by Anne Perry
“Sergeant …”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Have …” Wade bit his lip. What he was about to say seemed to hurt him intensely. He struggled with it, hovered on the edge of decision, and finally summoned the strength. “Have you considered the possibility that he is not sane … not responsible, as you and I understand the sense?”
So Wade accepted that Rhys was guilty. Was it simply the evidence they had presented? Or did he know something from Rhys himself, some communication, some long knowledge and perception of the boy’s nature over the years?
“No man could do what was done to those women, Doctor, and be what you and I understand as sane,” Evan replied quickly. “Blame is not for us to decide … thank God.”
Wade took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, then nodded his acknowledgment and walked past Evan to the withdrawing room door.
10
After Monk and Evan had left, Corriden Wade remained in the withdrawing room, pacing the floor, unable to be still long enough to sit. Sylvestra was motionless, staring into space as if all will and strength within her had died. Hester stood by the fire.
“I’m sorry,” Wade said passionately, looking at Sylvestra. “I’m so sorry. I had no conception this would happen … it is the most ghastly thing.”
Hester stared at him. Had he seen some darkness in Rhys all the time, and feared disaster, but something less than this, less intense, less irretrievable than death? Looking at his face now, cast in deep shadow, his eyes hollow, his cheeks somber with draining emotion and lack of sleep, it would be easy to believe he was seeing the realization of a long-held dread, but something he had been helpless to prevent.
Then another thought occurred to her. Was Corriden Wade the missing link in Evan’s chain of evidence? Was it he, perhaps, who had tried to warn Leighton Duff of his son’s weakness, his propensity for real vice? Had it been something Wade had said which had made Leighton Duff ultimately piece together all the sharp words, looks, little facts here and there, and realize the terrible truth?
With a shiver of horror she realized she had accepted within herself that Rhys was guilty. She had fought against it so long, and then in a moment had surrendered without even being conscious of it.
Wade stopped pacing and stared down at Sylvestra.
“You must rest, my dear. I shall give you a draft to help you sleep. I am sure Miss Latterly will sit up with Rhys should it be necessary, but I doubt it will. You will need your strength.” He turned to Hester. “I am sorry to place so much upon you, but I have no doubt both your courage and your compassion are equal to it.”
It was a profound compliment, and gravely given. It was not a time for thanks, only acceptance.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Tomorrow we shall begin what is to be done.”
He nodded and at last seemed to relax a fraction. Hester believed it prudent to allow him a few moments alone with Sylvestra. His care for her was apparent. Now, of all times, they should be permitted a privacy to reach towards each other through the tragedy which engulfed them.
“I shall go and see how Rhys is now,” she said. “Good night.” She did not wait for a reply, but turned and went out, closing the door behind her.
Rhys did not call her in the night. Whatever Dr. Wade had given him was sufficient to induce in him not rest but unconsciousness. She had no idea how long he had been awake when she heard the bell fall on the floor.
She rose immediately. It was full daylight. She grasped her shawl and opened the connecting door.
Rhys was lying facing her, his eyes wide and terrified.
She went in and sat on the bed.
“Tell me again, Rhys,” she said quietly. “Did you kill your father?”
He shook his head slowly, keeping his eyes on her.
“Not even by accident?” she pressed. “Did you fight with him, not realizing who he was, in the dark?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. His expression was filled with horror, his lips drawn back, his jaw clenched, the muscles of his neck corded with tension inside him.
“Could you see in the alley?” she pressed, the evidence heavy in her mind. “If someone accosted you, attacked you, are you sure you would know who it was?”
He gave a curious little jerk. If he had had the ability to make a sound, it might have been laughter, but bitter, self-hurting. There was some dreadful irony in what he knew, and he could not tell her, even if he would have.
“Could you see?” she asked again.
He stared at her without moving.
There were so many questions. She thought desperately which would be the right one.
“Do you know what happened that night?”
He nodded, still not taking his eyes from hers, although the horror in him was so palpable she could feel coldness creeping through her, and despair so great it consumed and destroyed everything else.
“Rhys …” She put her hand on his arm, holding him hard, feeling the muscle and bone beneath her fingers. “I’ll help you in any way I can, but I have to know how to. Can you tell me, somehow, what happened? You were there, you saw it. If you want to plead against the charge they are bringing, then you must give them something else to believe.”
For seconds he simply gazed back at her, then slowly he closed his eyes and turned away.
“Rhys!”
He shook his head.
She did not know what to think. Whatever had happened, he still could not bear to have anyone know. Even facing arrest, and in time a trial for his life, he would not impart it.
But did he understand that? Did he imagine because Evan had not taken him away that somehow it would not happen?
“Rhys!” she said urgently. “It hasn’t gone away, you know. You are under house arrest. It is just the same as being in a public cell or in Newgate. The only reason you are here, not there, is because you are too ill to move. There will be a trial, and if you are found guilty, they will take you to Newgate, no matter how ill you are. They won’t care, because they will hang you anyway.…” She could not go on. She could not bear it, even though he had not turned back or even opened his eyes. His body was rigid, tears running under his lids and down his cheeks.
