by Anne Perry
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “Of course.” He looked at Rathbone. “If you need me for anything, I can be found at my home. I cannot think what else there is to do now, or to say. I assume the judge will make whatever remarks he believes necessary, and that will be an end to it. Good day, gentlemen.” He stood up and, walking very uprightly and with a slight sway, made his way to the door. “Oh.” He turned and looked at Rathbone. “I presume I may have the liberty of giving him a decent burial? After all, he has not been found guilty of anything, and I am his only relative.” He swallowed painfully.
“I can see no reason why not,” Rathbone agreed, suddenly touched by a sense of overwhelming loss, deeper than mere death, a bereavement of the spirit, of the past as well as the future. “I will attend to the formalities, my lord, if you wish?”
“Yes. Yes, thank you,” Ravensbrook accepted. “Good day.” And he went out of the door. Now no longer locked, it swung to heavily behind him.
Hester looked towards the cell.
“You don’t need to,” Rathbone stepped in front of her. “It’s most unpleasant.”
“Thank you, Oliver, for your sensitivity,” she said bleakly. “But I have seen far more dead men than you have. I shall be quite all right.” And she walked in, brushing his shoulder. He had replaced his jacket and it looked odd with no shirt beneath.
Inside she stood still and looked down at the crumpled form of Caleb Stone. She stared at him for several seconds before she frowned a little, then with a deep sigh, straightened up and came out again. Her eyes met Rathbone’s.
“What are you going to do?” she asked quietly.
“Go home and get a shirt,” he replied with a twisted smile. “There isn’t anything else we can do, my dear. There’s no case to prosecute or defend anymore. If Mrs. Stonefield wishes me to act for her in the matter of formally acknowledging her husband’s death, then of course I will do so. First we must deal with this matter, which I imagine the judge will do when court reconvenes tomorrow morning.”
“Is there something which worries you?” Monk said suddenly, looking at her closely. “What is it?”
“I … I don’t think I am quite certain …” She frowned in concentration, but seemed unwilling to add more.
“Then come to my house and dine,” Rathbone invited her, and included Monk with a gesture. “That is, if you do not have to return with Lady Ravensbrook, or go back to Limehouse?”
“No.” She shook her head. “The typhoid is past its worst. In fact, there have been no new cases for over two days, and many of those who are left are beginning to recover. I … I would like to think further on Caleb Stone.”
Before even considering it they ate a surprisingly good meal. Rathbone’s house was warm and quiet, furnished in the discreet fashion of half a century earlier, the excellent chair lines of the Regency. It made for comfort and a sense of space.
Hester had not thought she would wish to eat at all, but when the meal was placed before her, and she had not had to take any part in its preparation, she found that she was, after all, quite hungry.
When the last course was completed Rathbone sat back and looked across at her.
“Well, what is it that worries you? Are you afraid it was suicide? And if it was, does it really matter? Who would it help to prove it, even if we could?”
“Why would he commit suicide now?” she asked, fumbling through the ideas jumbled in her mind, the memory of the wounds she had seen and the small, very sharp knife, almost like a scalpel, lying with the very end of its blade in Caleb’s neck and its silver handle in the sheet of blood beside him. “His defense had not even begun!”
“Perhaps he had no hope it could succeed?” Monk suggested.
“You don’t believe that,” Rathbone said instantly. “Could he have killed himself in remorse? Perhaps hearing the evidence somehow brought it back to him. Or more likely it was seeing Ravensbrook, and knowing the grief it had brought him, and of course Genevieve.”
“Genevieve?” Monk’s eyebrows rose. “He loathed her. She was part of all that he despised in Angus: the comfortable, pious wife with her smiling, complacent face and her total ignorance of the tragedy and reality of the kind of life he led, the poverty and the hardship and the dirt.”
“You don’t know anything about Genevieve, do you?” Hester looked from one to the other of them, and saw the blank incomprehension in their faces. “No, of course you don’t. She grew up in Limehouse.…”
Rathbone was astonished. He sat quite still, except for a slight parting of his lips.
