Execution Dock (6 page)

Tremayne was slightly taken aback. “No, my lord. I believe there is nothing to contest.”

“Then I daresay the jury will follow it simply enough. Proceed.” There was an edge to Sullivan's voice, and his hands on the great bench in front of him were clenched. He was not enjoying this case. Perhaps to him it was simply a tragedy of the darkest and most squalid sort. Certainly there were no fine points of law, and none of the intellectual rigor Rathbone knew he liked. He wondered quickly whether Tre mayne knew him socially. They lived not far from each other, to the south of the river. Were they friends, enemies, or possibly not even acquaintances? Rathbone knew Tremayne and liked him. Sullivan he had never met outside the courtroom.

Tremayne turned back to Orme in the witness box. “Mr. Orme, was the case officially reopened? New evidence, perhaps?”

“No, sir. Mr. Monk was just looking through the papers to see if there was anything…”

Rathbone rose to his feet.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Sullivan said quickly “Mr. Orme, please restrict yourself to what you know, what you saw, and what you did.”

Orme flushed. “Yes, my lord.” He looked at Tremayne with reproach. “Mr. Monk told me ‘e'd found papers about a case we'd never closed, and ‘e showed me Mr. Durban's notes on the Figgis case. He said it would be a good thing if we could close it now. I agreed with him. It always bothered me that we ‘adn't finished it.”

“Will you please tell the court what you yourself did then? Since you worked on it with Mr. Durban, presumably Mr. Monk was keen to avail himself of your knowledge?”

“Yes, sir, very keen.”

Tremayne then took Orme through the trail of evidence. He asked about the lightermen, bargees, lumpers, stevedores, ferrymen, chandlers, landlords, pawnbrokers, tobacconists, and quayside news vendors he and Monk had spoken to in the endless pursuit of the connection between the boy, Fig, and the boat in which Jericho Phillips plied his trade. They were always looking for someone who could and would swear to the use of Phillips's boat, and the fact that Fig was there against his will. It was all circumstantial, little threads, second-and thirdhand links.

Rathbone looked at the jury and saw the confusion in their faces, and eventually the boredom. They could not follow it. The disgust was there, the anger and the helplessness, but the certainty of legal proof still eluded them. They were lost in complexity, and because they were still sickeningly aware of the crime, they were frustrated and becoming angry. The day closed with a feeling of hatred in the room, and the police crowded closely around Phillips as he was taken down the stairs to the prison below the court. The mood was ugly with the weight of old, unresolved pain.

Rathbone began cross-examining Orme the next morning. He knew exactly what he needed to draw from him, but he was also aware that he must be extremely careful not to antagonize the jury, whose sympathies were entirely with the victim, and with the police who had tried so very hard to bring him some kind of justice. He stood in the middle of the courtroom floor in the open space between the gallery and the witness stand, deliberately at ease, as if he were a trifle in awe of the occasion, identifying with Orme, not with the machinery of the law.

“I imagine you deal with many harrowing tragedies, Mr. Orme,” he said quietly. He wanted to force the jury to strain to hear him, to make their attention total. The emotion must be grave, subdued, even private with each man, as though he were alone with the horror and the burden of it. Then they would understand Durban, and why Monk, in his turn, had taken the same path. He had not expected to dislike doing this so much. Facing the real man was very different from the intellectual theories of justice, no matter how passionately felt. But there was no way to turn back now without betrayal. When he had to question Hester it would be worse.

“Yes, sir,” Orme agreed.

Rathbone nodded.

“But it has not blunted your sensibilities, or made you any less dedicated to finding justice for the victims of unspeakable torture and death.”

“No, sir.” Orme's face was pale, his hands hidden by his sides, but his shoulders were high and tight.

“Did Mr. Durban feel as deeply?”

“Yes, sir. This case was… was one of the worst. If you'd seen that boy's body, sir, wasted and burned like it was, then ‘is throat cut near through, and dumped in the river as if he were an animal, you'd have felt the same.”

“I imagine I would,” Rathbone said quietly, his head bent a trifle as if he were in the presence of the dead now.

