Acceptable Loss (11 page)

Rathbone had tried to put from his mind Sullivan’s words blaming Arthur Ballinger for his downfall—first the temptation, then the corruption. Had his mind been deranged, and he had blamed Ballinger because he could not accept his own responsibility for what he had become? There had never been anything but words, perhaps hysterical—no facts, not even any details Sullivan could not have invented himself.

Monk came in through the door and closed it behind him. The clerk was right: he looked tired and miserable, almost defeated. The iron fist inside Rathbone’s stomach clenched tighter. He waited.

“I found out who killed Mickey Parfitt,” Monk said quietly. “The proof seems pretty conclusive. I thought you’d like to know.”

“I would!” Rathbone snapped. “So damned well tell me! Don’t stand there like an undertaker with toothache—tell me!”

A smile flickered across Monk’s face and disappeared. “Rupert Cardew.”

Rathbone was stunned. He had difficulty believing it. Certainly Rupert was a little dissolute, but surely not more than many young men with too much money and too many privileges. How on earth could he have become so degraded so young?

And yet even as a kind of sorrow washed over Rathbone, so did a relief. It was ridiculous to think that Arthur Ballinger could really have been involved with pornography, blackmail, and murder. If Claudine Burroughs had been correct and it really was Ballinger she had seen in the alley outside the shop with the photographs, then Ballinger must have been helping a friend, acting in his capacity of solicitor for some poor devil in over his head. Possibly he had even been attempting to pay off the blackmail by stealing the photographs with which the friend was being coerced. Yes, of course. A simple explanation; as soon as Rathbone thought of it, he wondered why it had taken him so long.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, meeting Monk’s eyes and seeing the sadness in them. For Hester, no doubt. Cardew had given much to the clinic, and she was not only grateful, but she liked him. How typical of Hester to befriend the troubled, someone others would shun when they knew.

Until she knew also; then she too would shun him. Many things she would forgive, but she would never countenance a man who abused and murdered children—vulnerable children, cold, hungry, and alone, like Scuff.

Monk stood very straight; he always did, with a kind of grace that was almost an arrogance. Except that, knowing him as well as he did, Rathbone understood that most of it was defense, his armor of belief
in himself, the more rigid since his loss of memory had left him uniquely vulnerable.

Now it would be Hester whose pain Monk was preparing for. There would be no way he could comfort her, or ease the disillusion. Rupert Cardew must be like the young officers she had known in the Crimea, the ones she had seen wounded, dying, still struggling to keep some kind of dignity. She had been helpless then to save most of them, and she could do nothing for Rupert now.

Monk gave a slight shrug. “I thought you would want to know.” He did not add anything about Ballinger, or Margaret, but it did not need to be said between them. Neither of them would ever forget that night on Jericho Phillips’s boat—the horror and the fear that Scuff was already dead and they were too late, the stench of the dead rats in the bilges as they pulled him out, small and very white, his body shaking. Nor would they forget the corpses at Execution Dock.

“You are sure it was him?” Rathbone asked. He was surprised how normal his voice sounded.

“The bastard was strangled with his cravat,” Monk told him. “The surgeon cut it out of Parfitt’s neck where the flesh had swollen over it. The design is unusual—dark blue with gold leopards on it, in threes.”

Rathbone felt the knots ease in his stomach even more. It was proof. He was filled with shame that someone else’s despair should be such a relief to him. He knew now with certainty that he had been afraid that Ballinger was somehow involved; as the fear slipped away, he understood the power of it, and was almost giddy at the release.

“Yes,” he said. “You are right, that does seem conclusive. I’m very sorry. Lord Cardew will be devastated. Poor man.”

Monk said nothing. His face was still pale, and there was a bleakness in his eyes. He nodded slowly, gave Rathbone a slight smile in acknowledgment, then turned on his heel and left.

Rathbone heard him outside declining the clerk’s offer of a cup of tea.

