Execution Dock

by Anne Perry

  “No. No, I paid more than I owed, because I wanted to be comfortable,” Oliver said with sudden lacerating honesty. “It was to Margaret's father, because I wanted to please her.”

  “At Hester's expense?”

  Oliver knew why his father had asked that, and exactly why the hurt was there in his voice. Henry had always liked Hester better. He tried to hide it. He was fond of Margaret, and would have been kind to any woman Oliver had married. But Margaret could never make him laugh as Hester had, nor would he feel comfortable enough with her to argue for fun, or tell long, rambling tales of gentle adventure and dry humor. Margaret had dignity and grace, morality and honor, but she had not Hester's intelligence, nor her passion. Was she less, or more vulnerable?

  Henry was watching his son closely. He saw the change in his eyes. “Hester will survive anything you can do to her, Oliver,” he said. “That is not to say that she may not be hurt.”

  Oliver remembered Hester's face as she had stood in the witness box, the pain and surprise on it. She had not expected him to do such a thing, either to her or to Monk.

  “Guilt?” Henry asked him. “Or fear that you have forfeited her good opinion of you?”

  That was the crux of it. He was startled at how sharply it cut. He had frayed a tie that had been part of his happiness for a long time. He was not sure if it would eventually break altogether.

  “She asked me if I knew where the money to pay me had come from,” he said aloud. “And how it had been earned.”

  “Do you?”

  “I know who paid it to me, of course, but I don't know who his client is, or why he should wish the accused man to be defended. And since I don't know who Ballinger's client is, naturally I don't know where the money came from.” He looked at the floor. “I suppose I'm afraid it could be the accused man's own money, and I certainly know how that was made, by extortion and pornography.”

  “I see,” Henry said quietly. “What is the decision you have to make?”

  Oliver looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

  Henry repeated the question.

  Oliver thought for several moments. “Actually, I'm not sure. Perhaps there is no decision, except how I am going to come to terms with myself. I defended the man, and I took the money for it. I can't give it back. I could donate it to some charitable cause, but that doesn't undo anything. And if I am remotely honest, it wouldn't salve my conscience either. It smacks of hypocrisy.” He smiled very slightly, a small, self-mocking gesture. “Perhaps I simply wanted to confess. I wanted to not feel alone in my sense of having done something vaguely questionable, something I think I may well be increasingly unhappy about.”

  “I believe so, Henry agreed. To admit that you are unsatisfied is a step forward. It takes far less energy to confess an error than it does to keep trying to hide it. Would you like another glass of Medoc? We might as well finish the bottle. And the pie too, if you care to. I think there is a spot more cream.”

  Rathbone arrived home quite late and was startled to find Margaret still up. He was even more surprised, unpleasantly so, to realize that he had counted on her being asleep, so that any explanation of his absence could be put off until the following morning. By that time he would be in a hurry to leave for his office, and could avoid the subject again.

  She looked tired and anxious, yet she was trying to conceal it. She was worried because she did not know what to say to him.

  He knew it, and wanted to touch her, tell her that such worries were superficial and of no lasting importance, but it seemed an unnatural thing to do. He realized with a jarring loneliness that they did not know each other well enough, intimately enough, to overcome such reservations of the mind.

  “You must be tired,” she said a little stiffly. “Have you had supper?”

  “Yes, thank you. I dined with my father.” Now he would have to find an explanation as to why he had gone to Primrose Hill without taking her. He could not tell her the truth, and he resented having put himself in the position where he needed to lie. This was undignified and ridiculous.

  He was also suddenly and painfully aware that he would have told Hester the truth. They might have quarreled over it, even shouted at each other. In the end they would have gone to bed at opposite ends of the house, desperately miserable. Then at some point he would have gotten up and gone to her and resumed the quarrel, because he could not bear to live with it as it was. Emotion would have overridden sense, and pride. Need of her would have been stronger than the need for dignity, or the fear of making a fool of himself. Her ability to be hurt would have been more important than his own.

