The Silent Cry

by Anne Perry

  “Yeah,” Vida agreed.

  Ebenezer Goode rose to his feet.

  “Yes, Mr. Goode,” the judge said, forestalling Goode’s objection. “Sir Oliver, has Mr. Hopgood’s occupation got anything to do with Mr. Duff’s guilt or innocence in this case?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Rathbone replied without hesitation. “The women he employs are profoundly pertinent to the issue. Indeed, they are the true victims in this tragedy.”

  There was a ripple of amazement around the room. Several of the jurors looked confused and annoyed.

  In the dock, Rhys moved position and a spasm of pain twisted his face. The judge also seemed unhappy. “If you are going to demonstrate to the court that they were abused in some way, Sir Oliver, that will not help your client’s cause. The fact that they can, or cannot, identify their assailants will distress them and give you nothing. In fact, it will only damage your client’s sympathies still further. If it is your intention to plead insanity, then practical evidence is required, and of a very specific nature, as I am sure you know very well. You have pleaded ‘not guilty.’ Are you now wishing to change that plea?”

  “No, my lord.” Rathbone heard his words drop into a well of silence, and wondered if he had just made an appalling mistake. What was Rhys himself thinking of him? “No, my lord. I have no cause to believe that my client is not of sane mind.”

  “Then proceed with questioning Mrs. Hopgood,” the judge directed. “But come to your point as rapidly as you are able. I shall not allow you to waste the court’s time and patience with delaying tactics.”

  Rathbone knew how very close to the truth that charge was.

  “Thank you, my lord,” he said graciously, and turned back to Vida. “Mrs. Hopgood, have you suffered a shortage of workers lately?”

  “Yeah. Lots o’ sickness,” she replied. She knew what he wished. She was an intelligent woman, and articulate in her own fashion. “Or more like injury. Took me a fair bit o’ argy-bargy, but I got it aht of ’em wot ’ad ’appened.” She looked questioningly at Rathbone, and then seeing his expression, continued with feeling. “They do a bit o’ dolly mop stuff on the side … beggin’ yer pardon, sir, I mean takes the odd gent ’ere an’ there ter add a bit extra … w’en their children is ’ungry, or the like.”

  “We understand,” Rathbone assured her, then explained for the jury. “You mean they practice a little amateur prostitution when times are particularly hard.”

  “In’t that wot I said? Yeah. Can’t blame ’em, poor cows. ’Oo’s gonna watch their children starvin’ and not do summink abaht it? In’t ’uman.” She drew breath. “Like I said, some of ’em was doin’ a bit on the side, like. Well, first orff they got cheated outa pay. Got no pimps ter look arter ’em, yer see.” Her handsome face darkened with anger. “Then it got worse. These geezers don’t on’y cheat, they started roughin’ ’em up, knockin’ ’em around, like. First it were just a bit, then it got worse.” Her expression twisted till the anger and pain in it were stark to see. “Some of ’em got beat pretty bad, bones broke, teef an’ noses broke—kicked, some of ’em were. Some of ’em was on’y bits o’ children theirselves. So I got a bit o’ money tergether an’ ’ired meself someone ter find out ’oo wos doin’ it.” She stopped abruptly, staring at Rathbone. “D’yer want me ter say ’oo I got, an’ wot ’e found?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Hopgood,” Rathbone replied. “You have laid an excellent foundation for us to discern from these poor women themselves what occurred. Just one more thing …”

  “Yeah?”

  “How many women do you know of who were beaten in this way?”

  “In Seven Dials? Abaht twen’y-odd, as I knows of. They went on ter St. Giles—”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hopgood,” Rathbone interrupted. “Please tell us only your own experience.”

  Goode rose again. “All we have heard so far is hearsay, my lord. Mrs. Hopgood has not been a victim herself, and she has not mentioned Mr. Rhys Duff. I have been extraordinarily patient, as was your lordship. All this is tragic, and abhorrent, but completely irrelevant.”

