Agatha did not answer.
Hester waited.
“I won’t try to make ’im,” Agatha said at last. “You ’aven’t seen what the withdrawal’s like, or you wouldn’t ask. You wouldn’t put anyone through it, let alone someone you cared about … a friend.”
“Maybe not,” Hester conceded, “but I wouldn’t make the decision for them, either.”
“It’d be the man who gives ’im the opium ’e needs,” Agatha pointed out. “Without it ’e’ll be in withdrawal for months-maybe on an’ off forever.”
“Can’t you get it for him?”
“I’ve ’ardly got enough for the injured. You want me to give ’im yours? D’yer know ’ow much it takes ter keep an addict going?”
“No. Does it make any difference?”
“You’re a hard bitch!” Agatha said between her teeth.
“I’m a nurse,” Hester corrected her. “That means I’m a realist … like you.”
Agatha snorted, was silent for a few moments, then straightened her huge shoulders. “Well, come on then! By the sound of it, you ’aven’t got time ter waste!”
Hester relaxed and smiled at last, then turned for the door.
Alvar Doulting knew as soon as he saw Agatha what they had come for. He shook his head, backing into the room as if there were a form of escape in the stacks of shelves behind him.
Agatha stopped and her raw-boned hand clasped Hester so hard it bruised the flesh of her arm. She had to bite her lip not to cry out.
“You don’t ’ave ter do it,” Agatha said to Doulting.
“If you don’t, Dinah Lambourn will hang,” Hester told him. “And Joel Lambourn’s report will never be seen. In particular the part about opium needles. There’ll still be people addicted, whatever we do, but if it’s made illegal, there’ll be fewer. It’s time to decide what you want to do … to be.”
“You don’t ’ave ter!” Agatha said again. Her face was pale, her voice strained. Her fingers were like a vise on Hester’s arm.
Doulting looked from one to the other of them as the seconds ticked by. He seemed beaten, as if he could no longer fight. Perhaps he knew there was nothing left that he could gain, except the last shred of the man he used to be.
“Don’t stop me, Agatha,” he said quietly. “If I can find the courage, I’ll do it.”
“You’ll testify that you told Joel Lambourn about the addiction that taking opium by needle causes, and he included it in his report?” Hester said it clearly. “And you’ll tell them what it’s like, and how it affects those it captures?”
Doulting looked at her and very slowly nodded.
She did not know whether she dared believe him. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll tell Sir Oliver Rathbone.”
He sank back against the bench, turning to Agatha.
“I’ll get you enough,” she promised rashly, yanking at Hester’s arm. “Come on. We done enough ’ere.” She looked at Doulting again. “I’ll be back.”
Rathbone sat in Monk’s kitchen, untouched tea steaming gently in front of him. There were pastries cooling on a rack, sweetmeats ready for Christmas.
“Are you certain?” Rathbone pressed, looking at Monk, then at Runcorn. “Is the evidence absolutely irrefutable?”
Hester nodded her head. “Yes. Dr. Winfarthing will come first, then Alvar Doulting. They’ll confirm that Joel Lambourn came to Winfarthing, who told him about the selling of opium and needles, and then Doulting will tell the court that Lambourn came to him, and repeat what he told him. Lambourn put it in his report. That was why he was killed. If they made it illegal to take opium that way, the sellers would lose a fortune. It was worth murdering Lambourn for, and Zenia Gadney.”
“And hanging Dinah Lambourn,” Runcorn added grimly.
“Then who actually killed Lambourn?” Monk asked.
“The seller of opium pure enough to inject without killing people, and the needles to do it,” Hester said quietly. “Or someone he paid. Morally, it’s him.”
“Who? Barclay Herne?” Rathbone asked, looking from one to the other of them.
This time it was Monk who answered him. “Possibly, but from what we can tell, he hasn’t the sort of money such a trade would bring. Apart from the bestiality of it, it’s too dangerous to do for small reward.”
“Then who? Sinden Bawtry? My God, that would be appalling,” Rathbone exclaimed, the full enormity of it burgeoning to fill his imagination. “Word is that he’s about to fill a very high cabinet post. If that’s possible, then no wonder Joel Lambourn was desperate to expose him. He could have had the power to stop that provision from being included in the Pharmacy Act.” He took a deep breath, his tea still ignored. “But Bawtry and Herne were dining at the Atheneum that night. There are witnesses. And that was miles away, on the other side of the river.”
“Is Herne involved?” Rathbone asked doubtfully. “Organizing everything for Bawtry? For a suitable reward afterward?” He could not see Barclay Herne with the fire or the courage to do anything dangerous, or requiring that kind of ruthless and passionate greed, unless he was an addict, too. He remembered the confidence one day, and the pasty skin and nervousness the Sunday he had called unexpectedly. “We can’t afford a mistake. If I say something I have to be right and be able to prove it-at least as probable, even if not certain,” he finished.
Runcorn bit his lip. “That isn’t going to be easy. The judge may not know what he’s defending, but he’s been told there’s something. He may think it’s to do with England’s reputation, and nothing more personal than that, but I dare say his future’s dependent on keeping it quiet.”
“I’m damned sure of it,” Rathbone agreed. He turned to Hester. “Are you certain this Agatha Nisbet will turn up? And what about Doulting? He could be drugged out of his senses, or dead in an alley by then.”
They all looked at Hester, faces tense, bodies stiff.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “We can only try.”
“We haven’t much to lose,” Rathbone said to all of them. “As it is now, they’re going to find Dinah guilty. I have no one else left to put on the stand. She’s lied to me before, and I’m not sure if she knew anything at all about what Lambourn found out. I don’t think her belief in him is going to be enough to change this outcome.”
He looked at Hester. “Do you believe this Agatha Nisbet?”
She did not hesitate. “Yes. But it won’t be so easy with Alvar Doulting. She’ll bring him if he’s all right, but she won’t force him. You may have to string it out at least another day. I’ll help her to get him as strong as we can.”
“I’ve no one else,” Rathbone told them.
“Then you must call Dinah,” Hester said, her voice uncertain, a little husky. “Immediately after Christmas.”
The more Rathbone heard of what Hester had learned, and the further disclosures it threatened, the more certain he was that both Coniston and Pendock knew at least of the existence of a scandal that they had been warned must be kept a secret, even at the cost of hanging a woman without exhausting the last possibility that she was innocent. Who else was addicted to the pervasive poison? Who else’s fortune relied on its sale?
He looked across at Monk. It was a gamble. They were all painfully aware of it.
“I’ll speak to Dinah,” he said. He had not had time to talk to her since the revelation that she had never actually been Lambourn’s wife. “But we’ve got to provide an alternative better than some shadowy form of an opium seller we also can’t name.”
Monk glanced at Hester, then back at Rathbone. “I know. We won’t stop trying to prove who’s behind it. But we need time. Can you stretch it out another day?”
Rathbone wanted to say yes, but he doubted it. If he could not, and the court could see that he was increasingly desperate, asking questions to which they all knew the answer, Coniston would object that he was wasting the court’s time, and Pendock would very justifiably uphold him. Most important, the jury would know he had no defense left, or else he would have used it.