Execution Dock - Anne Perry [17]
“Did Mr. Durban seem to you similarly distressed by it?”
“Yes, sir. Any civilized man would be.” The surgeon looked at him with distaste, as if Rathbone himself were devoid of decency. “Mr. Monk after him was equally upset, if you were going to ask,” he added.
“It had occurred to me,” Rathbone acknowledged. “As you've implied, it is an appalling piece of savagery, and against a child who had obviously suffered already. Thank you.” He turned away.
“Is that all you have to ask me?” the surgeon called after him, his voice harder, challenging.
“Yes, thank you,” Rathbone replied with a slight smile. “Unless my learned friend has anything further, you are free to leave.”
Tremayne next called Orme. He was a solemn figure, not overtly nervous. He held his hands at his sides, not gripping the rail except when he went up the steps. Then he stood square in the box and faced Tremayne with as little expression on his face as he could manage.
Rathbone knew he would be a difficult man to break, and if he did so and the jury saw it, they would not forgive him. He glanced at them now, for the first time. Immediately he wished he had kept his resolve not to. They were mostly middle-aged men, old enough to have sons the victim's age. They sat stiffly in their sober best suits, white-faced and unhappy. Society had entrusted them not only with weighing the facts, but also with seeing the horror and dealing with it on behalf of everyone. If they sensed that they were being manipulated they would not pardon the man who did it.
“Mr. Orme.” Tremayne began his questions, which were likely to go on until the adjournment for lunch, and long into the afternoon, perhaps until evening. “You worked with Mr. Durban during the rest of his life, from the time the boy's body was pulled out of the river until Mr. Durban's own death at the end of last year?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“We have already heard that Mr. Durban took a special interest in this case. As far as you know from your own direct observation, will you describe what was done to solve it, either by him, of which you have the evidence, or by yourself?”
“Yes, sir.” Orme stood stiffly. “It was plain from the beginning that the boy was murdered, and that he'd been pretty badly used before that,” he said distinctly, his voice carrying throughout the room. No one moved or whispered in the jury box or the gallery “We ‘ad to find out who he was, and where he came from. There was nothing on the body that'd give ‘is name, but the way ‘e'd been treated it seemed likely ‘e'd fallen into the ‘ands of one o’ them who sells children for the use of brothels an’ pornographers and the like.” He said the words with withering disgust.
“You could tell that from a body?” Tremayne said, affecting some surprise.
All this was exactly what Rathbone had expected, and what he would have done had their roles been reversed—draw it all out in the fashion of a story, and with detail the jury would never forget. The poor devils would probably have nightmares for years to come. They would waken in a sweat with the sound of running water in their ears.
“Yes, sir, pretty likely,” Orme replied. “Lots of boys, an’ girls too, is ‘alf starved. You're poor, you've got no choice. But the burns are different.”
“Is it not possible that a poor man, violent, perhaps drunken, in his despair might hurt even his own children?” Tremayne pressed.
“Yes, sir,” Orme conceded. “‘Course it is. But poor men don't ‘ave cigars to do it with. It isn't a bad temper that makes you light a cigar, smoke it till it's hot, then hold the end of it against a child's body till it burns through the skin into the flesh, and then makes scabs that bleed.”
Several people in the gallery cried out, stifling the sound instantly, and one of the jurors looked as if he might be sick. His face was sweaty, and had a faintly greenish hue. The man next to him grasped his arm to steady him.
Tremayne waited a moment before going on.
Rathbone understood. He would have done the same.
“Did that prompt any particular course of action from you?” Tremayne