by Anne Perry
Everyone was now staring at these two men, but no one could have missed seeing the doors swing open. Hester Monk came in, the gaunt figure of Alvar Doulting a step behind her.
Sinden Bawtry turned toward them as the sound of their entry caught his attention.
Doulting stared at Bawtry. Hester seemed to be half supporting him as he lifted one arm awkwardly to point at Bawtry.
“That’s him!” he said, gasping for breath. His body was shaking so badly he looked in danger of collapse. “That is the man who sold the opium and syringes to me, and to God knows how many others. I’ve watched too many of them die. Buried some of them in paupers’ graves. I’ll find one myself soon.”
The crowd erupted as pent-up terror and fury at last found release, people rising to their feet, crying out.
“Order!” Pendock shouted, also rising to his feet, his face scarlet.
But no one took any notice of him. The ushers tried to push their way through the crowds to help Bawtry, or at the very least to make sure he was not trampled.
Amity Herne, still in the witness stand, could do nothing. Her anguish was naked in her face. She cried out Bawtry’s name in a howl of despair, but it was hardly audible above the din, and no one listened to her or cared.
Coniston looked like a lost child, searching this way and that for something familiar to hold on to.
Pendock was still shouting for order. Gradually the noise subsided. Ushers had helped Bawtry out and stood guarding the doors. Hester eased Doulting into a seat at the back where people made ample room for him, sitting apart, as if his private hell were contagious.
At last Pendock had restored some kind of sanity and was able to continue.
“Sir Oliver!” Pendock said savagely. “Was that outburst contrived by you? Did you arrange for that … that appalling scene to take place?”
“No, my lord. I had no idea that Dr. Doulting would know by sight the man who has dug his grave, so to speak.” That was something less than the truth. At the time he had arranged it with Hester, he had expected Doulting to reveal Barclay Herne as both the seller and an addict.
Pendock started to speak again, and then changed his mind.
“Have you anything further to ask of Mrs. Herne?” he said instead.
“Yes, my lord, if you please,” Rathbone said humbly.
“Proceed.” Pendock barely lifted his hand, but the gesture was unmistakable.
“Thank you, my lord.” Rathbone turned to Amity, who was now looking as if she had heard the news of her own death. Her eyes were unfocused, her entire body sagging.
It was all up to him now. He must make it plain to the jury. Reasonable doubt was no longer the verdict he sought; it was a clear and ringing “not guilty.” What happened to Bawtry was up to a different jurisdiction, and would perhaps only happen on the stage of public opinion. Dinah Lambourn’s life, and Joel Lambourn’s reputation, were Rathbone’s responsibility. And maybe he would also achieve some measure of justice for Zenia Gadney.
“Mrs. Herne,” he began. The silence in court was absolute. “Mrs. Herne, you have heard the evidence making it seem highly likely that your brother, Joel Lambourn, was murdered by a woman he trusted, who arranged to meet with him on the night of his death? Together they walked up into Greenwich Park, he totally unsuspecting of any violence. On One Tree Hill they stopped. It is possible she somehow managed to inject him with a needle, but more likely she offered him a drink that was extremely heavily laced with opium. He became dizzy, then unconscious within a very short space of time. She then slit his wrists with a blade she had brought with her, leaving him to bleed to death alone in the dark.”
Amity swayed in the witness box, gripping the rail to stop herself from falling.
“It was suggested that this woman he trusted was his first wife, in law his only wife, known as Zenia Gadney,” Rathbone went on. “And that she did it because she was paid to by your husband.”
“I know,” Amity whispered.
Coniston half rose, then sat back again, his face pale, eyes wide in fascination.
“Why would your husband do such a thing?” Rathbone asked.
Amity did not answer.
“To protect his superior, Sinden Bawtry?” Rathbone answered for her. “And of course his own supply of opium. He is addicted, isn’t he?”
She did not speak, but nodded her head slightly.
“Just so,” Rathbone agreed. “I can well believe that Bawtry asked this of him. Your husband is a weak and ambitious man, but he is not a murderer, either of your brother, or of Zenia Gadney.”
Again there were cries from the gallery and Pendock restored order only with difficulty.
“It was a woman who killed Dr. Lambourn,” Rathbone continued as soon as the noise had subsided. “But it was not poor Zenia. It was you, Mrs. Herne, because Bawtry asked your husband to do it, and he had not the nerve. But you had. In fact you would have the nerve to do anything at all for your lover, Sinden Bawtry!”
Again the noise, the screams, catcalls, and gasps drowned him out.
“Order!” Pendock shouted. “One more outburst and I shall clear the court!”
This time silence returned within seconds.
“Thank you, my lord,” Rathbone said politely. He turned to Amity again. “But Dinah would not let people believe Joel had killed himself. She would not let it rest, and you could not allow that. If she persisted, and cleared his name, then the opium bill would have to include making the sale of it in injectable form illegal-a crime, punishable very seriously. The prime minister would never ignore what Joel Lambourn had told him of the evil that opium in such a form caused. Your husband, addicted as he was, would sink into despair, and perhaps death. I don’t know whether that mattered to you-perhaps not. It might even have been convenient. But Sinden Bawtry would be finished by such a bill. The wealth he so lavishly spends on his career, and his philanthropy, would dry up. If he continued to sell the opium, then he would become a criminal before the law, ending his days in prison. And you would’ve done anything to prevent that.”
