A Sunless Sea (51 page)

“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.

R
ATHBONE SLEPT BADLY
. T
HERE
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?”

“Yes, sir,” Runcorn replied simply. This was the last stand, and there was no time or need to elaborate beyond what was absolutely necessary.

“You examined the body, and the surrounding scene?” Rathbone asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Could you tell if Dr. Lambourn had walked to the place where you found him, or been carried there in some way?”

“I can tell you that there were no marks on the ground of any kind of transport, sir,” Runcorn said firmly. “Nothing with wheels anywhere near, no hoofprints of any horse, just the foot marks of several men, and those of a dog, matching the one belonging to the gentleman who found the body.”

“Do you conclude from that absence of these indications that Dr. Lambourn walked?”

“Yes, sir. He was at least an average height and weight of man. It would have been impossible for one man to have carried him all the way from the path. It was some distance—hundred yards or so—and steep.”

“Two men?” Rathbone asked.

Coniston rolled his eyes with exasperation, but he did not interrupt.

“No, sir, I don’t think so,” Runcorn answered. “Two men carrying a body would have left some kind of mark on the grass, and even on the path. It’s very awkward, carrying a dead weight. Have to go sideways some of the time, or even backward. Slips out of your grip. Anyone who’s tried it would know.”

“But what footprints were there around the body?” Rathbone persisted.

“Clearly?” Runcorn raised his eyebrows. “Impossible to say, sir. Too many people been there. The gentleman who found him, the policemen, the surgeon. They all went up to him, naturally, at first probably to see if they could help. Pretty well mucked up everything. No harm meant, of course. Couldn’t know it would ever matter.”

“Just so,” Rathbone agreed. “So he could have walked there himself, either alone, or with someone else?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you ever find the knife with which he had cut his wrists?”

Runcorn shook his head. “No, sir. Looked very hard, even at some distance, to see if he could have thrown it. Don’t know how far a man can throw a knife when he’s just cut his wrists. Come to that, don’t know why he would want to.”

“Nor do I,” Rathbone agreed. “Did you find anything in which he could have taken the opium? I’m thinking of a bottle for water, or a vial that contained any solution in which opium could have been dissolved.”

“No, sir. Looked for that, too.”

“Or a syringe with a needle?” Rathbone asked.

“No, sir, nothing.”

“Nevertheless, at first you concluded that his death was suicide?”

“At first, yes, sir,” Runcorn agreed. “But the more I thought about it, the unhappier I got. Still, there was nothing I could do until Mr. Monk came along about a second death, which was very definitely a murder, and asked me to look into Dr. Lambourn’s death a little harder.”

“But you had been told to leave the matter as it was, had you not?” Rathbone pressed.

“Yes, sir. I did it in my own time, but I’m aware I’d been ordered to
leave it,” Runcorn admitted. “But I began to think he was murdered. I can’t leave that to rest without knowing for sure.”

Coniston stood up abruptly.

“Yes, yes,” Pendock said quickly. “Mr. Runcorn, please do not give us any conclusions you may have come to unless you have proof that they are correct.”

“Sorry, my lord,” Runcorn said contritely. He did not argue, although Rathbone could see from his face that his silence was not easy.

“Mr. Runcorn, did you see any marks of struggle on the ground, or on Dr. Lambourn’s person?” Rathbone asked. “Were his clothes torn or in disarray, for example? Were his shoes scuffed, his hair tangled or his skin bruised?”

“No, sir. He looked fairly peaceful.”

“As a man might who had committed suicide?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Or been brought there, dosed with opium he took to be something else?” Rathbone suggested. “Given to him by someone he trusted, causing him to be insensible when that person carefully slit his wrists and left him there to bleed to death, alone in the night?”

Runcorn’s face showed his imagination of the tragedy. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly, his voice a little husky. “Exactly like that.”

Coniston looked up at Pendock, but this time kept his silence with grim resignation.

“Thank you, Mr. Runcorn,” Rathbone said courteously. “Please wait until Mr. Coniston has asked you whatever he wishes to.”

Coniston stood up and walked toward the witness stand. “Mr. Runcorn, did you see anything whatsoever to prove that Dr. Lambourn was in the company of anyone when he went up One Tree Hill in the middle of the night?”

“It isn’t so much what I saw as what I didn’t see,” Runcorn replied. “No knife to cut his wrists, nothing with which to take opium.”

“And from that you deduce that it was someone he knew, and trusted, this mystery companion?” Coniston pursued.

“Yes, sir. Seems to make sense. Why would you go up a hill in the dark with someone you didn’t trust? And there were no signs of a fight. Anyone fights for their life, when it comes down to it.”

“Indeed.” Coniston nodded. “Then it could even have been a woman, for example the accused, his … mistress, with whom he lived as if she were his wife, and pretended to the world that she was, who was with him?”

There was a gasp in the gallery at Coniston’s blunt statement. Several jurors actually looked up at the dock, where Dinah sat white-faced.

“Could’ve been,” Runcorn agreed quietly. “But then, it could’ve been the lady who really was his wife.”

One of the jurors blasphemed—and immediately clapped his hand over his mouth and blushed scarlet.

Pendock glanced at him but said nothing.

“Thank you, Mr. Runcorn. I think we have heard enough of your remarkable suppositions.” Coniston returned to his seat.

“Anything further, Sir Oliver?” Pendock inquired.

“No, thank you, my lord,” Rathbone answered. “I would like to call Dr. Wembley, the surgeon who examined Dr. Lambourn’s body.”

Wembley was called, sworn in, and faced Rathbone.

“I shall be very brief, Dr. Wembley,” Rathbone began, still standing out in the center of the open space, every eye upon him. “Were there any marks on the body of Joel Lambourn when you examined him on One Tree Hill, or later in your postmortem?”

“Other than the cuts on his wrists, you mean?” Wembley asked. “No, none at all. He seemed to be a healthy man in his fifties, well nourished and perfectly normal.”

“Could you say whether or not he had been involved in any kind of physical struggle immediately prior to his death?” Rathbone asked.

“He had not.”

“Were there any bruises, ligature marks, abrasions, anything at all on his body or his clothes to suggest he had been carried manually?” Rathbone pursued. “Or that he had been tied up, perhaps by the ankles, arms, or any other part of his body? Or bumped around? The rubbing of fabric, perhaps, twisting as if something had been used to make carrying easier?”

Wembley looked incredulous. “Nothing whatsoever. I can’t think what gives you that idea.”

“I do not have that idea, Doctor,” Rathbone assured him. “I simply
want to exclude it. I believe Dr. Lambourn walked up One Tree Hill in the company of someone he trusted completely. It never occurred to him that they might do him any harm whatsoever.” He smiled bleakly. “Thank you, Dr. Wembley. That is all I have to ask you.”

This time Coniston did not take the trouble to cross-examine. His face showed his belief in the total futility of the entire exercise.

M
ONK ARRIVED AT THE
Old Bailey considerably later than Rathbone, after the trial had resumed. He had been out since before dawn questioning people near the Limehouse Pier and along Narrow Street leading to it, asking the new questions that they had planned yesterday evening. He had the answers, even though he had come perilously close to putting them in the witnesses’ mouths. But he believed them, and time was desperate.