Anne Perry - Blood on the Water

“I have studied the transcripts of Beshara’s trial very carefully, and with legal colleagues, in case I should misinterpret anything in them,” he began. “I have studied your rulings and your summation.”

“For what purpose?” York snapped.

“To see if there are any grounds for reversal …”

York started to his feet, his left hand grasping for the cane that leaned against his chair.

“How dare you, sir?”

Beata rose also, her face creased with anxiety. “Ingram!”

“Don’t you dare protect him!” he snarled, then swung back to face Rathbone. “I know you want to make a spectacle of yourself, one way or another, but this is beyond disgraceful! You dare to question the rulings of one of Her Majesty’s judges, and a verdict that every sane man in England knows was fair and true?”

“Yes, I do,” Rathbone answered him. “Some of your rulings were arbitrary and in error. At least two of them seriously so, and-had the case not been so deeply emotional and the verdict desperately desired-they would have been questioned at the time. Your summation was biased to the point of, politely, serious error; less politely, corruption.”

York lurched fully to his feet. At first he leaned his weight on his cane, and then, ashen-faced, he raised it in the air.

“How dare you, of all people, question the law?” His voice was raised and shrill. “You took the law into your own hands and smashed it to pieces when you were on the bench. I backed you! I recommended you, and you thanked me by perverting the course of justice, blackmailing a witness with obscene photographs and very justly getting yourself disbarred. And now you come into my home, under false pretenses, and in front of my wife you accuse me of corruption in a case you weren’t even in the country to see.”

“And I paid for my mistake,” Rathbone kept his voice level. “I am no longer practicing law. I am doing no more than giving Brancaster my advice …”

York gave a loud, derisive laugh. “The more fool he!”

“Your rulings were biased in favor of the prosecution against Habib Beshara,” Rathbone continued. “The case is going to be overturned …”

“The hell it is!” York shouted, his face twisted with rage, spittle on his lips. “The man was as guilty as sin. If Sabri is guilty too, then they were in it together.” His knuckles were white where he clutched the cane. His whole body shook.

“Ingram …” Beata tried again, moving a step toward him.

“Be quiet!” he said furiously, brushing her aside so hard he actually knocked her off balance. Only her closeness to the side of the armchair saved her from falling.

Suddenly the tone in the room changed. Rathbone struggled to regain control of the situation, and then he saw York’s eyes and knew he had already failed.

“Beshara is dead, as he needed to be,” York went on. “If you can hang Sabri as well, so be it. But you will not question my rulings or my conduct of one of the most important cases in British jurisprudence. It was my last great case, and I will not have a disbarred hack like you smear my legacy with your pathetic whining. Do you hear me?”

His voice was so loud they must have heard him in the kitchens.

“Only one man laid the dynamite on the Princess Mary , then lit the fuse and jumped overboard,” Rathbone said as levelly as he could, but his voice was shaking. “Your ruling said it was Beshara, and he is dead. It was not Beshara, it was Gamal Sabri, and he is very much alive. We cannot convict two men of the same, single act. And apart from that, Beshara may be guilty of many things, but he was not guilty of this.”

York lifted his cane and raised it to the side of him.

Beata jerked backward.

“Don’t you dare tell me how to judge the law, you prancing jackass!” York shouted. “You are disbarred!” He swung the cane through the air with a sharp hiss of sound. “You are a suborner of perjury!” He swung the cane again. “A dealer in filthy pictures, a blackmailer … a lecher!”

“Ingram!” Beata shouted at him. “Stop it! That is untrue!”

York ignored her. He was moving toward Rathbone now, his cane lifted in the air. His face was scarlet. “I’ve seen you looking at my wife! Sniffing around her like a dog …” He lashed out with the cane, swinging it sideways until it struck Rathbone across the shoulder and sent him crashing to the floor with the force of the blow.

York took another step forward, his cane raised to strike again.

Beata picked up the coffeepot off the side table and smashed it over the back of his head. He stood swaying for a moment as coffee and blood trickled down his face and over his shoulders. Then he crumpled up and pitched forward to collapse on the floor in front of the couch.

Rathbone climbed to his feet, bruised, feeling shocked and ridiculous, but above all concerned for Beata.

She was shuddering, her face ashen, her eyes wide.

“I’m so sorry,” she said huskily. “I-I think he has lost his mind. I must call his valet … and the doctor. Are you … hurt?” She looked stricken.

He took a deep breath. His well-being, and York’s mistakes in the Beshara case, seemed insignificant now. This was the end of Beata’s life in the way she knew it. It had to be a disastrous end to her husband’s career.

The thoughts raced in Rathbone’s mind.

“Yes,” he agreed. “You must call the doctor immediately. There has been a most unfortunate accident and I fear Mr. York may have had some kind of seizure.”

“He attacked you …” There were tears in her eyes; he thought they were of shame.

“Not as I remember it,” he replied. “He stumbled and fell backward, grasping the cane to save himself, and regrettably caught me with the end of it as I lunged forward to help him. May I stay with you until you have assistance? Perhaps you should sit down and I will fetch the butler …”

She straightened her shoulders. “I will fetch him, thank you, Oliver. As … as you say, my husband is ill. I think perhaps he has been so for some time, and I did not realize how serious it was.”

“Exactly,” he agreed.

The butler was at the door. He must have heard the crash of York’s fall. He regarded his master, who was still senseless on the floor, with some pity, but his concern was for Beata.

“I shall send Duggan for Dr. Melrose, ma’am,” he told her. “Immediately. Perhaps, Sir Oliver, you would be good enough to remain here until we can get the appropriate assistance, and give Mrs. York what comfort you can? I don’t believe we shall be able to resume … things as they were.”

York was still lying insensible on the floor, coffee and blood on his head and face, spittle on his lips.

Rathbone said nothing, but bent to straighten out the fallen man’s legs, before guiding Beata to one of the other chairs. Then he sat in silence opposite her until the servants returned.

Rathbone was at Brancaster’s chambers by eight o’clock the next morning, carrying the papers he had regarding York’s conduct of the Beshara trial. He was too tired and too confused in his emotions to feel any sense of triumph in the fact that he almost certainly had enough material to gain Beshara a new trial, were he alive, or-since he was not-to overthrow a highly questionable verdict. But the victory over Ingram York gave him no sense of triumph. The man had abused his position. Perhaps Rathbone would never know all the small reasons that had brought it about, but he would not have had Beata suffer the distress of seeing him collapse in such a way, stripped of dignity and reason.

The doctor had come immediately. On seeing York still lying on the sitting-room floor, apparently in some sort of coma, the doctor had had him carried gently and carefully to his own room. When the doctor had heard more of the story, York had been taken to a private clinic.