Slaves of Obsession

by Anne Perry

  “Thank you.” Casbolt spoke for her. “It was a fortunate day for us when you crossed our path. Without you this would have been an unmitigated tragedy.” He turned to Trace. “And I have been remiss in acknowledging your part also, sir. Your knowledge and your willingness to take your time and risk your safety in pursuit of justice, and towards Merrit, a very considerable mercy, marks you as a true gentleman. We are in your debt also.”

  “There is no debt between friends,” Trace replied. He spoke to Casbolt, but Monk was quite certain his words were meant for Judith.

  It was not a task to which Monk looked forward. He had half hoped Judith Alberton would have a lawyer in whom she had such explicit trust that she would look no further, but he had always acknowledged the possibility that in the end Rathbone would have to be approached. This was a desperate case.

  Still, as he and Hester rode homeward at last, he felt a weight of oppression settle over him at the prospect of having to go to Vere Street the following day and speak to Oliver Rathbone—worse than that, to ask a favor of him.

  Their relationship was long, and tense. Rathbone was by birth everything that Monk was not: privileged, financially comfortable, excellently educated, part of the establishment, effortlessly a gentleman. Monk was a fisherman’s son from Northumberland, a self-made man, grasping his education where he could, bettering himself by imagination and hard work. He could appear a gentleman to the undiscerning eye. He had every whit as much elegance as Rathbone, but it cost him effort. He had learned how to behave, imitated those he admired, but sometimes made mistakes and remembered them with the fire of embarrassment.

  Rathbone never made the point that he was superior; to do so would have been unnecessary. Monk was learning that only now, in his forties.

  All of which was only a natural abrasion between two men who had equal intelligence and ambition, quickness of thought and word, passion for justice. The issue that mattered, that was always at the front of both their minds, was that they had loved the same woman. And she had chosen Monk.

  Now Monk had to go to him and ask his help, offer him a case which could certainly prove complicated and highly emotive, and very possibly incapable of resulting in a satisfactory conclusion. But it was a kind of compliment that he considered Rathbone the only man who could and would attempt such a task.

  Hester insisted on going with him.

  They came without an appointment and were told by an apologetic clerk that Sir Oliver was in court. However, if the matter was of the urgency they claimed, considering their long association, a message could be sent to the Old Bailey, and Sir Oliver might meet them there during the luncheon recess.

  So it proved. The three of them sat together in a crowded inn, hunched over a small table, talking as softly as possible while still loudly enough to be heard above the babble of voices, which were all attempting to do the same thing.

  Rathbone acknowledged Hester, then listened studiously to Monk as he told the story, concentrating on putting the case succinctly. Monk was surprised at how uncomfortable he felt.

  “I daresay you will have read of the murders in the warehouse yard in Tooley Street?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Rathbone said guardedly. “All England has. Extremely ugly. One of the newspapers this morning said that Lyman Breeland had been brought back to London to stand trial, and Alberton’s daughter also. It is probably nonsense.” He moved the vegetables delicately around his plate. “Someone was seen who resembles them. Why on earth would he leave his cause and his country when they must need him and come back here to face almost certain hanging? I suppose it is conceivable President Lincoln may wish accommodation reached, at a diplomatic level, because of Breeland’s importance to the Union cause, but I cannot see any way of making that sit well with public opinion here, not to mention with the law.” He frowned. “Why? I assume you have some part in it, or you would not have raised the subject.”

  “We brought him back,” Monk replied, watching Rathbone’s long, patrician face with its thin cheeks and sensitive mouth. He saw the start of surprise. “At gunpoint,” he added. “But he is not as unwilling as one would suppose.”

  “Indeed?” Rathbone’s eyebrows rose.

  “He claims he is innocent, and knew nothing about Alberton’s death.” He ignored Rathbone’s expression. “I don’t believe it either, but it is not completely inconceivable. He says Alberton changed his mind about selling him the guns and sent him a message to that effect. The hall porter at Breeland’s rooms did deliver a message to him that night, on receipt of which Breeland packed his belongings and he and Merrit Alberton left immediately.”

