“I don’t know whether Dinah guessed at any of this.” He plunged on. “I think not. She believed in her husband, believed that he would not have killed himself. And she knew that she had not killed Zenia. I think it was you, Mrs. Herne, who posed as Dinah in the shops in Copenhagen Place, already knowing perfectly well where Zenia lived, but creating a scene in order to be remembered. You knew Zenia, as she knew you. She trusted you, and quite willingly met you on the evening of her death, just as Joel had met you on the evening of his.”
The court was motionless; no one interrupted him now, even by sigh or gasp.
“You walked with her to the river,” he went on. “Perhaps you even stood together on the pier and watched the light fade over the water, as she loved to do. Then you struck her so hard she collapsed. Perhaps she was dead even as she fell to the ground.
“Then in the darkness you cut her open, possibly with the same blade as you had used to slit your brother’s wrists. You tore out her entrails and laid them across her and onto the ground, to make as hideous
a crime as you could, knowing that the newspapers would write headlines about it.
“Public opinion would never allow the police to leave such a murder unsolved. They would eventually find the clues you had laid leading to Dinah, and she would at last be silenced. No one would believe her protests of innocence. She was half mad with grief; and you had reason and sanity, and an unblemished reputation on your side. Who was she? The mistress of a bigamist with a wife he still kept on the side, or so it appeared.”
He looked up at her now with both awe and disgust.
“You very nearly got away with it. Joel would be dead and dishonored. Zenia had served her purpose and would be remembered only as the victim of a terrible crime of revenge. Dinah would be hanged as one of the most gruesome female murderers of our time. And you would be free to continue your love affair with a rich, famous, and very handsome man, possibly even marry him when your husband’s addiction ended his life. And Sinden Bawtry would forever owe you his freedom from dishonor and disgrace.”
He took a deep breath. “Except, of course, that he does not love you. He used you, just as you used Zenia Gadney, and God knows who else. Surely in time he would also kill you. You have a hold on him that he cannot afford to leave at loose ends, and he will grow tired of your adoration when it is no longer useful to him. It becomes boring to be adored. We do not value that which is given to us for nothing.”
She tried to speak, but no words came to her lips.
“No defense?” Rathbone said quickly. “No more lies? I could pity you, but I cannot afford to. You had no pity for anyone else.” He looked up at Pendock. “Thank you, my lord. I have no more witnesses. The defense rests.”
Coniston said nothing, like a man robbed of speech.
The jury retired and came back within minutes.
“Not guilty,” the foreman said with perfect confidence. He even looked up at Dinah in the dock and smiled, a gentle look of both pity and relief, and something that could have been admiration.
Rathbone asked permission to speak to Pendock in chambers, privately, and he walked out of the court before anyone else could catch
his attention. He did not even look at Hester, Monk, or Runcorn, all waiting.
He found Pendock alone in his chambers, white-faced.
“What now?” the judge asked, his voice hoarse and shaking in spite of his attempt to remain calm.
“I have something that should belong to you,” Rathbone answered. “I don’t wish to carry it around, but if you come to my house at some time of your convenience, you may do with it, and all copies of it, whatever you please. I would suggest acid for the original, and a fire for the copies, which are merely paper. I … I regret having used them to obtain justice.”
“I regret that you had to,” Pendock replied. “You did not create the truth; you merely used it. I shall be retiring from the bench. I imagine after this victory, you may well be offered it. For reasons that must be obvious, I shall not mention our arrangement. You may believe me, or not, but I truly thought I was serving my country in attempting to prevent you from frightening the general public from using the only medicine easily available to them. I thought Lambourn was a foolish man wishing to curtail the freedom of ordinary people seeking some respite from the worst of their afflictions, perhaps even a man attempting to keep the sale of opium in the hands of a very few, of whom I was told he might be one. God forgive me.”
“I know,” Rathbone answered softly. “It was very believable. Our record of the use and abuse of opium, the smuggling and the crime already attached to it, are damnable. Alvar Doulting is only one of its victims, Joel Lambourn another, Zenia Gadney a third. We must become far wiser in the treatment of pain, of every sort. This is a warning we ignore at our peril.”
“You will make a good judge,” Pendock said, biting his lip, his face pale and tight with regret.
“Maybe,” Rathbone answered. “I imagine it is a great deal more difficult than it looks from the floor of the courtroom, where your loyalties are defined for you.”
“Indeed,” Pendock answered. “I have found nothing harder in life than to be certain of my loyalties. I am sure in my head; it is my heart that ruins it all.”
Rathbone thought of Margaret. “It always does. It would be easier not to love,” he agreed.
“And become the walking dead? Is that what you want?” Pendock asked.
“No.” Rathbone had no hesitation. “No, it isn’t. Good luck, sir.” He went out without looking backward, leaving Pendock to his thoughts.
Outside in the hall he almost bumped into Monk.
Monk looked at him with intense concern.
Rathbone wanted to affect indifference, but the warmth in Monk’s eyes made it impossible. He stood still, waiting for Monk to speak first.
“You used them, didn’t you?” Monk asked. “Ballinger’s photographs.”
Rathbone thought of lying, but discarded the idea. “Yes. This was too big, too monstrous to think only of my own peace of mind.” He searched Monk’s face now, afraid of what he would see.
Monk smiled. “So would I … I think,” he said quietly. “The burden is heavy either way.”
To Frances and Henry
By Anne Perry
(Published by The Random House Publishing Group)
The Sheen on the Silk
F
EATURING
W
ILLIAM
M
ONK
The Face of a Stranger
A Dangerous Mourning
Defend and Betray
A Sudden, Fearful Death
The Sins of the Wolf
Cain His Brother
Weighed in the Balance
The Silent Cry
A Breach of Promise
The Twisted Root
Slaves of Obsession
Funeral in Blue
Death of a Stranger
The Shifting Tide
Dark Assassin
Execution Dock
Acceptable Loss
A Sunless Sea
F
EATURING
C
HARLOTTE AND
T
HOMAS
P
ITT
The Cater Street Hangman
Callander Square
Paragon Walk
Resurrection Row
Bluegate Fields
Rutland Place
Death in the Devil’s Acre
Cardington Crescent
Silence in Hanover Close
Bethlehem Road
Farriers’ Lane
Hyde Park Headsman
Traitors Gate
Pentecost Alley
Ashworth Hall
Brunswick Gardens
Bedford Square
Half Moon Street
The Whitechapel Conspiracy
Southampton Row
Seven Dials
Long Spoon Lane
Buckingham Palace Gardens
Treason at Lisson Grove
Dorchester Terrace
T
HE
C
HRISTMAS
N
OVELS
A Christmas Journey
A Christmas Visitor
A Christmas Guest
A Christmas Secret
A Christmas Beginning
A Christmas Grace
A Christmas Promise
A Christmas Odyssey
A Christmas Homecoming
T
HE
W
ORLD
W
AR
I N
OVELS
No Graves as Yet
Shoulder the Sky
Angels in the Gloom
At Some Disputed Barricade
We Shall Not Sleep
A
NNE
P
ERRY
is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the William Monk novels, including
A Sunless Sea
and
Acceptable Loss
, and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including
Dorchester Terrace
and
Treason at Lisson Grove
. She is also the author of a series of five World War I novels, nine Christmas novels, most recently
A Christmas Homecoming
, and a historical novel,
The Sheen on the Silk
, set in the Ottoman Empire. She lives in Scotland.