  “It is not irrelevant, my lord,” Rathbone argued. “The prosecution’s case is that Rhys Duff went to the area of St. Giles to use prostitutes there, and that his father followed him, chastised him for his behavior, and in the resulting quarrel, Rhys killed his father and was severely injured himself. Therefore what happened to these women is fundamental to the case.”

  “I have not claimed that these unfortunate women were raped, my lord,” Goode contradicted. “But if they were, then that only adds to the brutality of the accused’s conduct and the validity of the motive. No wonder his father charged him with grievous sin and would have chastened him severely, possibly even threatened to turn him over to the law.”

  Rathbone swung around to face Goode. “You have proved only that Rhys used a prostitute in the area of St. Giles. You have not proved violence of any sort against any women—in St. Giles or in Seven Dials.”

  “Gentlemen!” the judge said sharply. “Sir Oliver, if you are determined to prove this issue, then you had better be absolutely certain you are aiding your client’s cause and not further condemning him, but if you are satisfied, then prove your point. Proceed with dispatch.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Rathbone dismissed Vida Hopgood, and one by one called half a dozen of the women of St. Giles whom Monk had found. He began with the earliest, and least severely injured. The court sat in uncomfortable near silence and listened to their pathetic tales of poverty, illness, desperation, journeys out onto the streets to pick up a few pence by selling their bodies, and the cheating, then the violence which had followed.

  Rathbone loathed doing it. The women were gray-faced, almost inarticulate with fear and, in some cases, also shame. They despised themselves for what they did, but need drove them. They hated standing in this handsome courtroom facing exquisitely gowned and wigged lawyers, the judge in his scarlet robes, and having to tell of their need, their humiliation and their pain.

  Rathbone glanced at the jurors’ faces and read a sense of different emotions in them. He watched how much their imaginations conceived of the lives that were being described. How many of them, if any, had used such women themselves? What did they feel now? Shame, anger, pity or revulsion? More than half of them looked up to the dock at Rhys, whose face was twisted with emotion, but it was impossible to say what aroused his anger, or the revulsion which was so plain in his features.

  Rathbone looked also at Sylvestra Duff and saw her lips puckered with horror as a world opened up in front of her beyond anything she had imagined, women whose lives were so utterly unlike her own they could have belonged to a different species. And yet they lived only a few miles away, in the same city. And her son had used them, could even, for all she knew, have begotten a child upon them.

  Beside her, Fidelis Kynaston looked pale but less shocked. There was in her already a knowledge of pain, of the darker side of the world and those who lived in it. This was only a restatement of things she already knew.

  On Sylvestra’s other side, Eglantyne Wade was motionless as wave after wave of misery passed over her, things she had never imagined were rehearsed before her in sickening detail.

  The following day the stories became more violent. The witnesses still carried the marks of beatings on their blackened and swollen faces, their broken teeth.

  Ebenezer Goode hesitated before questioning each one. None of them had recognized their assailants. Every brutal act only added to his case. Why should he challenge any of it? To demonstrate that the women were prostitutes anyway was unnecessary. There was not a man or woman in the room who did not know it and feel their own emotions regarding their trade and its place in society, or in their own personal lives. It was a subject of emotion rather than reason anyway. Words were only a froth on the surface of the deep tide of feeling.

  A particular wave of revulsion and anger swelled when the thirteen-year-old Lily Drover testified, still nursin
g her dislocated shoulder. Haltingly she told Rathbone how both she and her sister had been beaten and kicked. She repeated the grunted words of abuse she had heard, and how she had tried to crawl away and hide in the dark.

  Fidelis Kynaston looked so ashen Rathbone thought she suffered more in hearing it than Sylvestra, beside her.

  The judge leaned forward, his own face tight with distress.

  “Have you not established all you need, Sir Oliver? Surely no more can be necessary. This is a horrifying matter of escalating violence and brutality. What more do you require to show us? Make your point!”

  “I have one more victim of rape, my lord. This one was in St. Giles.”

  “Very well. I realize you need to establish that your assailants have moved into the relevant area. But make it brief.”

