Execution Dock

by Anne Perry

  Several jurors fidgeted unhappily. They could see the plain difference.

  “Are you sure you were not merely confirming what you already wished to believe?” Rathbone hammered the point home.

  “Yes, I am sure,” Monk said decisively.

  Rathbone smiled, his head high, the light gleaming on his fair hair.

  “How do you identify the body of a boy who has been in the water for some days, Mr. Monk?” he challenged. “Surely it is … severely changed? The flesh …” He did not continue.

  The mood of the court altered. The reality of death had entered again, and the battle of words seemed faintly irrelevant.

  “Of course it is changed,” Monk said softly. “What had once been a bruised, burned, and underfed boy, but very much alive, had become so much cold meat, like something the butcher discarded. But that is what we had to work with. It still mattered that we learn who he was.” He leaned forward a little over the railings of the stand. “He still had hair, and height, shape of face, possibly some clothes left, and quite a bit of skin, enough to guess his coloring, and of course his teeth. People's teeth are different.”

  There were gasps of breath drawn in sharply. More than one woman stifled a sob.

  Monk did not hesitate to be graphic. “In this case, Durban had written down that the boy had the marks of burns old and new on the inside of his arms and thighs.” The full obscenity of it should be known. “No one burns themselves in those places by accident.”

  Rathbone's face was pale, his body awkward where he stood. “That is vile, Mr. Monk,” he said softly. “But it is not proof of identity.”

  “It is a beginning,” Monk contradicted him. “An undernourished child who has been tortured, and has begun to change from a boy into a man, and no one has complained of his disappearance? That narrows down the places to look very much indeed, thank God. Durban made several drawings of what the boy probably looked like. He was good at it. He showed them up and down the riverbank, particularly to people who might have seen a beggar, a petty thief, or a mudlark.”

  “He assumed he was one of such a group?”

  “I don't know, but it was the obvious place to begin, and as it turned out, the right place.”

  “Ah, yes,” Rathbone nodded. “Somebody recognized one of these drawings that Durban did from what was left of the boy. You mentioned hair, skin coloring to some extent, shape of skull, and so on. Correct me if I am mistaken, Mr. Monk, but could not such bare characteristics produce at least a thousand different sets of features?”

  Monk kept his temper, knowing that Rathbone was trying to bait him. “Of course. But desperate as the state of many children is, there are not a thousand boys of that age missing at one time along the bank of the river, and unreported.”

  “So you fitted this tragic corpse to the face of one boy that a mudlark said was missing, and you identified the body as that of Walter Figgis?” Rathbone's eyes were wide, a very slight smile on his lips.

  Monk swallowed his sarcasm. He knew he was playing to an audience who was watching the shadows on his face, hearing the slightest inflection of his voice. “No, Sir Oliver, Commander Durban thought it very likely that the corpse was that of Figgis. When we found obscene photographs of Figgis, taken when he was alive, they were identified by those who knew him, and Commander Durban then matched them to the corpse. He had unusual ears, and one of them had not been destroyed by the water, and the creatures in it who feed on the dead.”

  Rathbone was forced to accept it.

  Tremayne smiled, his body relaxing a little in relief.

  Sullivan sat forward a little at his high bench, turning first to Rathbone, then to Tremayne, then back again.

  Rathbone moved on. “Did you see these—obscene—photo graphs?”

  “Yes. They were in Durban's papers.” Monk could not prevent the violence of his disgust from showing. He tried to; he knew he should keep control. This was evidence. Only facts should matter, but still his body was shaking, and he felt sweat break out on his skin. “The faces were perfectly clear, even three of the burns. We found two of them on the same places.”

  “And the third?” Rathbone asked very gently.

  “That part of him had been eaten away.” Monk's voice trembled, thick with the horror and misery of Durban's words on the page in jagged writing, creating a picture of disintegration and loss.

  “The vision of tragedy, of bestiality, that you call up, is almost beyond bearing,” Rathbone acknowledged. “I do not wonder that you find it hard to speak of, or that Mr. Durban put in endless hours of his own time, and indeed also his own money, to bring to justice whoever did this. Would it be true to say that you felt just as deeply as he did?” He shrugged very slightly. “Or perhaps you did not?”

