Acceptable Loss (14 page)

Rathbone admired him for it. “You want me to answer that truthfully?” he asked.

“Yes, I do. Would you?”

“No, Mr. Cardew. But, then, my friends don’t frequent places like that, so far as I know. But I wouldn’t know, because I don’t. I’ve seen what men like Phillips and Parfitt do to children, and I’d be happy if the law allowed anyone who wished to get rid of them all. But if we permit people to make their own decisions as to who should live and who should die, it would be a license to murder at will. We can always find excuses when we want them. All of which you know as well as I do.”

“I still can’t tell you the names of the men I know who went to that boat.”

“Not yet. When you know more of what Parfitt did, and how he used his power, you may change your mind.” Rathbone rose to his feet.

“Will you represent me?” Rupert asked, standing also. His knuckles were clenched, and he had to brace himself to keep his body from shaking.

“Yes,” Rathbone replied without hesitation, surprising himself by the firmness of his decision, as if no other answer had occurred to him.

B
UT NONE OF IT
seemed so easy to explain to Margaret that evening in their own quiet dining room, with the faint aroma of apple wood burning in the fire and the gaslights soft.

“Rupert Cardew?” she said with amazement. “How awful for his father. The poor man must be devastated.” Her face was bleak with pity.

“Yes. I wish I could offer him more hope,” Rathbone agreed. They were at the dining room table. The air was warm outside, and the long curtains still weren’t drawn, letting in the sweet smells of earth and leaves as the garden faded with the year. There were golden chrysanthemums and purple asters in bloom. The summer flowers were cut down, but it was too early for the leaves to turn. There was no rich perfume of wood smoke or bonfires yet.

“There’s nothing you can do, Oliver,” she said gently. “Just don’t shun him when he comes back into society again. So many people do, because they don’t know what to say, and it’s easier to say nothing than face other people’s pain.”

“If he’s found guilty, they’ll hang him,” he replied. “There won’t be any ‘coming back.’ ”

Her eyes widened with surprise. “For goodness’ sake, I meant Lord Cardew, not Rupert! Of course they’ll hang him. There’s no other possible answer.”

He looked at her and saw no trace of indecision in her face, and only a remnant of the pity she had felt for Lord Cardew, nothing fresh for Rupert.

“Parfitt tried to blackmail him,” he said, reaching absentmindedly for the salt, and then, realizing that he had already used it, putting it down again. “It would have gone on forever.”

“Of course it would. Until his father refused to pay,” she said drily, returning her attention to her meal. They had an excellent cook, both imaginative and skilled, but tonight Rathbone barely tasted his food.

“You haven’t asked me if I believe he did it,” he pointed out, and then realized how critical he sounded.

Margaret put her fork down. “Do you doubt it?”

“There must always be room for doubt—”

“Don’t be pedantic, Oliver,” she interrupted him. “I know that, legally. I mean do you, personally, doubt it?”

“Yes, I do. He denies it, and I believe he may be speaking the truth. He is hardly the only one to wish Parfitt dead.”

“There is all the difference in the world between wishing someone dead and making it so,” she said reasonably. “How much difference is there between a man who will pay others to torture and abuse small boys for his gratification, and one who will kill the provider of such abomination rather than continue to pay for it?”

He heard the anger in her voice, and the revulsion. He would not have expected anything less. He felt it himself. And yet he also understood Rupert’s horror when he realized what his blindness and stupidity had led him into. Was he naïve to believe that Rupert might actually be innocent of the murder of Parfitt? Was he acting on exactly the kind of emotional loyalty, devoid of reason, that he saw in Margaret’s family? Lord Cardew reminded him of his own father, and his pity was instinctive and immediate.

“I’ve agreed to defend him,” he said aloud.

Margaret froze.

Now he was compelled to justify himself. “Everyone deserves a defense, Margaret, the benefit of doubt until guilt is proved.”

“Of course he needs to be defended,” she agreed, her eyes bright and angry. “But not by you. You are the finest barrister in London, maybe in the whole of England. Your very presence will draw attention to the case and make people believe there is something to be said
for the whole repulsive business. Whatever you argue on the niceties of the law, the vast majority of people will believe you are doing it because of his father’s title and money, not because you have any real belief in his innocence.”