He stopped to draw breath.
“I don’t know whether Dinah guessed at any of this.” He plunged on. “I think not. She believed in her husband, believed that he would not have killed himself. And she knew that she had not killed Zenia. I think it was you, Mrs. Herne, who posed as Dinah in the shops in Copenhagen Place, already knowing perfectly well where Zenia lived, but creating a scene in order to be remembered. You knew Zenia, as she knew you. She trusted you, and quite willingly met you on the evening of her death, just as Joel had met you on the evening of his.”
The court was motionless; no one interrupted him now, even by sigh or gasp.
“You walked with her to the river,” he went on. “Perhaps you even stood together on the pier and watched the light fade over the water, as she loved to do. Then you struck her so hard she collapsed. Perhaps she was dead even as she fell to the ground.
“Then in the darkness you cut her open, possibly with the same blade as you had used to slit your brother’s wrists. You tore out her entrails and laid them across her and onto the ground, to make as hideous a crime as you could, knowing that the newspapers would write headlines about it.
“Public opinion would never allow the police to leave such a murder unsolved. They would eventually find the clues you had laid leading to Dinah, and she would at last be silenced. No one would believe her protests of innocence. She was half mad with grief; and you had reason and sanity, and an unblemished reputation on your side. Who was she? The mistress of a bigamist with a wife he still kept on the side, or so it appeared.”
He looked up at her now with both awe and disgust.
“You very nearly got away with it. Joel would be dead and dishonored. Zenia had served her purpose and would be remembered only as the victim of a terrible crime of revenge. Dinah would be hanged as one of the most gruesome female murderers of our time. And you would be free to continue your love affair with a rich, famous
, and very handsome man, possibly even marry him when your husband’s addiction ended his life. And Sinden Bawtry would forever owe you his freedom from dishonor and disgrace.”
He took a deep breath. “Except, of course, that he does not love you. He used you, just as you used Zenia Gadney, and God knows who else. Surely in time he would also kill you. You have a hold on him that he cannot afford to leave at loose ends, and he will grow tired of your adoration when it is no longer useful to him. It becomes boring to be adored. We do not value that which is given to us for nothing.”
She tried to speak, but no words came to her lips.
“No defense?” Rathbone said quickly. “No more lies? I could pity you, but I cannot afford to. You had no pity for anyone else.” He looked up at Pendock. “Thank you, my lord. I have no more witnesses. The defense rests.”
Coniston said nothing, like a man robbed of speech.
The jury retired and came back within minutes.
“Not guilty,” the foreman said with perfect confidence. He even looked up at Dinah in the dock and smiled, a gentle look of both pity and relief, and something that could have been admiration.
Rathbone asked permission to speak to Pendock in chambers, privately, and he walked out of the court before anyone else could catch his attention. He did not even look at Hester, Monk, or Runcorn, all waiting.
He found Pendock alone in his chambers, white-faced.
“What now?” the judge asked, his voice hoarse and shaking in spite of his attempt to remain calm.
“I have something that should belong to you,” Rathbone answered. “I don’t wish to carry it around, but if you come to my house at some time of your convenience, you may do with it, and all copies of it, whatever you please. I would suggest acid for the original, and a fire for the copies, which are merely paper. I … I regret having used them to obtain justice.”
“I regret that you had to,” Pendock replied. “You did not create the truth; you merely used it. I shall be retiring from the bench. I imagine after this victory, you may well be offered it. For reasons that must be obvious, I shall not mention our arrangement. You may believe me, or not, but I truly thought I was serving my country in attempting to prevent you from frightening the general public from using the only medicine easily available to them. I thought Lambourn was a foolish man wishing to curtail the freedom of ordinary people seeking some respite from the worst of their afflictions, perhaps even a man attempting to keep the sale of opium in the hands of a very few, of whom I was told he might be one. God forgive me.”
“I know,” Rathbone answered softly. “It was very believable. Our record of the use and abuse of opium, the smuggling and the crime already attached to it, are damnable. Alvar Doulting is only one of its victims, Joel Lambourn another, Zenia Gadney a third. We must become far wiser in the treatment of pain, of every sort. This is a warning we ignore at our peril.”
“You will make a good judge,” Pendock said, biting his lip, his face pale and tight with regret.
“Maybe,” Rathbone answered. “I imagine it is a great deal more difficult than it looks from the floor of the courtroom, where your loyalties are defined for you.”
“Indeed,” Pendock answered. “I have found nothing harder in life than to be certain of my loyalties. I am sure in my head; it is my heart that ruins it all.”
Rathbone thought of Margaret. “It always does. It would be easier not to love,” he agreed.
“And become the walking dead? Is that what you want?” Pendock asked.
“No.” Rathbone had no hesitation. “No, it isn’t. Good luck, sir.” He went out without looking backward, leaving Pendock to his thoughts.
Outside in the hall he almost bumped into Monk.
Monk looked at him with intense concern.
Rathbone wanted to affect indifference, but the warmth in Monk’s eyes made it impossible. He stood still, waiting for Monk to speak first.
“You used them, didn’t you?” Monk asked. “Ballinger’s photographs.”
Rathbone thought of lying, but discarded the idea. “Yes. This was too big, too monstrous to think only of my own peace of mind.” He searched Monk’s face now, afraid of what he would see.
Monk smiled. “So would I … I think,” he said quietly. “The burden is heavy either way.”
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