Lord Justice Sullivan leaned forward, his face pinched, his mouth drawn tight. “Is there some purpose to this, Sir Oliver? I trust it has not slipped your mind which party you represent in this case?” There was a note of warning in his voice, and his eyes were suddenly flat and hard.

“No, my lord,” Rathbone said respectfully. “I wish to find the truth. It is far too grave and too terrible a matter to settle for anything less, in the interests of humanity.”

Sullivan grunted, and for a moment Rathbone was afraid he had taken his play too far. He glanced sideways at the jury and knew he was right. Relief washed over him with physical warmth. Then he remembered Phillips shivering in Newgate and his horror of dripping water, and his satisfaction vanished. He turned again to Orme. “You and Mr. Durban worked all your duty hours, and many beyond?”

“Yes, sir.” Orme knew not to answer more than he was asked.

“Was this same passionate dedication also true of Mr. Monk?” He had to ask; it was the plan.

“Yes, sir.” There was no hesitation in Orme; if anything, he was more positive.

“I see. It is not surprising, and much to be respected.”

Tremayne was fidgeting in his seat, growing restive at what seemed to be a purposeless reaffirmation of what he himself had just established. He suspected Rathbone of something, but he could not deduce what, and it troubled him.

The jury was merely puzzled.

Rathbone knew he must make his point now. One by one he touched on the evidence that first Durban and then Monk had pursued, asking Orme for the facts that specifically connected the abuse of the boys to Phillips's boat. Never once did he suggest that it had not happened, only that the horror of the facts had obscured the lack of defining links to Phillips.

The boat existed. Boys from the age of five or six up to about thirteen unquestionably lived on it. There were floating brothels for the use of men with any kind of taste in sexual pleasures, either to participate, or merely to watch. There were pornographic photographs for sale in the dark alleys and byways of the river. What unquestionable proof had Durban, Monk, or Orme himself found that the boys so abused were the ones to whom Phillips gave a home?

There was none. The horror of the cruelty, the greed, and the obscenity of it, had moved all three men so deeply that they had been too desperate to stop it and punish the perpetrators of it than to make certain of their facts. It was only too easy to understand. Any decent man might fall into the same error. But surely any decent man would also be appalled at the idea of convicting the wrong person of such a heinous crime, deserving of the gallows?

The court adjourned for lunch with quite suddenly a complete and awful confusion, a knowledge that all the certainties had been swept away. Only the horror remained, and a sense of helplessness.

Rathbone had accomplished exactly what he had intended. It was brilliant. Even the subtle and clever Tremayne had not seen the trap before he was in it. He had left pale-faced, angry with himself.

Hester was waiting to testify to her part in the investigation when Tremayne came to her during the lunch adjournment. She was sitting in one of the public houses that provided food, but she was too tense to do more than take an occasional bite of her sandwich, and then found it difficult to swallow.

He sat down opposite her, his face grim, his manner apologetic. He too declined to eat more than a sandwich and drink a glass of white wine.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Monk,” he said immediately once they were alone. He spoke quickly, so as not to be overheard by others passing close to them. “It has not gone as well as I had hoped, in fact, rather as I had taken for granted. It is proving harder to make the connections between Phillips and the victims of his depravity than I had expected.”

He must have seen the surprise on her face. “Sir Oliver is one of the most brilliant attorneys in England, far too clever to attack us openly,” he said. “I knew there was something wrong when he played up the horror of the crime. It should have warned me of what he was doing.”

She felt a chill of dismay. “What is he doing?”

Tremayne blushed, and the last shred of irony vanished from his face, replaced by gentleness. “Did you not know he was defending this case, Mrs. Monk?”

“No.” Then instantly she saw the understanding in his face and wished she had not admitted it. He must have known or have sensed something of her friendship with Rathbone, and had seen her sense of betrayal.

“I'm sorry,” he said quietly “How clumsy of me. He is suggesting that the police were moved as much by pity and outrage as by logic. They proved the crime was committed, but forgot the finer elements of connecting it unarguably with Jericho Phillips.”

