by Anne Perry
Pryor was shaking with fury, either real or very well assumed. “My lord, this is outrageous!” he said furiously. “Sir John knows better than to make such an—an appalling breach of all etiquette and …”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Antrobus agreed. “But you did rather open the door for him, Mr. Pryor, by asking if you had misunderstood. Perhaps you might find a more fortunate question for him? Unless, of course, you have no more to say?” A faint flicker of hope crossed his face, heavily laced with amusement.
Hester found herself liking Antrobus. He reminded her of Henry Rathbone.
“I do not wish to further embarrass him,” Pryor said a little waspishly. “We cannot afford to have our police and judicial authorities held in less than the highest respect. Justice and the rule of law that all men may equally rely on is the cornerstone of our civilization.” He turned to Brancaster, frowning heavily. “Your witness.”
Brancaster rose to his feet. “Thank you,” he said politely. “May I echo your sentiment? We must both be right, and be seen to be right.” He looked at the jury, and then briefly at the crowded gallery where men and women were sitting so tightly packed many seemed barely able to move.
“We all are fallible,” Brancaster observed. “Sometimes we make mistakes, even though we believe we have been meticulously careful. When emotions are deep and grief is numbing us, fear waits in the darkness, then—”
Pryor rose to his feet. “My lord, my learned friend seems to have the misimpression that I have concluded my case for the defense, whereas in truth I have barely begun! If—”
Antrobus nodded. “Mr. Brancaster, we are all aware that you are attempting to show that there has been a previous error that you are now able to correct. You do not need to explain that again. Please allow Mr. Pryor to do his best in assuring us that we were, in fact, correct the first time. If he has concluded his questions for Sir John Lydiate, then you may cross-examine him … without speeches, if you please.”
Pryor sat down, his dislike for Antrobus sour in his expression.
“I apologize, my lord,” Brancaster said humbly.
Hester wished she could tell him to be careful. Antrobus might have a degree of tolerance toward him, but if he strained it, the result would come back on him very harshly. Had Rathbone not warned him of that?
Brancaster turned to Lydiate. A complete hush fell over the courtroom again.
“If I understand you correctly, Commissioner, you were given the case urgently, for political or diplomatic reasons. You did not request it?”
“That is correct,” Lydiate agreed.
“You believed you had the guilty man when you charged Habib Beshara?”
Again Lydiate agreed.
“Beshara was tried and convicted. Then some time later, further evidence emerged that brought that verdict into question, at which point the case was reopened and placed with the Thames River Police.”
“Yes.”
“With whom you cooperated fully?”
“Of course.”
Hester was sitting forward, her hands clenched in her lap. Please heaven, Brancaster would have the sense to stop now! Don’t open the door for Pryor! Rathbone must be aching to pull on his coattails and warn him!
Brancaster smiled charmingly. It lit his dark face.
“Thank you, Sir John.”
A rustle of relief sighed through the whole room.
Hester relaxed and found herself smiling widely.
Her relief did not last long. Immediately after the luncheon adjournment, Pryor called his next witness—William Monk of the Thames River Police.
Hester watched as Monk walked across the open space of the court and climbed the steps to the witness stand. He was sworn in, and faced Pryor. It was immediately obvious to everyone that there was considerable hostility between them.
Pryor was punctiliously polite.
“Commander Monk, you were on the river in a small boat on the night of the sinking of the Princess Mary. In fact I believe you saw the whole tragedy, right from the explosion to rescuing the last of the survivors from the water. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is. And I returned the next—”
“Thank you,” Pryor cut him off. “I did not ask that. We will please take events in the order in which they occurred.”
Anger flushed up Monk’s face, but he did not respond.
“You saw the explosion, which tore the ship apart and sank it within four minutes?” Pryor continued.
“I saw it, yes,” Monk agreed between his teeth. “I cannot swear as to the time she took to sink.”
“It was approximately four minutes,” Pryor assured him.
Brancaster rose to his feet.
“Yes, yes,” Antrobus agreed. “If the time is important, Mr. Pryor, then you had better establish it other than through Mr. Monk.”
Pryor was annoyed. “It was extremely fast, was it not?” he said to Monk.
“Yes,” Monk accepted.
“And yet you had time to notice a man leaping from the deck into the water, and being rescued by someone on a boat with a distinctive emblem on the stern?” His tone was heavily laced with disbelief. “You were not momentarily blinded by the flash? You were not frozen in horror at the devastation? You did not leap to the oars to begin the rescue of the drowning men and women in the water around you?” There was not only incredulity now but also disgust in his voice.
“It was a pleasure boat,” Monk said quietly, staring at Pryor as if there were no one else in the room. “All the lights were on. They were having a party. The man leaped off the deck into the water before the explosion, not after it. To jump afterward wouldn’t have done much good. That was the point. It was in the flash of the explosion moments later that I saw him picked up by the boat with the seahorse on the stern.”
“Which you conveniently remembered several days later, even weeks,” Pryor said sarcastically.
