Rathbone held out the brown envelope.
Warne took it and after a moment’s hesitation, opened the flap and picked out the stiff paper of the photograph. He stared at it, blinked, then his face reflected vividly the wave of revulsion that must’ve welled up inside him. His paramount emotion seemed to be acute distress.
Rathbone wished he had not made this choice. He had done the wrong thing, and it was too late to take it back. Now he was as chilled as if his heart had stopped pumping blood around his body.
Warne looked up at him, his eyes unreadable.
“Where in God’s name did you get this? Did someone send it to you?”
There was no possible way out of this. He must plunge through it-with the truth.
“My father-in-law owned these photographs, about fifty of them. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. I defended him, partly because of family obligation, partly because anyone at all is worthy of a defense, as Gavinton has been at pains to remind me. And in the beginning I believed he was innocent. Only too late did I discover that he was not.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He always blamed me for not having defended him adequately. As a bitter irony he bequeathed me these damnable pictures.”
Warne stared at him, blinking.
Rathbone knew he should not go on, making bad even worse, but he heard his own voice as if it belonged to someone else and he had no control over it.
“He told me that to begin with he used one of them to force a corrupt judge to make an industrialist clean up his factory’s waste, which was spreading cholera in a poor area of the city. It saved the lives of hundreds of people. And cholera is a vile way to die.”
Warne winced as if he had felt a wave of that pain himself.
“He went on using them,” Rathbone continued. “For a while it was always to force justice where it would otherwise be denied. Then he began to do it for less clear-cut reasons. In the end he was thoroughly corrupt. I hesitated whether to give you this or not. You will notice the date on it-after Drew joined Taft’s Church. You can see from it that Robertson Drew is very far from being the minister of Christ that he professes to be. He has slandered at least three good men, and probably the finest woman he is ever likely to meet. If the jurors were aware of his nature, I think they would attach a very different weight to his testimony than they do now.”
“Indeed,” Warne replied, his voice little above a whisper.
“Do whatever you think just,” Rathbone told him. “If you believe the man is telling the truth, then the picture is irrelevant. I know Mrs. Monk, and I know Squeaky Robinson. Squeaky is a devious sod and has been on the wrong side of the law most of his life, but I trust him to keep the books of the Portpool Lane clinic. I think he knows fraud when he sees it and knows how to find it-the places where a man who has always been honest would never think to look. If he says Taft is crooked, then I believe he is. And if you are able to take a little time to look more closely at Hester Monk, you will find she has more courage and honor than many a decorated army officer and has done more to help the poor and outcast of society than Taft can have ever imagined.”
Warne almost smiled.
“I imagine much of what Gavinton said was aimed at you. He seems to have studied your past cases, and your personal friendships, quite closely.”
Rathbone felt his lips curl in a sneer. “A great deal more closely than he has some of the personal friendships of Robertson Drew, from the look of it.” Then he looked at Warne’s eyes. “But none of that has anything to do with the fact that, in spite of the financial evidence, you have failed to convince the jury that Abel Taft is a fraud and a manipulator of innocent and vulnerable people who trust him because he says he comes in the name of Christ. They believe him because they would not lie about such a thing themselves, and they find it impossible to believe that anyone else would. Perhaps they don’t want to. No one wants to acknowledge himself a fool, and maybe a decent man wants even less to admit that the faith he placed in his church was hideously false.”
“Most of all in front of his neighbors, and aloud, where they can remind him of it again and again,” Warne added. He held the photograph in one hand, by his fingertips, as if touching it soiled him. “Would you use this?”
Rathbone thought for several moments before replying. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “If I did, I would be tormented by it forever. And if I didn’t, then everything that Taft gets away with from now on is at my door, whether I want to own it or not. Every innocent man defrauded of his money or his trust is one more victim I could have prevented, had I not placed my own peace of mind first.”
“Damn you,” Warne said quietly. There was no enmity in his voice, just fear and exhaustion, and a touch of revulsion, for the picture, for the choice he now had.
There was no need for more words. Silently Rathbone took his leave and went out into the night. He walked toward the main road. He had left the photograph behind him, but he felt, if anything, even more heavily weighed down.
CHAPTER 6
The following day the trial resumed. Rathbone had slept badly, his dreams full of chaos. Now he sat in the high-backed chair and watched the proceedings, feeling as if the air in the room were as thick as that before an electric storm. His chest was tight and his neck so stiff that he could barely turn from side to side.
The gallery was less than full but the atmosphere was heavy. There was going to be no dramatic end. As far as the law was concerned, all was well, but as drama it had failed. Taft was clearly going to be found “not guilty,” which meant that everything was going to remain as it had been. It was not worth watching. Those left now were the few with a personal interest in the outcome.
Felicia Taft looked more composed than in earlier days. Perhaps she knew that the worst was past. And yet she did not look happy. If she were exhausted, one could hardly blame her. The pallor of her face, the droop in her expression might be no more than that. She had endured all she was able to. With the end in sight, she had allowed herself to relax.
Gavinton was jubilant. He all but strutted out onto the floor. Abel Taft was on the witness stand again. He was not smiling exactly, but it was as if he felt he no longer had anything to fear, or to apologize for.
Rathbone was so tense his whole body ached. No matter how he moved in the seat, the tension did not let up. He feared he had left it too late. Even with the photograph, there was nothing Warne could do. What was it Rathbone ever imagined he might accomplish anyway? Did he think Warne would show the photograph to the jury and tell them this was the man they were believing rather than the witnesses he had so carefully mocked and belittled?
He could see Gethen Sawley sitting in the gallery, stubborn, white-faced, his body hunched forward as he waited for the ultimate defeat. Why was he here? Why was he punishing himself by watching as Drew and then Taft picked him apart, humiliating him gently, acting as if they were reluctant to say each word.
John Raleigh was still here too, dignified and silent, waiting for his ruin to be complete.
Rathbone could not see Bicknor, but he was probably here somewhere.
What did they expect? Did the desperation of their faith make them think there would be some miracle to make the trial just after all? Rathbone wished that he had the power to produce that miracle for them.
What a horrible irony. Gavinton was asking Taft once again if he believed in Robertson Drew, so the last thing he left in the jurors’ minds was the image of Taft as an innocent, trusting man. Nothing was his fault. Because Drew was not charged, in a sense he was invulnerable.
Was Warne going to use the photograph? How would he introduce it? Had he even brought it?
Gavinton was handing over the witness to Warne.
Warne rose to his feet. He looked haggard. There were dark shadows on his face, as if he had not shaved, but as he moved and the light caught him it was clear it was only the hollows of his cheeks. He had probably been up all night pacing the floor, wondering what to do with the terrible picture.
Warne regarded Taft cautiously, but no politeness in his words could mitigate the intense dislike in his face.
“Mr. Taft, it seems you are ill served in your congregation, and indeed by everyone except Mr. Drew,” he