  “Could have been anything,” Rathbone pointed out. “But continue.”

  “He said a man called Shearer, an agent of Alberton’s, brought the entire shipment of guns and ammunition—”

  “How much?” Rathbone asked.

  “Six thousand rifles and over half a million rounds of ammunition,” Monk replied.

  Rathbone’s eyes widened.

  “Quite a weight. Not something you carry around in a barrow. Do you know how much that is? A wagon load, two, three?”

  “Three at least, large wagons,” Monk replied. “He says Shearer took them to the railway station, where he paid the full price for them, and Shearer went on his way. Breeland never saw Alberton at all, and certainly never harmed him.”

  “And what does Merrit Alberton say?” Rathbone glanced at Hester.

  “The same,” she answered. “She says they went by train to Liverpool, and from there by sea, calling in at Queenstown in Ireland, and then to New York, and further by train to Washington. We went the same way. She described it pretty accurately.”

  Rathbone thanked her. It was impossible to know if he had read anything of her emotions in her face.

  “I had thought the police had traced the guns to a barge down the river,” he said thoughtfully. “Did I misread?”

  “No. They did. And I was with them,” Monk affirmed. “We traced the barge all the way to Greenwich, where we assume it met a seagoing ship and transferred the guns.”

  “So they are both lying?”

  “They must be. Unless there is some other explanation we haven’t thought of.”

  “And what is it you want of me?” Although there was a rueful, sad shadow of it already in his eyes, there was a smile on his lips, perhaps in memory of other battles they had fought together, both losses and victories that held their hurt.

  Hester drew in her breath sharply and left it to Monk to reply.

  “To defend Merrit Alberton,” he answered. “She swears she did not murder her father, and I think I believe her.”

  Hester leaned forward urgently. “Either way, she is only sixteen, and completely under Breeland’s influence. She believes passionately in his cause and thinks he is a hero, all the noble and brave ideals that any young woman would have.”

  Rathbone’s dark eyes widened. “The Union of the American states? Why, for heaven’s sake? Whatever difference could that possibly make to an English girl?”

  “No, not the Union, the fight against slavery!” Her own fierce urgency for it, her utter loathing of all the evils of dominion, cruelty and denial were burning in her face. If Merrit Alberton had felt even part of what she did, it would be painfully easy to believe she would have followed to the ends of the earth a man whose crusade was freedom, and thought little of the cost.

  Rathbone sighed. Monk knew in a moment of intense understanding exactly what he thought, and was proved correct when he spoke.

  “That may well earn her some sympathy with a British jury, who have no more love for slavery than a Unionist, but it will not excuse anything in the eyes of the law. Is she married to this Breeland?”

  “No.”

  He sighed very slightly. “Well, I suppose that is something. And she is sixteen?”

  “Yes. But she won’t testify against him anyway.”

  “I assumed as much. And if she would, that would not help us
greatly. Loyalty is a very attractive quality; disloyalty is not, even if it is well justified. I swear, Monk, I sometimes think you spend your time trying to find ever more complicated cases for me, until you have one which will confound me completely. You have excelled yourself this time. I barely know where to begin.” But the expression on his face showed that already his mind was racing.

  Monk felt the first tiny lift of his spirits. If Rathbone saw it as a personal challenge, he would take it up. Nothing would ever allow him to retreat in front of Hester. The flash of humor, mockery and self-knowledge was there in his eyes, as if he knew Monk’s thoughts as well as he knew his own, and accepted them. If there was a moment of pain, of loneliness, it was hidden instantly.

  He began to question them both on every detail he could think of: questions about Casbolt, Judith Alberton, Philo Trace, and the whole of their journey to America and all they had done there. Particularly he was interested in Monk’s journey down the Thames with Lanyon.

  He looked distressed, and for a moment seriously out of composure, when Monk told of finding Alberton’s body in the yard, and of almost treading on the watch.

