“Terrified,” she filled in. “I know. I think the very worst thing is that he has to wonder if they are going to prove that he did it. How do you live with that?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I thought I might have to, after Joscelyn Gray, and I didn’t know then. I still don’t.”

  “If they do convict him, they’ll hang him, won’t they?” The words came out hoarsely, choked with tears.

  He put his arms around her and held her, allowing her to weep.

  —

  IN THE MORNING SHE ate a slice of toast, forcing it down, and drank a cup of tea, although it was too hot to be pleasant. Then she set out to see Crow, hoping he would be at his clinic. If he was not, then she would have to ask for Scuff’s help.

  The trip across the river seemed to take ages, and she could smell the first touch of chill warning that summer was ending. In a month there might be fog shrouding the water like a veil. Sunsets would carry a blaze of color, washed over in moments.

  It was a short walk from the ferry steps to Crow’s clinic. She was fortunate. Scuff had been on duty all night with a sick patient, and was asleep now. Crow was wide-awake and making himself breakfast in the kitchen, his black hair overlong, as it so often was, and falling half across his face.

  He looked up at her.

  “What is it?” he said immediately. “Something happened?” He moved a chair for her to sit down. He took the opposite one and sat astride it, facing her over its back.

  Very briefly she told him her idea about the local newspapers, some of which were just a leaflet, and the thought that something must have happened that started off the series of murders. “If Fitz read them, he might see things we could look into. The trial should last a few days…at least…”

  “I’ll get you the papers,” Crow said immediately. “I know people who keep all the back copies for years. And they are certainly patients who owe me more than a few favors. But will the police let you see Fitz?”

  “I don’t know. But if they won’t, I’ll ask Oliver to give them to him, and really force him to read them.”

  “Would Fitz know what it would be? What is it you think they might say?”

  “Something that changed and stirred up a memory, a danger, some reason those four people were killed, and so terribly. Something happened! Nobody, even a lunatic, just gets up one morning and takes a sword or a bayonet and impales someone with it. And all the candles, always seventeen, and the broken fingers, and…and the icons defaced. Something started it…”

  Crow stood up. “I’ll start now. I don’t think Scuff will wake up for a while, but if the patient has any trouble, call him. The patient’s in there.” He waved his hand toward the room where they kept the beds. “I’ll be back when I’ve got the papers for the last three months or so. Have some tea.”

  Time seemed to crawl as Hester sat down, then stood up again, paced back and forth across the room, and checked on the patient, who seemed to be sleeping without any distress. She listened to his breathing, even took his pulse without waking him.

  Finally Crow returned with a sheaf of papers, all editions of the local bulletins.

  “Sorry it took so long,” he said. “But no one had all of them. Had to pick and choose, and chase down a couple. They might have been the ones that had something. Here, I’ll put them in a bag so they don’t blow about.” He fished in a cupboard and brought out a cloth bag. He pushed the papers in and handed the bag to her.

  She thanked him profusely, then without another word left and strode as fast as she could to the main road, where she could get a hansom to Rathbone’s chambers. If he was not in, she would wait for him as long as was necessary.

  —

  “I’M SORRY,” HE SAID after she had waited a mere ten minutes to see him. “They are forbidding any visitors at all, and I daren’t jeopardize my own chance of speaking to him. Not that it is doing any good.”

  She passed him the papers. “Get him to read them,” she pleaded.

  He frowned. “I’ll try, but he’s given up, Hester.”

  “I know. But I haven’t. Sometimes we need someone else to believe in us, even when we don’t believe in ourselves. Something happened that started this cycle of murders. We’ve looked and we can’t find it. This is another place to look.”

  Rathbone bit his lip, a mark of unusual indecision for him. “Do you really believe he’s innocent? He is the only one who has no account of his whereabouts for any of the murders, and they began not that long after he arrived here. Apart from the probability that Fodor was the father of Haldane’s son, and Haldane had just learned that, no one seems to have a motive, and there’s nothing we know of to connect the victims…”

  “There’s something,” Hester argued. “They have all been killed in exactly the same way. Or are you suggesting we’ve got four murderous lunatics loose in Shadwell, all with exactly the same kind of madness that requires impaling the chest, breaking the fingers and extinguishing candles in blood? I don’t think any jury is going to accept that, Oliver.”

