never wanted to, and it was possibly a lot easier for Scuff’s dignity if he believed she had no idea. If he did ever want to speak of it, it would likely be to Monk, someone of his own gender. As he grew up there would be parts of his life Hester must be excluded from. It was inevitable.
“What are they saying?” he asked again, more urgently, afraid she was going to close him out. Then his imagination would run to all the darkest and most painful places.
“It’s quite a long story,” she answered at last. “I’ll make the tea and tell you as much as I know. Will you pass the milk jug back to the table, please?”
A few moments later, when the tea had been poured but was too hot to drink, and the cake was on the table, Hester had collected her thoughts to a degree she began.
“You know we gathered quite a lot of information about Mr. Taft and the way he asked people for money?”
“Yeah …”
“Well, Mr. Drew-remember him?”
“Yeah, pompous git wi’ a face like a burst boot-expensive boot-”
She stifled a smile. “Exactly. Well, Mr. Drew was a witness in Mr. Taft’s defense, and he tried very hard to make all the witnesses against him look either stupid or weak, even dishonest, so the jury didn’t believe them. It’s quite a usual thing to do in court. A lot of testimony is just what one person says, rather than another.”
He was losing the thread and she could see it. He was too young even to have been in high court, especially one like the Old Bailey.
“Mr. Drew made them all look like liars,” she said more directly. “So the prosecution asked Mr. Taft if he trusted Mr. Drew completely and believed all he said. Mr. Taft said Mr. Drew was an upstanding man, so of course he did. Then the prosecution called me to the witness stand and very clearly asked me about Jericho Phillips.” She stopped and watched his face.
The shadow of fear was there in his eyes, sharp and painful. He was watching her, waiting for her to hurt him with it, wondering if she would lie to him because she thought he couldn’t take it.
“He made me tell him quite a lot,” she continued, “because I was one of the witnesses Drew had made look stupid, so the lawyer was trying to show that I wasn’t. That way he made an opening, a legal one, to show me one of Jericho Phillips’s disgusting photographs.”
He blinked. “Why? Mr. Taft didn’t ’ave nothing ter do with that.”
“That’s just the point, Scuff-Mr. Drew did. The picture he showed me was of Mr. Drew, and a small boy.” She stopped, hoping he was not going to ask her for any other details. Several of those boys had been his friends.
He bit his lip, blushing. Suddenly she saw the child he had been then, thin-shouldered, slender-necked, his skin still smooth, unblemished by even the slightest beginning of fuzz. At that moment she could have killed Phillips herself. She might have repented of it-but only long after.
Suddenly Scuff’s eyes widened. “Where’d ’e get one o’ them pictures?” he said incredulously.
“That is the difficulty,” she confessed. “When Mr. Ballinger died he left them in his will to Sir Oliver.”
“Oh Gawd!” Scuff covered his mouth. “Sorry …” But his eyes were wide with horror and understanding. “Is ’e allowed ter do that?”
“Well, I think that’s the whole question. You see how that might change the jury’s minds?”
He nodded slowly. “Not ’alf. ’Ow are we going ter ’elp ’im, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“But we are going ter?” The edge of fear was back in his voice, and in his eyes.
“Yes, we are,” she said without hesitation. “But we have to deal with the truth, and we don’t know yet what that is.” That was something of an understatement.
Scuff stared into his cup.
“What is it?” Hester asked when the silence became too long.
“But Drew is bad, in’t ’e? Why is it wrong to show the jury wot ’e is?” Scuff asked seriously.
How on earth could she answer that? What concept did Scuff have of the law, and the role of a judge? He had grown up with the only laws being those of survival and loyalty to your own. What did he understand of impartiality, of playing by certain rules, even if it meant you lost? Why hadn’t she even thought of all this before, brought it up earlier somehow, so she wouldn’t have to stand here trying to explain it all at once? She was going to sound pedantic, and it would seem as if she were making excuses rather than fighting. Then he would think her a coward. And if he thought that, then when he needed her he would not be able to trust her to come forward and fight for him.
“Well, the whole idea of a trial is so that the police-or whoever has made an accusation-has a lawyer to fight on his side, and the person who has been accused has someone to fight on his. The judge is supposed not to take sides at all, just be there to make sure everyone gets a fair chance to tell their side of it. Sometimes the police get it wrong, and the people they accuse are not guilty. Or there’s a reason that makes it not as bad as it looks.”
Scuff was thinking about it. He had not even taken a second piece of cake.
“It’s like games,” she tried again. “You have to obey the rules.”
“But what if you’re right?” he argued. “What if the other person’s going ter win ’cos they’re cheating. Can’t you break the rules then-if they are? It in’t fair!”
“Most people think they’re right, even when they aren’t,” Hester pointed out. “And some people don’t care whether they’re right or not. They just want to win.”
“But Sir Oliver in’t like that!” he protested. “We know ’im. ’E really likes you. I seen ’im look at you.”
Hester felt the warmth flush up her cheeks. Trust Scuff to have noticed that.
“Even the people we care about make mistakes sometimes,” she said, picking her words carefully.
“Does that mean if they get it wrong you don’t like ’em anymore?” Deliberately he did not avert his eyes from hers. He was going to take the blow, if it came.
That was the question she had been dreading. What if Rathbone had done something seriously wrong? A mistake, even an error of hubris, was not impossible. She needed to explain to Scuff that however much you loved someone, you still didn’t cover for him when he made a grave mistake. Would he understand the morality of a greater good being more important than individual love?
He was waiting for her answer, his eyes grave.
“No, it doesn’t mean that at all,” she replied. “But you may not always like what they do. You … you can’t say a thing is right just because it’s done by someone you like, and wrong because it’s done by someone you don’t. It hurts desperately if you have to find fault with someone you love, even worse if it’s someone who is part of your life. But right and wrong don’t change just because of the way you feel about the people involved.”
“Is it always right and wrong? In’t there anything in the middle?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes, many times there is,” she agreed. “That’s when it gets really difficult.”
He frowned. “ ’Ow do yer know if it’s right or wrong or something in the middle?”
“You don’t always,” she admitted. “As you get older you begin to realize sometimes just how difficult it can be and how easy it is to make a mistake, even though you’re trying not to. When you’ve made a few yourself, you get slower to judge other people.”
He looked at her very carefully, his eyes wide and clear.
“You’ve never made mistakes, though, ’ave yer?” There was an innocence in his face, a faith in her. She realized with a jolt how deeply he loved her.
Hester found herself blushing. “I wish I hadn’t, except I suppose if that were true maybe I wouldn’t understand just how easy it is for mistakes to happen, even when we’re really trying to avoid them. That would make me very hard on others. It isn’t making mistakes that matters so much as whether you learn from them, whether you admit you were wrong or try to blame somebody else. And I suppose what matters most is that you get up again and try not to keep on making the same mistake.”
“ ’Ow many different ones are there?” he asked.
She gave a twisted little smile. “I don’t know. I’m still counting.”
“An’ yer gotter pay for ’em?” he said carefully. “You ’ave, ’aven’t yer?”
“Usually. Sometimes not. Sometimes there’s a kind of grace where you get forgiven without paying. You don’t really deserve it, so you really truly need to make yourself worthy afterward by being grateful and making an
