Acceptable Loss (41 page)

“No, there was nothing wrong with Parfitt,” Ballinger said quite casually, almost as if it were by the way, no more than incidental. Then suddenly his voice filled with intense emotion and he stared at Rathbone unblinkingly. “But I have to keep this power. There is so much still to be done, not just about pollution, but slum clearances, child labor …” His eyes were brilliant, feverish, watching Rathbone’s every flicker of expression. “What can you do, Oliver, with all your brilliant arguments in court? Can you move those men one inch from their comfort and their power?”

Rathbone did not bother to reply—the question was rhetorical. They both knew he could do nothing.

“I can,” Ballinger went on. “But I knew that Monk would never let it go. He believed I was behind Jericho Phillips, and he was determined to get me hanged. Parfitt’s death, in the same trade, would draw him like a magnet. If he hanged Rupert Cardew for it, wrongly, it would finish him in the police forever.”

“God almighty!” Rathbone swore incredulously. “It was to get Monk?”

“No, you fool!” Ballinger snarled with sudden savagery. “It was to save me. Monk is like a rat: he would never let go. I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life looking backwards over my shoulder to see what new plan he has to ruin me.”

“And poor Hattie was going to testify that she stole Cardew’s cravat and gave it to … whom? Someone of yours?”

“Tosh Wilkin, if it matters.”

“No, not really.” Rathbone knew the moment he said it that Tosh would not have the photographs.

“Find a way, Rathbone,” Ballinger said between his teeth. “You have too much to lose if you don’t.”

Rathbone did not move. His limbs felt heavy, his chest as if there were a tight band around it.

“Don’t stand there like a damn footman,” Ballinger said with a sudden blaze of fury. “You haven’t got time to waste!”

Wordlessly Rathbone turned and banged on the door to be released.

H
ESTER HAD COME HOME
from the clinic a little earlier than usual, but Monk was barely through the door when Rathbone arrived at Paradise Place. He looked so ashen, Hester was frightened for him. His hollow eyes and the dragging lines of his face made it clear that he was almost at the end of his strength. She offered him tea immediately, and went to put the kettle on without waiting for his answer. Also without asking him, she put in a stiff dash of brandy.

When she returned with it already poured out in a large kitchen mug, Rathbone was sitting next to the fire in Monk’s usual seat, and he was still shivering. Monk sat on a hard-backed chair.

Hester put the tray down on the table between them, with Rathbone’s mug nearest to him, and then she looked at Monk. His face was pale too, and the lines in it were more than those of tiredness.

Monk gestured to her chair, opposite Rathbone, and she sat obediently.

“Ballinger has photographs,” Monk said simply. “They’re with somebody who’ll make them public if Ballinger is hanged. We don’t know who’s in them, but what they’re doing is obvious. Ballinger said they’re all kinds of people: in government, judiciary, business, even the royal household. He blackmails them, not for money but for power, to bring about the reforms he believes are just. At least that’s what he told Rathbone. Any of that might be true, or might be lies, but we can’t afford to take the risk.”

“He wants me to mount an appeal.” Rathbone looked at her. “That’s the condition for his silence. But I can’t. There are no grounds.”

For a moment Hester was stunned. It was monstrous. Then the more she thought of it, the more it made sense. It might all be true. It would be a passionate and almost understandable reason for all he had done. She could see the temptation. If she had had such power to use in the reform of nursing, she would have played with the idea, and please God, discarded it, but perhaps not? But, then, it could also be a brilliant way of defending himself, because they could not afford to ignore him.

“I’m surprised he trusted someone else with the pictures. How do you know they are all together, with one person?” Hester asked.

Rathbone stared at her, horror in his face.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But I wouldn’t give everything to one person, would you?”

“Oh, God!” he said in utter wretchedness. There was no hope in his voice.

“You are certain that Ballinger killed Parfitt? It was not one of Parfitt’s other victims who did it?” Monk asked.