With the door closed again, Rathbone sat down behind his desk and found himself shaking with an overwhelming sense of having escaped a danger he had been bracing himself against until his body had ached with the strain of it. He had failed to pursue the possibility
of Ballinger’s guilt because of the irredeemable pain it would have caused Margaret were her father to be implicated. She loved her father unconditionally, with the same love that she must have borne for him in childhood, and Rathbone admired her for it.

It was the first time he had ever avoided seeking the truth, and he was ashamed. Fate had allowed him to escape facing the possible reality, and it was an undeserved gift.

This evening he would take Margaret to the dinner party for which they had already accepted an invitation. He would make it a celebration, a time of happiness she would remember. He allowed himself to think of that until the clerk told him the first client of the day had arrived.

T
HE DINNER PARTY WAS
magnificent. Rathbone had recently given Margaret a beautiful necklace of garnets and river pearls, with earrings and a bracelet to match. It was a bit extravagant, but exactly the kind of rich yet discreet setting she most liked. This evening she wore them with a gown of deep wine-red silk. It was fuller-skirted than she usually chose and perhaps even a little lower at the bosom. The jewels gleamed against her pale, flawless skin, and with a faint flush of happiness in her cheeks she was lovelier than he had ever seen her before.

They swept into the main reception room with a rustle of silk and to polite words of welcome. There were nearly a score of people present. The men were in elegant black, women in a blaze of colors, from the youngest in gleaming pastels to older doyennes of the aristocracy in burgundies, midnight blues, plums, and rich browns. Diamonds glinted with suppressed fire; ropes of pearls glowed on bare skin. There was soft laughter, the clink of glass, slight movement, like a wind through a field of flowers.

Margaret held Rathbone’s arm a little more tightly. He could smell the warmth of her perfume, sweet and indefinable.

“Ah! Sir Oliver—Lady Rathbone! How delightful to see you.” The welcome was repeated again and again. He knew them all and didn’t need to rack his memory for a name, a position, or an achievement.
He replied easily, shared a joke or an item of news, a comment on the latest book or exhibition of art.

It was not until they went in to dinner that he realized there was an odd number of them, something no hostess in England would ever allow intentionally.

“What is it?” Margaret whispered, seeing his puzzlement.

“There are nineteen of us,” he replied, speaking almost under his breath.

“Something must have happened,” she said with certainty. “Someone is ill.” She looked around casually, trying to conceal the fact. “It’s a man,” she said finally. “There are ten women here.”

Then suddenly the answer was obvious, as was the reason no one had mentioned it. The missing man was Lord Cardew.

Considering who had been invited, Rathbone was certain that when the ladies had retired after dinner, the gentlemen would be discussing over port and cigars the vexed question of industrial pollution. He remembered Ballinger saying it was a subject Lord Cardew had been involved in for years. Rathbone wondered if it had been Cardew who had somehow prevailed upon Lord Justice Garslake to change his mind, and thus the ruling of the Court of Appeal on the case.

He felt a sinking sensation of misery inside himself, and guilt that he was here with his happiness unclouded. It was in no way his fault that Rupert Cardew had murdered Parfitt. It was Rathbone’s relief that shamed him, and the fact that he had been prepared to look the other way when discomfort threatened his own happiness. Perhaps Lord Cardew had done that for years—refused to see what Rupert really was, face the truth and at least attempt to do something about it. In that, then, they would be the same, except that Rathbone had not had to pay anything for it.

“Oliver?” Margaret’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

He dismissed them immediately, forcing himself to think only of the moment, and of her.

“Yes,” he lied. “Someone must have been taken ill. Let us hope it is slight and he will soon be better.” He put his hand over hers briefly, then moved forward, smiling, and took his place at the table.

No one mentioned Cardew, or any other subject that could cloud the enjoyment of the occasion. Rathbone was happy to see Margaret so forgetting her earlier shyness that she laughed openly, making amusing and sometimes even slightly barbed responses to the opinions with which she disagreed. More than once a ripple of laughter swept around the table, a flash of appreciation for her wit.

Rathbone was proud of her.

