Blood on the Water Read online

  Brancaster looked down at the floor. “I know that. That’s the main thing I haven’t worked out how to use—the fear.”

  Dover came in and coughed discreetly, then announced that dinner was served. They went through to the small dining room with its window overlooking the square and the trees.

  “You can guarantee that Pryor will use it,” Rathbone answered the remark as they began the first course. “He will make it seem as if the safety of the whole system depends upon upholding the original verdict. The details might be wrong, but the conviction wasn’t. The jurors will want to believe him. Don’t ever forget that. They won’t care who’s right or wrong, whose reputation falls, but they’ll want desperately to be safe. They’ll want it for themselves and for those they love. And Pryor will know that as well as you do. He’ll play on their fears that justice and law will collapse if you prove they were wrong the first time. He’ll frighten them out of thinking clearly at all. And once you’ve lost them your chance is pretty slight of getting them back.”

  Brancaster nodded grimly. “I know.”

  “Who is presiding?” Rathbone asked, feeling his muscles knotting as he approached the subject he dreaded.

  “Antrobus,” Brancaster replied. “That’s something in our favor, I think. From what I’ve heard, he isn’t afraid of anything, which should make for a fair trial. And he’s reputed to have a hell of a temper if he’s crossed.”

  Rathbone smiled. “That’s right. Don’t even try to put anything across him.” He hesitated. “I understand Ingram York presided over the first one …” He left the sentence unfinished. Suddenly he was embarrassed, not sure how much Brancaster knew or guessed about his past with York.

  Brancaster’s expression did not change at all. “I’ve read and reread those transcriptions,” he said thoughtfully. “I think in a different, less highly charged case there would even have been error sufficient to appeal. But then considering the degree of the atrocity, and public feeling at the time, anyone else might have ruled similarly. They all appeared to believe Beshara was guilty.”

  “It also seemed as if they didn’t look very far beyond him,” Rathbone pointed out. “Did anybody at all assume that he could have done it alone?”

  “That’s the whole other issue,” Brancaster replied. “They were happy to settle for someone to blame and not dig any deeper.”

  Rathbone thought for a moment.

  The manservant cleared the dishes and brought the main course.

  “Sabri is being defended by Pryor,” Rathbone resumed as soon as the door was closed. “Who is paying him?”

  For an instant Brancaster looked startled, his eyes widened. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s possible Pryor is doing it for nothing, or at least for nothing that we can see. But it would be most interesting to know.”

  “Favor for favor?” Rathbone wondered. “It should be looked into. Discreetly, of course. Now let’s get down to tactics, because that’s where it will all lie. The evidence is for us, but the emotions are against.”

  Brancaster smiled and obeyed. He did not comment on Rathbone using the word “us,” although he undoubtedly heard it. He began to lay out the ground plan of his prosecution.

  Rathbone listened and commented here or there.

  They had dessert, then coffee and brandy, and sat far into the night, debating facts and tactics.

  It was Brancaster who finally put words to the question Rathbone had been skirting around.

  “What if Pryor can prove that Sabri has no connection with Suez or anything to do with it? Or worse, that he has some interest in its success? Why on earth would he kill two hundred British people he doesn’t even know?”

  “For money,” Rathbone replied, although that was merely opening the door to the answer they both feared. “But I have heard no proof that anyone paid him. If they did, it will have been in some way we can’t trace, probably all done in Egypt.”

  “Why?” Brancaster said simply. “And probably far worse than that, who? Even if nobody else wants to know, Pryor is going to ask, because he’ll know damned well that if we don’t say who, it’s because we don’t know.”

  “Worse than that,” Rathbone added. “Who colluded to frame Beshara, and why? Lydiate? Camborne? Even York? Who put pressure on Ossett to direct it as he did, or to get Monk back on it after the case against Beshara collapsed?”

  Brancaster did not even attempt to answer.