  “My lord.” Rathbone called the woman who had been raped and beaten on the night before Christmas Eve. Her face was still discolored. She had difficulty speaking through her broken teeth. Slowly, her eyes closed as she refused to look at the people who were watching her as she told about her terror and pain and humiliation. She began to describe being accosted by three men, how one of them had taken hold of her, how all three had laughed, then one had thrown her to the ground.

  In the dock, Rhys was gray-skinned, his eyes so hollow one could almost visualize the skull beneath the flesh. He leaned forward over the rail, his splinted hands stiff, shivering.

  The woman described how she had been taunted by the men, called names. One of them had kicked her, told her she was filth, should be got rid of, the human race cleansed of her sort.

  In the dock, Rhys started to bang his hands up and down on the railing. One of the warders made a move to stop him, but the muscles of Rhys’s body were knotted so hard he did not succeed. Rhys’s face was a mask of pain.

  No one else moved.

  The woman in the witness stand went on speaking, slowly, each word forced between her lips. She told how they had knocked her over till she was crouching on the cobbles.

  “They were ’ard, an’ wet,” she said huskily. “Then one of ’em leaned on top o’ me. ’E were ’eavy, and ’e smelled o’ summink funny, sort o’ sharp. One o’ the others forced me knees up and tore me dress. Then I felt ’im come inter me. It was like I were tore inside. It ’urt summink terrible. I—”

  She stopped, her eyes wide with horror as Rhys wrenched himself from the warders, his mouth gaping, his throat tortured with the sound it could not make, as if inside himself he screamed again and again.

  A warder made a lunge after him and caught one arm. Rhys lashed at him, his face a paroxysm of terror and loathing. The other warder made a grab and missed. Rhys overbalanced, hysterical with fear, teetered for a moment on the high railing, then swiveled and fell over the edge.

  A woman shrieked.

  The jurors rose to their feet.

  Sylvestra cried out his name and Fidelis clasped her arms around her friend.

  Rhys landed with a sickening crash and lay still.

  Hester was the first to move. She rose from her seat in the back of the gallery, on the edge of the row, where she could be reached were she needed, and ran forward, falling on her knees beside him.

  Then suddenly there was commotion everywhere. People were crying out, jostling one another. Others had been hurt, two of them badly. Press reporters were scrambling to force their way out to pass on the news. Ushers were trying helplessly to restore some form of order. The judge was banging his gavel. Someone was shouting for a doctor for a woman whose leg had been broken by an overturned bench.

  Rathbone swung around to make his way towards where Rhys was lying. Where was Corriden Wade? Had he been seized to tend to the woman? Rathbone did not even know if Rhys was still alive. Considering the height of his fall, he could easily be dead. It is not difficult to break a neck. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps it would be a merciful escape from a more prolonged and dreadful end.

  Was it even suicide, in hearing the full horror of his crime told from the victim’s view, her feelings of shame, humiliation, helplessness and pain? Was this the nearest Rhys could come to some kind of redemption?

  Was this Rathbone’s final failure, or perhaps the only thing he had truly done for him?

  Except that Rhys had not raped the woman. He had been playing cards with Lady Sandon. It was Leighton Duff who had first raped and then beaten her. Leighton Duff … and who?

  The uproar in the courtroom was overwhelming. People were shouting, trying to clear the way for a stretcher. Someone was screaming again and again, uselessly, hysterically. All around him people were pushing and shoving, trying to move one way or another.

  Bent over Rhys’s body, Hester, for one desperate moment, had the same thought that had passed through Rathbone’s mind … was this Rhys’s escape at last from the pain of body which afflicted him, and from the greater agony of mind which haunted even his sleep? Was this the only peace he could find in a world which had become one long nightmare?

  Then she touched him and knew he was still alive. She slid her hand under his head, feeling the thick hair. She felt the bone gently, exploring. There was no depression in the skull. She pulled her hand clear. There was no blood. His legs were twisted, but his spine was straight. As far as she could tell, he was concussed, but not fatally injured.

  Where was Corriden Wade? She looked up, peering around, and saw no one she recognized, but there was a huddle of people where the bench was overturned and someone was lying on the floor. Even Rathbone was beyond the crowd jostling beside and in front of her.

