William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

whole new picture opened up in Monk’s imagination: full of unguessable risks and pitfalls. It might be necessary to travel down that road to save Rathbone. Was it possibly also justified? It would be a final and terrible end to the whole issue of Ballinger’s photographs. Brancaster, Rathbone, and Monk himself could have no idea who they might bring down in the process because they could not know every man’s connections.
    “Are you prepared to do that? Use the photographs in that way?” he asked, his voice catching in his throat.
    Brancaster’s face was unreadable. “I’m thinking about it. Perhaps it’s time.” He gave a very slight shrug. “By the way, I’ve saved an important piece of information for last. Drew wants to have access to Taft’s house to get the papers pertaining to the church.”
    Monk jerked his mind to attention. “No!” he said simply. “Not yet.He can have access eventually, but not yet.” Even if Drew’s request was innocent—which he doubted—he still wanted to go through the house himself before he allowed anything to be removed.
    Brancaster nodded. “I thought you’d say that. I already told him so.”
    Monk felt a very slight, inexplicable ease run through him. “Thank you. I’ve got to get into that house. And now that you told me this, I’m even more eager. The church papers can’t be all that important. There must be something there. And I’m going to look till I find it.”

CHAPTER
13
    O LIVER R ATHBONE HAD SPENT some of the most exciting and challenging hours of his adult life in a courtroom. It was where he excelled, where his victories and his defeats occurred. It was the arena for his skills, the battlefield where he fought for his own beliefs and other men’s lives.
    Today it was utterly different, still as familiar as his own sitting room but as alien as a foreign country where the people had the faces of those you knew, but the hearts of strangers.
    Brancaster had spoken to him briefly. It was too late to discuss tactics. It had been simply a word of encouragement. “Don’t lose heart. Nothing’s won or lost yet.” Then a quick smile and he was gone.
    Rathbone had never seen the courtroom from the dock before. He was high up, almost as if in a minstrels’ gallery, except of course he had jailers on either side of him, and he was manacled. He was acutely aware of these things now as he looked down at the judge’s high seat, wherehe himself used to sit, and at his peers, the jurors, on their almost church-like benches—two rows of them!
    The witness box was small, as a pulpit might be, and was reached by climbing a curving stair. He could see it all very clearly. It still looked different from before. But then it was different. Everything was. For the first time in his life he would have nothing to say, nothing to do until he was called by Brancaster. The trial was about his life, and he could do nothing but watch.
    He could see Brancaster standing below him, his white lawyer’s wig hiding his black hair, his gown over his well-cut suit. They had planned and discussed every possible move, but all that was over now. Rathbone was helpless. He could not object, he could not ask any questions or contradict any lies. He had no way of contacting Brancaster until the luncheon adjournment, and perhaps not even then. He couldn’t lean forward and tell him the points he should make, alert him to errors or opportunities. His freedom or imprisonment, his vindication or ruin, hung in the balance, and he could not intervene, let alone take part. It was like something out of his worst nightmare.
    Then he saw the prosecution on the other side. It was Herbert Wystan.
    Rathbone had known him for years, appeared against him a number of times, and won more often than he had lost. Wystan would no doubt remember that now. It would not make any difference. He was a man who loved and respected the law. He would not care who won or lost. This, of course, was an excellent reason for prosecuting this case with passion. In his eyes, Rathbone had betrayed the very sanctity of the law he was sworn to uphold. For Wystan that would be a crime tantamount to treason.
    Had Rathbone done that? He had certainly not intended to. Or at least, he had not intended to betray justice—it was just that justice and the law were not always the same thing. But he knew they were for Wystan. And they ought to have been for him.
    Wystan’s hair was sandy gray, but now only his beard was