  Margaret was more self-controlled. She would ache quietly, within, and he would never be certain of it. It would not show on her calmer, prettier, more traditional face. That was what made her safer for him, a far more comfortable and suitable wife than Hester would ever have been. He had never needed to worry that Margaret would say or do anything that would embarrass him.

  Now he owed her an explanation, something resembling the truth, and yet not exposing her to the knowledge that her father had put him in the position of defending Phillips as a favor. She did not ever need to know that; in fact, unless Ballinger told her, she must not. It was a professional confidence.

  “I needed to discuss a case,” he said aloud. “Hypothetically, of course.”

  “I see,” she said coolly. She felt excluded, and the feeling was too raw for her to hide it.

  He must say more. “If I had explained it to you, you would have known who it was, which would have broken a confidence,” he added. That at least was true. “I could not do that.”

  She wanted to believe him. Her eyes widened, hope stirring. “Did it help?”

  “Perhaps. At least I understand my problem a little more clearly. The process of thought required to explain sometimes clarifies the mind.”

  She decided to leave it while she had some form of comfort, rather than press for more. “I'm glad. Would you like a cup of tea?” It was a politeness, something to say. She did not want him to accept; he could hear that in her tone.

  “No, thank you. It is quite late. I think I shall simply go to bed.”

  She smiled very slightly. “I too. Good night.”

  While Monk was busy, with Scuffs help, searching for further evidence of the darker side of Phillips's trade, Hester set out to learn more about Durban's past, including such family as he might have had.

  She needed to know because she was afraid of what Monk might find out that would hurt him, and by extension, eventually, the River Police, and that would hurt him even more.

  She understood loyalty within a service, and how in dangerous circumstances where men's lives were often in jeopardy, loyalty must be absolute. Commanding officers were seldom afforded the luxury of time in which to ask or answer questions, and they did not explain themselves. They expected obedience. The army could not function without it. An officer who did not inspire loyalty in his men was ultimately a failure, whether or not that loyalty was warranted by either his ability or his character.

  She walked down Gray's Inn Road towards High Holborn. It was hot and dusty, and her skirt was already grimed at the hem. She was passed by traffic, its wheels rattling over the cobbles, the sun glinting on polished harnesses and brass. Four huge shire horses passed, slowly pulling a brewers’ dray. Cabs clattered by in the opposite direction, their horses’ hooves loud, long whips curling in the air above the horses’ ears. An open landau offered a glimpse of summer fashion, pale parasols to keep skin fair, the sound of laughter, the bright silk of a puffed sleeve and satin ribbons in the breeze.

  Hester thought of blind loyalty in the army, the unquestioning obedience. Perhaps the alternative was chaos, but she had seen the death and it had stunned her, bruised her heart and mind forever.

  She had been on the heights of Sebastopol during the Crimean War, and watched the slaughter at the charge of the Light Brigade into the Russian guns. She had tried afterwards to rescue some of the
few mangled but still alive. The senselessness of it still overwhelmed her. She was very uncertain that she would give blind loyalty to anyone. She had tasted its cost.

  At the bottom of Gray's Inn Road she turned into High Holborn and walked to the left. When there was a lull in the traffic she crossed over, kept walking, and then turned right into Castle Street. She knew exactly where she was going and for whom she was looking.

  Still it took her another half hour to find him, but she was delighted when she learned the reason. She was told at his lodgings that he had obtained a job as a clerk at a trading house, a skill he had acquired since losing a leg in the Crimea nine years ago. At that time even writing his name had been a challenge to his literacy.

  When she arrived at the trading house she controlled her urgency as well as she could, but the head clerk still looked at her dubiously, chewing his lip as he considered whether he would give permission for one of his employees to stop work and speak with her.

  She smiled. “Please?” she said with as much charm as she could muster. “I was the nurse who looked after him when he lost his leg at Sebastopol. I'm trying to find another man, or at least learn where to look, and I think Mr. Fenneman could help me.”

