William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

the jury would be reluctant to hang the man who had killed him. In fact, Rathbone judged that several of them would want to shake the killer’s hand and turn a blind eye to the law.
    And there was a level at which this entire trial was not so much about who had killed Parfitt, quickly and more mercifully than he deserved, but about who had staked him, used him, and reaped the lion’s share of his profit. Rathbone had seen the anger in Monk’s face that drove him to pursue the deeper levels of the affair, and the guiltthat his instinct had been too powerful to simply abandon the murder case in the beginning. There must have been moments when he would gladly have marked it “unsolved” and shelved it.
    Now Monk was going to fail anyway, because no one would hang for the crime—either the lesser crime of strangling Parfitt or the greater crime of having created his opportunity in the first place, and then fed him with money and skill until he became a monster.
    He understood Monk and wished that his failure were avoidable, particularly that Rathbone himself did not have to be such a powerful instrument in bringing it about. But he had no choice. The hansom pulled up outside his house. It was dark, and the streetlamps were shedding yellow light in the misty evening. Branches swayed, the leaves drifting in the wind. The air smelled of earth and rain.
    The butler opened the door. Margaret was waiting for him in the withdrawing room. She was standing in the middle of the floor, as if she had heard him come and had risen to her feet. She looked tired. There were signs of strain in her face, and she was definitely pale, but her eyes were bright. As soon as he had closed the door behind him, she came to him quickly, putting her arms around him and kissing him on the cheek, and then the mouth.
    Then she pulled away quickly. “We’re going to win, aren’t we? I can see it in the jurors’ faces. They’ll acquit him.” She closed her eyes. “Thank God for that.”
    He held her tightly. “We’re not there yet, but yes, I think they’ll acquit.”
    She opened her eyes again.
    “They have to know that he didn’t kill that wretched man, not just that Monk can’t prove it.”
    “It isn’t Monk, Margaret. It’s—”
    “Yes, it is!” she responded vehemently. “Monk is the one who arrested him and brought the charge. I know he doesn’t run the prosecution in court because he isn’t a lawyer, but he’s behind it, and everyone knows that. Don’t quibble! You have to have them know it was somebody else, probably Rupert Cardew. They aren’t bringing that girl to say she stole his cravat, are they!”
    “No, of course not. They can’t. She’s dead.” He watched her face, afraid of what he would see in it.
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said quietly. “But I’m afraid prostitutes come to a bad end quite often. And she lied. I don’t know why. Maybe he threatened her. But it doesn’t matter now. You have to make sure the jury understands that she was killed, almost certainly by Rupert Cardew. That’s a good thing, for the case. Then they’ll really know Papa was innocent.”
    “Do you hear what you are saying, Margaret?” he asked, pushing her a little farther from him, looking into her face. He saw the fear there, tightly controlled, the fierce protection, the urgency. There was no awareness at all that she had said anything to cast a shadow over her integrity.
    “That justice will be done, and we’ll be safe again,” she replied.
    Should he argue? Was there any point, or would she only be angry, and then push a further wedge between them? He knew he should not say it, and yet the words slipped out of his mouth: “Don’t you care that she’s dead, perhaps murdered?”
    “Of course I’m sorry! I’m not heartless,” she retorted with a touch of anger. “But she had a life that was always going to end badly.” She shook her head. “There’s nothing we can do about it. We have to fight for complete justice—exoneration for Papa. And then perhaps Monk will put it right by charging Rupert Cardew again. He can, can’t he? I mean, there’s no double jeopardy or anything like that, because he didn’t stand trial. He might even have killed Hattie as well. Then if you can’t prove he killed Mickey Parfitt, you could always hang him for killing her.”
    “You said it as if you would like that,” he observed. Why was he provoking a quarrel, pushing her away? All she wanted was for her