  Monk said little of the Battle of Bull Run. The horror of it was not something for which he had words. The few he found were difficult and stilted, the emotion too deep to be shared in this noisy, friendly, peaceful inn. And he was not ready to look at it again himself. It was too closely bound with his love for Hester, and with a strange, sharp sense of his own inability ever to be worthy of that beauty he had seen in her. And anyway, that was the last thing he could share with Rathbone. It would be the ultimate cruelty.

  He moved on swiftly to the account of finding Breeland, and how he and Trace had guarded him all the way to Richmond, and then Charleston, and home again.

  “I see,” Rathbone said when Monk had finished, with only a few words from Hester. “Then you may tell Mrs. Alberton that I shall call upon her, and she may direct me to her solicitor for instructions. I have a very considerable battle ahead.”

  Monk hesitated on the edge of thanking him, then did not. Rathbone had not taken it for him … for Hester perhaps … for the challenge possibly, for justice, but never for Monk, unless it were to prove himself equal to the challenge.

  “Good!” he said instead. “Very good!”

  7

  RATHBONE RETURNED to the courtroom rather hurriedly. His junior was perfectly capable of conducting the present case. It was a routine one: purely a matter of presenting the evidence, most of which was incontestable. It was as well, because all through the afternoon it was not the subject of Regina versus Wollcroft which occupied his mind, but how he would handle the case of Regina versus Breeland and Alberton which he had been rash enough to accept.

  He was not only uncomfortable with the case itself but with his own reason for agreeing to take it. He had read something of it in the newspapers, although it did not especially interest him because it seemed so clear-cut, but like most of the editorial writers, he was deeply sorry for Judith Alberton. Compassion was a noble emotion, but it was not a good basis upon which to go to law. Juries might be swayed by sentiment; judges were not. And public opinion was very harshly against Merrit Alberton. It seemed she had conspired with a foreigner to murder her own father. It was an affront to all decencies, to family loyalty, to obedience, to property and to patriotism. If every daughter were free to disobey her father in such a violent and appalling manner, then all society was threatened.

  Rathbone found that those assumptions irritated him, and that his respect for the establishment, while deep in the roots of his life—on the surface at least—was becoming a trifle frayed. He despised prejudice, tradition set in rigid minds and no more than habit.

  He had also accepted the case in part because he liked the challenge. There was an excitement in stretching himself to the full, and a danger. What if he were not equal to it? What if he failed to secure justice and an innocent man or woman was hanged because he had not been clever enough, brave enough, or imaginative, articulate, persuasive?

  Or a guilty man were to be freed? Perhaps to kill again, at the best to profit from his crime and show to others that the law was not capable of protecting his victims?

  But even without these he knew he would have accepted it because Hester was involved. She had not said so, but he had seen in her face that she cared for Merrit, might even find something of herself in her, as she might have been at sixteen; wayward, idealistic, too much in love to believe ill of the man in whom she had vested so much, too close to her dream to deny it, whatever the cost.

  Was that how she had been? He wished he had known her then. Ridiculous how sharp that ache was, even half a year after she had married Monk. In fact, it was sharper now than it had been when she was still single and Rathbone could have asked her to marry him, if he had only realized how much he had wanted it.

  When the case reached its conclusion, satisfactorily and a good hour earlier than he had expected, he accepted his client’s thanks and went out into the hot, noisy August street. He hailed the first available hansom that passed him, giving his father’s address in Primrose Hill. He settled back for the long ride and deliberately let his mind slip into idleness. He did not wish to think of Monk or of his new case. Especially he did not wish to think of Hester.

  After an agreeable supper of fresh bread, Brussels pâté, a very pleasant red wine, and then hot plum pie with flaky pastry and fresh cream, he sat back in his armchair and looked through the open French windows across the lawn to the honeysuckle hedge and the orchard beyond. There was no sound but birds singing, and the faint scratch as Henry Rathbone wiggled a small knife around in the bowl of his pipe, not really achieving anything. He did it out of habit, his mind not on the task, just as he seldom actually smoked the pipe. He filled it, tamped down the tobacco, lit it, and invariably allowed it to go out.

