Execution Dock

There was a rustle of sharpened interest around the room. One or two of the jurors looked anxious. Lord Justice Sullivan's face was carefully expressionless.

Tremayne rose to his feet, but with anger rather than confidence.

“Profound as Sir Oliver's philosophy may be, my lord, it does not appear to contain a question.”

“You are quite correct,” Sullivan agreed, but with reluctance. “Such observations more properly belong in your club, Sir Oliver. You called Mr. Monk to the stand; therefore, I assume you have something to ask him. Please proceed with it.”

“My lord,” Rathbone said, masking only the slightest irritation. He looked back up at Monk. “What was your own occupation when you first met Mr. Durban?”

“I was a private agent of inquiry,” Monk answered. He could guess where Rathbone was leading, but he could not avoid going with him.

“Did that fit you for taking over Mr. Durban's position as Commander of the River Police at Wapping?”

“I don't think so. But I had been in the Metropolitan Police before that.” Surely Rathbone was not going to bring up his loss of memory? He was seized with a sudden cold uncertainty that he might.

But that was not where Rathbone struck.

“Why did you leave the Metropolitan Police?” he asked.

Sullivan was impassive, but as if he were containing his emotion with difficulty. His color was high, his fist tightly closed on the bench.

“Sir Oliver, are you questioning Mr. Monk's professional ability, his reputation, or his honesty?” he asked.

“None of those, my lord.” Irritation marked Rathbone's face now. His hands were closed tight and hard. “I believe Mr. Durban had leadership skills that Mr. Monk intensely admired, because he had failed to exhibit them himself in the past. Mr. Durban, in choosing him as his successor, gave him the opportunity to try a second time, which is a chance few men receive. Mr. Durban also expressed a confidence in him that he did not have in himself. I will show that Mr. Monk's sense of debt to Durban drove him to exceed his authority, and his usual judgment, in pursuit of Jericho Phillips, and that he did so to pay what he perceived as a debt. He also desired profoundly to earn the respect of his men by vindicating Durban 's original pursuit of the murderer.”

Tremayne shot to his feet, his face filled with consternation, forgetting even to address the judge.

“That is a very large and rather rash assumption, Sir Oliver.”

Rathbone turned to Sullivan with an air of i

“My client is accused of a very terrible crime, my lord. If he is found guilty he will be hanged. No lengths within the law are too great to make certain that justice is done, and that we do not also allow our emotions, our pity or our revulsion, to dictate our thoughts and overwhelm our reason. We too wish to see someone pay, but it must be the right someone.”

“Of course it must,” Sullivan said forcefully. “Proceed, Sir Oliver, but get to the point.”

Rathbone bowed very slightly. “Thank you, my lord. Mr. Monk, did you follow Durban 's notes to retrace his original detection, or did you accept his observations and deductions as sufficient?”

“I followed them again and questioned the same people again, as far as I could,” Monk answered with a tone suggesting that the answer was obvious.

“But in each case you already knew what evidence you were looking for,” Rathbone pointed out. “For example, Mr. Durban began with an unidentified corpse and had to do whatever he could to learn who the boy was. You began knowing that Mr. Durban believed it to be Walter Figgis. You had only to prove that he was right. Those are not the same courses of action at all.”

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 begi

“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.”