Acceptable Loss (34 page)

Margaret swung round as soon as the door was closed.

“Well, what is it? After your husband’s accusations against my father, you can hardly expect me to be pleased to see you, or to imagine you have my welfare in mind.”

It was not so long since they had been close friends, sharing laughter, dreams, even the excitement of Margaret’s courtship with Rathbone, and her anxieties that he would never actually propose to her. She had not said so in as many words, but there had been a time when Margaret had feared that he would always love Hester, and had secretly imagined that Hester would have made him happier. It had been some time before she had realized that was not true.

Now they faced each other, several feet apart in the small room with its table, chairs, and bookcases, a world apart in emotion.

There was no time to waste in prevarication, or in an attempt to smooth the way to any kind of understanding.

“You were at the clinic the morning Hattie Benson left,” Hester stated.

Margaret was stiff, her shoulders high and straight, a very faint color in her cheeks.

“You came here to tell me that?” she said with surprise. “You’ve lost your evidence. I know that. She won’t testify to save your friend. Although how you can be a friend to Rupert Cardew is beyond my imagination. But, then, you have not been in court, and perhaps that is some excuse. I assure you, your loyalty is misplaced.”

All kinds of bitter retorts rose to Hester’s lips, especially as Margaret herself had not been in court the previous day, but Hester did not speak them. It would break the frail thread of contact between them, and she needed to know the truth.

“I want to know what happened to Hattie, Margaret; that’s all I’m concerned with at the moment. I promised to look after her. I want to know why I failed, regardless of what she might have said on the stand.”

“What she might have said is that she lied to you,” Margaret answered. “You were kind to her, and she wanted to please you. I imagine she also had a very good idea of where her best future interests lay, should she ever be sick or injured, or need your help for any kind of problem. And she wouldn’t be the first who lied to please the police, out of fear, or for revenge, or simply because it’s easier than keeping up a resistance. You know as well as I do that street women survive by pleasing others, frequently those they are afraid of.” She made a slight gesture, half pity, half disgust. “They know what people want, and they give it to them. It’s their trade.”

Hester shook her head fractionally, as if to rid herself of something. “Is that how you think of her, as someone who lies to please, that’s all?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hester, don’t be so self-righteous. This is the time for truth. Yes, that is what I think of girls like Hattie. Maybe if I had had the misfortune of being born into her lot in life, I would be the same. I wasn’t. I had fine parents, good health, good examples to follow, and I married a fine man. I show my gratitude for it in service to those less fortunate, but I’m not blinded by sentimentality
regarding their nature, or their weaknesses. Sometimes I think you are.”

Hester was overtaken by an anger that astounded her. She stood for a moment, trembling a little.

“I imagine we both have thoughts about others that are less than flattering,” she said almost between her teeth. “Or even downright unkind. I want to know why you took Hattie at least as far as the door, and watched her go outside, when you knew that I had her in the clinic to keep her safe so she could testify at the trial. Why did you?”

“You sound like a policeman,” Margaret said with a slight curl of her lip. “You are giving yourself airs to which you have no right. I gave my time to help at the clinic because I believe in the work you do there. I am not your servant to answer your questions.”

“Either I ask you or William does,” Hester said grimly.

“Then, William may try,” Margaret snapped back. “I do not have to account to you for where Hattie went, even did I know.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Hester began, furious with herself because her voice was shaking.

“That is what I just said,” Margaret told her.

“Because I already know!” Hester snapped. “She went back to Chiswick, where she was strangled and her body thrown into the river!”

Now it was Margaret’s turn to blanch, and to find herself gasping for breath.

“Now perhaps you can see my concern,” Hester added tartly. “Also why William may very well ask you where she went, and why you took her to the door.”

Margaret regained her control with difficulty. “Obviously Rupert killed her! So she would not be called to the stand and say that she’d lied before, and she’d no more taken his cravat than I had. He kept it, as everyone supposes, and later strangled Mickey Parfitt with it, because he could not go on paying him blackmail. If you were a little less blinded by your own crusades, you would have seen that in the first place. I’m sorry Hattie had to die for you to face reality.”