  There was only one answer possible. Rathbone had chosen his words with an artist's precision. Every eye in the court was on Monk.

  “Of course I felt as deeply,” he said.

  “Commander Durban had given his life to save others,” Rathbone went on with some reverence. “And he had recommended you to take over his position. That is perhaps the highest mark of trust one man can offer another. Would it be true to say that you owe him a debt of both honor and gratitude?”

  Again, there was only one possible reply.

  “Yes, I do.”

  There was a sigh and a rustle of agreement around the room.

  “And you will do everything you can to honor it, and bring pride to the men of the River Police who are now in your command, and earn their loyalty, as Durban did?” Rathbone asked, although it was barely a question. The answer spoke for itself.

  “Of course.”

  “Especially completing this task of Durban's, in the way he would have wished. Perhaps you would even give him the credit for its solution?”

  “Yes,” Monk said without hesitation.

  Rathbone was satisfied. He thanked Monk and returned to his seat with a gesture of invitation to Tremayne.

  Tremayne hesitated, only too clearly seeking any way to regain the balance. Then he declined. Perhaps he thought that anything Monk might add would only raise the emotion still higher, which would make it even worse. Monk was excused.

  In the early afternoon Tremayne gave the prosecution's summary. His movements were graceful, his voice smooth and confident, but Monk knew it was a superb piece of acting. The man should have been on the stage. He even had the striking looks for it. But he was laboring against the tide, and he had to know it.

  He mentioned Durban's original deductions only in passing, concentrating on Monk's taking up of the trail again. He avoided the horror of it whenever he could, telling instead the detail of Monk's piecing together the proof of Fig's identity, and the links that connected him to Jericho Phillips and the trade in exploitation and pornography. He could not mention the photographs because they had not been produced, only referred to by Monk. As evidence they did not exist, as Rathbone would have instantly pointed out.

  He also spoke of Hester's part in connecting Phillips to the trade that satisfies the sexual appetites of those with money to pay for whatever they wanted, using the poor, willing or unwilling, who had no other way to survive. When he finally sat down, the jury was wrung with emotions of anger and pity, and would clearly have been willing themselves to tie a noose around Phillips's neck.

  Rathbone stood up. He looked very somber, as if he too were shaken by what he had heard.

  “What happened to this boy is appalling,” he began. There was absolute silence in the room, and he had no need to raise his voice. “It should shock all of us, and I believe it has.” He stood very still, awed by the horror of it. “The fact that he was a child of poverty and ignorance is completely irrelevant. The fact that he may have made his living at first by begging or stealing, then was very probably forced into acts of the utmost degradation by men in the grip of deviant appetites is also irrelevant. Every human being deserves justice, at the very least. If possible, they deserve mercy and honor as
well.”

  There was a low rumble of assent. The jurors’ faces were filled with emotion. They sat huddled forward, bodies tight and uncomfortable.

  On the bench Sullivan seemed frozen, his cheeks dark with color.

  “What we have heard is sufficient to stir the passions, the rage, the pity of every decent person, man or woman,” Rathbone continued. “What would you think of a woman like Hester Monk, who spends her time and her means laboring to help the sick, the destitute, the forgotten, and the outcast of our society, if she had no pity for this misused child? If she does not fight for him, then who will? If she is not moved to fury and to weeping on his behalf, what manner of woman is she? I am bold enough to say that she would not be a woman that I wish to know.”

  There were strong murmurs of agreement.

  Rathbone was speaking to them intimately now. Not a soul moved or made the slightest rustle.

  “And Commander Durban, who saw the boy's dead body pulled from where it was tangled in the ropes of the lighter, mangled and unrecognizable, who saw the marks of torture on the dead flesh?” He gestured delicately with his hands. “What sort of a guardian of our law would he be, had he not sworn to spend his professional life seeking the creature who brought this about? In his case, he spent his personal time as well, and his own money, to seek justice, and it seems to me, to put an end to such things happening to other boys as well. Do we want policemen who are not moved by such horror?”