  “Well … yes, of course,” the head clerk said nervously. “I … I suppose a few moments wouldn't hurt. Sebastopol? Really? He never said, you know.”

  “People don't like talking about it,” she explained. “It was pretty dreadful.”

  “I've heard others talk,” he argued.

  “So have I,” she agreed. “Usually they were not there, they only heard about it from tales. The ones who saw it say nothing. I don't actually like talking about it myself, and I only experienced the aftermath, searching among the dead for those still alive that we might be able to help.”

  The head clerk shuddered, his face a little paler. “I'll fetch Mr. Fenneman for you.”

  Fenneman appeared a few moments later. He was thinner than the last time she had seen him, and of course no longer in army uniform. He had a wooden peg fitted to the stump of his lost leg, a little above the knee, and he moved with one crutch, balancing quite efficiently. She still felt a little sick when she remembered the agile young man he had been, and the desperate struggle she had had to save him. It had been she who had actually sawn through the bone in the shattered remnants of his leg, unable even to render him unconscious during the agony of it. But she had stopped the bleeding, and with help, gotten him from the battlefield to the hospital.

  Now his face lit with pleasure at seeing her. “Miss Latterly! Fancy finding you here in London! Mr. Potts said as I could help you. I'd be happy to, in any way I can.” He stood in front of her, smiling, leaning sideways a little to level his weight on his crutch.

  She wondered whether to ask if there was somewhere he could sit, and decided against it. He sat at his work, and it might insult him, obliquely, if she took such notice of his disability as to instantly suggest that he could not stand.

  “It's good to see you looking so well,” she said instead. “And with a good job.”

  He blushed, but it was with self-conscious pleasure.

  “I'm looking for information about a man who died about the turn of the year,” she hurried on, aware that the head clerk would be watching the seconds tick by. “His name was Durban. He was commander of the River Police at Wapping, and I believe you grew up in Shadwell. He never spoke about himself, so I hardly know where to begin to look for his family. Can you suggest anyone who might help me?”

  “Durban?” he said thoughtfully. “Can't say I know anything about his family, or where he came from, but I heard he was a good man. But Corporal Miller, d'you remember him? Little man, with red hair, and we called him Dusty, but then we call all Millers ‘Dusty.’ “He smiled at the recollection. In spite of his lost leg, his memories of the companionship in army life were still good. “I can give you the names of two or three others, if you like?”

  “Yes, please,” she accepted quickly. “And where I can find them, if you know that.”

  He swung around on his crutch and moved rapidly back to the bench where he worked. He wrote on a sheet of paper, dipping his quill in the inkwell and concentrating on his penmanship. He returned several moments later and handed her the sheet covered with beautiful script letters. He was watching her, pride in his face, anxious to see if she observed his achievement.

  She said the names and addresses, and looked up at him. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I know now if I ever want a job as a clerk not to come here. This standard is something I couldn't achieve. Seeing you has lightened a dark day for me. I'll go and look for these men. Thank you.”

  He blinked a little, uncertain what to say, and ended by simply smiling back.

  It took her the rest of the day and half the next one, but she gained bits and pieces from all the men whose names Fenneman had given her, and gathered a picture of Durban's own account of his youth. Apparently he had been born in Essex. His father, John Durban, had been headmaster of a boys’ school there, and his mother a happy and contented woman about the home and the schoolhouse. It had been a large family: several sisters and at least one brother, who had been a captain in the merchant navy, travelling the South Seas, and the coast of Africa. There was no hint of darkness at all, and Durban's own official police record was exemplary.

  The village of his birth was only a few miles away along the Thames Estuary. It was still barely past noon. She could be there by two o'clock, find the schoolhouse and the parish church, look at the records, and be home before dark. She felt a twinge of guilt at the whisper of caution that drove her to do it. This was Durban's own account. She would never have doubted him before the trial, and the questions Rathbone had awoken in her.

