William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

how sorry for him they might feel. My family is decent too.”
    He hesitated for several seconds, and Rathbone was about to speak again when Ballinger seemed to reach some decision, and continued. “And you have no idea what good I’ve done that I don’t boastabout, or seek reward for. But that won’t stay anyone’s hand, or their tongues.”
    Rathbone looked at him and felt profoundly sorry for him. He was right. The talk, the suspicion, would remain, the belief that somehow he had escaped justice. He would be saved from the punishment of the law, but not of society.
    “Are you sure you want to, Arthur?” he said gently. “This case is still very lightly balanced. Emotions are high. Don’t ever mistake Winchester for a fool because he occasionally makes people laugh. He will go for your throat if he has the chance.”
    “Then, I won’t give him the chance,” Ballinger said bitterly. “Rupert Cardew is a dissolute and violent young man, and he should answer to the law like anyone else. Parfitt was a scab on the backside of humanity, but Hattie Benson was simply an ignorant young woman who made her living in the only way she could imagine. She had little alternative but the match factory, or a sweatshop somewhere. Whoever killed her should hang for it, and I can see that in the jurors’ faces, even if you can’t.”
    Rathbone knew that he was right, but he was still afraid of the risk. It seemed brutal to warn Ballinger, but it would be a betrayal of Rathbone’s duty not to.
    “You would be safer to leave it as it is,” he said gently. “I have to tell you that. The risk is considerable.”
    “What does ‘considerable’ mean?” Ballinger said sharply.
    “The balance is with us now, but not heavily. That could alter. They could hear something, the mood could change on an attitude, an answer they don’t understand, a witness saying something …”
    “I’ll take that chance. I will not leave that courtroom with the world believing I am guilty but I escaped because I had a good lawyer.”
    “There is a chance you could be found guilty.” Rathbone said it, and the words all but choked him. “Sometimes it depends on a thing as trivial as a like or dislike. It’s skill and chance as well as justice. For heaven’s sake, Arthur, you know that!”
    “Are you advising me against trying to clear myself?”
    Rathbone hesitated. He was not sure. If it were he and he knewhimself innocent, the practicality of not seeking more than to escape the noose might not be enough for him. He might believe more deeply than at an intellectual level that truth would prevail. Would he insist on fighting, or would he be cautious, careful, willing to settle for the lesser prize?
    Perhaps he would. Monk would not. Hester wouldn’t even consider it. She would always fight for the best, the ultimate—win, lose, or draw—he had no doubt of it. But was she wise?
    More to the point, would she do that when giving medical treatment to someone unable to make their own decision, lacking the strength or the knowledge and depending upon her? No. He knew the answer without even considering. She would not take the risk with someone else’s life.
    But she would cut off a gangrened limb rather than let the patient’s whole body become infected and die.
    “Oliver!” Ballinger said sharply.
    “I think you should find another way of clearing yourself. Perhaps do all you can to help Monk, or anyone else, to prove who it was and bring them to trial. It will be slower, but—”
    “No,” Ballinger said firmly. “I will do it now. I won’t subject my family to this horror any longer. And for God’s sake, you can’t expect me to leave my fate in the hands of William Monk!”
    “But—”
    “Are you refusing to take my instructions, Oliver?”
    “No. I am advising you, but in the end I will do as you wish.” He felt like a coward saying it, as if in some oblique way he had betrayed Ballinger, but he had no choice.
    They spoke only a little longer, and he left. Outside, a fine rain soaked him thoroughly before he was able to get a hansom, and it perfectly suited his mood.
    He was unable to let the matter go. He went straight to Portpool Lane, to the clinic, on the chance that—in spite of the fact that it was Saturday—Hester might be there. He might learn more about exactly what had happened to Hattie Benson. He felt guilty as he walked in through the familiar, shabby entrance. One of the girls who had seen him before