Hester could feel her fingernails dig into the palms of her hands. “The reality throughout is that Hattie was the one person who could
have cleared Rupert,” she answered. “And you took her to the door and let her out into the street, out of the place where she was safe, and someone killed her. It might have been Rupert Cardew. It might just as easily have been your father. He was the one her testimony would have hurt. And you were the one who sent her out.”

Margaret stared at her, her face white to the lips, her eyes glittering. “Are you likening my father—my father—to Rupert Cardew? Rupert is dissolute, weak, and perverted … a … a vile man, who, for some unknown reason, in your own morality, your memory, or your need, you don’t seem able to see for what he is.”

“Of course I can see he’s weak!” Hester’s voice was rising in spite of her efforts to keep it level. “I don’t know how dissolute he is, and neither do you. But your loyalty to your father blinds you from seeing that he too could be just as greedy, as cruel, and in his own way as dissolute. He may not watch little boys being raped and abused, but is he any better if he imprisons them and causes it to happen, so he can blackmail the wretched men who do it? Is corrupting others any better, any nobler than being corrupt yourself? I think it’s worse!”

“My loyalty makes me know it could not be true,” Margaret said between her teeth. “But you wouldn’t understand that. You were in the Crimea being noble, saving strangers when your own father needed you. He died alone in despair while you were off glory-hunting. And if that weren’t enough, who supported your mother in her grief? Not you! You didn’t even come home for his funeral.”

Hester was speechless. She could not catch her breath. Her whole body hurt as if she had been beaten.

“You don’t know what loyalty is,” Margaret went on, seeing her advantage and forcing it home. “I used to be sorry for you that you don’t have any children of your own, only that little urchin you’ve picked up from the dockside to fill your emptiness. When it comes down to it, you don’t understand what family is. You’re too selfish, too absorbed with the image of love to know what the reality is.” She took a gulp of air, then pushed past Hester and went out into the hallway again, leaving the door swinging on its hinges.

Was it true? Only part of it! Hester had had no idea of her father’s despair, no idea he had been cheated, lied to, and betrayed. She heard
of his suicide only after it had happened. Letters to and from the Crimea took weeks, and often she was away from Scutari when the ships from England landed.

Could she have known? Should she have? Her brother James had kept it from her. Her younger brother had already been killed in action. Was there something else she should have done? Should she have stayed at home in the first place?

No! She had followed not only her heart but her beliefs, in joining the nurses in the hellhole of Scutari, and even on the blood-soaked battlefields. She had eased pain, saved lives. And she had loved her father more than Margaret could ever know.

And she loved Monk. She would have wanted children to please him, to give him everything love can ever give, but she did not ache for them for herself. Yes, she loved Scuff. Why should she deny that? But for who he was, not to ease an emptiness within herself. Monk alone was sufficient—companion, ally, lover, and friend.

Had she made mistakes, perhaps even profound ones? Yes, of course. But never through indifference.

She stood still, dizzy, the room blurring in her vision, and waited until she was sufficiently composed to return to the courtroom and observe the afternoon’s trial.

R
ATHBONE WAS FIGHTING FOR
the defense as Hester had known he must do. He had no choice, legally or emotionally.

He called witnesses who, one by one, painted a picture of the trade Parfitt had run, and its patrons among the rich and dissolute, including, most pointedly, Rupert Cardew.

“Only the rich?” He pressed the witness, an oily, devious-looking man who stood very straight in the witness box, his hands by his sides.

“Course,” the man replied. “No point in blackmailin’ the poor!”

There was a faint snicker around the gallery, which died immediately.

“And the fashionable?” Rathbone continued. “The socially prominent?”

The witness regarded him witheringly. “In’t no need ter pay if yer
got no position to lose. If yer nobody, yer tell ’im ter sod off an’ sell the pictures to whoever ’e wants.”

“Quite,” Rathbone agreed succinctly. “Thank you, Mr. Loftus.” He turned to Winchester. “Your witness, sir.”

Winchester rose to his feet. He moved just as elegantly as before, but Hester noticed the pallor of his face, and that the hand resting at his side was clenched.

“Mr. Loftus, you seem to be very well informed about this whole business. Far more, for example, than I am, even though I have had to learn as much about it as I can, for this trial. How is that, sir?”