Monk, on the other hand, gave a snort of disbelief and moved his hand sharply to dismiss the idea as preposterous, knocking his elbow against his empty wineglass and clinking it against its neighbor.
“Yes, she did!” Hester said sharply. “I’ve just spent nearly a month in Limehouse, and I know the people she grew up with. They remember her. Her name used to be Ginny Motson.”
Monk looked astonished. His face was almost expressionless with surprise.
“I assume you wouldn’t say that unless you were sure beyond question?” Rathbone said gravely. “This is not gossip, is it?”
“No, of course it isn’t,” Hester answered, the scene over the mistake clear in her mind. “She told me herself, when she realized I had guessed.”
They sat silently for several minutes, turning over those new and amazing thoughts. The butler came in and removed the last of the dishes and brought the port, offering it to Monk and Rathbone. He bowed civilly to Hester, but disregarded her otherwise. She puzzled him, and his uncertainty showed in his face.
“It would explain a number of things,” Monk conceded at last. “Her dread of poverty, above all. No woman who had not known it should fear it as she does. I thought it was simple love of comfort. I’m glad it isn’t.”
Hester smiled. She knew Monk’s vulnerability where certain women were concerned. He had been a startlingly poor judge of character before, but she did not refer to that. It was a precisely delicate subject just now.
“Then was it Angus, or perhaps Caleb, who taught her to carry herself like a lady, and speak like one?” Rathbone mused. “If it were Caleb, then that may have been the catalyst which turned his rivalry with Angus into hatred. She met Angus when he came to see Caleb, and perhaps she fell in love with him, or less attractively, saw a chance to get out of the poverty and squalor of Limehouse into something far better, and she took it.”
“And you think Caleb might have loved her?” Hester said, raising her eyebrows. “So much that after he had killed Angus, for having taken her away from him, he now felt such remorse, on looking at her face in the courtroom, that he killed himself halfway through the trial? And Lord Ravensbrook allowed him to, and is prepared to conceal it? No.” She shook her head sharply. “She told me she was never Caleb’s woman, and I believe her. She had no reason to lie, and I don’t think she did. Anyway, it makes no sense. If what you are saying were true, he would have written whatever it was he sent for the paper and ink to say. Unless, of course, you think Lord Ravensbrook took it? But why would he?”
Rathbone regarded his port, shining ruby red in the candlelight, but did not touch it.
“You’re right,” he conceded. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“And I don’t see Caleb Stone taking his own life out of remorse, honestly,” Monk added. “There was more than hatred in him. I don’t know what, a terrible emotion that clawed at his heart or his belly, or both, but there was a wild humor in it, a kind of pain that was far subtler than remorse. And does it matter now?” He looked from one to the other of them, but the shadow in his eyes and the sense of unhappiness in him answered the question more vividly than words could have done.
No one bothered to affirm it. It was tangible in the air, the quiet candlelight of the dinner table gleaming on unused silver and winking in the blood-red colors of the untouched port glasses.
“If it was not suicide, then either it was accident or murder,” Rathbon
e stated. He looked at Hester. “Was it exactly as Ravensbrook said?”
“No.” She was quite positive. “It may have been an accident, but if it was as he said, then why didn’t he cry out when Caleb first attacked him?”
“He didn’t,” Rathbone said slowly. “He can’t have. And according to his own account, he struggled with him for several moments, seconds perhaps, but there was obviously a struggle.”
“In which Lord Ravensbrook tried to save himself from injury,” Monk took up the thread. “And was, in principle, successful. His wounds are minor. But Caleb was killed, by a freak mischance.” He pulled a face.
“If Caleb attacked him, why did he not cry out straightaway?” Hester asked.
“I don’t know. In some desperate hope of ending the matter without the gaolers needing to know?” Rathbone suggested. “It could be damning evidence if it were revealed in court, and even if no one introduced it, Ravensbrook’s injuries would allow the conclusion easily enough.”
“Irrational, in the circumstances,” Monk argued.