“Rhys,” she said softly. “I have to make you realize this is real. You must tell someone the truth to save yourself.”
Again he shook his head.
“Did you kill him?” she whispered.
He shook his head again, very little, but quite unmistakably.
“But you know who did?” she persisted.
He turned back very slowly, meeting her eyes. He lay still for seconds. She could hear the sound of distant feet as a maid crossed the landing.
“Do you?” she said again.
He closed his eyes without answering.
She stood up and went out of the room and down the stairs to the withdrawing room, where Sylvestra was moving aimlessly from one idle task to another. A pile of embroidery yarns sat tangled on a small table, linen bunched up near them. A bowl of winter flowers from the hothouse were half arranged, half simply poked into the water. Several letters lay on a salver on the large semicircular table by the wall; two were opened, the others were not.
Sylvestra swung around as soon as she heard the door.
“How is he?” she asked quickly, then bit her lip as though unsure what she wanted the answer to be. “I simply don’t know what to do. Leighton was my husband. I owe him … everything, not only loyalty but love, respect, decency.” Her brow puckered. “How could it have happened? What … what changed him? And don’t tell me Rhys hasn’t changed … I’ve seen the difference in him and it terrifies me!”
She swung away, her hands clenched in front of her. A less controlled woman would have wept or screamed, thrown something just to release the tension inside herself.
“He never used to be like this, Miss Latterly.” Her voice was tight in her throat, as if she had difficulty making herself speak. “He was willful at times, thought
less, like most young people, but there was no cruelty in him. I don’t understand it. I thought I was so tired last night I would have slept from exhaustion. I wanted to.” She emphasized it fiercely. “I wanted simply to cease to be able to think or feel anything. But I lay awake for hours. I racked my brain trying to understand what had changed him, why he had become so different, when it had begun to happen. I found no answer. It still makes no sense to me.” She turned back to Hester, her face bleak and desperate. “Why would anyone want to beat those women? Why rape a woman who is willing anyway? Why would anyone do that? It isn’t sane.”
“I don’t understand either,” Hester said candidly. “But obviously it is not appetite, but rather more a desire for power over someone else, a need to hurt and humiliate—” She stopped. Sylvestra was looking at her with amazement, as though she had said something new and almost inconceivable.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to punish, not for justice but for anger?” Hester asked her.
“I … I suppose so,” Sylvestra said slowly. “But that is hardly … yes, I suppose I have.” She stared at Hester curiously. “Are you saying it is the same thing, hideously magnified?”
“I don’t know. I am only trying to imagine.”
The fire settled with a shower of sparks.
“You mean it is not appetite … but … hate?” Sylvestra asked, struggling to understand.
“Perhaps.”
“But why would Rhys hate such women? He doesn’t even know them.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter who it is. Anyone will do, the weaker, the more vulnerable, the better …”
“Stop it!” Sylvestra took a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. It is not your fault. I asked you, and now I do not want to hear the answer.” Her hands were twisting around one another. She had scratched herself with her nails but she seemed unaware of it. “Poor Leighton. He must have suspected there was something terribly wrong for ages, and at last he had to put it to the test. And when he followed him, and he knew …” She could not finish. They stood there in the quiet, dignified room, two women imagining the same terrible scene in the alley, father and son face-to-face over a horror which had to divide them forever. And then the son had attacked, perhaps out of rage, or guilt, perhaps out of some kind of fear that he would be caught by the law, and he imagined he could escape the consequences if he fought his way out. And they had beaten and punched and kicked at each other until Leighton was dead and Rhys was so badly hurt he lost consciousness and lay there on the stones, soaked with his own blood.
And now it was so terrible to him he could not accept that it was he who had done it. It had been another person, another self, one he did not own.
“We must find a barrister for him,” Hester said aloud. “He must have some defense when he comes to trial. Do you have someone you wish?”
“A barrister?” Sylvestra blinked. “Will they really try him? He is too ill. He must be mad, won’t they realize that? Corriden will tell them—”
“He is not too mad to stand trial,” Hester said with absolute certainty. “Whether insanity will be the best defense or not, I cannot say, but you must find a barrister. Do you have someone?”
Sylvestra seemed to find it difficult to concentrate. Her eyes looked without focus. “A barrister? Mr. Caulfield has always dealt with our affairs. Of course, I have never spoken to him. Leighton handled business, naturally.”
“Is he a solicitor?” Hester asked, almost sure of the answer. “You need a barrister for this, someone who will appear in court to represent Rhys. He must be engaged through Mr. Caulfield, but if you do not have any preferences, I am acquainted with Sir Oliver Rathbone. He is the best barrister there is.”
“I … suppose so …” Sylvestra was uncertain. Hester was not sure if it was her shock at the turn of events, or if now she doubted whether she wished to engage an unknown barrister, at unknown expense, to defend Rhys when she feared him guilty. Maybe it was simply too big a decision for her to make alone. She was not used to decision. She had always had her husband to see to such things. He would find and assess the information. His word would be final. She would probably not even be expected to contribute an opinion.
It was up to Hester to see that Rhys was defended. Possibly no one else would.
