William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

before what it feels like to be accused, unable to prove your innocence and having to depend on someone else to do it for you? Suddenly you’re helpless too. Now you know how your clients felt, their fear, and why they trusted you. They did so because they were desperate, terrified, and had nowhere else to turn.” She smiled tightly. “To you the law is a way to show off your skills, to win publicly, and of course to make money. To them it’s survival or death. It looks a little different from the side you’re on now, doesn’t it?”
    She was being unfair. He had taken every case seriously and given every single one his all, even when in the end he lost, as he had with Ballinger.
    “I can give a defense, Margaret,” he said with as much self-control as he could. His voice sounded rasping. “Sometimes I can prove a man innocent, sometimes I can mitigate a sentence. I cannot save a guilty man. Are you suggesting that I should? If everyone is to be set free at the end, regardless, why bother with a trial?”
    “So that the lawyer can strut around, show off, and earn money, of course!” she snapped. “And the public can have its entertainment.” Then she waved her hand sharply, as if she could brush the subject out of the way. “But you are guilty, aren’t you? Or are you going to say that it was not you who gave obscene pictures to Warne so that Drew would be destroyed as a witness?” The look of disbelief on her face was savage.
    “You think the picture should be suppressed, and the jury have noidea what kind of a man Drew is”—he put all his incredulity and contempt into his voice—“so he can go on slandering the other members of the congregation and be believed?”
    Her temper snapped. “Don’t answer every question with another question, Oliver! For the love of heaven, be honest for once!”
    He felt as if he had been slapped. He knew the color burned up his face. “That is honest, Margaret. I gave Warne the picture so he had a choice of defending the ordinary, trusting men and women whom Drew was slandering and holding up to public mockery. They deserved that.”
    “You hypocrite!” Her voice was very nearly a shout, her face dark with fury. “You can introduce that filthy photograph into the courtroom and sit there full of righteous indignation as if you knew nothing about it. I’m glad they found out that it was you who gave it to Warne. You can’t hide anymore. Everyone will know you for what you are.”
    The lash of her tongue hurt so sharply that for a moment he could hardly draw breath to defend himself.
    She mistook his silence for weakness. “I wish my father were alive to see this,” she went on, choking a little on her own words. “It would be perfect. Well, at least I am here. And believe me, I will watch with pleasure.”
    “I’m sure your father’s appreciation would be the sharpest of all,” he said bitterly. “That is why he had the pictures in the first place, to bring about justice that could be forced no other way. I understood that in him—obviously far more than you did, or do even now.”
    She froze, her face white. “Liar! How dare you suggest such a thing to me? Is that your defense? To blame a dead man you have made sure cannot speak for himself? Well, I can speak for him, and I will. The world will see you for what you are—a man who places pride and opportunism before everything else: before family or honor, or even human decency.”
    He struggled for something to say that would put them back on common ground, some shared belief. They had cared for each other once.
    She was not prepared to wait for him.
    “I will not discuss my father with you. For you to suggest you are alike in anything is an insult to him, and I won’t listen. I came to tell you that I am consulting a lawyer—a friend of my father’s, who still has some regard toward the family—because I do not wish to remain connected to you in any way, least of all in the public mind. I don’t think it will be difficult, in the circumstances you have created, for me to obtain a divorce. I will revert to my maiden name. I no longer wish to be known as Margaret Rathbone. I imagine you can understand that, but if you don’t it really doesn’t matter to me. I am informing you simply as a matter of courtesy.”
    He should have been expecting it. It was the perfect opportunity for her to set herself free. She did not have to accuse him of anything, not that there were many excuses for a