William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

prurient curiosity, or complete indifference.
    Rathbone indicated the chair and Henry sat down in it. Rathbone took the other, with the table between them.
    “Fifteen minutes,” the jailer warned, and went outside, clanging the door behind him and turning the key so the falling of the tumblers was audible.
    “Hester told me what happened in court, and that you’d been arrested, but not much else,” Henry said immediately. “I assume it
was
you who gave the photograph of Robertson Drew to Warne?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?” Henry asked. “Why did you give it to Warne? What did you want him to do with it?”
    That was the question Rathbone had known he would ask, and he had tried to prepare an answer.
    “Because he was losing the case,” he said. “I meant him to do exactly what he did. Drew and Taft between them destroyed the credibility of every witness against them, even Hester. Taft was going to be acquitted and set free to do exactly the same thing again, vindicated and with an even wider audience to fleece, even more people whose faith he could destroy.”
    “An evil man,” Henry agreed. “But were you sure that was the only way to deal with him?”
    To anyone else Rathbone might have protested that it was, even that Drew deserved nothing but to be disgraced in front of the many people he had tried so thoroughly to destroy. However, he knew that was not the point now, and Henry would not be sidetracked.
    “It was the only way I could think of at the time,” Rathbone replied. “And it was certain. Just raising a slight doubt wouldn’t have achieved anything. He’d been ruthless and the jury believed him.” He looked down at his hands on the table. “If you don’t lie yourself, you don’t have that instinctive feel for other people’s weaknesses. You can’t manipulate people’s faith or gullibility, so you can’t see when other peopledo it because it just doesn’t occur to you. Most of the parishioners were like that, and most of the jury.” He raised his head again and met Henry’s eyes. “For heaven’s sake,” he said urgently, “we pick our jurors from men of property, men who don’t know what it’s like to be poor, disadvantaged, ill educated, and on the border of survival. It’s supposed to be a jury of your peers, but by definition it isn’t.”
    Memory of the trial was sharp in his mind. He could see Drew on the stand and hear his confident, slightly unctuous voice.
    “Drew was very persuasive,” he went on. “If I hadn’t seen that photograph I might have believed him myself. And if he hadn’t savaged Hester, I might not even have looked for the photograph.”
    Henry smiled very slightly. “And that was the turning point, not the reason?”
    Rathbone thought for a moment. It
was
the turning point because without that there would have been no excuse for Warne to raise the picture in evidence at all. But was it also his reason for taking such a monumental risk with his own career? Would he have done exactly the same had Drew not attacked Hester? Had his mind really been totally focused on delivering justice only within this particular case? He had lain awake and thought hard about it before making his decision, but had he thought clearly? Had he been completely honest? With all the disgust, the outrage, did he even know how to be?
    Would he have done it at all if he had been with Margaret still, comfortable and happy? Perhaps not.
    “I don’t know,” he answered. “I thought so at the time, but now I don’t know anymore. I certainly don’t know how to offer any defense.”
    “Of course you don’t,” Henry agreed. “But then you aren’t going to. I have considered whom to approach to represent you, and in my opinion Rufus Brancaster would be best. However, if you have someone you prefer, please let me know and I shall have him come to you.”
    Rufus Brancaster. Rathbone tried to place the name and failed. As far as he could think, he had never faced him in court. Certainly in the short time he had been a judge Brancaster had not been before him.
    “I don’t know him,” he said tentatively. The decision was his, everythingthat mattered in his future rested on it, but he did not want to challenge his father, or sound distrustful of his judgment. Heaven help him, his own had been fatally flawed.
    “I know,” Henry said with a bleak grimace of humor. “He is from Cambridge …”
    Rathbone’s heart sank. He was probably a friend of his father’s, a decent