A Sunless Sea (24 page)

The judge was Grover Pendock, a man Rathbone had known for years, but never well. His wife was an invalid and he preferred to remain away from the social events to which she could not come. Was that in deference to her, or an admirable excuse to avoid a duty in which he had no pleasure? He had two sons. The elder, Hadley Pendock, was a sportsman of some distinction, and the judge was extremely proud of him. The younger one was more studious, it was said, and had yet to make his mark.

Rathbone looked up at Grover Pendock now and saw the general gravity of his rather large face, with its powerful jaw and thin mouth. This was a very public trial. He must know all eyes would be on his conduct of it, expecting—indeed, requiring—a swift and completely decisive conclusion. The sooner it was ended, the sooner the hysteria would die down and the newspapers turn their attention to something else. There must be no doubt as to justice being done, with no unseemly behavior, and above all, absolutely no chance for an appeal.

The counsel for the prosecution looked grim and full of confidence, as if already spoiling for a fight. Sorley Coniston was in his late forties, taller than Rathbone and heavier, smooth-faced. When he smiled there was a slight gap between his front teeth, which was not unattractive. He was almost handsome. Only a certain arrogance in his manner spoiled the grace with which he rose to call his first witness.

As expected, it was Sergeant Orme of the Thames River Police. Rathbone had known it would be, but it still puzzled him that Coniston had chosen Orme rather than Monk.

Then, as he saw Orme’s solid, calm face when he climbed the steps to the witness box and looked down at the floor of the court, he understood the choice. Monk was lean and elegant. He couldn’t help it. The air of command was in him: in the angle of his head, the bones of his face, his remarkable eyes. Orme was ordinary. No one would think him devious or overly clever. He would be believed. Anyone attacking his honesty would do more harm to themselves than to him.

Coniston walked out into the center of the floor and looked up at Orme, who was already sworn in and had given his name and his rank.

“Sergeant Orme,” Coniston began courteously, as if they were equals. “Will you please tell the court of your experience on the morning of the twenty-fourth of November, as you approached Limehouse Pier? Describe the scene for those of us who have not been there.”

Orme had been prepared for this, but he was uncomfortable nonetheless. It was obvious in his face, and the way he leaned forward a little, both hands gripping the rail. Rathbone knew it was the request for a description of something he was not used to putting into words for others, that made him behave so. To the jury it would look like distress at what he had seen. Coniston was already preparing them for the horror.
Rathbone was impressed. He could easily have taken less trouble and assumed the mood would follow naturally.

“Mr. Monk and I were coming back from looking into a robbery farther up the river,” Orme began.

“Just two of you?” Coniston asked. “Were you rowing?”

“Both of us,” Orme answered. “One behind the other, sir, an oar each.”

“I see. Thank you. What time of day was it? What was the light?” Coniston asked.

“Early sunrise, sir. Lot of color in the sky, and across the water, too.” Orme was clearly unhappy.

“Were you close in to shore, or out in the current?” Coniston continued.

“Close in to shore, sir. Out in the stream an’ you’d be in the way of shipping, ferries an’ the like.”

“In the shadow of the docks and warehouses? Paint the picture for us, Sergeant Orme, if you please.”

Orme shifted his weight to the other foot. “About twenty yards out, sir. Buildings sort of … looming up, but we were not in their shadow. Water was smoother closer to shore. Out of the wind.”

“I see. You describe it well,” Coniston said graciously. “So you and Commander Monk were rowing back to Wapping after being called out before dawn. It was cool. The breeze made the river choppy except close to shore, almost in the shadow of the docks and the warehouses, rising sun spilling red light on the smooth, dark water around you?”

Orme’s face tightened as if the attention to beauty in the circumstances were distasteful to him. “Something like that, sir.”

“Did anything occur that caused you to stop?”

There was absolute silence in the courtroom, apart from the slight rustle of a skirt as someone shifted position.