  OVER THE NEXT WEEK, Rathbone learned everything he could about the main players in the trial of Habib Beshara, and those like Lydiate and Lord Ossett who had been instrumental in handling the whole tragedy. He contacted Alan Juniver for much of the background. It was a difficult meeting, as it always was for Rathbone when encountering anyone he had known prior to his fall from grace. Before it he had been one of the most senior lawyers, and later, briefly, a judge. His downfall was spectacular, because it had been from such a height.

  Had his long trip to Europe been an escape, a running away that had only made his return harder? Possibly. But whatever the cost now, he would not regret it. The time with his father had been beyond price.

  Juniver was embarrassed to see him, but he concealed it moderately well. He had once admired Rathbone immensely, and told him so. Now he was uncertain, and that, too, was in his face.

  “You’re looking well,” he said with sincerity. Rathbone’s skin had been burned brown by the Mediterranean sun. He was leaner and he knew it. He had had to ask his tailor to alter some of his suits by a couple of inches to fit his shape, having lost the softness he had gained from too many good lunches and hours sitting at a desk studying depositions and briefs.

  “Thank you.” Rathbone accepted the compliment. “Good travel broadens the mind and narrows the waist.”

  Juniver smiled. “I hear you were in Egypt. Was it all that the romantics say? Newspapers, travel books, novelists, and poets seem to be full of it.”

  “More than all,” Rathbone said sincerely. The memories of it were sharp in his mind: not just the grandeur to the eye but the tastes and smells, the sting and heat of the sun, the murmur of the Nile fingering its way through the reeds. It was not hard to think of the basket with the infant Moses caught up in those reeds, or, centuries later, the gilded barge with the young Cleopatra returning to her capital after lying with Caesar.

  “And Italy,” he added. “No visit there is long enough. Must be one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world. But there is much to return to here.”

  Juniver bit his lip. Now he was wrong-footed. He did not know what Rathbone was going to say next, so he did not know what reply to prepare.

  “I need your help,” Rathbone said, concealing his faint amusement. For all his potential, Juniver was not as quick, as intuitive at questioning, as he would need to be.

  Juniver saw it in his eyes and caught the lesson.

  “Of course,” he said quickly. “You want to know about the Beshara case. I assume there is no doubt this time that Sabri is guilty?”

  “None at all,” Rathbone answered. “But that is only part of the issue, as I imagine you must know. I’ve read the transcript of Beshara’s trial. There was never any possibility that you could have got him off, unless you had had the evidence that Monk later discovered. Even then I am not certain. The emotional tide might have prevailed, even so.” He looked steadily at Juniver, seeing the uncertainty in his eyes, and finally the acknowledgment that he himself had believed Beshara guilty. That had inevitably colored his voice, his face, the way he stood. The jury had read that too.

  “Tell me all you can,” Rathbone asked, and knew Juniver would.

  RATHBONE WOKE IN THE morning a trifle later than usual. It was funny how in just a few months, years of mental discipline had loosened their hold.

  Dover was standing beside the bed with a steaming cup of tea, and the newspaper in his other hand. Rathbone relaxed again, feeling the smooth surface of the sheets with his feet, smelling the cotton. It would be a long time, maybe
years, before the luxury of that wore off, after his time in prison during trial, when he could see no end to his incarceration.

  “Good morning, sir,” Dover said punctiliously. His expression gave no indication that he was aware of anything unusual having occurred. It was extraordinarily comforting. “I’m afraid the news is not very pleasant this morning.” He put the cup of tea on the bedside table beside Rathbone, and then the newspaper, still folded, on the top of the bedcover.

  Rathbone sat up. “What is it?” he asked, suddenly cold in spite of the fact that the room was warm.

  “Mr. Beshara, the Egyptian who was accused of—”

  “I know who Beshara is,” Rathbone interrupted. “What about him?”

  “I’m sorry to say, sir, he has been murdered, in the prison where he was being held … and treated for his illness.”