“I’ll speak to Sir Oliver and ask him to come to see you.” She chose not to make it a question, so Sylvestra could not so easily refuse. She smiled encouragingly. “Will it be reasonable if I go first thing in the morning?”
Sylvestra drew in her breath, but could not make up her mind.
“Thank you,” Hester accepted, her voice gentle, full of an assurance she was far from feeling.
Hester was in Rathbone’s office at nine o’clock. She waited until his first client had been and gone, then she was ushered into his office, the clerk advised that the next client should be handsomely entertained and informed that Sir Oliver was regrettably kept by an emergency, which was at least half true.
She did not waste his time with preamble. She was sufficiently conscious of the fact that he had seen her without an appointment, and she was presuming on his regard for her to ask a favor. She hated doing it, the more so since their last encounter, and her belief as to his feelings towards her. Had Rhys’s life not depended upon it, she would not have come. Sylvestra’s solicitor could have briefed whomever he wished.
“They have arrested Rhys for the murder of his father,” she said bluntly. “They have not removed him, of course, because he is too ill, but they will bring him to trial. His mother is at her wits’ end, and not in a position or a state of mind to find for him the best barrister for his defense.” She stopped, acutely aware of his dark eyes on her and his expression of concern leaping ahead of what she had already told him.
“I think you had better sit down and tell me the facts of the case, so far as you know them.” He indicated the chair opposite his desk and moved around to sit at the one behind it. He did not yet reach for the quill to make notes.
She tried to compose her mind so that she could tell him sensibly, in order so that it was comprehensible, and without over-weighing it with emotion.
“Rhys Duff and his father, Leighton Duff, were found in Water Lane, an alley in the area of St. Giles,” she started to explain. “Leighton Duff was beaten to death. Rhys was severely injured, in a similar manner, but he survived, although he is unable to speak and both his hands are badly broken, so neither can he hold a pen. That is important, because it means he cannot communicate, except by a nod or a shake of his head.”
“That is an added complication,” he agreed gravely. “I have read something of the case. It is impossible to pick up a newspaper and not at least be aware of it. What evidence is there that leads the police to presume that Rhys killed his father, rather than the more natural assumption that both of them were attacked, and possibly robbed, by thieves or general ruffians of the area? Do you know?”
“Yes. Monk has found evidence which ties them to the rape cases in Seven Dials—”
“Just a minute,” he interrupted, holding up his hand. “You said ‘them.’ Who are we talking about? And what rape cases in Seven Dials? Is he charged with rape as well?”
She was not being as clear as she had intended after all. She had seen the fractional change in his face when she had mentioned Monk’s name, and she felt guilty. What had he seen in her eyes?
She must speak intelligently, in an orderly fashion. She started again.
“Monk was engaged by a woman from Seven Dials to discover who had been first cheating, then, with increasing violence, raping and beating factory women, amateur prostitutes in Seven Dials—” She stopped.
He was frowning. Did he disapprove of Monk or of the women, or did he fear it made Rhys’s case even worse?
“What is it?” The words were out before she intended.
“Rape is a very ugly crime,” he said quietly. “But it is one the courts will not pursue … for a dozen different reasons, both social …” H
e wrinkled his nose very slightly in a wealth of distaste, subtle and deep. “And legal impossibilities also,” he added. “Rape is a difficult crime to prove. Why did Monk pursue it? Whatever else he has forgotten, he must be aware of these things.”
“I argued it with him,” she said with a very slight smile. “It is not what you fear.” She hoped as she was saying it that it was the truth, not merely her wish. “He intended only to expose them to their own society, not to provoke the people of St. Giles to take their revenge.”
Rathbone’s lips curled in a faint, ironic humor. “That sounds like Monk. A nice irony, using society’s hypocrisy to make it punish its own for the very crime it pretends does not exist and will not strengthen the law to judge.” He kept his eyes on her face. “But what has this to do with Rhys Duff and the death of his father?”
“For some time Rhys had been keeping company with women of whom his father did not approve, and to the exclusion of suitable young ladies,” she explained. “At least that is what his mother believed.” She was twisting her hands in her lap without realizing it. “Perhaps, in fact, he had some idea of what Rhys was really doing. Anyway, on that particular evening they quarreled, Rhys left the room, and apparently the house. Leighton Duff left about half an hour afterwards, when he realized that Rhys had gone, and perhaps suspected to where.” She looked at him to make sure he was following her explanation.
“Proceed,” he directed. “It is all perfectly clear so far.”
“One woman was raped and beaten in St. Giles that night,” she went on. “Within a few yards of Water Lane. A short time after that, the bodies of Rhys and his father were found in Water Lane itself. Rhys was insensible, and has not spoken since. Leighton Duff was dead.”
“And the assumption,” he concluded, “is that Leighton Duff caught up with Rhys and his friends while it was still apparent they were the rapists of the woman … either they were in the act or they had just completed it. He was furious, endeavored to reason with them or apprehend them, and one, or all of them, attacked him. He drove off the other two quite quickly, but Rhys, knowing he would not escape the matter, fought until he had killed him.”