“Oh, I know all sorts.” Loftus tapped the side of his nose, as if to suggest some extraordinary sensory awareness.

“I accept that you do, sir, but how?” Winchester pressed. He smiled very slightly. “For example, how much are you involved in it yourself?”

Loftus drew in his breath, then caught Winchester’s eye and apparently changed his mind. “Well … I see things.”

“ ‘See things,’ ” Winchester repeated dubiously. “What things, Mr. Loftus? Well-dressed men coming from and going to a boat moored on the river, would you say?”

“That’s right. Late at night, an’ believe me, they in’t there ter fish.”

There was another titter of laughter around the gallery. A juror raised his hand to hide a smile.

“Late at night?” Winchester said gently. “In the dark, then?”

“O’ course,” Loftus sneered. “You don’t think they’re gonna be about when folks can recognize ’em, do yer? Yer in’t bin listenin’, sir.” He exaggerated the “sir” slightly. “They in’t there for any good.”

“Too dark to be recognized. And yet you know who they were?” Winchester smiled back at him, eyebrows raised inquiringly.

Loftus knew he had been trapped. “All right!” he said angrily. “I ’elped now an’ then. On the outside only! I never done nothing to those boys!”

“You helped on the outside,” Winchester echoed him. “Out of the goodness of your heart? Or you were paid in kind, perhaps? A few pictures to sell on to others? After you’d had a good look at them
yourself? Perhaps to sell back to the miserable wretches in them, caught in acts that would ruin them if their friends knew? Is that how you were so sure that Rupert Cardew was involved?”

Rathbone rose to his feet. “Might we have no more than two questions at a time, my lord? I am going to have trouble working out which answer fits which question.”

There was another nervous ripple of laughter around the room.

“I’m sorry,” Winchester apologized. “My confusion must be contagious.” He looked back at Loftus. “Your reward for this help, sir? What nature did it take?”

“Money!” Loftus said indignantly. “Pure money, like you own, sir.”

“You have none of my money, Mr. Loftus,” Winchester responded with a smile. “But since you know Mr. Cardew was there, you must surely know the names of others. Who else attended those … parties?”

Loftus made a movement across his mouth. “Code o’ silence, sir. You understand? All kinds o’ gents like their excitement a bit on the spicy side. Ruin ’alf o’ London if I were to speak out o’ turn, I could.”

“Not to mention your own future income, and that of the man behind the business, who will have to find another manager, now that Parfitt is dead. Could that be you, Mr. Loftus?”

Suddenly the courtroom was silent. All the small rustles of movement stopped. One could almost hear the rasp of breathing.

Rathbone rose to his feet. “My lord, Mr. Winchester is assuming facts that no one has proved. He keeps making suggestions as to this gray presence behind Parfitt, but no one has shown that he exists, let alone is going to pay Mr. Loftus for anything.”

“My lord, someone sent the letter of instruction to Mickey Parfitt, so that he was alone on his boat the night he was killed,” Winchester pointed out. “Someone put forward the money to buy and to furnish the boat. Someone found, watched, and then tempted the men susceptible to this kind of indulgence. Someone blackmailed them and drove at least one to suicide, and it appears, one to murder. And since Mr. Loftus has sworn that Rupert Cardew was a victim of this trade, and other witnesses have told us very graphically of his descent from
bystander and gullible friend to witness of degraded and revolting scenes, it cannot have been him. One does not blackmail oneself.”

The judge considered for a moment, then lifted one heavy shoulder in a gesture of resignation.

“Mr. Winchester appears to be right, Sir Oliver. You cannot have it both ways with Mr. Cardew. Either he was the blackmailer or he was the victim who struck back.”

“My lord,” Rathbone bowed. “It seems to me beyond a reasonable doubt that Mickey Parfitt was a vile man who provided a ready path to total degradation, a depravity that must disgust all decent people. He charged his victims for it twice over: once to purchase it, and then a second time to keep themselves from the disgrace of having it known to their friends and to society in general. How he was able to target those vulnerable to such weakness we do not know. Many answers are imaginable. If there was indeed a mastermind behind it, we do not know who that is. Personally, I should like to see him hang, as I dare say so would you. But it is repulsive to me that in our disgust we should vent our anger by hanging the wrong man!”