  Rathbone was stunned. “Are you sure?” It was a stupid question, and yet he could hardly grasp the facts. It was like some parody of the past, hideous, ironic, not even remotely funny. “Murdered?” he repeated the word. “By whom?”

  “No one knows, sir.”

  “No, of course they don’t! Damn it! Damn it! How could they let that happen?”

  “Dead men don’t speak, sir,” Dover replied.

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER, RATHBONE had dinner at the house on Primrose Hill where his father still lived. It was a late August evening and the shortening of the days was noticeable. Sunset came earlier, and there was a golden haze in the air as Oliver and Henry walked down the lawn toward the hedge and the orchard beyond. The boughs were heavy with fruit, and here and there birds were already pecking at the riper ones.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Henry said casually. “There’ll be plenty for us. I grew them mostly for the birds anyway. Although I hope they don’t take all the plums.”

  They went through the gate and into the longer grass. Oliver drew in his breath deeply, smelling the richness of it: the ripe seed heads of the longer wild grass, the damp earth where the ditches ran. It would not be long before the hips and the haws turned scarlet. There were a few trumpets of late honeysuckle in bloom. It was far enough into the evening for their scent to be heavy and sweet in the air.

  Above them the breeze was stirring the elm leaves in a soft whisper, and the starlings were beginning to gather. In an hour or so, there would be small bats flittering in their odd, jerky way between the branches and the eaves of the house.

  Traveling had been wonderful, full of adventure, walking in the ancient places where men had built monuments to their lives and beliefs for thousands of years. But nothing exceeded the deep and abiding pleasure of a late-summer evening at home.

  Returning to London also meant facing emotions that Oliver had been able to bury while filling his mind daily with new and absorbing experiences, then sharing them afterward with Henry and discussing all manner of ideas and philosophies long into the night. But one cannot escape forever; even such freedom has its caverns that cry out to be filled.

  Now the awareness that intruded on him, no matter how he tried to escape it, was of how much Beata York was in his mind. Even as he stood here in the familiar orchard, steeping himself in its scents and letting the silence wash over him, he thought what joy it would bring him to share it with her. Everything, sweet or painful, would be better shared, and he could think of no one else with whom that would be so.

  He had finally accepted in his mind that Henry would not be here forever. Whether it was years from now, or sooner, the day would come. He could not yet grasp the loneliness it would bring, but he had gained the courage to face it.

  With Beata it could be accepted as one of the great milestones of life, not an irreparable loss. He did not even know what he believed of death, or of eternity. Perhaps very few people really knew, until the test of bereavement came.

  He had thought of it when visiting the tombs of Egypt, the burial mounds of people who died a thousand years before Christ was born, or even longer. They had unquestionably believed in immortality. But life had held more mystery then. It was easier to believe in the unknowable.

  He had thought of it also standing in the streets of Rome, the same city to which St. Peter had come after the death of Christ, and from which pope after pope had ruled the Catholic Church, which at that time was synonymous with the Christian world.

  Perhaps he should have gone to Jerusalem?

  Except that it should not make a ha’p’orth of difference where a man stood. What closer place was there to heaven than an English garden at sunset as the wind shimmered the leaves of the elms above them and flocks of starlings were crowded black pin dots against the gold of the sky?

  Henry’s gentle voice broke into his thoughts. “This trial you’re advising Rufus Brancaster about, have you thought of the consequences?”

  Oliver returned his mind to the immediate present with a jolt. “Beshara will be vindicated, although it’s too late to be of much use to him,” he answered. “Sabri will be sentenced to death.”

  “That will be the beginning,” Henry agreed. “And in some senses, the least of it. This appalling miscarriage did not happen by accident, or because of one or two chance pieces of evidence. There was error, misjudgment, and corruption all the way through. If you succeed—and I know that you must if it is humanly possible, and whatever the cost—then you will also expose that. Once you have begun, you will not be able to stop it. Have you considered the full impact?”

