“It would make sense,” Runcorn agreed. “If he was killed by someone he knew, that would explain why he went out to meet them alone in the evening. Maybe he even walked up One Tree Hill with them.”
“If he went up the hill alone with them, at night, knowing who they were and what they did, then he was an idiot!” Monk said savagely. He ran his hands through his hair. “Sorry,” he apologized. “There’s something here we’re missing. It does look as if he could well have gone up the hill with someone he knew. There were no marks of hoofprints or tire tracks on the path or the grass, and no one could have carried him up there single-handed. Even two would have found it difficult. It doesn’t make sense.”
Rathbone nodded. “We always assumed he walked willingly, but alone.” He turned to Runcorn. “Were there any footprints other than his?”
“Those of the man who found him, and by the time I got there, other police, and the police surgeon,” Runcorn replied. “There could have been anyone else’s and I wouldn’t have seen. And to be honest, at that time I assumed it was suicide, too. I didn’t think of alternatives. I should have.” He looked wretched, filled with guilt for an irresponsible oversight.
Rathbone glanced at Monk and saw the pity in his face. This was something that would have been unimaginable only a year or two ago.
“Actually we know it wasn’t either Herne or Bawtry in person, because there are people who’ll swear they were elsewhere, lots of people,” Hester said. “So if it was one of them who was selling the opium, then he had somebody else actually kill Lambourn. But they can’t account for their time when Zenia Gadney was killed. They wouldn’t think to, because as far as anyone else knew, there was no connection.”
“They paid someone to kill Lambourn?” Rathbone asked. “Zenia? Is that possible? And then killed her so she couldn’t betray them, or blackmail them?”
“Why wait two months?” Monk asked.
“Perhaps she didn’t try blackmail until then?” Rathbone suggested.
“Or perhaps it isn’t either Herne or Bawtry anyway?” Runcorn put in. “Where do we go if it’s someone else altogether?”
Monk sighed. “Let’s look at who it has to be.” He ticked off the points on his fingers, one by one. “Someone Lambourn knew, and who had the power to have his report rejected, and his name blackened for incompetence.” He went to the second finger. “Someone who had access to raw opium of pure quality in order to sell it.” He touched the third. “Someone who knew of Lambourn’s connection with Zenia Gadney, and was in a position to make it look as if Dinah had killed her.”
“One more,” Hester added.
“What?”
“Someone who knew a woman who could pose as Dinah in the shop in Copenhagen Place. She could have worn a wig to imitate Dinah’s hair, but it had to be a woman,” she answered.
“Unless it really was Dinah?” Monk looked from one to the other of them to see what they thought.
Suddenly an idea came to Rathbone’s mind. He looked up quickly.
“I … I think I know.” The words seemed absurd, not courageous but idiotic and desperate. “I want to have Bawtry in court tomorrow, and Herne and his wife. I think I know how I might trick them on the stand.”
“Think?” Monk said softly.
“Yes … I think. Do you have a better idea?”
Monk pushed his hands through his hair again. “No.” He looked at Runcorn.
“We’ll do whatever you want,” Runcorn promised. “God help us.”
“Thank you,” Rathbone answered almost under his breath, wondering if he could be right, and if he could possibly pull it off.
CHAPTER 24
Rathbone slept badly. There was too much racing through his mind, too many possibilities for success, and for failure. His plans were made, but everything rested in the balance of his one last, great gamble. In his mind he turned over everything he could say, every disaster he might avert, or rescue if it came down to it.
He drifted off into fitful sleep, still troubled. If he lost, Dinah would be hanged. Either way, in using the photograph to dictate Pendock’s behavior, to force him into decisions he would not have otherwise made, what had Rathbone done to himself?
Would Pendock ever forgive him? Rathbone knew that if he were certain of the decision he had made in his own mind, that should not matter. But how could one ever be certain when it came to using such methods?
Was he sure Dinah was innocent? Was he seeing her as a woman who would risk anything and everything to save her dead husband’s name because that was what he wanted to see, needed to believe someone would do? And did it ease any of the pain he felt from the bitter end of his own marriage?
He woke late, with a jolt of panic; what if he did not get to the Old Bailey in time? The day was jarringly cold; the sky was dark and the easterly wind carried a sleety edge of worse to come. The pavements were icy, and keeping balance was hard as he strode along.
Runcorn, his first witness, was already waiting for him in the hallway as he went toward his chambers to put on his wig and gown. He had never imagined he would find Runcorn’s figure reassuring, but it was acutely so today. The man had a solidity to him, a certainty of the things he believed in.
“All present and correct, Sir Oliver,” Runcorn said quietly.
For a moment Rathbone was puzzled. It seemed an oddly inclusive expression to use referring to himself.
“Mr. and Mrs. Herne, Bawtry, and the police surgeon, sir,” Runcorn explained. “And Mrs. Monk says she’ll do the best to fetch Dr. Doulting again, just as you said. Could be that the poor man’s too ill.”
Rathbone drew a deep breath and let it out in a sigh of overwhelming relief. “Thank you.”
“And there’s a Mr. Wilkie Collins here as well,” Runcorn went on. “Something to do with the Pharmacy Act. Says he’s supporting it, and to send you the message that he’ll remember Joel Lambourn. I gather he’s a writer of some sort.”
Rathbone smiled. “Indeed he is. Please give him my compliments, Mr. Runcorn. If I survive this, I’ll take him to the best dinner in town.”
Runcorn smiled back. “Yes, sir.”
Half an hour later Runcorn was on the witness stand and Rathbone was looking across at him. The gallery was silent, the twelve jurors sitting motionless. A few of them appeared not to have slept much either.
Upon his high chair Pendock seemed like an old man. Rathbone wanted to avoid looking at him at all, but to do so would be both foolish and impossibly rude. He was acutely aware that if he had not spoken, Pendock might have died without ever knowing of his son’s aberration. The knowledge of it now was a dark burden to carry, whatever the nature of this one trial.
At the next table Coniston was tense, looking one way and then another. Even the jury must see that he had lost the certainty he had shown as recently as yesterday morning.
Rathbone cleared his throat, coughed, then coughed again.
“Mr. Runcorn, in the light of further evidence and certain facts that seem to be unclear, I must take you back to your earlier testimony regarding the death of Joel Lambourn.”
Coniston half rose, but Pendock was there before him.
“I realize you object, Mr. Coniston, but nothing has been said yet. I shall stop Sir Oliver if he wanders from the point. I imagine the prosecution is as keen as the rest of the court to learn the truth of this. If indeed Dr. Lambourn was murdered, then in the interests of justice we must know that.” He smiled in a ghastly gesture, looking like a man drowning. “If the accused is guilty of that also, I assume you wish to know it?”
Coniston sat back down again, looking at Rathbone with an expression of complete confusion. “Yes, my lord,” he said grudgingly.
Rathbone waited a second or two, then asked his first question of Runcorn.
“You were called to take over the investigation of Dr. Lambourn’s death as soon as the local police realized who he was, is that correct?”