  He looked at her gravely for several seconds, his face filled with a gentle exasperation.

  “You are quite right. There is something connecting them, of course there is. But it may be recognizable only to a madman—or should I say a man driven mad by pain, isolation and the loneliness of the terrible things he has seen, and could not help. But yes, I will ask him to read them, for you. I will tell him that you believe in him, and that whoever killed these men—Fitz or anyone else—in their own mind had a reason. Something started it.”

  “Thank you.”

  —

  IN THE DAYS BEFORE the trial began, Hester received no answer from Rathbone, except that he had given the papers to Fitz, who had said he would read them.

  The day before the trial was due to begin, Hester, Monk and Rathbone sat late into the evening making final plans. They were in the house in Paradise Place, not sitting in the armchairs but in the dining room at the front of the house, with the panorama of the evening sky and the last light on the river. Sunset came earlier each night as midsummer had passed. Now all they could see were a few yellow gleams of riding lights on the water and the black tangle of masts moving very gently as the tide rocked the boats at anchor.

  “I’ve no defense except madness,” Rathbone said with a flat note of defeat in his voice. “We have no other believable suspects.”

  “Except that Haldane has been arrested for killing Fodor and is awaiting trial, and someone else killed all the others,” Hester argued, but her tone was desperate, and she could hear in her own voice that she did not believe it. Neither would anyone else.

  “And the prosecution will point out whatever Haldane felt about Fodor, and Haldane will probably deny that he knew anything about his son being Fodor’s. We can’t expect Adel Haldane to admit it either. We will just look desperate, and vicious. Then we have to convince the jury that someone else, we don’t know who, killed all the others in an identical fashion—and I don’t mean similar, I do mean identical, down to the last detail. And we don’t know why! Or how they knew the tiny details, like the colors of the candles, and always seventeen!”

  “Were they really all identical?” Hester asked.

  “Yes,” Monk told her. “And we never allowed that to be in any of the newspapers, nor, as far as I know, did anyone know that apart from Hooper and Dr. Hyde. And me. Hester, it isn’t believable. We have to face it now. It’s too late to be undecided. The trial starts”—he glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf—“in eleven hours.”

  “We need more time!” she said, her voice climbing in desperation.

  “There isn’t any,” Monk said gently. “We have no legal reason to delay it, and honestly, I don’t think they will.” He looked at Rathbone.

  Rathbone shook his head. “Public feeling is very high, and you can hardly blame them. We have no reason…”

  “Then plead ‘not guilty,’ ” she urged. “Make the prosecution prove everything!”

  “Just dragging out the—”

  “Make them!” she insisted. “If they say Fitz changed everything in his life, in his nature, and killed all these people he didn’t even know, then they have to prove it, beyond doubt!”

  “Beyond all reasonable doubt,” Rathbone corrected her. “And I’m not sure your idea of reasonable is going to be the same as the judge’s.”

  “Make them prove it anyway,” she insisted.

  Rathbone looked across at Monk.

  Monk nodded. “We might as well play it to the last card,” he answered.

  —

  THE FOLLOWING DAY THE trial began. As always, it was held with all the due circumstance of the law. It opened in the Old Bailey, the central criminal court of London, next to Newgate Prison, where public hangings had taken place up to two years previously.

  The presiding judge was Justice Aldridge, arrayed in gown and full-bottomed wig. The twelve jurors were all men, of course, most of them middle-aged and prosperous-looking. One or two were younger. All were very serious indeed; in fact, one kept clenching and unclenching his hands on the railing in front of him.

  The usual formal opening seemed to take ages. To Hester it had the rigidity of a church service, the same age-old words repeated without variation. Did anybody listen to them?

  Fitz, white-faced and thinner than he’d been just a few weeks ago, sat in the dock, a space raised above head height, like a small room in the side wall, reached by another door and a flight of steps. There were guards on either side of him and his wrists were manacled.