  Up in the dock, for the first time, Jericho Phillips stirred anxiously. His eyes flickered with panic, and his body was hunched forward as far as his manacles would allow.

  “And Mr. Monk is a worthy successor to Durban,” Rathbone continued. “He has the same passion, the same dedication, the driving will that compels him to spend night and day searching for clues, answers, proof, anywhere he can. He will not rest, indeed he cannot rest, until he has captured the man responsible, and taken him to the very foot of the gallows.”

  Several jurors were nodding now.

  Lord Justice Sullivan looked concerned, on the brink of going so far as to interrupt him. Could Rathbone conceivably have forgotten which side he was on?

  “Let us consider these excellent people, one by one,” Rathbone said reasonably. “And Mr. Orme, as well, of course. We too, I believe, wish that justice may be served, completely and irrevocably.” That was almost a question, although he smiled very slightly. “Our position is different from theirs, in that they provide evidence to be considered, while we reach a conclusion that is irrevocable. If we find that Jericho Phillips is guilty, within three weeks he will be hanged, and cannot ever be brought back to this world.

  “If, on the other hand, we find that he is not guilty, then he cannot be tried for this crime again. Gentlemen, our decision allows no room for passion, no matter how understandable, how human, how worthy of the noblest pity for the victims of poverty, disease, or inequality. We have not the luxury that others will have after us to alter our mistakes or correct our misjudgments. We have in this room only that final judgment at the bar of God, before whom we will all stand in eternity. We must be right!” He held up his hand in a closed fist, not of any kind of threat, but of an unbreakable grasp.

  “We are not partisan.” He looked at them one after another, and then quailed a little. “We must not be. To allow emotion of liking or disliking, of horror, or pity or self-indulgence, of fear or favor for anyone”—he sliced the air—”or any other human tenderness to sway our decision is to deny justice. And never believe that the drama here is our purpose—it is not! Our purpose is the measured and equal justice for all people, alive or dead, good or evil, strong or weak …” He hesitated. “Beautiful or hideous. The question is not whether Commander Durban was a good man, even a noble one. It is whether he was right in his collection of and deduction from evidence regarding the murder of Walter Figgis. Did he allow his human passions to direct his course? His dream of justice to hasten his judgments? His revulsion at the crime to make him too quick to grasp at the solution?

  “You need to weigh in your minds why it was that he stopped his pursuit of Phillips, and then started it again. His notes do not say. Why do they not? You need to ask that, and not flinch from the answer.”

  He turned, paced back, and then faced the jury again. “He chose William Monk to succeed him. Why? He is a good detective. No one knows that better than I. But did Durban, who knew him only a few months, choose him because he saw in Monk a man of profound convictions like his own, of pity for the weak, rage against the abusive, and an unstoppable dedication? A man who would seek to close his own unfinished cases, out of honor and to pay a personal debt?”

  The jurors’ eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Rathbone. He knew it.

  “You must judge the power and the compulsion that drove Monk to follow precisely the course that Durban had taken,” he told them. “You have listened to Mrs. Monk and must have formed some opinion of her courage and her passion. This is a woman in the same mold as Florence Nightingale, a woman who has walked the fields of battle among the dead and the dying, and has not fainted or wept, or turned away, but has steeled her courage and made her decisions. With knife and needle, bandages and water, she has saved lives. What would she not do to bring to justice the man who abused and murdered children—including a boy so like the very mudlark she has all but adopted as her own?”

  He lowered his voice. “Are you prepared to hang Jericho Phillips in the certainty, beyond any reasonable doubt, that those passionate, justifiably enraged people have made no error in their detached and analytical reasoning, and have found the right man, among all the teeming many who make their livings on this busiest river in the world?”

  He stood motionless in the center of the floor. “If you are not certain, then for all our sakes, you must find him not guilty. Above all for the sake of the law, which must protect the weakest, the poorest, and the least loved of all of us, as much as it protects the strong, the beautiful, and the good. If you do not, then it becomes no protection at all, simply the instrument of our power and our prejudice. Gentlemen, I leave the judgment to rest not with your pity or your outrage, but with your honor to the sacred principle of justice, by which one day we will all be judged.”