He took a sip of his wine, his eyes not leaving hers. “He has made it obvious that so far we have provided no motive for him to have tortured and murdered one of his own boys-assuming we can ever prove Figgis was one of his. And he is quite right that we have not so far done that beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“Who could doubt it?” she said hotly. “It all fits together and makes the most excellent sense. In fact, it is the only answer that makes sense at all.”

“On balance of probability it does,” he agreed. He leaned across the table a little. “The law requires that it be beyond all reasonable doubt, if we are to hang a man for it. You know that, Mrs. Monk. You are not a novice at the law.”

Now she was shivering, in spite of the heat inside the stuffy room with its gleaming tankards on the bar, its sawdust floor muffling footsteps, and the smells of ale, food, and too many people crushed together.

“You don't mean he's going to get away with it?” she asked huskily. It was a possibility she had not even considered. Phillips was guilty. He was brutal, sadistic, and profoundly corrupt. He had abused numberless children, and murdered at least one. He had nearly murdered a lighterman, simply to divert the river police so he could escape. Monk and Orme had seen him do it.

“No, of course not,” Tremayne assured her. “But I will have to describe some very violent and offensive scenes, and ask you to relive on the witness stand things that I am sure you would rather forget. I apologize for it, because I had hoped to spare you.”

“For heaven's sake, Mr. Tremayne,” she said sharply. “I don't care in the slightest what you question me about, or whom! If it is unpleasant, or discomfiting, what on earth does that matter? We are talking about the misery and death of children. What kind of person is concerned about such trivialities as comfort at such a cost?”

“Some people will allow others to pay almost anything, in order to avoid embarrassment to themselves, Mrs. Monk,” he replied.

She did not consider that worthy of an answer.

She took the stand, climbing up the steep, curving steps carefully so as not to trip over her skirt. She faced the court, seeing Tremayne below her in the open space reserved for the lawyers. Lord Justice Sullivan sat in his high, magnificently carved seat to the right. The twelve somber jurymen were opposite in their double row under the windows. The public gallery was behind the lawyers’ tables.

She was not afraid to look ahead to where Jericho Phillips sat in the dock, above the whole proceedings. His face was jagged: the high-boned nose, sharp cheekbones, crooked eyebrows, and hair that even water would not make lie straight. She recognized no emotion whatever in his face. Perhaps it was in locked hands or a shivering body behind the high ledge, out of sight.

She did not look to where Rathbone sat quietly, waiting his turn, nor did she try to see if Margaret was in the public gallery behind him. Just at the moment she did not wish to know.

Tremayne began. His voice sounded confident, but she had come to know him well enough over the last few weeks to notice the slightly awkward way he stood and that his hands were restless. He was not as sure of himself as he had been before the trial began.

“Mrs. Monk, is it correct that you have created and now run a clinic situated in the Portpool Lane, for the treatment, at no charge, of street women who are ill or injured, and unable to obtain help any other way?”

“Yes it is.”

“Are you financially rewarded for this?”

“No.” The answer sounded very bare. She wanted to add something, but could not find the words. She was saved from the attempt by Rathbone rising to his feet.

“If it may please the court, my lord, the defense will stipulate to the fact that Mrs. Monk was an outstanding nurse under Miss Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, and that on her return to this country she worked in hospitals, courageously and tirelessly, endeavoring to bring about some very necessary reforms.”

There was a murmur of admiration from the gallery.

“She then turned her attention to the plight of street women,” Rathbone continued. “Reduced to prostitution by abandonment, or whatever other crime. She created, at her own expense, a clinic where they could come for treatment of injury or disease. It is now a recognized establishment drawing voluntary help from Society in general. Indeed, my own wife gives much of her time in its cause, both to raise charitable contributions, and to work there at cooking, cleaning, and tending the sick. I can think of no finer work a woman may perform.”

Several of the jurors gasped and their faces brightened into uncertain smiles. Even Sullivan was moved to an expression of admiration. Only Tremayne looked nervous.

“Do you have anything to add, Mr. Tremayne?” Sullivan asked.

Tremayne was off balance. “No, my lord, thank you.” A little more tight-lipped, he looked up at Hester and resumed his questioning. “In the nature of this work, Mrs. Monk, have you had occasion to learn a great deal more than most of us could know about the business of those who sell their bodies for the sexual indulgence of others?”