William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

good man. Thank you for finding him.”
    Henry accepted that that was the end of the conversation and deliberately he spoke of other things until it was time to leave. He did not ask again if Rathbone would like to stay at Primrose Hill.
    When Henry had gone the house seemed oppressively quiet. Theservants were conspicuously keeping out of his way. Probably they were embarrassed. What did one say to a master who was out of prison on bail for a crime you did not understand?
    What should he say to them? It was his responsibility to broach the subject, and at the very least tell them what was happening and what prospects they had of remaining in his employ. He owed them that.
    If he received any jail sentence at all, he would have to sell the house. What would he need it for, anyway? On his release he would hardly come back here. It was too big, far too expensive, and he ought to admit it, he would have no use for a residence in the middle of one of the best areas of London.
    He was alone. If he could afford any servant, then one gentleman’s gentleman could do it all. Perhaps he could hire a woman to come in and do the laundry and the scrubbing of floors.
    Perhaps he wouldn’t even be able to manage that, to begin with. He could very well end up in lodgings, renting one room. Why not? Thousands of people did. That is what Monk had been doing when they first met. It was a long fall from a house like this, with half a dozen servants, to being glad to rent one room and share conveniences. But then it was a long fall from being a judge at the Old Bailey to being an unemployed ex-convict.
    It was different from this side of the picture, very different indeed. How simple it is when the victim is somebody else. Justice is so easy from the blind end, nicely cushioned from everything except the knowledge of an uninvolved conscience.
I didn’t cause it. This is the law, and I am not responsible. Now let me go home, forget it, and have a decent dinner and perhaps a glass of port afterward
.
    He forced himself to smile, wry amusement only, no pleasure.
    Even if he were found not guilty, much of the result would be the same. His career on the bench would be over. He realized with a deep ache that whatever the law, whatever rabbit Brancaster might pull out of his hat, morally Rathbone had made a very flawed judgment. He was a good lawyer, even brilliant. He had been called the best in London,and possibly he was, or had been. But that was fighting for a cause, even crusading, requiring all his passion and will and intelligence to be channeled to one side. No judgment was required.
    If he looked back at it now, he knew perfectly well that he had made up his mind from the beginning that Taft was guilty, not only legally but even more so, morally. He had considered Drew a cruel man even before he held the picture, and wasn’t going to stand for him destroying other, naïve people from the stand and then walking away without censure.
    He was not cool enough to be a good judge, certainly not dispassionate enough. He loved the battle, but did he love the law, above and beyond all else, separated from the human cost and turmoil?
    No—perhaps not. And that was what a judge needed to do. A judge should not be partisan, as he was, as it seemed he could not help being.
    That would amuse Hester, in a bitter way. She had always thought he was too remote, too controlled. Would she like him better this way?
    He would probably never know what she truly thought about any of this because she was too loyal to tell him completely. She would not lie to him, or probably for him, but she would never purposefully hurt him, especially when he was in trouble and alone.
    When they all first met she had not known if Monk was guilty of having beaten Joscelyn Grey to death. Reason and evidence said that he was. He even thought he was guilty himself, but the blow to his head in the accident had left him without memory to know the truth. Even now, all these years later, he still knew what happened only from the evidence. Flashes of memory returned, but without connection. There was no narrative of his life.
    But Hester had stood by him, even though she did not know, any more than Monk himself did. What would have happened if he had been guilty? It was only a guess, deep-rooted in feeling rather than reason, but he believed she would have stayed loyal to Monk and expected him to pay the price, like a man, and then resume what was left of his life afterward.
    Is