by Anne Perry
He swore to his name, address, and occupation, and to tell the entire truth. Perhaps Ravenswood would go lightly with him. Rathbone certainly would not. Please heaven Monk was finding something—anything—to cause a reasonable doubt! A connection to an enemy that one of Exeter’s deals had ruined, a poisonous enemy.
Ravenswood led Doyle softly through his career at the bank and the years he had handled Exeter’s accounts. He touched lightly on the profits and expenses, the enormous chances Exeter had taken, and the money he had made, and occasionally lost. Yes, he was indeed a client who had earned the bank a great deal of money. And yes, Doyle’s own fortune had risen with Exeter’s. Not to the same degree, of course, but more than most men’s. A lot more.
“So, you owe much of your success to the fact that he is one of your clients?” Ravenswood asked.
“Yes, sir.” Doyle shifted his weight as if his back pained him.
“Did he come to you when his wife was kidnapped and a very large ransom was demanded of him?”
“Yes, sir. He was very distressed.”
“Did you help him realize his assets in order to have the money to hand over?”
Doyle looked uncomfortable. He answered slightly aggressively. “Yes, sir. He did not have the amount readily available in cash. Hardly anyone would. Selling property, even if you are prepared to take an immense loss, can still not be accomplished in so short a time.” He cleared his throat. “And even if the kidnappers were prepared for urgent negotiations, say a week, what man would leave his wife in the captivity of such men even an hour longer than he could help? God alone knows what they might have done to her…” He trailed off, leaving it to the imagination. A glance at the jurors’ faces made it nightmare-clear what they thought.
“Indeed.” Ravenswood nodded gravely. “So, what did you do, Mr. Doyle?”
Doyle cleared his throat again. “Mrs. Exeter had a very large trust, which she would inherit on her thirty-third birthday, which was over a year away. Mr. Exeter asked the trustee, Mr. Maurice Latham, if he would consider using it to save her life. Of course, he agreed. It was lodged in my bank. With Mr. Latham’s agreement, I had instant access to it. I gave it to Mr. Exeter, for the ransom of his wife, the saving of her life. I could hardly do less.”
“Quite so,” Ravenswood agreed. “And did Miss Franken assist you in these…preparations of yours, Mr. Doyle?”
Doyle’s face froze for a moment, as if he had not expected this question. Surely, he had been prepared by Ravenswood? A good lawyer—never mind a brilliant one—does not ask questions to which he does not already know the answers.
“I…I do not wish to speak ill of the poor young woman,” Doyle began. “But she was not as skilled or as experienced in banking as she thought. She is dead, poor creature. Can I say that she was diligent, a good student, but she had a tendency to leap to conclusions that were not justified. She had met Mrs. Exeter on a few occasions, and Mrs. Exeter had been very gracious to her. I’m afraid poor Bella took her death, and the manner of it, very hard.”
“So, she could have read into the papers things that were not there?”
Doyle looked relieved. “Yes. Indeed, looking back on her remarks, I think she did. She did not fully comprehend the situation.”
“And Miss Franken knew nothing that would harm your reputation in the bank, were she to confide in Mr. Monk?”
“If he found something amiss in it, it would be his lack of understanding of banking or figures. They can be confusing when you are not accustomed to dealing with them,” Doyle replied. “There are fees to be paid for urgent transactions, which might look to someone unfamiliar with the process like miscalculations. And when one adds up columns of figures several times, one tends to make the same error each time. A person more experienced would do it upward one time, and downward the next. Books have to be balanced every day. Errors are quickly found.” He seemed satisfied with the answer.
“And you did not confide in Miss Franken at all?”
“About the private accounts of a client? Certainly not.”
“Because you did not trust her?”
“No. I would have dispensed with her services had I not trusted her. Simply because such accounts are private, and even more so at a time like that, when a woman’s life hung in the balance. I think, sir, that much is obvious.” Doyle sounded eminently reasonable, but there was a distinct discomfort in the way he stood, altering the balance of his weight every now and then.
“Did you have any idea of Miss Franken’s personal life, Mr. Doyle?”
Doyle’s eyebrows shot up. “Good heavens, no! As far as I know, and of course I inquired, her reputation was as a very respectable young woman. A little…bookish…to attract the attention of most men, if you know what I mean?”
“She lacked the opportunity to misbehave?” Ravenswood’s face was difficult to read, but Hooper thought he disapproved of the unkindness of the remark.
“I…I meant the temptation did not easily come her way,” Doyle recovered himself. “Perhaps she preferred books.” Then he must have realized that a perfect excuse to explain her death had been offered him, and he had refused it. He drew breath quickly. “I really did not take much notice of her personal affairs. Perhaps I should have done. The honest answer is that I don’t know.”
“But she was clever with figures?”
“Yes. Very.”
“Is it possible she was better acquainted with Mr. Exeter than you were aware?”
This time, Doyle did not miss the opportunity. “I suppose it is.”
Hooper listened as the afternoon wore on, but he could see nothing deeper than the lawyers moving cautiously, testing each other. The only drama lay in the minds of the audience in the gallery, possibly in the tense and watchful jurors, and of course in the minds of the witnesses and of Harry Exeter, sitting white-faced and haggard in the dock.