“People frequently are irrational,” Hester said. “But I don’t think they work out a chain of thought as complicated as that in the heat of an unexpected attack. Would you, if you were leapt upon when you least thought of such a thing? Would you think of anything more than defending yourself? If there were a weapon involved, and the attacker were younger and stronger than you, and you knew he had already killed one man, and was in danger of being hanged, so he had nothing to lose, even if he were caught, would you even think at all, or just fight for your life?”
Rathbone bit his lip. “If Caleb Stone attacked me, there’d be nothing in my mind but surviving,” he admitted. His face twisted. “But I am not his father.…”
Monk shrugged, but there was a tightness of wounded enthusiasm in his eyes. “When I was chasing him down the river, I didn’t think at all. There was nothing in my mind but a blind determination to catch him. I hardly even felt my own wrenches and bruises until afterwards.”
Rathbone looked at Hester. “Are you sure he didn’t cry out almost immediately, after the initial shock of the attack? It might take a moment in time to ward him off, and collect his wits.”
“He had six separate wounds,” she answered. “But they were all clean. He may well have bruises come up in the next day or two as well, and his clothes were torn a little, as if in a struggle. But Caleb had only one real wound, and that was the slash across his throat which killed him.”
“What are you saying?” Rathbone leaned forward. “That Ravensbrook was mistaken, or that in some essential of importance, he lied?”
“I think so. Yes, I think he lied,” she answered very deliberately. “I just don’t know why.”
Monk sipped his port, looking from one to the other of them.
“You mean there was a considerable struggle before he called out?” Rathbone persisted. “What reason would he have? If it was not suicide, and not an accident, then are you saying that Ravensbrook murdered him? Why on earth should he? Not just to prevent him from being hanged. That’s absurd.”
“Then there is something we don’t know,” Hester answered. “Something which would make sense of it … or if not sense, at least something understandable to one’s feelings.”
“People kill for various reasons,” Rathbone said thoughtfully. “Greed, fear, hatred. If it is irrational, then it may spring simply from emotion, but if it is rational, then it will be as a result of something that has happened, and to prevent something else from happening, to prevent some loss or pain to themselves, or someone they love.”
“What could Caleb do to Ravensbrook, apart from be hanged, which could be a disgrace, but he has already disgraced himself very thoroughly.” Monk shook his head. “Hester is right. There is something crucial that we don’t know, perhaps haven’t even come close to.” He turned to Rathbone. “What was going to happen next, if Caleb had lived?”
“The defense would have begun tomorrow,” Rathbone replied slowly, his concentration suddenly sharpening, his wineglass ignored. “Perhaps we need to speak with Ebenezer Goode? I thought I knew what he was going to do, but perhaps I don’t.”
Monk stared at him. “What could he do? Plead insanity? The best argument he has is that it was an accident, that Caleb didn’t mean to kill him, and then when he had, he panicked. Either that, or try to convince them there is not enough evidence to prove Angus is dead at all. And I don’t think he will win with that.”
“Then maybe that’s it.” Rathbone clenched his fists on the white tablecloth. “He was going to bring out some evidence to show Angus was not the just and honorable man we suppose. That would be worth killing him for. To protect Angus’s name, and Genevieve’s. Perhaps to prevent Caleb from telling some appalling truth about him? That would be a reason.”
“Do you think Lord Ravensbrook would kill Caleb to protect Genevieve?” Monk looked skeptical. “I gathered from their behavior towards each other that their relationship was cool, at best.”
“Then to protect himself?” Rathbone argued urgently, leaning farther forward. “Or protect Angus, or his memory of him. After all, he was the nearest to a son he had. One can love a son in a strange, passionate and possessive way, as if he were part of oneself. I’ve seen some very complex emotions between parent and child.”
“And Caleb?” Monk asked, his lips drawn back in a hard smile.
“God knows.” Rathbone sighed. “Perhaps it was to spare him the verdict and the hanging. I wouldn’t wish hanging on anyone. It’s an appalling way to die. It’s not the actual drop, and the rope around the throat, jerking tight and breaking the neck as the trap opens, it’s the deliberate hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute dragging it out to the appointed hour. It’s a refinement of cruelty which degrades everyone involved.”