“No one will who knows me,” he said with a touch of chill. Her accusation hurt. It caught him by surprise that she should think it.

“Most people don’t know you,” she said reasonably, but there was a pucker between her brows. “They will simply leap to the easiest conclusion.”

“And I should cater to them?” he inquired.

“You are exaggerating,” she answered coolly. “I didn’t suggest that you follow every whim of public opinion, merely that you do not need to defend every criminal, no matter how base their crime, just to prove that the law must be honored. Let someone else defend Rupert Cardew.”

“You mean so that we may hang him and then go home and still sleep well?”

“Yes, I suppose I do mean that.” Now it was a definite retaliation. “If you are going to hang anyone at all, then Rupert Cardew deserves it. The use of children in prostitution and pornography is bestial. Anyone who had a part in that, of any sort, deserves the rope.” She leaned forward over her plate, the food now entirely forgotten. “And don’t tell me he didn’t actively participate. That is irrelevant, Oliver, and you know it. He knew, and he did nothing about it. He could have called the police, made the whole thing public, but instead he chose to kill Parfitt, in order to spare his own embarrassment, and that of his friends who are little better. You can’t defend him, because it is indefensible.”

He was stunned into silence.

“I suppose Lord Cardew asked you to,” she went on. “And you were too softhearted to refuse him. Of course the poor man believes his son is innocent. What else could he bear to believe?”

“Perhaps he is right?” he said softly, placing his knife and fork on the plate. His food was half-eaten, but he no longer wanted it.

“Nonsense,” she answered. “And Cook will be offended if you don’t eat at least most of that.”

“Tell her I’m ill. In fact, I’ll tell her myself.” Rathbone rose to his feet. The thought of remaining at the table in a bitter silence was so unpleasant, he would rather retreat into work. Any excuse would do. “As you have pointed out, it will be exceedingly difficult to present any believable defense. And if I don’t make a reasonable show of it, I will not only let Rupert Cardew down, and his father, I will damage my own reputation. I cannot afford to do that.” He turned at the door. “Don’t wait up for me. I shall probably be a long time.”

Margaret opened her mouth to speak, and then changed her mind. He would never know whether it would have been an apology or not. He chose to think that it would. But even so, the laughter, the intimacy, of the previous evening seemed an age ago, hard even to recall to the inner mind, where treasures are stored.

H
ESTER FELT AWKWARD STANDING
on the steps of Lord Cardew’s beautiful house in Cheyne Walk at ten o’clock the following morning. It was a bright, windy day, and the river was choppy as the tide came in. Pleasure boats were bobbing up and down, people clutching hats, ribbons flying. The russet-colored sails of a barge billowed out, the hull listing over.

She had brought news of death before, and of maiming, burning, disfigurement. There was never an easy way to deal with grief, nothing to say that could make it any different. If there was healing with time, then it came from within.

It was difficult to speak with someone whose only living child was accused of something as hideous as this. If he had killed someone in a fight or, more cold-bloodedly, in revenge, it would have been bad enough. But to be tied in the mind with a man as fearful as Mickey Parfitt, to have known him, used his services, and said nothing—that left a stain that would be indelible.

And yet it seemed unacceptably cruel to ignore the father’s pain as if it were of no importance, or an embarrassment one would rather avoid.

The door was opened by a butler whose expression was guarded, his eyes already showing the strain.

“Good morning, madam. May I help you?”

“Good morning.” She produced her card. “Mr. Rupert Cardew has been extremely generous to me and to the clinic for the poor that I run. It seems an appropriate time to offer Lord Cardew any service I can perform for him.” She smiled very slightly, sufficient only to show goodwill.

The stiffness in the butler’s face eased. “Certainly, madam. If you care to come inside, I will inform his lordship that you are here.”

She dropped her card onto the small silver tray, then followed the butler through the hall with its carved mantel and exquisitely wrought plaster ceiling and cornices. He left her in the firelit morning room with its faded carpets and the seascapes on the walls, the numerous bookcases, the spines lettered in gold, but of odd sizes. She knew at a glance that they were bought to read, not for show.

