William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

believe. A jury might also see what they expected to see—a judge who used evidence to which he alone had access in order to turn a trial the way he wished it to go, condemning a man of the Church.
    Monk had gained understanding, but it had not yet helped his cause.
    T HE DAY AFTER THAT Monk spoke to Rufus Brancaster and told him what he had learned. Brancaster said exactly what he had expected him to.
    “It doesn’t amount to a defense.” He looked tired, as if he were struggling to avoid giving in to defeat. “It does make sense of Taft’s actions, but only of the fact that he committed murder and suicide, where any other man would have been devastated but would have survived; perhaps drunk himself senseless, or collapsed with hysteria, but not taken his life. He thought he was necessary to the survival of his family,” Brancaster continued. “I’ve defended a few like that before. Imagine their families cannot live without them, convinced nobody elsewould protect and provide for their wives. I think it’s really a thinly disguised terror that they might not actually be as essential as they suppose. Can’t bear to think that anyone could manage without them. Their worst nightmare is to be forgotten.”
    Monk said nothing. He had spent so much of the life he could remember alone. In the early days after his accident, what he had learned of himself did not encourage him to investigate more deeply. He had not been a necessary part of anyone’s life.
    Now he was necessary to Hester in that she loved him, but it had never been that she was unable to stand on her own feet, make her own decisions, and, if need be, to earn her own living. She was independent—not a quality liked by all men. She was highly intelligent, articulate, brave, and had a very sharp sense of humor—again not qualities comfortable to all men. She was not beautiful in the traditional sense, but he could see in her a loveliness deeper and more lasting than mere prettiness. He had never deluded himself that she could not find someone else to love her, even if not as deeply or intensely as he did.
    Brancaster interrupted his thoughts.
    “You and I might see that Taft was self-obsessed, and deluded enough to kill himself rather than face the loss of his fame. But the jury is going to see a man driven—by evidence they have not seen and don’t understand—to the point of despair where he took not only his own life but that of his family. They have to blame someone for that.” His face was sad, his eyes hollow. “A judge who perverted justice for his own reasons is an easy solution. Nobody cares what those reasons might be. Possibly the prosecution will offer them a few choices.”
    “Can’t we prove …?” Monk began, then saw the exhaustion in Brancaster’s face and realized the pointlessness of the question. The law had broken down. A judge had shown his partiality in a way that was extremely visible. If the law could fail, what protection had anyone? The jury would be, by definition, upstanding citizens who did not consider themselves vulnerable to just prosecution, only to injustice. For any argument to work, it must not only be true, it must be something they would have no choice but to believe.
    “What can we do?” he asked. “What could help?”
    “Something to prove that when Rathbone did this it was in the service of justice and that it was the only course open to him to avoid a severe miscarriage in this case,” Brancaster replied. “And believe me, I’ve been up most nights trying to think of the solution. It’s too late now for Taft to tell his side. And it’s not Drew on trial.”
    “The possibility of exposure exists, for every man who posed for one of those photographs, and they must all be aware of that,” Monk said. “Not just Drew.”
    Brancaster chewed his lip thoughtfully. “You have a point there, perhaps one we could use.”
    Monk was puzzled. “How could we use it?”
    “Play on the fear of how deep the corruption is,” Brancaster replied, meeting Monk’s eyes. “Rathbone has told me that there is a deep cesspit here. We have a very reasonable argument on our hands: if he had gone to any authority with that photo, or any of the photos, they might simply have covered it all up, and possibly destroyed Rathbone in the bargain, just to avoid the monumental scandal.”
    “But
this
is going to destroy Rathbone,” Monk pointed out.
    Brancaster smiled a trifle wolfishly. “Precisely.”
    Slowly a