William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

I would want to protect him, let him keep his hideous mistake private. If he continued to practice such abuse of children, I might feel less like protecting him.”
    There was a murmur around the room, a rumble to which it was difficult to put a meaning, but it sounded more like agreement than anger.
    “But I have no doubt,” he went on, “that if it were my wife or my friends who needed help, and some man in one of these photographs refused to give it though he was quite able, I would wish that whoever had the power to force him to act would use it, no matter how high the price. Wouldn’t any man?”
    “Yes, I think so,” Brancaster agreed. “I certainly would. I could not see anyone I loved punished, tortured, perhaps killed if I could exert a pressure that would save him. Tell me, did Sir Oliver expose the man in the photograph that you speak of, and ruin him?”
    “No. Of course not. He kept his word.”
    Brancaster gave a slight shrug, still frowning a little. “Did he ever say anything that led you to understand why he wished to keep this power in his hands? Or for that matter, why did you, as a policeman, not expose the men in the photographs anyway? The acts depicted are not only revolting—they are criminal. It was within your right.”
    The air in the room crackled. No one moved even a cramped limb.
    Monk gave a small, tight smile. “Because as I think we have already established, the men involved are in all walks of life, almost all highly placed. There was no purpose in seducing or photographing men without money or influence or a great deal to lose if the pictures were made public. To expose them all would, at the very least, rock the foundations of our government, possibly the Church, the army, and the navy. I have no wish to do that. Apart from anything else, it would expose the nation to ridicule and contempt. Which of our ministers would be able to sit at the international tables of negotiation without embarrassment?”
    Brancaster bit his lip. “Perhaps I had not appreciated just how wide and how deep this is. It … it is very frightening.” He took a deep breath. “I begin to grasp just what Sir Oliver was struggling with, and so perhapswhy he took the irrevocable step of bringing it into the open in this particular way—we do not know who is involved, and yet we cannot possibly legally or morally turn our backs on the problem and pretend it is not real, dangerous, and terrible.”
    York leaned forward. “Mr. Brancaster, before you elevate the accused to sainthood, perhaps you should remind the jury that Abel Taft, a man who was yet to be convicted of anything at all and was charged with fraud, not violence, not obscenity, is dead! As are his poor wife and his two young daughters—as a direct result of this act of Rathbone’s that you are attempting to paint so nobly!”
    “Thank you, my lord,” Brancaster said with a sudden appearance of humility. Then he turned back to Monk. “Commander Monk, I believe you have been reinvestigating that tragic event, to which his lordship refers, specifically the issue of where the large amount of money that was embezzled—still unaccounted for—went. Is that correct?”
    Wystan looked puzzled. He made as if to rise, then eased back into his seat again but paid even closer attention.
    “Yes, that is correct,” Monk answered quickly, before York could intervene, or Wystan changed his mind. “I went back to Taft’s house. The matter is now being looked at by experts called in by the local police—”
    “How is this your concern?” York interrupted angrily. “Are you not Thames River Police? Since when did your jurisdiction run to an embezzlement investigation, miles from the river, over a case that was already closed?”
    That was the question Monk had been hoping to avoid.
    “It does not, my lord,” he said as deferentially as he could force himself to. “Which is why, when I found the evidence, I turned it over to the local police. I went in there with their permission,” he added, before York could challenge him on that also. He did not want to get the officer who had granted the help into trouble. “We cooperate with each other, my lord,” he added, seeing the irritation in York’s face. He already disliked York, for Rathbone’s sake, but he knew the man had a point.
    York hesitated.
    Brancaster quickly broke in. “Evidence, Commander? Evidence of what?”
    “Murder,” Monk replied. He was leaping far ahead of the way