“Inconveniently,” Monk corrected him. “The thing nearly killed me when it rammed the ferry I was in. Which I believe you know from the poor ferryman who was injured in the event. But are you not ahead of yourself? You told me to keep it in the order in which things occurred!”
Pryor’s face reddened with anger. He glanced up at Antrobus, and saw the amusement flash in his eyes, before he leaned forward and addressed Monk.
“Your observation is out of order, Commander, even if it is correct. You had best allow Mr. Pryor to proceed in whatever order he wishes, or we shall be here for even longer than is necessary.”
“Yes, my lord,” Monk said meekly.
Pryor’s face was tight with arrogance.
“The case was given back to you after you so fortuitously discovered the witness, the eyewitness, whose testimony made you question the conviction of Habib Beshara, is that right?” he asked.
Monk hesitated, and decided not to argue.
“Yes.”
“The case was restored to you?” Pryor emphasized.
“The police deal with whatever cases arise,” Monk answered him. “We do not own them.”
“You are very sensitive about it, Mr. Monk,” Pryor challenged him.
Monk glared at him. “Nearly two hundred people drowned, sir. It is not something about which I can be indifferent!”
There was a murmur of approval around the gallery. Several of the jurors nodded and turned to one another.
Pryor leaped on the answer. “Far from it! You have a history of very personal involvement with some of your cases in the past. So much so that you have been dismissed from the Metropolitan Police force, is that not true?”
Brancaster was instantly on his feet. “My lord! That is totally improper and Mr. Pryor knows it! Mr. Monk left the Metropolitan Police of his own accord, many years ago, and the matter should be either addressed properly, or omitted altogether. This is innuendo and an attempt at slander. If that is the best that the defense can do, it is as good as an admission of guilt!”
Rathbone leaned forward, but he could
not attract Brancaster’s attention.
Pryor faced Antrobus. “My lord, Sir John Lydiate came to his conclusion regarding this case, Commander Monk to another, quite different conclusion. Surely the jury is entitled to question the reputations of each of these men so as to judge which one they will believe.”
“Have you considered questioning the evidence?” Brancaster shot back. “The case was given back to Commander Monk once it was thoroughly compromised. We all know that! The only way to find the truth is to look at it issue by issue. If my learned friend would like to tear apart the reputation of everyone involved in it, he may find himself in very much deeper water than he can manage!”
“We have more than enough people drowned in this already,” Antrobus said with distaste. “Mr. Pryor, is it really your intention to open the door to questioning the characters and the motives of all the men concerned in this unhappy business?”
That was the last thing Pryor wished, and he was obliged to withdraw, angry and longing to have his revenge.
Hester wondered more urgently why Pryor seemed to care so much about this case. Watching him, hearing the emotion in his voice, she was convinced he fully intended to win. Even looking up at Sabri now and then, she had the same powerful feeling that he also expected Pryor to win. There was anger in his expression, contempt, jubilation when Pryor won a point, but very little fear.
The question and answer, attack and evasion continued all afternoon and into the next day, first with Monk, and then with other witnesses.
Pryor was willing, reluctantly, to grant that there had been errors of identification, but insisted they were honestly made. Ordinary, decent people were shattered and eager to identify those guilty.
“Of course they are not infallible,” he said passionately. “Which of us would be, in such circumstances? Please God, we will never have to find out. Do I have to paint the scene for you again?” He swung round from the jury to the gallery, imploring their comprehension, doing all he could to force them back into remembering all they had heard and imagined. He knew he dared not tell the story another time. He would lose them.
“They are good men,” he insisted. “Seeking not only some form of justice, but—perhaps even more importantly—to catch those who were responsible for this monstrous evil, and see that they can never do such a thing again.” Now he spoke specifically to the jury. “Would you not do the same? And could you swear that you would make no errors?”
Hester watched the jurors’ faces, and was overtaken with the cold fear that Pryor would win.
They needed more time. Could Rathbone think of some way in which Brancaster could drag out his cross-questioning of Pryor’s witnesses? At the very worst, if Pryor saw what he was doing, he would simply declare his case closed, and then there would be nothing anyone could do. The jury would deliberate, and that would be the end.
What would they conclude, as it stood now? Just what Pryor had implied: Good men had been fallible, overzealous, but not corrupt at heart. They had used desperate means, at times incorrect, but in order to convict the right man of a hideous crime. If Sabri were guilty as well, then they should punish him too. Mistakes have been made, but the right and just end had been achieved.
The law was safe after all.
And Pryor would be rewarded for that for the rest of his life. The sheen of victory was already in his face.
Brancaster had still established no motive for Sabri, just as Camborne had not for Beshara. The suggestion of revenge—nonspecific, unsubstantiated—was not enough this time around.
In defending Sabri, Pryor was also defending England, and the justice they believed had already been dispensed. How did you tell people something they did not want to know? What did you need to say to have them question the bedrock on which their beliefs of themselves were built?
Why the Princess Mary? And—possibly even more importantly—why that night?