He thought of Hester—her quick tongue, the passion that made her outrageous at times, her fury at incompetence and the pride that covered deceit, the pity that made her crusade so inappropriately, caring too little for the consequences. He would always find her exciting, but he had once mistaken that for love and imagined he would be happy with her. Thank heaven she had refused him. At a dinner party like this, he would always have been waiting for her to say something disastrous, something so candid it could never be forgotten, much less ignored.

He looked across the table now at Margaret, her face serious as she answered the man to her left, talking about the enormous power of industry and the complexity of profit and responsibility. There was nothing dismissive in his attitude. He was not in the slightest humoring her as he explained how such giants could not be fought against.

Rathbone smiled. And then, as if sensing his gaze on her, Margaret looked up, and her eyes were warm, bright, full of happiness.

That sweet mood of intimacy lasted all through the carriage ride home, and became more intense as they dismissed the servants for the night and went upstairs alone. Suddenly passion was easy and without hesitation. There was no moment of reassurance necessary, no asking. To have spoken at all would have been to doubt the gift of such happiness.

B
UT THE NEXT MORNING
in Rathbone’s office, his peace of mind and heart was shattered.

“Lord Cardew is here to see you, Sir Oliver,” the clerk said gravely. “I told him that I would have to consult you, but I took the liberty of asking Lady Lavinia Stock if she would consult you at another time.
The matter is trivial, and she was quite agreeable to postponing her appointment.”

Rathbone stared at him, horrified. The man was an excellent clerk, and had given too many years’ loyal service for Rathbone to dispense with him, but this was nonetheless a liberty.

The clerk had a slight flush in his cheeks, but he met Rathbone’s eyes without blinking.

“Knowing you as I do, sir, I felt certain that you would offer him at least the kindness of listening to him, even should you not wish to take the case—or not feel it is one you are able to handle.”

Rathbone drew in his breath to give a swift retort, and realized with a mild amusement that the man had very neatly boxed him in. He would never admit that he was not able to handle a case, nor on the other hand could he refuse to listen to Cardew in what must be the most appalling state of distress of his life.

“You had better show him in, since you have clearly made up your mind that I should take the case,” he said drily.

The clerk bowed. “It is not for me to decide which cases you take, Sir Oliver. I will show Lord Cardew in immediately. Shall I make tea, or perhaps in the circumstances you would prefer something a little stronger? Perhaps the brandy?”

“Tea will be excellent, thank you. I shall need to be very sober indeed to help in this matter. And …”

“Yes, Sir Oliver?”

“We shall have words about this later.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll bring the tea as soon as it is brewed.”

He returned a moment later and opened the door for Lord Cardew. He was in his early sixties, although today he looked twenty years more. His skin was drained of all color, and dry like old parchment. He stood straight, shoulders squared, but he moved as if his whole body were filled with pain.

Anything as banal as “Good morning” seemed ridiculous. There could be nothing good in it for this man. Rathbone thanked the clerk and excused him, then gestured to the big leather chair opposite the desk, for Cardew to sit down.

“I am aware of what has happened,” Rathbone said quickly, to spare Cardew the pain of telling him. “At least the rudiments.”

Cardew looked startled.

“Commander Monk has long been a friend of mine,” Rathbone explained.

“He tells you of all his cases?” Cardew asked with disbelief.

“Not at all, sir. But this one distressed him more than most, because of its connection to the Jericho Phillips case a very short while ago.”

Cardew looked like an old man too stubborn to admit defeat. Rathbone had seen other men like that, for whom surrender was too alien to be considered. They were bewildered, carrying on from force of habit and inability to think of any alternative.

“Why should he be distressed?” Cardew asked. “He is doing his job. In his place I would assume my son to be guilty. Such evidence as they have indicates it to be so. That creature was undoubtedly killed with Rupert’s cravat. Even I could not argue against it. The thing is distinctive. I know. I gave it to him. Apparently they cut it off the wretched man’s neck.”

“Did Rupert confess that he did it?” Rathbone asked.

A flush spread up Cardew’s cheeks, and he lowered his eyes. Cowardice was a sin neither his nature nor his upbringing could forgive. A gentleman did not make excuses, he did not complain, and above all he did not lie to escape the consequences of his acts.