The day finished with the forensic accountant that Runcorn had employed, who gave details no one understood of the figures in the bank’s ledgers. He was able to show that there had been both licit and illicit movement of funds, and that a good deal of money had disappeared from Katherine’s trust over the years. It could have been invested, but badly, because there had been no yield. Mr. Doyle’s own account had also grown considerably since the week after Kate Exeter’s death. Mr. Latham’s records were unavailable to be checked, but that was about to be rectified.
Mr. Doyle’s personal accounts were also examined. Rathbone pushed this but could only make Doyle look greedy, and certainly opportunistic, if not worse. It raised the first natural doubt of Exeter’s guilt.
Hooper was able to report this to Monk when he saw him in the early evening at the Wapping Police Station.
“Haven’t you found anything?” he asked when he had finished.
Monk looked exhausted, and there was no energy coming from him to indicate he had a new idea to work on. The question was a matter of form.
“No. I’ve been looking further into Lister’s associates. Someone must know who killed him, but they’re very quiet indeed. Some people suggested they’ve gone to sea, to one of the big European ports. There’s always labor needed there.”
“Not many where strangers are welcome,” Hooper pointed out. “More likely to stay at sea. That is, if they’re seamen in the first place. Any idea at least of their names?”
Monk shook his head.
“And enemies who might be behind it all?” Hooper asked. “With Doyle or not?”
“No,” Monk said flatly. “I’ve got men on it; so has Runcorn. We found a certain amount of dislike, envy, grievances over shared investments gone wrong, but they all seem to have taken it as the fortunes of business. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Either Exeter is not hated as much as he fears, or his enemies have been better at hiding it than I can uncover.”
They spoke a li
ttle longer and moved to memories of past times: of Orme and the house he had been going to build by the riverside, down the estuary a bit. They had both been thinking of the old loyalties, people who had been part of their lives. They were grieving not only for Orme, but for all the old memories and safeties that he represented. It gave some comfort; there were things that, for a moment at least, could not be tarnished by the present and what was going on at the Old Bailey.
* * *
—
HOOPER RETURNED TO THE trial the next day. Ravenswood had not finished presenting his case for the prosecution. Hooper knew from the focus of the jurors that Rathbone was going to have an uphill battle to win them over. But if any man on earth could do it, he could. Hooper had watched him win seemingly impossible cases before. So far, he had questioned hardly any of the evidence. Hooper looked at him sitting quietly in his seat at the front of the court, in his lawyer’s white wig and black gown. He looked comfortable, biding his time. Please heaven, he was!
Ravenswood called Runcorn.
Runcorn crossed the floor and went up the steps to the witness stand. He was big, solid, heavy. He was quite a good-looking man in a long-nosed and solemn sort of way. He looked humorless, but Hooper knew he was not, only because he had seen him with the wife he adored—who was socially immeasurably above him, but also wise enough to recognize his worth—and with the baby daughter he could still hardly believe was real.
Runcorn swore to his identity and rank in the police.
Ravenswood asked about his being called to where the body of Bella Franken had been pulled out of the river. Runcorn replied with very little detail, but in spite of his best efforts to keep his feelings to himself, his deep sense of both pity and outrage marked his features and rang through his voice. Anyone listening might have imagined he saw, for a moment, his own wife or daughter used in such a way, and he could not bear it.
“You saw her pulled out of the river?” Ravenswood questioned.
“No, sir. Her body was already out of the water when I arrived.”
“And you said Commander Monk pulled her out?”
“Yes, sir. At least, rightly put, I suppose he had to go in after her. She was beyond his reach from the dockside, which is where he was. I mean, he went in a boat in the water.”
“So, he went in after her?”
“I didn’t see, sir. But I have been told by numerous witnesses that that’s more or less what happened. He was waiting for her. Had a meeting with her, to get more papers or something. And he saw her, did the only thing he could…”
“Oh?”
“Well, he couldn’t leave her there,” Runcorn’s face showed clearly his opinion of anyone who would do that. “She might have been still alive! It’s…possible…at least it could be. For heaven’s sake, man, you wouldn’t leave a woman in the water, would you?”
“I hope I wouldn’t, Mr. Runcorn,” Ravenswood said gently. “But it still takes a brave man to go willingly into that dark, swift-running water after a body that is almost certainly already dead.”
“Well, Monk’s that sort of a man,” Runcorn said flatly. “And I’ve known him near on thirty years.” His glare defied Ravenswood to question it.
“Then why did you take the case from him? She was found in the water. He knew her as a witness in a case he was handling, and he pulled her out. Why hand the solving of her death over to you? If ever a case belonged to the Thames River Police, this one does.”
“As he was half-drowned and freezing cold,” Runcorn said with a tone that made it sound as if the answer was obvious, “he was in no state to follow up. Just about caught his death in the river. Whoever did it could have still been around.”
“I see. Did he identify her for you?”
“Yes. Told me briefly about her then, and more the next day.”
“He was willing for you to keep the case, even when he had recovered from his near drowning himself?”