“Yes, sir. We heard a woman crying out, on Limehouse Pier. She was screaming, and waving her arms. We couldn’t see why until we got right up to the pier and climbed the steps to the top. There was the body of a woman lying crumpled up on her side. Her … the body’d been ripped open and there was blood soaking her clothes …” He could not finish, not only because of his own emotion, but also because
of the rising sound of gasps and groans from the body of the courtroom. In the gallery a woman was already crying, and there was a murmur of voices trying to offer comfort and telling others to be quiet.

“Order! Please, ladies and gentlemen,” Pendock said from the bench. “Let us continue. Allow Sergeant Orme to be heard.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Coniston said soberly, then turned again to Orme. “I assume you and Commander Monk examined this poor woman’s remains?”

“Yes, sir. There was nothing we could do for her. She was past all human help,” Orme said hoarsely. “We asked the witness’s name and address, and all she could tell us, which wasn’t anything. She had just come there looking for her husband. Then I stayed with the body, and Mr. Monk went for the local police.”

“The local police?” Coniston said with raised eyebrows. “But since she was found on the pier, was she not within your jurisdiction?”

“Yes, sir. But the first thing we wanted to know was who she was,” Orme pointed out reasonably.

Coniston smiled and relaxed his tense position a fraction. “Of course. We will come to that. She was not known to you?”

“No, sir.”

“And could you describe the body for us, Sergeant?” This time he made no apology.

Rathbone would like to have objected, but there were no grounds. The crime was appalling. Coniston was entitled to horrify the jury until they were sick and weeping. Had Rathbone been prosecuting he would have done the same.

Orme swallowed hard. Even from where he was sitting, Rathbone could see the muscles of his neck and jaws tighten. The effort it cost him to maintain his control would be just as visible to the jurors.

“Yes, sir,” Orme said quietly. He gripped the rail in front of him and breathed in and out several times before beginning. “She wasn’t a young woman, maybe forty, but not gone to fat. Her skin was very white, what we could see of it. Her clothes had been torn, or cut, and her … her bosom laid bare. Someone had slit her open right from …” He moved a rather jerky hand to the middle of his own chest and then slowly down below the rail to where his groin would be. He swallowed again.
“And her entrails were pulled out, sir, an’ left lying all over her. It … it wasn’t easy to see if everything was there, sir, an’ I wouldn’t know anyway.”

Coniston looked pale himself. “Was that the full extent of her injuries, Sergeant?”

“No, sir. There was blood matted in her hair, as if she’d been hit pretty hard.”

Coniston stood with his head bowed. “Thank you, Sergeant. Would you please remain on the stand in case my learned friend for the defense has any questions for you?” He looked across at Rathbone with a courteous smile. There was nothing for Rathbone to question, and they both knew it.

Rathbone stood up and addressed the judge. “Thank you, my lord. But I think Sergeant Orme has already told us all that he is able to.”

Orme left the stand, and his place was taken by Overstone, the police surgeon who had examined the corpse. He held himself with military precision and looked straight at Coniston, his face bleak, his thinning hair smooth to his head. He looked tired, as if he had done this too many times, and it was getting harder rather than easier for him. It flickered through Rathbone’s mind that it was requiring all the man’s strength of will to speak with a steady, unemotional voice.

“You examined the body of this unfortunate woman that the police found on Limehouse Pier, Dr. Overstone?” Coniston began.

“I did,” Overstone answered.

“Describe it for me, if you please. I mean what manner of person had she been in life?”

“About five foot, three inches tall,” Overstone replied. “Of average build, thickening a little around the waist. She appeared to be well nourished. I would estimate her age to be middle or late forties. Her hair was light brown, her eyes blue. As much as one could tell, she must have been very pleasant-looking in life. She had good teeth, fine-boned hands.”

“Any sign of illness?” Coniston inquired, as if it were a reasonable question.

Overstone’s face tightened. “The woman was hacked to bits!” he said between his teeth. “How in God’s name would I know?”

Coniston flushed slightly, even though he had incited the answer. In that instant Rathbone knew he had done it intentionally. The emotion in the room was taut as a violin string. Rathbone felt his own muscles lock and his neck ache with the effort of trying to breathe deeply and relax. Some of the jurors were looking at him, wondering what on earth he would do to defend anyone accused of such a crime. Possibly they wondered why he was here at all.

Coniston’s penitence was brief. He addressed Overstone again.

