Anne Perry - Acceptable Loss

“Do you really believe that Margaret and Gwen were working in cooperation with Rupert Cardew to murder the one witness who could have saved him, and thus condemned their father?” she asked.

“No, of course not! They …” He stopped.

“Yes? They what?” She waited.

“Perhaps she wasn’t going to save him?” he replied. “Maybe Cardew paid her to lie, and she wouldn’t go through with it. He realized that, and that’s why he killed her.”

“With Margaret’s help?” Hester’s eyebrows rose in disbelief, but there was no triumph in her face. “And Gwen’s? Can you imagine what Winchester will make of that idea on the stand?”

She was right. It was unbelievable.

“Did you really want to know that, Oliver?” Her voice broke into his nightmare. “If you did, then I apologize for not telling you. I made a wrong judgment, and I’m sorry. I know that you have to act honestly. I thought it would be impossible for you if you knew that.”

He felt dizzy, as though the room were whirling around him. She was right-of course she was right. But he did know now. The terrible thing was that he could believe it. He remembered Margaret’s face as she looked at her father. She obeyed him without thought, without judgment. He was part of the life she had always known, the fabric of her beliefs, the order in everything.

That was natural. Perhaps Henry Rathbone was the cornerstone of Rathbone’s own life. He could not think of any values, any thought or idea that they had not shared with each other over the years. Their trust was so deep, it had never needed expressing. It was as sure as sunrise; it was the safety that reassured all other doubts, so he never feared an endless fall.

“Oliver?”

He heard her voice, but it was a moment before he could recall himself to the present, the small room in the clinic, the bed with the clean sheet on it, and Hester looking at him.

“What are you going to do?” she asked anxiously.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I suppose you are certain of all this?”

“Yes.” Her voice was gentle. “Margaret told me herself, when I faced her with it. She didn’t evade it. She didn’t say it was Gwen, though. That I deduced by going out and asking people in the streets. I found a peddler who saw Hattie with another woman, and described her. I found the hansom they took to Fulham, right to the house. I took the same cab to the same house, and spoke to the woman who owns it. There might be one chance in a hundred that I’m wrong. It was another woman who looked just like Hattie, at the same time on the same day. And another Mr. Cardew rented the place for her. And our Hattie turned up dead later that day, in the river just a mile away.”

“One chance in a hundred?” he said bitterly. “Perhaps in a million.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did this landlady see Cardew’s face?” It was a desperate last throw. Rathbone knew how he sounded even asking.

“No. He stood well back in the shadows, and he had a heavy coat on, and a hat. He could have been anyone.”

He could think of nothing to say, nothing that eased the increasing pain inside him.

“Thank you … I …”

Hester shook her head. “I know. Winchester won’t call me, and you shouldn’t. I can’t testify to anything firsthand. Do whatever you feel is the right thing.”

“The right thing!” The words escaped with a wild bitterness. “For God’s sake, what is that?”

“Do you believe Ballinger is guilty?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I suppose I fear it. It will be a kind of hell if he is.” He meant it: he was not exaggerating the horror he saw in his own imagination.

She looked at him steadily. “Would you have Rupert Cardew hanged to save him, because he is your family and Rupert isn’t? If you would, Oliver, then what is the law worth? What if Lord Cardew felt the same way, and would have anyone else hanged, guilty or innocent, as long as his own son didn’t have to face himself and his deeds? Would you accept that? Is that really what you believe-one law for your family, another for anyone else?”

“What about loyalty, what about love?” he asked.

“What have you left to give, if you have already given away yourself?”

“Hester …”

“I’m sorry. I don’t always like it, but I can’t believe anything different. It doesn’t mean you stop loving. If you could care only for those who are good all the time, we would none of us be loved. I’m sorry.”

He nodded. Then he touched her hand briefly and turned to go.

He reached home at lunchtime; Margaret was waiting for him.

“Where have you been?” she asked, her voice sharp-edged. “You didn’t say you were going out.”

“I left before you were up.” He found himself defensive. “I went to see your father. He wants to take the stand. I think he shouldn’t, but I couldn’t persuade him.”

“Why shouldn’t he take the stand?” she demanded. She was wearing pale blue, her hair pulled back a little severely, and she looked angry. “He must defend himself. The jury has to hear him deny all the charges and explain that he is a solicitor. He acts on behalf of all sorts of people. Even men like Parfitt are entitled to legal advice, and to a defense, if they are wrongly accused.”

“They are entitled to it even if they are rightly accused,” he pointed out.

“Don’t quibble!” she snapped. “Why don’t you wish him to testify? You haven’t explained that to the jury-I don’t know why not.”

“Because I don’t want to say it more than once,” he replied tartly. “It sounds like an excuse if I push it too hard, like protesting too much. I am keeping it for my final address to them.”

“Well, Papa should still testify. He’ll look guilty if he doesn’t. You’ve said that often to me. It seems to them like running away. If they hear him, see him, they’ll know what kind of a man he is, and that the whole charge is ridiculous. It’s Monk trying to make a name for himself. He probably knows he’s wrong by now, but he daren’t back out of it or he’ll look a fool.”

Rathbone felt as if a nightmare were tightening its coils around him. “Margaret, did you go to Hattie Benson in the clinic, take her to the street door, and persuade her to leave?”

There were two spots of color in Margaret’s face. She lifted her chin a little higher. “She was going to lie about Rupert Cardew, and Hester would have seen that she went through with it. If you think I could allow my father to be hanged for something he didn’t do, then you have no idea of either love or loyalty.”

“Love doesn’t mean betraying what you believe in, Margaret, and no one who truly loved you would ask it,” he replied, his voice trembling.

She closed her eyes. “You pompous fool!” she said between her teeth. “Love means caring, passionately. It means sacrificing yourself for another person because they are more important to you than your career or your ambition, or the way other people admire you, or your money, or even your own life!” Her voice was shaking. “But you wouldn’t understand that. You like, you want, perhaps at times you can need, but you don’t love! You’re a cold, pious, self-righteous man. You don’t want a wife; you want someone to hold on your arm at parties, and organize your household for you.”

Rathbone felt as if she had struck him. He tried to think clearly, find the reason, the balance, but all that filled his mind was crippling emotion. Hester’s words rang in his ears, but he knew even trying to repeat them to Margaret would be useless. And they would sound like Hester, which would make matters even worse.

He should leave, now before he said something that he could never take back.