Anne Perry: Acceptable Loss

It was not the detail that had sent the icy chill creeping through her, for she knew all too well how Jericho Phillips had died. She had seen his dead face. It was the fact that Rupert Cardew knew of Phillips’s terror of water. That meant that he had known Phillips himself. Why should that surprise her? Rupert had made no secret of the fact that he knew prostitutes and was prepared to pay for his pleasure. Perhaps that was more honest than seducing women and then leaving them, possibly with child. But Jericho Phillips had been a different matter-a blackmailer, a pornographer of children, of little boys as young as six or seven years.

Perhaps Rupert had known Phillips only casually, without realizing that he did? Was that one of the many scrapes from which Rupert’s father had bailed him out? It should not surprise her. How easy it is when you like someone to be blind to the possibilities of ugliness in them, of weaknesses too deep to be passed over with tolerance.

What horror might be ahead for Margaret, if Sullivan had been telling the truth about Arthur Ballinger, and one day Margaret was forced to realize it? Margaret’s loyalties would be torn apart, the whole fabric of love and belief threatened. Margaret was loyal to her father; of course she was, as Rupert was to his. And perhaps he had even more cause. His father had protected him, right or wrong. The cost to Lord Cardew must have been far more than money, and yet he had never failed.

Love does forgive, but can it forgive everything? Should it? Which loyalties came first-family, or belief in right and wrong?

What about her own father? That pain twisted deep into places she dared not look. Her father had died alone in England, betrayed and ashamed, while she had been out in the Crimea caring for strangers, ignorant to his plight. What loyalty was that?

“Hester?” Rupert’s voice broke through her thoughts.

She looked up. She was glad that Rupert was just a friend, someone she was deeply grateful to but not tied to by blood, or love.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “It sounds as if fate were harsher to Phillips than the law would have been.”

Monk went to Oliver Rathbone’s office in the city late in the morning, and was informed courteously by his clerk that Sir Oliver had gone to luncheon. Monk duly returned at half past two, and was still obliged to wait. It might have been simpler to catch Rathbone with time to spare at his home in the evening, but Monk needed to speak with him when Margaret was not present.

At quarter to three Rathbone came back, entering with a smile on his face and the easy elegant manner he usually had when the taste of victory was still fresh on his tongue.

“Hello, Monk,” he said with surprise. “Got another case for me already?” He came in and closed the door quietly. His pale gray suit was perfectly cut and fitted to his slender figure. The sunlight shone in through the long windows, catching the smoothness of his fair hair and the touches of gray at the temples.

“I hope I don’t,” Monk answered. “But I can’t let this go by default.”

“What are you talking about?” Rathbone sat down and crossed his legs. He appeared reasonably comfortable, even if in fact he was not. “You look as if you have just opened someone’s bedroom door by mistake.”

“I may have,” Monk said wryly. The reference was meant only as an illustration, but it was too close to the truth.

Rathbone regarded him levelly, his face serious now. “It’s not like you to be oblique. How bad is it?”

Monk hated what he had to say. Even now he was wondering if there were some last, desperate way to avoid it. “That night on Phillips’s ship, after we found Scuff, and the rest of the boys, you told me that Margaret’s father was behind it-”

“I told you that Sullivan said so. He told me while you were occupied with Phillips.” Rathbone cut across him quickly. “Sullivan had no proof, and he’s dead by his own hand now. Whatever he knew, or believed, is gone with him.”

“The proof may be dead”-Monk did not move his eyes from Rathbone’s-“but the question isn’t. Someone is behind it. Phillips hadn’t the money or the connections in society to run the boat and find the clients who were vulnerable, let alone blackmail them afterward.”

“Could it have been Sullivan himself?” Rathbone suggested, and then looked away. Monk did not bother to answer-they both knew Sullivan had not had the nerve nor the intelligence it would have required. He’d been a man ruined by his appetite, and eventually killed by it. In the end, he’d been one more victim.

Rathbone looked up again. “All right, not Sullivan. But he could have implicated anyone, as long as it wasn’t himself. There’s nothing to act on, Monk. The man was desperate and pathetic. Now he’s very horribly dead, and he took Phillips with him, which no man more richly deserved. There’s nothing more I can do, or would. The boat has been broken up, the boys are free. Let the other victims nurse their wounds in peace.” His face tightened in revulsion too deep to hide. “Pornography is cruel and obscene, but there’s no way to prevent men looking at whatever they wish to, in their own homes. If you want a crusade, there are more fruitful causes.”

“I want to stop Scuff’s unhappiness,” Monk replied. “And to do that I have to stop it from happening to other boys, the friends he’s left behind.”

“I’ll help you-but within the law.”

Monk rose to his feet. “I want whoever’s behind it.”

“Give me evidence, and I’ll prosecute,” Rathbone promised. “But I’m not indulging in a witch hunt. Don’t you … or you’ll regret it. Witch hunts get out of hand, and innocent people suffer. Leave it, Monk.”

Monk said nothing. He shook Rathbone’s hand and left.

It was early morning, and Corney Reach was deserted. The heavy mist lent the river an eerie quality, as if the smooth, sullen face of it could have stretched to the horizon. It touched the skin and filled the nose with its clinging odor.

Here on this southern bank, the trees overhung the water, sometimes dipping so low they all but touched its surface. Within fifty yards they were shrouded, indistinct; a hundred yards, and they were no more than vague shapes, suggestions of outlines against the haze. The silence consumed everything except for the occasional whisper of the incoming tide over the stones, or through the tangled weeds close under the bank.

The corpse was motionless, facedown. Its coat and hair floated, wide, making it look bigger than it was. But even partly submerged, the blow to the back of the skull was visible. The current bumped the body gently against Monk’s legs. He moved his weight slightly to avoid sinking in the mud.

“Want me to turn ’im over, sir?” Constable Coburn asked helpfully.

Monk shivered. The cold was inside him, not in the damp early autumn air. He hated looking at dead faces, even though this man might have been the victim of an accident. If it was an accident, he would resent having been called all the way up here, beyond the western outskirts of the city. It would have been a waste of his time, and that of Orme, his sergeant, who was standing five or six yards away, also up to his knees in the river.

“Yes, please,” Monk answered.

“Right, sir.” Constable Coburn obediently leaned forward, ignoring the water soaking his uniform sleeves, and hauled the corpse over until it was floating on its back.

“Thank you,” Monk acknowledged.

Orme moved closer, stirring up mud. He looked at Monk, then down at the body.

Monk studied the dead man’s face. He seemed to be in his early thirties. He could not have been in the river long, because his features were barely distorted. There was just a slight bloating in the softer flesh, no damage from fish or other scavengers. His nose was sharp, a little bony, his mouth thin-lipped and wide, and his eyebrows pale. There seemed little color in his hair, but it would be easier to tell when it was dry.