  He sat down in total silence. Not another person moved even to rustle in their seats.

  After a moment, in a hushed voice, Lord Justice Sullivan invited the jury to retire to consider its verdict.

  They came back within the hour, looking at no one. They were unhappy, but they were resolute.

  Sullivan asked their foreman to speak for them.

  “Not guilty,” he said in a low, clear voice.

  FOUR

  itting in the courtroom Monk was stunned. Beside him Hester was rigid. He could feel it as if he were touching her, although actually there were several inches between them. Then he heard her move and knew she had turned to look at him. What could he say to her? He had been so certain of the verdict that he had not even suggested that the prosecution charge Phillips with the attempted murder of the ferryman. Now, as if he had dissolved into the air, Phillips had escaped.

  They walked out of the courtroom and through the crowds in silence, then instead of looking for a bus, as if by unspoken agreement, they went along Ludgate Hill and left down to Blackfriars Bridge. The river was bright in the low, late-afternoon sun. Pleasure boats had bright flags up and streamers rippling in the wind. The sound of a barrel organ drifted from the bank, somewhere just out of sight.

  They were less than a mile upstream from the Southwark Bridge. They walked over slowly, watching the bright wake of boats below them, and caught a bus on the farther bank. They sat still without speaking until they alighted a quarter of a mile from Paradise Place, and walked uphill, a longer way around than they needed, for the pleasure of the air.

  The park was quiet, a faint breeze moving the leaves, like someone breathing softly in their sleep.

  Half a dozen times, Monk had wanted to speak, but each ti
me the words he had been going to say seemed clumsy, like an attempt at self-justification. What did she think of him? Rathbone had called him as a witness. He must have counted on Monk saying and doing exactly what he had.

  “Did he know I was going to do that?” he said at last as they passed under one of the towering trees, the shade deep beneath the boughs. “Am I so predictable, or did he manipulate me into it?”

  She thought before she answered. “Both, I think,” she said finally. “That's his skill, to ask the question in such a way that you can really give only one answer. He painted a picture of Durban as overemotional, and then asked if you cared just as much. You could hardly say that you didn't.” She was frowning. “I understand the principle that the law must be based on evidence, not love or hate. That's hard, but it's true. You can't condemn him because you don't like him. But I don't understand why he chose this case to demonstrate it. I could have sworn that he would find Phillips as repulsive as the rest of us do. It seems …” she searched for the right word. “Perverse.”

  It solidified Monk's thoughts. “Yes, it does. And that is not the man he used to be … is it?”

  They crossed the road and walked side by side up towards Paradise Place.

  “No,” she said at last as they reached their own door and he took out the key to let them in. It smelled closed up in the warmth of the day, but the faint aroma of lavender and beeswax was pleasing, as was the cleanness of freshly laundered linen hanging on the airing rail in the kitchen. There was a maid who came twice a week for the heavy work, and she had obviously been there today.

  “Do you think he's changed as much as it seems?” Hester stopped and turned to face him.

  He did not know how to answer. He realized only now how much he had liked Rathbone, in spite of the difference between them. If Rathbone no longer held the beliefs he used to, then Monk had also lost something. “I don't know,” he said honestly.

  She nodded, lips closed tightly, eyes suddenly sad. She walked through to the kitchen and he followed, sitting on one of the hard-backed chairs as she picked up the kettle and filled it before setting it on the stove. He knew the change in Rathbone would hurt her also, even more than it would him. People did change when they married, sometimes only a little, but it could be a great deal. He was different since marrying Hester, although he believed that was entirely for the good. He did not like to admit it, but looking back, he had formerly been harder to please, quicker to lose his temper and to see the ugly or the weak in anyone. Happiness had made him kinder. That was something to be grateful for, though not proud of; he should have managed it anyway. Pride might have been justified if he had been gentler, without his own inner peace or safety from the wounds of loneliness.