The butler excused himself, closing the door. In other circumstances Hester might have looked at the titles of the books. It was always interesting to know what other people read, but she could not keep her mind on anything at the moment. Even in the silence, she kept imagining footsteps in the hall; her mind raced to find words that would sound anything but futile.

She paced from the bookcase to the window and back again. She was staring at the garden when the door finally opened, catching her by surprise.

“I apologize for keeping you waiting, Mrs. Monk,” Lord Cardew said quietly, closing the door behind him.

“It is gracious of you to see me at all,” she answered. “I would not have been surprised had you declined. Especially since, now that I am here, I hardly know what to say that makes any sense—only that if I can be of service to you, then I wish to be.”

Cardew looked exhausted. His skin was papery, as if there were no blood in the flesh beneath it. But it was the emptiness in his eyes that
she found the most painful. There was a kind of shapeless panic in them, a despair too big for him to handle.

“Thank you, but I have no idea what anyone can do,” he replied. “But your kindness is a small light in a very large darkness.” He was a slender man, but he must once have been elegant, supple, like a military man. He reminded her of the soldiers she had known in the past. The whole Crimean War seemed to belong to another age now. He also made her think of her own father, perhaps only because he also had looked older than he was, as if the weight of failure were crushing him.

She had not been at home when her father had most needed her. He had died alone while she was nursing strangers in Sevastopol. He had trusted where he should not have; a man with every appearance of honor had deceived him totally. Her father was one of many so betrayed, but the debts he could not meet had broken his spirit. He had believed that taking his own life was the only course left him.

That too, Hester had not been at home to prevent, or to aid her mother’s grief. What she could have done had never been spoken of; it was simply her absence at the time of need that wounded.

“We can find out what really happened,” she said impulsively. “It can’t be as simple as it seems. Either it was someone else altogether who killed Parfitt, and Rupert doesn’t know who, or he does know but he is defending them because he believes that is the right thing to do. Or possibly he did kill Parfitt, but for a reason that would make it understandable.” She waited for Cardew to answer.

He struggled with an emotion so sharp, the pain of it was visible in his face. “My dear Mrs. Monk, for all the help you give to the poor women who come to you in their distress, you can have no idea what kind of world men like Parfitt inhabit. I cannot be responsible for your stumbling into such abomination, even by accident. But your kindness is most touching. Your compassion is—”

“Pointless,” she interrupted him gently, “if you will not permit me to be what help I can. I have been a nurse on the battlefield. I walked among the dead and the dying after Balaklava. I was in the hospital in Sevastopol, with the rats, the hunger, and the disease. I have nursed in a fever hospital in the slums here in London, and I have waited in
a locked house for the bubonic plague to run its course. Please don’t tell me what I can or cannot do for a friend who is clearly in trouble.”

He had no idea how to answer her. She was an example of all the compassion he idealized in women, and at the same time she broke the only mold with which he was familiar.

She seized the chance to continue. “I know at least something of what they did on such boats, Lord Cardew. I was there when they arrested Jericho Phillips, and he escaped, and then was murdered also. If Mickey Parfitt was of the same nature, there is much to argue in defense of anyone who rid the world of him. But to defend Rupert before a court, we need to know the truth. You are quite right in supposing such a creature is well beyond the knowledge of most people fit to sit on a jury.”

“Surely the police—,” he began.

“It is not their job to find mitigating circumstances, only to prove what happened. Did Rupert tell you what that was? I imagine he may not have wished to.”

“It is a little late to spare my feelings,” Cardew said drily, the ghost of a smile in his eyes. “He said he did not kill Parfitt. I would give everything I have to be able to believe him, but …” He looked away from her, then back again, his eyes slowly filling with tears. “But his past choices make that impossible. I’m sorry, Mrs. Monk, but I do not see how you can help. I would prefer that you did not risk any danger to yourself, either in person or in the form of the distress such knowledge would cause you. The things one sees, one cannot afterward forget.”