“Oh, yes. He told me as much.” A painfully bitter smile touched Rathbone’s lips. “Actually, he did it to ruin you, get you off his trail forever. He meant you to go after Rupert Cardew, and then he would have proved him innocent, at the last moment, carried Lord Cardew’s everlasting gratitude, and seen you off the force with your reputation shattered. Nothing you said about him after that would have been listened to. Even evidence would have been disregarded.”

Monk looked startled.

“He knew you suspected his part in Phillips’s boat and it would be only a matter of time before you came after him,” Rathbone went on. “With your care for Scuff, you wouldn’t have let it go.”

Hester looked across at Monk and felt a sense of warmth fill her, as if even in this ghastly situation she still wanted to smile, still trusted in a goodness, an inner beauty that would survive.

“I’m sorry,” Monk said with a little shake of his head. “What can we do? If we could think of any way of appealing, would you?”

“I don’t know,” Rathbone admitted. “But there isn’t. There’s no new evidence, and no legal grounds. I suppose the only thing I can think of is to find the photographs and destroy them. But I have no idea where to look. Who would he trust with such things? There can’t be so many people.”

“Are we sure he was telling the truth?” Monk looked from one to the other of them.

Rathbone pushed his hand through his hair. “I believe him. He still wants to go on forcing through the reforms he cares about. But I can’t think of any way of proving it, and can we afford to take the risk?”

Hester spoke slowly, weighing her words, uncertain of her own feelings. “Even if we could find these photographs and destroy them, and we were certain they were the only ones, do we want to? It is a sin and a crime to abuse children in such a way. Why do we want to protect men who are doing such things? I’m not sure that I do. And I’m not sure that I want to have that kind of power over people in anyone’s hands, even my own. How do you decide what to use it for, when to stop, how many people’s lives you can destroy along with the guilty?” She shook her head minutely, her shoulders rigid, aching, with the muscles knotted. “No one—”

“I see! I see,” Rathbone said sharply, his voice raw-edged. He pushed his hand through his hair again. “I should have seen it. But whatever he could do, I still don’t have grounds for an appeal.”

“Then, we have to look for the photographs,” Monk replied. “At least it will tell us who is vulnerable, even if we have no guarantee that they are the only copies.”

“God, what a nightmare!” Rathbone said softly. He seemed about to add something more, and then changed his mind.

“We’ll need help,” Hester said practically. “We can’t possibly do it all by ourselves. We don’t even know where to look, or how to make the right people listen to us.”

Rathbone raised his hand. “Who else could we trust?”

“The people at the clinic,” she replied, thinking as she answered. “Squeaky Robinson, perhaps Claudine?”

“What on earth could she do?” Rathbone said incredulously.

“Make inquiries in society,” Hester replied. “I don’t mix with the sort of people who would be worth blackmailing for power, and you can hardly ask.”

Rathbone blushed very faintly, and she knew he was thinking that at any other time they would have asked Margaret to help, but now it was impossible. But Hester would not say so, or even that he himself would hardly be wishing to move in his usual social circle. He had not even considered how life would be after his father-in-law was hanged. There would be no waking up from this nightmare.

“And Crow,” Monk added. “I’ll ask Orme. His knowledge of the river is better than mine.”

“I’ll ask Rupert Cardew,” Hester said, looking at Monk, then at Rathbone. She expected them to argue, and she had her rebuttal ready.

“He could be putting his life at risk, after what he’s already done,” Monk warned her.

“I know. And I’ll remind him of it. But I have to ask. It’s a long path back from where he was, and I believe he means to take it.”

“If he stays in London, he’s ruined,” Rathbone said grimly. “Doesn’t he understand that? He’ll never be forgiven for what will be seen as betraying his own.”

“He knows,” she assured him, remembering Rupert’s ashen face when she had asked him to testify. “He’s ruined anywhere in England. I expect he’ll go to Australia, or somewhere like that. Start again.”

“What hell for his father,” Rathbone murmured. “Poor man.”

“Better he go having made amends than stay here as he was.” Hester shook her head a little. “He hasn’t left himself such a lot of choices. This is the bravest thing, the cleanest. But he can do this one thing more before he leaves. He may be the only one who knows some of the people Ballinger knew. And Ballinger probably gave the pictures to someone who was in them himself. It would be the best way to make sure he obeyed.”