  Then she saw Monk and felt a surge of relief. He was elbowing his way forward, angry, white-faced. He was shouting at someone. A large man clenched his fist and seemed intent on making a fight of it. Someone else began pulling at him. Two more women were crying for no apparent reason.

  Monk finally forced his way through and knelt beside her.

  “Is he alive?” he asked.

  “Yes. But we’ve got to get him out of here,” she responded, hearing her voice sharp with fear.

  He looked down at Rhys, who was still completely insensible. “Thank God he can’t feel this,” he said quietly. “I’ve sent the warder for one of those long benches. We could carry him on that.”

  “We’ve got to get him to a hospital,” she said desperately. “He can’t stay in the cell. I don’t know how badly he’s hurt.”

  Monk opened his mouth as if to reply, then changed his mind. One of the warders had come downstairs from the dock and was pushing people aside to reach Rhys.

  “Poor devil,” he said laconically. “Best for ’im if ’e’d killed ’isself, but if ’en in’t, we’ll best do for ’im what we can. ’Ere, miss, let me get ’im up onter the bench wot Tom’s bringin’.”

  “We’ll take him to the nearest hospital,” she said, rising shakily and only just avoiding falling over her own skirts.

  “Sorry, miss, but we gotta take ’im back to ’is cell. ’E’s a prisoner …”

  “He’s hardly going to escape!” she said furiously, all her helplessness and pain welling up in useless anger for a moment. “He’s totally insensible, you fool! Look at him!”

  “Yes, miss,” the warder said stolidly. “But the law is the law. We’ll put ’im back in ’is cell, an’ yer can stay wif ’im, if yer don’ mind bein’ locked in wif ’im? No doubt they’ll send a doctor w’en they get one.”

  “Of course I’ll stay with him!” she choked out. “And fetch Dr. Wade, immediately!”

  “We’ll try, miss. Is there anyfink as yer want for ’im? Water, like, or a little brandy? I’m sure as I could get a little brandy for yer.”

  She controlled herself with an effort. The man was doing his best. “Thank you. Yes, get me both water and brandy, please.”

  The other warder appeared along with two more men carrying a wooden bench. With surprising gentleness they picked Rhys up and laid him on the bench, then carried it out of the courtroom, pushing past onlookers an
d out through the doors and down the hallway toward the cells.

  Hester followed, hardly aware of the people around her, of the curious stares and the mutters and calls. All she could think of was how badly Rhys was hurt and why he had fallen over. Had it been an accident as he tried to escape the warders and they attempted to restrain him, or had he intended to kill himself? Had he lost every last vestige of hope?

  Or had he been lying all the time, and he had both killed his father and raped and beaten those women?

  She refused to believe that … not unless and until she had to. As long as there was a flicker of any other possibility, she would cling to it. But what possibility? What other conceivable explanation was there? She raked her imagination and her memory.

  Then one occurred to her, one so extreme and so horrible she stumbled as she followed the warders and all but fell. She was shaking. She felt cold and sick, and her mind raced for any way at all in which she could learn if it were true, and prove it. And she knew why Rhys could not speak, why even if he could … he would not.

  She ran a step or two to catch up with them, and as soon as they were at the cells she swung around to face the warders.

  “Thank you. Bring me the brandy and water, then leave us alone. I will do what I can for him.” It was a race against time. Dr. Wade, or some other physician, would be bound to come soon. If she was right, it must not be Corriden Wade. But she must know. Anyone interrupting what she now meant to do would be horrified. She might even be prosecuted. Certainly she would jeopardize her career. If it was Corriden Wade, she might even lose her life.

  The warder disappeared, leaving the door open, and his companion waited just outside. What could she begin doing to save time?

  “Yer all right, miss?”

  “Yes, of course I am, thank you. I am a nurse. I have treated many injured men before. I shall just examine him to see where he is most seriously hurt. It will help the doctor when he comes. Where is the brandy? And the water? A little will do, just hurry!” Her hands were shaking. Her mouth was dry. She could feel her heart lurching and knocking in her chest.