  But the lean, intelligent face of Oliver Rathbone kept coming back into her mind, and the necessity to check, to prove, to be able to answer every question with absolute certainty.

  She spent the money and traveled in a crowded carriage out to the stop nearest the village, and then walked the last couple of miles in the wind and sun, the water of the Estuary glinting bright to the south. She went to the schoolhouse, and to the church. There was no record whatsoever of anyone named Durban—no births, no deaths, no marriages. The schoolhouse had every headmaster's name on its board, from 1823 to the present date. There was no Durban.

  She felt sick, confused, and very afraid for Monk. As she walked back towards the railway station and the journey home, the road was suddenly hard, her feet hot and sore. The light on the water was no longer beautiful, and she did not notice the sails of the barges coming and going. The ache inside herself for the lies and the disillusion ahead outweighed such peripheral, physical things. And the question beat in her mind, over and over—Why? What did the lies conceal?

  In the morning, feet still aching, she was at the clinic on Portpool Lane, intensely relieved that Margaret was not present, who perhaps just now found their meetings as unhappy as Hester did.

  She had visited all the patients they currently had, and attended to a little stitching of wounds and the repair of a dislocated shoulder, when Claudine came into the room and closed the door behind her. Her eyes were bright, and she was slightly flushed. She did not wait for Hester to speak.

  “I've got a woman in one of the bedrooms,” she said urgently. “She came in last night. She has a knife wound and bled rather badly …”

  Hester was alarmed. “You didn't tell me! Why didn't you have me see her?” She rose to her feet. “Is she …?”

  “She's all right,” Claudine said quickly, motioning for Hester to sit down again. “She's not nearly as bad as I let her think she is. I spread the blood on to a lot of clothes so it would look dreadful, and she would be afraid to leave.”

  “Claudine! What on earth …?” Now Hester was frightened not only for the woman, but for Claudine's sanity.

  Claudine interrupted her, her face even more flushed. “I needed to speak to you privately before you go to her.
She might be able to tell you something important, if you go about it the right way.” She barely paused for breath. “She knows Jericho Phillips—has for a long time, since he was a child. Knew Durban a bit also.”

  “Really?” Now she had Hester's entire attention. “Where is she?” She had started towards the door by the time Claudine replied, and had her hand on the knob before she turned back to thank her, her own voice now also filled with urgency.

  Claudine smiled. It was a start, but she knew it could still prove fruitless. She needed to help.

  Hester walked quickly along the corridor, up a flight of stairs, and along another, even narrower hall until she came to the last, quite good-sized room at the end. It was out of the way of the normal traffic within the clinic. Sometimes they used it for people who had infectious illnesses, or for those they feared were terminally ill. It was large enough for a second cot where a nurse could catch short naps, so as not to leave anyone alone in their last hours.

  The woman inside was far from dying. Claudine had indeed made it look dramatic. There were still bloodstained clothes and bandages lying in a basin and padding sitting on the small table, needles and silk for stitching wounds, and a carafe of water.

  The woman looked frightened, lying in the bed with her head propped on pillows and her injured arm lying swathed in bandages beside her, although she had good color in her cheeks, and none of the hollow-eyed stare of the desperately injured.

  “Hello,” Hester said softly, closing the door behind her. “My name is Mrs. Monk. I've come to look at your wound, and see what I can do for you. What's your name?”

  “Mina,” the woman said hoarsely, fear choking her voice.

  Hester felt a strong twinge of guilt, but did not allow it to alter her intent. She pulled up the hard-backed chair until she was close enough to the bed to work comfortably, then began as gently as she could to unwind the bandages and examine the wound, without taking off the final gauze, which would certainly start it bleeding again. Claudine had done a very good job of cleaning it and stitching the raw edges together. The jagged knife slash was not as deep or as dangerous as Mina had been allowed to believe.