Monk swore under his breath, but he did not argue. He stood up. “Then we’d better start. Where’s Scuff?”

She was horrified. “You’re not taking him?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Of course I am. You think he’d be better
off staying here alone? You think he would stay? At least if he’s with me, I’ll know where he is.”

She let out her breath slowly. He was right, but it was not good enough, not safe enough. But, then, probably it never would be. Life wasn’t safe.

T
HEY WORKED FOR SIX
days, starting before dawn and stopping only late at night. Monk and Orme went up and down the river. Rathbone went through every social acquaintance and business connection of Ballinger’s that he could trace. Claudine listened to society gossip and asked inquisitive and even intrusive questions. Squeaky Robinson put out inquiries among all the brothel-keepers, prostitutes, and petty criminals that he knew. Crow sought all the dubious medical sources, procurers, and abortionists. Rupert Cardew risked his safety, and even his life, asking questions. Once he was beaten, and was lucky to escape with no more than severe bruising and a cracked rib.

Every lead fizzled out, and they were left with no more than fears and guesses as to who had the photographs, or even if they were real.

Rathbone decided to try one more time to plead with Arthur Ballinger, for the sake of his family, if nothing else, to tell them where the photographs were, and allow them to be destroyed.

He would go in the morning. At midnight he stood in the drawing room of his silent house and stared out through the French windows into the autumn garden. The smell of rain and damp earth was sweet, but he was barely aware of it. The wind had parted the clouds, and the soft moonlight bathed the air, making the sky milky pale, the black branches of trees elaborate lace against it.

The room was not cold, but he was chilled inside.

There was nothing else left but to go back to Ballinger, and he must do it in the morning.

He finally closed the curtains and went upstairs, creeping soundlessly, as if he were in a strange house and did not wish to disturb the owners. He changed into his nightclothes in the dressing room and walked barefoot to the bedroom. The lights were out. He could not
hear Margaret move, or even breathe. It was a curiously sharp feeling of isolation, because he knew she was there.

H
E WOKE AT SIX
and rose immediately, washing, shaving, and dressing silently, and going downstairs in a house still chilly from the night. The maid had lit the fires, but they had not burned up sufficiently to warm the air.

The maid boiled the kettle for him and made a cup of tea and two slices of toast. He had to force himself to eat it, standing at the kitchen table, making the girl uncomfortable. The master had no business alone and miserable in her territory. It was not the way houses were supposed to be run.

He thanked her and left, catching a hansom a block away from the house, and finding himself all too quickly outside the cold gray walls of the prison. It was only twenty minutes before eight, and the sky was so overcast it seemed still shadowed by the retreating night.

As the lawyer of a condemned man he was admitted immediately.

“Mornin’, sir,” the jailer said cheerfully. He was a large, square-shouldered man with a ready smile and a gap between his front teeth. “Don’t often get folks ’ere this time o’ the day. Mr. Ballinger, is it? Not long for ’im now. Best it’s over, I say. Longest three weeks in the world.”

Rathbone did not argue. The man could not know Ballinger was Rathbone’s father-in-law, or anything of the bitter and complicated relationship between them. Rathbone followed obediently along the stone corridors. He could hear no voices, no footfalls, because he walked carefully. Yet the silence seemed restless, as if there were always something just beyond his hearing. It was cold, and the air smelled stale. No one had let wind or light inside to disturb the centuries of despair that had settled here.

This was no place for a man to end his days. Remembering Mickey Parfitt did not help. Rathbone forced himself to think of the children, like Scuff, small, thin, humiliated, and forever afraid. Then he found he could straighten his shoulders and accept the necessity of the situation. Nothing on earth could make him like it.

The jailer stopped at the cell door, and the sudden jangle of his keys was the first loud noise. He poked one into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door. It swung open inward, with a slight squeak of hinges.

“There y’are, sir,” he invited.

Rathbone took a deep breath. This was loathsome. He would not have wished to walk into Ballinger’s bedroom and find him in his nightshirt, half-asleep, expecting privacy, even at the best of times. This was a loss of dignity that was degrading to both of them.