The next time there was a pause, Hester stood up and inched her way out of the row of seats where she had been. There was a sigh of relief as people eased a little, each taking a fraction more room, straightening a skirt.
As soon as she was in the hallway, she walked toward the entrance and out into the street. Her mind was already busy with the idea Monk had mentioned briefly the night the ferry was rammed and he so nearly drowned: the possibility that the whole ship had been sunk to be certain of killing one specific person.
Why would anyone do that? It was dangerous and terrible. There would be no excusing it. The reason must have been equally powerful. Especially if no one knew who had done it or why.
Where was the passenger list that Monk had obtained? He must have looked at it, stretched all the possible connections. But what had he been looking for? There had been plenty of wealthy people celebrating some private event, or simply having a highly enjoyable evening with friends, good food, and good wine.
Who should she ask?
She stepped to the curb and hailed the next hansom. She gave the driver the address of the Wapping Police Station. Orme would have the list, and he knew the situation was desperate.
CHAPTER
19
HESTER FOUND ORME VERY willing to show her the guest list for the party on the Princess Mary, and also the rest of the passenger manifest. It had been a long trip, all the way from Westminster Bridge to Gravesend and back again; so all places had been reserved, and names written down.
A great deal of work had already been done to identify most of the passengers and eliminate them from suspicion.
“What are you looking for, ma’am, exactly?” Orme asked as they sat together in Monk’s office. Monk was still in court, as she had known he would be, so at least for the moment, they were uninterrupted.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I think it is possible that the Princess Mary was sunk not to have some kind of revenge, or create a political horror, but to kill one person …”
Orme could not conceal the look of disbelief on his face. “Who’d do a thing like that?” he asked, shaking his head.
“I don’t know. It’s just an idea William had, after he was hit by Sabri’s boat when he was on the ferry. It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is,” Orme agreed reluctantly. “But how would we find such a person? It could be anybody.”
She had been thinking about it on the omnibus while coming here.
“If you needed to get rid of someone, you would pick the best way you could to do it. One that was certain, and that did not make you a suspect. One that looked like an accident would be best, but if that were not possible, then at least one that hid your involvement in it.”
He pursed his lips, but nodded agreement. “This was no accident, but I see what you mean. With near two hundred dead, we don’t look for one that matters more than the others.”
“Exactly. We look for a really big motive, probably political, or with a lot of money involved, fortunes made or lost.”
“So how do we look for one?” he said grimly.
She had given that some thought also. “Someone who had to be killed this way because no better way was possible. And perhaps someone who had to be killed urgently, and was vulnerable right there and then.”
Orme began to smile. “I see. And it needed to be certain; so the person would have been at the party below deck. That must exclude a lot of people.”
“Also anyone who went as a last-minute decision,” she added.
He nodded his head. “The sinking must’ve taken planning. That dynamite stuff isn’t that easy to get hold of.”
“Where did it come from?” she asked quickly.
“Stolen from a quarry twenty miles away, we reckon.”
“Reckon?”
“You can’t tell one lot of dynamite from another. But there isn’t that much of it around.”
“So we can narrow it down by taking out all the people who were not at the party below deck because they wouldn’t be certain victims.” She winced a little at the thought.
She was doing it logically, deducing the one intended victim as if she were speaking of something quite casual, not mass and indiscriminate death.
“We must think of who was vulnerable only this way,” she continued. “It was dangerous. Either Sabri was paid a lot, or else he cared about it enough to take the risk for his own reasons.”
“We looked at that,” Orme told her. “We couldn’t find any connection between Sabri and anyone on the Princess Mary.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I’m only doing this because if we don’t find a motive I think Pryor’s going to win. Sabri will get off and the verdict against Beshara will stand. And, maybe even worse, whatever corruption or incompetence there was will be covered up, and for all we know, could happen again. And the very worst of it is that most other people will know it too. And when the law is held in disrespect, we don’t know what other things we trust may also fail.”
Orme’s wind-burned face was pale beneath the superficial color. “Then we’d better be getting on with it,” he said quietly. “We’re looking for a victim who couldn’t be killed any other way without it being obvious who did it. In fact someone who had to be killed then and there. Maybe this was the only way the killer could eliminate his victim without casting suspicion on himself. That cuts it down a lot. Let’s go through that list again.”
An hour later they had reduced it to a dozen people, excluding anyone who had booked passage after the dynamite was stolen, or who would have been just as vulnerable in a less dramatic and dangerous way.
“Soldiers,” Orme said, looking at her carefully. “Men on their way home on leave, celebrating with a party on the river. An’ most of them were here anyway. Could’ve been got at other ways.”
“I know. I’ve got six names to follow up. Thank you very much, Mr. Orme.” She rose to her feet, realizing how long she had been there only when she felt the stiffness in her back. “I’ll start tomorrow morning.”
He stood also. “You’re welcome, ma’am. If I can do anything more, please tell me.”
“I will,” she promised, then turned and walked out onto the dockside, and the steps to catch a ferry home.