  That was precisely what Oliver had been avoiding, keeping his mind too occupied to tread there.

  “We don’t know who is behind it,” he said reasonably as they began to walk back toward the house.

  Henry sighed. “Yes you do. You’ve read the transcripts by now. Don’t tell me you haven’t. You are not incompetent.”

  Oliver did not answer.

  “Part of your argument regarding the first trial, and a flaw you will certainly expose, is that no one proved a motive for Beshara to risk his own life to kill so many British that he did not even know.”

  “The only answer is the general one, that he hated us and was paid to do it,” Oliver replied.

  “Precisely,” Henry agreed. “And have you considered who may have paid Sabri? I hope you don’t imagine that Pryor will not ask?”

  “No … of course he will,” Oliver agreed.

  Henry shook his head. “And do you know?”

  “Not yet. There are several possibilities. Ossett has nothing to gain by it. I looked into his background, his financial investments, even his social connections. There is nothing to suggest he’s anything but the decent, slightly stuffy, ex-military man he appears to be. The same is true of everyone else connected with changing the case from Monk to Lydiate. And Lydiate himself is a victim of it. He was put in over his head, granted. He felt coerced because of his brother-in-law’s vulnerability, but it didn’t affect how he behaved. And there’s Camborne, but I can’t find any reason for him to prosecute so passionately, except his ambition.”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?” Henry asked as they reached the French windows and went inside. The air was cooling as the light faded, and he was happy to close and lock them for the night.

  Oliver waited.

  “Ingram York presided over the first trial,” Henry went on, sitting down in his favorite chair and waving Oliver to take the opposite one, where he habitually sat. “You will be forced to expose his conduct of it, with every ruling he made. Are you prepared for what you may find? Do you want to prove him at best incompetent, losing his mental grasp, or at worst, actually corrupt?”

  Oliver faced it at last. Henry had left him no escape. Such an exposure would inevitably hurt Beata, even if at the same time it began to free her from York. He did not know if that was a price he was willing to pay.

  Would it even free her? Was it not more in her character that loyalty would bind her to her husband even more tightly?

  Henry was watching him, not saying the obvious, but the knowledge of it was in
his eyes, and the pain he would share if Oliver were hurt.

  Either way, it should make no difference to the decision as to what was the right thing to do. He could not recuse himself! What would he say? I am in love with Sir Ingram York’s wife?

  Of course not. He would embarrass her beyond bearing, not to mention what he would do to himself—and to the case. It was not a time for personal considerations. And he was not officially representing anyone. He had no standing. All he could do was advise Rufus Brancaster—and serve the law.

  Inevitably it raised memories of Margaret, and the failure of their marriage. Her loyalty to her father had risen above her loyalty to the law, or truth, or even moral justice. When it was only in theory, she had said that whatever the cost, one’s first loyalty had to be to what was right.

  Such easy words—before something cuts to the heart and the bone. Before it is your father, your husband or wife who is to be imprisoned, or executed! Arthur Ballinger had been sentenced to be hanged for a crime Oliver knew he had committed. In their last, terrible meeting he had not even denied it. But only Oliver had heard that.

  Margaret still believed that her father had been innocent, and that Oliver had put his own career before loyalty to family in allowing Arthur to be convicted and not mounting an appeal. When Oliver’s career had crashed in ruins, because of his decision as to what was right in the Taft case, she had rejoiced, and seized the opportunity to ask him for a divorce.

  He had faced a prison sentence and could not morally deny her her freedom. Not, honestly, that he had wanted to. Freedom was lonely, but sweet for all that.

  Could he stand by his loyalty to the truth, no matter the price, if it were asked of him? Did he really believe that without honor, nothing else survives?

  If it were Henry charged … but Henry wouldn’t be guilty!

  Then again, Margaret had been unable to believe that her father was guilty, whatever the evidence.