“Yes, sir. Glad of the help. Needed to get started straightaway.”
Ravenswood drew out of Runcorn how he had questioned Doyle again, gone over all the evidence from the kidnapping itself, the finding of Lister, and then his death. Lastly, he spoke of the pursuit of the killer of Bella Franken, and the way it tied in with raising the ransom money.
“Lister had much of it, didn’t he?” Ravenswood asked. “That was how Monk found him in the first place.”
“Lot of money, sir, for a man like Lister. Not much for a man like Harry Exeter,” Runcorn replied.
“Quite so,” Ravenswood agreed.
“But why would a man steal money from his wife’s trust, when in a matter of a year or so it would to all intents be his? That’s what we have to understand,” Runcorn said. “But the papers that Miss Franken brought to show Mr. Monk, they were wrapped up inside a piece of oiled silk, and you could still make out the figures. India ink. It’s waterproof, sir. They explained it. If you’re clever enough with ledger sheets and that kind of thing, you can move money and make it appear on the pages twice, when it’s only one lot of money.”
“I find that hard to believe, Mr. Runcorn. Are you saying that there was not as much money passed to Lister? Then where did he get it from?”
“There was more money passed to him, then only a bit. At least on paper. Same as Mr. Doyle got a bit for doing it. Quite a big bit. But Mr. Exeter got the main portion…or that’s how it looked.”
“It was his wife’s money in the first place!” Ravenswood protested. “It would have been in his charge in a year!”
“Yes, sir. But he needed it before that. Mr. Exeter hadn’t enough liquidity to build that large development on the south bank, and he needed the money up front, and urgently.”
“Ah,” Ravenswood said quietly. “That sounds very clear. I think we can all understand that. And you are quite satisfied, Mr. Runcorn, that Mr. Exeter hired Lister to play kidnapper? Mr. Exeter was observed by Monk and his crew during the exchange that went so disastrously wrong, and then Lister was killed to keep him quiet, and finally so was poor Miss Franken, when she disentangled the books and realized what he had done?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Just for the record, did Mr. Monk agree with your conclusions?”
“No, sir, he did not.”
“And also there is, of course, the matter of embezzling from Mrs. Exeter’s trust fund, which will be completely investigated, and to which Mr. Exeter had no access. But it would, no doubt, have come to light at the time of her inheritance? There is much to be looked into yet. Please remain in the witness box, Mr. Runcorn. Sir Oliver may want to question you.”
But there was nothing left for Rathbone to ask. Ravenswood had drawn the story already from Runcorn’s disagreement with Monk. There was little point in challenging any of the identifications of witnesses. Who can tell one man from another in the wind and rain of a November dusk?
Rathbone declined, and the judge adjourned for the day.
Hooper left the Old Bailey and walked down the slope of the street toward the river, wondering what on earth Rathbone would do the next day to begin the defense of Harry Exeter. He could pursue the embezzlement as much as he liked. Latham could account for his whereabouts at all the relevant times. He was a thief, but not a killer.
He could think of nothing that did not have the unmistakable air of desperation, and the jury would know it.
CHAPTER
20
RATHBONE BEGAN STRAIGHTAWAY BY calling Celia Darwin to the stand. Hooper was in his place again, in order to carry any message to Monk that might alter the course of the case, and to return to Rathbone with any last desperate evidence they might have found.
Hooper watched Celia walk across the floor and climb up to the stand, holding on to the rail. She looked a little clumsy, and she actually tripped on one of the steps, only just catching herself in time before s
he lost her balance completely. Hooper rose from his seat and then sank back again. He had no right to go to her assistance. He would make a fool of himself and only draw more attention to her. Clearly, she hated having to relive Kate’s abduction, which she had tried futilely to prevent. It must haunt her every waking hour, whether she admitted it or not. Kate had been not only her cousin but her dearest friend, the one family member who remained close.
Celia turned when she reached the top of the steps and faced the room. As she took the oath her voice wavered, and once she actually stopped, as if she had lost the words. The usher prompted her, and she completed the ritual. Never once did she glance across at Harry Exeter in the dock.
Hooper looked up at him. He was staring at Celia fixedly, but Hooper could not read his expression. It could have been hope he was trying not to show, or perhaps he was endeavoring not to betray his fear or his vulnerability to the jury. He must hate being so exposed! Nothing of his old wealth, dignity, wit, and swagger was left to him.
Rathbone treated Celia with respect, at least in his manner. But he was acting for the defense, and Hooper knew now how much Celia disliked Exeter and had guessed how much he disliked her. Kate had remained her friend only because of her own insistence. Exeter had tried to wean her away from all her family, but especially Celia, who was from the branch that had missed out on the wealth, the social success, and all the general popularity. But Kate had found her one true friend and confidante in Celia, and she refused to set her aside.
What could Rathbone ask Celia, other than about the actual abduction, which she had seen? She had identified Lister once he was dead. Could he be going to challenge that? To what end? There must be some attack, or why would he bother?
Rathbone had already established Celia’s friendship with Kate. In her account she reached the day of the abduction and the fact that they were walking along the riverbank in the sun, talking together of personal matters.