“I would have no sympathy if it were about money, Hester, but it isn’t. It’s about power,” he said simply.
“Power?” There was sharper fear in her face now, and perhaps the beginning of understanding as to what he meant.
“Power to make the men in those photographs do anything, which they would, out of fear of being exposed,” he elaborated.
“Do you think there are other people in those pictures who are … judges and politicians, or …?” She saw it in his face. “You do! Did Ballinger say there were?”
“No. He did far worse than that, Hester. He left them to me.” He looked at her intently, waiting for the horror in her eyes, even the revulsion.
She sat motionless and very slowly the full impact of it settled over her, like a shadow. She studied him. Perhaps she saw in him something of the burden he felt, and the bitterness of the irony. It was both Ballinger’s legacy and his revenge. He might not know what it would do to Rathbone, but he must have relished the possibilities.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “If you had destroyed them you would have told me differently, wouldn’t you.” It was not a question; she was letting him know that she understood.
“Yes,” he confessed. “I would. I will hide them. If I die then they will be destroyed. I meant to do it at the time I saw them; then when I saw who was in them, I couldn’t. Maybe I still will. The power of it is … so very great. Ballinger began by using them only for good, you know? He told me. It was to force people to take action against injustice or abuse, when they wouldn’t do it any other way.” Was he making excuses for Ballinger? Or for himself, because he had not destroyed the pictures? He looked at Hester’s face and saw the confusion in her, and the comprehension. He waited for her to ask if he would use them, and she did not.
“Do you think Dinah is innocent?” she asked instead.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “At first I thought it was possible, then after the beginning of the trial, I seriously doubted it. Now I don’t know whether she killed Zenia Gadney or not, but I’m beginning to have very serious doubts as to whether Lambourn committed suicide. And if he was murdered, then that opens up a lot of other doubts, and questions.”
There was a sound of footsteps outside the door to the hall. A moment later Ardmore came in and very courteously reminded Rathbone that it was time for him to go.
Hester smiled and rose to her feet. There was no need for further discussion, simply a quiet good-bye.
Lambourn’s suicide was still in Rathbone’s mind as the trial resumed an hour and a half later, when he met Sorley Coniston in the hall and they exchanged brief greetings.
“Morning,” Coniston said with a slight smile. “Tough one for you, Rathbone. Whatever made you take it? I used to wonder if you accepted cases for notoriety sometimes, but I always decided you didn’t. Haven’t changed, have you?”
“Not that much,” Rathbone replied drily. He did not know Coniston well, though they had been acquainted for years, but thought he might like the man if he did. He was unpredictable, and occasionally his opinions were startlingly honest. “This time I can’t make up my mind myself.”
“For heaven’s sake!” Coniston said, shaking his head. “The only question in this one is how far you can bring in the damn opium question. Lambourn might have gone off the rails in his personal life, but he was a decent man, and honest. Don’t drag his private mistakes out in front of the world. His children don’t deserve that, even if you think he does.”
Rathbone smiled back at him. “Cold feet?” he asked wryly.
“Going to hold them to the fire,” Coniston replied. “Yours, I mean.”
“Really?” Rathbone shrugged with confidence he did not feel, and they went into the courtroom.
Twenty minutes later, Coniston rose to question his first witness of the day, Dinah’s sister-in-law, Amity Herne.
Rathbone watched as she walked across the open space toward the witness box. With one hand delicately lifting her skirt so she did not trip, she climbed up the steps to the top and stood facing the body of the court.
Rathbone would like to have looked across at Dinah to see her expression, but he did not want to draw the jury’s attention to her, when they were all watching Amity Herne so closely. He could not imagine the pain of seeing your own family testify against you. Did they blame her for Lambourn’s death? For any degree of the unhappiness that they believed had led to his suicide? He might soon know. He realized his hands were knotted in his lap beneath the table where they could not see them, his muscles aching already, at the very beginning of the morning.
Amity Herne swore to her name, and to tell the truth, all of it, and nothing but. She acknowledged that she was the sister of the accused woman’s late husband, Joel Lambourn.
“I offer my condolences for the recent loss of your brother, Mrs. Herne,” Coniston began. “And I apologize for being obliged to open up so publicly a subject that must be additionally painful to you in the recent tragedy that has afflicted your family.”
“Thank you,” she said graciously. She was an attractive woman, although not beautiful, and now appeared a little too unemotional for Rathbone’s taste. Perhaps in the circumstances a certain stiffness was the only defense she had to preserve any composure at all, when all privacy was denied her. There was something in the dignity with which she stood waiting for Coniston to open up the wounds that reminded him of Margaret. He should have admired her more. How much was his own disillusion warping his views of the people around him?
Surely Coniston, standing gracefully and even a little deferentially, realized that the jury would not take kindly to anyone who was unnecessarily rough with Amity Herne. He would begin gently, set a pattern Rathbone would have no choice but to follow.
“Mrs. Herne,” Coniston began, “were you aware of the nature of the work that your brother, Dr. Lambourn, was doing for the government?”
Rathbone sat up a little straighter. Surely Coniston was not going to allow that subject to be raised?
“Only in the vaguest terms,” Amity replied calmly, her voice soft and very precise. “It was a medical investigation of some kind, that is all he would say.”
“Confidential?” Coniston said.
“I imagine so,” she agreed. She kept her gaze fixed on him, never allowing it to wander toward the gallery and not once even glancing over to the dock, where Dinah sat between her jailers.
“But I did not ask him further anyway,” she continued. “I do know that it troubled him. He felt very deeply about it, and I was concerned that he was allowing himself to become too involved in it.”
Rathbone rose to his feet. “My lord, Mrs. Herne has just said that she has very little idea what the work was concerned with. How, then, could she judge whether his involvement was too great?” He would like to have argued that it was also completely irrelevant to Zenia Gadney’s death, but he intended to introduce the exact point later on, and this opened the door for him nicely.
Coniston smiled. “She might not have known specifically what the work was, but she can judge if it had bearing on the state of his mind. And if it bears on his state of mind, my lord, it will automatically bear on the state of mind of the accused.”
“My lord!” Rathbone was still on his feet. “How can Dr. Lambourn’s concern for his work have been on the accused’s state of mind two months after he was dead? Is my learned friend suggesting there was some kind of communicable madness involved?”
There was a ripple of nervous laughter around the gallery. One juror sneezed and put his handkerchief up to his face, hiding his expression.
“I will permit this kind of questioning,” Pendock said, clearing his throat, “on condition that you reach some relevance very soon, Mr. Coniston.” He did not look at Rathbone.
“Thank you, my lord.” Coniston turned again to Amity Herne. “Mrs. Herne, was Dr. Lambourn more involved with this task, whatever it was, than was usual for him?”