who was good-looking and not unaware of it. There was power in his hawk-nosed face and confidence in his voice when he took the oath.
Gavinton began quietly, without drama, as if they were two men whose conversation happened to be overheard by an entire courtroom.
“Mr. Drew, are you a member of Mr. Taft’s congregation?”
“I am,” Drew acknowledged. “I have been for many years. About ten or eleven, I think. I would like to believe I have been of some help to him in his ministry.”
“Are you paid for this, sir?”
Drew looked surprised, even a trifle indignant, although he must have been prepared for all Gavinton’s questions.
“Certainly not. It is a privilege that is its own reward.”
“Have you had any dealings with the financial side of the ministry?” Gavinton asked, his tone still conversational. “Specifically the collection of donations to be offered to various charities for the poor?”
“I have, a great deal.”
Rathbone saw the jurors paying close attention, but their expressions were hostile, ready to disbelieve him. “And did you find anything amiss in the accounting?” Gavinton inquired.
Drew smiled very slightly. “The occasional arithmetical error, usually to the amount of a few pennies. I dare say it would count to shillings, one way or the other, over a year or so. Such errors are always put right when the books are balanced.”
“Once a year?” Gavinton inquired.
“Once a quarter, sir,” Drew corrected him.
Gavinton nodded. “I see. And what do you make of the claims that there is a profound fraud going on, to the amount of tens of thousands of pounds, all very cleverly disguised in pages and pages of complex figures?”
Drew blinked then looked down at his strong hands on the railing. “Frankly, Mr. Gavinton, when one is trying to minister to a flock, one expects all manner of people. The doors of a Christian church cannot be closed to anyone. Those who come in will do so for many reasons and to fill many kinds of needs.” His voice was sonorous with regret. “We draw the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the quarrelsome and the silent.” He looked up. “Quite frankly, we also draw the guilty, the troubled, at times the malicious, and also those whose mental balance is questionable, who seek attention and must have it at any cost. Occasionally we even have people who see and hear things that are not there, who imagine voices and labor under the delusion that they speak for God.”