“But you could ascertain the cause of her death, couldn’t you, sir?” he said respectfully.

“Yes. A violent blow to the head,” Overstone answered. “It crushed her skull. She would have died instantly. The mutilation was done after her death, thank heaven. She can have known nothing about it.” There was a very slight defensiveness in Overstone’s face.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said calmly. He walked back toward his seat, then at the last moment turned around again and looked up. “Oh … one more thing. Would it have required great strength to have struck the blow that killed her?”

“No, not if it were wielded with a swing.”

“Did you ever find what it was that was used?”

“They brought the body to me, man!” Overstone said irritably. “They didn’t take me onto the pier to look at it.”

Coniston’s face remained impassive. “Just so. Have you any idea what the weapon was? What do you think most likely, if you please?”

“A heavy piece of metal: a length of piping, something of that order,” Overstone answered him. “I doubt a wooden bar would have had the weight, unless it was hardwood, even ebony.”

“And the mutilations? Would they have needed particular strength or skill?”

“Just a sharp blade. There was nothing skilled about it.” Overstone said the words with loathing.

“Would a woman have the strength to have done it?” Coniston finally asked what everyone in the room was thinking.

“Yes.” Overstone did not add anything.

Coniston thanked him and turned to Rathbone. “Your witness, Sir Oliver.”

Rathbone tried desperately to think of anything to say that would make the slightest difference. Dinah must be wondering why on earth she had hired him. Her life was in his hands.

“Was there anything about the injuries, anything at all, to indicate what manner of person had inflicted them?” he asked, looking up at Overstone.

“No, sir,” Overstone replied.

“Nothing to suggest their height?” Rathbone elaborated. “Strength? Whether they were left- or right-handed, for example. Male or female? Young or old?”

“I said nothing at all, sir,” Overstone repeated. “Except perhaps, considering the power of the blow, it might have been two-handed.” He lifted both his own arms above his head, hands clenched together, and brought them down and sideways, as if holding a two-handed sword. “But that hardly helps. All it does is make height irrelevant.”

“So it could have been anyone, except perhaps a child?”

“Just so.”

Rathbone nodded. There was nothing more he could ask. Overstone was dismissed.

Next Coniston called Monk to the stand.

Monk was immaculately dressed, as always, elegant even to his polished boots. But he climbed the stairs to the witness bar as if he were stiff, and stood with one shoulder a little higher than the other.

To begin with, the court seemed less tense, not knowing what to expect from him. They thought the worst horror was past. Nevertheless the jurors watched him gravely, faces pale, several of them fidgeting with discomfort. They knew the people in the gallery were looking at them, trying to guess what they thought. Rathbone did not see a single one of them look toward Dinah Lambourn sitting high up in the dock, with burly woman jailers on either side of her.

Coniston seemed aware this time that he was dealing with a potentially hostile witness, in spite of the fact that it was Monk who had arrested Dinah. Rathbone’s long friendship with Monk must be widely known. Coniston was far too clever not to have made certain he was aware of such things and the effect it might have on his case.

“Mr. Monk,” he began softly. The gallery was silent, to be sure they
missed nothing. “You were with Sergeant Orme when you first discovered the body of this poor woman, that dawn at Limehouse Pier. You and he heard the screams of the woman who found her. Orme remained with her to guard the body, and you went to call the local police, in case they could identify her, and appropriate authorities to take care of the corpse?”

“Yes,” Monk agreed, his face carefully expressionless.

“Did the local police know who she was?” Coniston asked casually, as if he did not know the answer.

“No,” Monk replied.

Coniston looked a little startled. He stood motionless, stopped in mid-stride. “They had never had occasion to arrest her, or at least caution her regarding her activities as a prostitute?”

“That is what they said,” Monk agreed again.

“If she was indeed a prostitute, do you not find that remarkable?” Coniston asked with a lift of surprise in his voice.

Monk’s face was expressionless. “People often don’t recognize someone when they have died violently, especially if there is a lot of blood involved. People can look smaller than you remember them when they were alive. And if they are not dressed as you know them, or in a place where you expect to see them, you do not always realize who they are.”