“Then perhaps we should ask Mr. Goode?” Hester concluded. “If we want to know? But do we?”
“Yes,” Monk said without hesitation. “I want to know, even if I don’t want to do anything about it.”
Rathbone’s eyes widened. “Could you do that … know, and do nothing?”
Monk opened his mouth to reply, then changed his mind. He shrugged, and drank the rest of his port, looking at neither Rathbone nor Hester.
Rathbone rang the bell and the butler appeared within seconds.
“I want you to take a note to Ebenezer Goode, straightaway,” Rathbone ordered. “It is vital we meet with him before court sits again tomorrow. I expect he will be at his home, but if he is not, it is worth pursuing him to wherever he is. Get your coat, and I’ll have the note ready. Take a hansom.”
The butler did not move a muscle; his face remained as impassive as if Rathbone had merely asked him to bring another bottle of port.
“Yes sir. Would that be the address in Westbourne Place, sir?”
“Yes.” Rathbone stood up. “And make all haste.”
It was over an hour and a half later when Ebenezer Goode strode in, his coattails flapping behind him, a broad-brimmed hat jammed on his head and a look of glittering expectation in his eyes.
“Well?” he said as soon as he was in the door. He swept a bow to Hester, then ignored her, staring at Rathbone and Monk. “What is it that possibly matters now, that it cannot wait until tomorrow morning and allow me a decent dinner? Have you found a body?”
“Yes, and no.” Rathbone indicated an easy chair. They had retired to the withdrawing room and were relaxed in front of a brisk fire. “Do you know Miss Hester Latterly? She, of course, knows you.”
“Miss Latterly. How do you do.” Goode bowed perfunctorily. “What the devil do you mean, Rathbone? Have you found Angus Stonefield’s body, or not?”
“No, we have not. But Caleb’s death may not be nearly as simple as we had supposed.”
Goode froze, still halfway to the chair.
“How? In what way? Is Ravensbrook more severely injured than they said?”
Goode sank into the chair.
“No,” Hester ans
wered him. “A few very minor cuts on his upper arms and shoulders. They will stay for a while, but none of them is serious.”
Goode looked at her sharply.
“Miss Latterly is a nurse,” Monk said rather quickly. “She was in the Crimea, and has tended more wounded men than you have had cases. She was close to the court, fortunately, and came to Lord Ravensbrook’s assistance.”
“I see.” A flash of interest lit Goode’s expression. “Do I take it from your tone of voice, and your curious choice of words, Miss Latterly, that there is something more to your opinion than you have said?”
“It is simply this, Mr. Goode,” Monk explained. “We can think of no explanation which fits all the facts, therefore we feel that there must be some profoundly significant fact which we do not know.”
Goode’s eyebrows shot up. “And you think I do?” he said incredulously. “I have no idea at all why Caleb should attack Lord Ravensbrook. He may well have hated him, because he so obviously preferred Angus, and perhaps always had done, but that is all rather obvious. By the way, what facts does that not fit?” He looked again at Hester.
“The fact that Lord Ravensbrook did not cry out until after he had sustained six very minor wounds,” she answered him. “And Caleb had sustained one fatal slash across the jugular vein and was already dead.”
He leaned forward, staring at her intently.
“Are you suggesting, ma’am, that Lord Ravensbrook was a willing actor in Caleb’s death, either by suicide or by murder?”
“Not quite. We do not believe it likely Caleb would have killed himself. Why should he? His defense had not even begun.” She looked at him intently. “Had he not some realistic chance of escaping conviction, or at least conviction of anything worse than not reporting a fatal accident? If I were defending him”—she ignored Goode’s sharp start of amazement—“I should plead a fight in which Angus had accidentally been killed, perhaps fallen into the river, hit his head, and Caleb had been afraid to report it, since he could not prove what had happened, and knowing the quarrel between them, and his own reputation, expected no one would believe him. After all, there is no witness to say anything differently.”