  “Well?” he said eventually.

  Oliver looked up. “Pardon?”

  “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?”

  It was both comfortable and disturbing to be understood so well. There was no room for evasions, no escape, and no temptation to try.

  “Have you read about the murders in the warehouse yard in Tooley Street?” Oliver asked.

  Henry knocked out his pipe on the fire surround. “Yes?” he said, looking anxiously at Oliver. “I thought it was supposed to be an American gun buyer. Isn’t it?”

  “Almost certainly,” Oliver said ruefully. “Monk has just brought him back here to stand trial.”

  “So what does he want from you? He does want something, doesn’t he?”

  “Of course.” Occasionally he tried hedging with his father. It never worked, because even if he succeeded in misleading him, he felt so guilty he found himself admitting the truth and then feeling ridiculous. Henry Rathbone was transparently honest himself. Sometimes it was a fault—in fact, quite often, when negotiation or management had to be achieved. He would never have made an even moderate barrister. He had not the first idea how to act a part or plead a cause in which he did not believe.

  But he had a brilliant grasp of facts and a relentlessly logical mind which was capable of remarkable leaps of imagination.

  Now he was waiting for Oliver to explain. Outside the starlings were swirling across the sky, black against the fading gold of the sun. Somewhere close by a lawn recently had been mown, and the smell of the cut grass was heavy.

  “He brought the daughter back also,” Oliver started to explain. “Extraordinary, but she and Breeland say that they are neither of them guilty of killing Alberton, or of stealing the guns.” He saw the look of disbelief in his father’s face. “No, I don’t think so either,” he said quickly. “But he does have a story better than simple denial. He says Alberton changed his mind, but had to do it secretly because of Philo Trace, the buyer from the South to whom he had already given his word and from whom he had accepted a half payment in advance.”

  Henry’s mouth pulled down at
the corners in distaste. “And was Alberton the sort of man to do that?”

  “Not from what I’ve read, but I have no personal knowledge,” Oliver replied. “Apart from dishonesty, it would ruin his reputation for the future. But more to the point, according to Monk, Trace did not receive his money back.” He hesitated. “At least, he says he didn’t. And Alberton’s estate has no record of having received Breeland’s money.”

  Henry put his pipe in his mouth. He lit a match, and the sharp smell of it filled the air momentarily. He held it to the tobacco and inhaled. It ignited, puffed smoke for an instant, then went out again. He sucked at it anyway.

  “The most reasonable explanation seems to be that Breeland is lying,” Oliver went on. “Perhaps I need to examine Alberton’s business affairs, and what I can of Mr. Trace, to guard myself from unpleasant surprises.”

  Henry nodded slowly in silent agreement. Oliver was still leaning forward, elbows on his knees. They were facing each other across the space in front of the fireplace, as if the fire were lit, although on this summer evening it was still warm enough for them to be pleased the French doors were open. It was merely a comfortable habit shared over years of discussing all manner of things. Oliver had first done it when he was eleven; then it had been a question of irregular Latin verbs, and trying to find a logic behind their eccentricity. They had reached no conclusion, but the sense of companionship, of having attained some quality of adulthood, was of immeasurable satisfaction.

  “The police traced the guns to the river and onto a barge down as far as Bugsby’s Marshes,” he went on. “Whereas Breeland claims he took delivery of them at the railway station and went by train to Liverpool. Merrit Alberton swears to the same thing.”

  “That doesn’t make a great deal of sense,” Henry said thoughtfully. “How competent are the police? I wonder.”

  “Monk says the man in charge seems excellent. And regardless of that, Monk himself went with him. He says exactly the same. The guns went from the warehouse to the river, and downstream as far as Bugsby’s Marshes. From there it would be an easy matter to transfer them to an oceangoing ship, and across the Atlantic. Even Breeland doesn’t argue that he took them, and they arrived safely in America. Presumably they were used in the battle at Manassas.”