  Hester should be used to this now, but it always seemed new, like a nightmare she had had many times, but which could still veer off in some different, terrible way, and end in tragedy.

  That was ridiculous! It was already a tragedy. Four people were horribly dead, and Fitz had changed from one of the bravest and most generous people she knew into a man who had lost himself, lost his balance, his judgment and his belief; possibly he was even guilty of these murders.

  Had he read the Hungarian newspapers? Was it an idea that mattered at all, or just the last delusion she clung to?

  The formalities were complete. The judge asked Rathbone how the accused pleaded to the charge.

  “Not guilty, my lord,” Rathbone replied.

  The prosecutor, Mr. Elijah Burnside, turned an astonished gaze toward him, as if he could scarcely believe what he had heard. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, and he had a mane of thick white hair and a full beard to match. However, his chief weapon was a magnificent voice. He could have found success as a singer, had he chosen to.

  Justice Aldridge, a small, neat, meticulous man, with a dry sense of humor, made no comment at all.

  Burnside called his first witness.

  In this silent room, no one was even fidgeting, so tight was the tension. Antal Dobokai took the stand and swore to his name and his place of residence. He did so calmly, in a voice that sounded perfectly English, except for a slight hesitation before certain words. He looked completely composed. Even from where Hester sat, the light caught his remarkable eyes, like pale blue glass, clear as the sky.

  Under Burnside’s guidance Dobokai told the story of his visit to Fodor’s workshop, and of finding the terrible scene in the office.

  “I had never seen anything so…so horrifying,” he said gravely. He swallowed hard. “It is almost impossible to describe.”

  “I am sorry to distress you, sir,” Burnside said with evident regret. “But the jury has no knowledge of what you saw, unless they have read reports in the newspapers, which may or may not be accurate. Will you please tell us what you recall.”

  Dobokai straightened himself a little, although he was not leaning against anything.

  “Yes, sir. I hardly recall the room. But as soon as I was in the door, I saw the body of Imrus Fodor splayed across the floor. He was lying on his back and there was an old bayonet sticking out of his chest, still attached to a rifle. It was…at an angle, about…so.” He described a diagonal with his arm. “There was blood everywhere. I had never before seen so much. It seemed to be…” He hesitated, swallowed, closed his eyes and then opened them again. “…on candles all around the room, and on the floor.”

  “Candles?” Burnside interrupted. “There is no gas in the workshop for light?”

  “I…I have no idea,” Dobokai said. “I didn’t notice. The candles were on many different surfaces, all capped with blood, as normal candles might be with melted wax.”

  “I see. Do you remember anything else?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “And Mr. Fodor was unquestionably dead?” Burnside’s magnificent eyebrows rose.

  “Yes, I kneeled and touched his hand. It was cold.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I was deeply upset, as you may imagine. I asked one of the employees to send for the police. Then I stepped back and closed the door. I waited there, knowing they would wish to speak with me.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dobokai.” Burnside waved his hand toward Dobokai, then turned to Rathbone.

  Rathbone rose slowly to his feet. Hester, watching him, wondered if anyone in the jury knew how little he had to work with. He looked calm, elegant as always. The light caught more silver in his fair hair than she had noticed before. It suited him.

  “Your English is excellent, Mr. Dobokai,” he said courteously.

  “Thank you,” Dobokai acknowledged. Clearly it pleased him. “I try to speak it well. It is a beautiful and very flexible language.”

  “Indeed. And you are obviously a keen student. You hear and you remember…”

  Burnside rose to his feet. “My lord,” he complained, “I am very conscious, as I am sure your lordship must be, of the poverty of Sir Oliver’s case for the defense, but we are wasting time complimenting Mr. Dobokai on his mastery of English. The court must already be as aware of it as we are.”

  “My lord,” Rathbone responded, “my learned friend is wasting time objecting. I have reason to believe that Mr. Dobokai is an intelligent man who has adapted unusually well to a change in his circumstances, and has thus become something of a leader in the Hungarian community in Shadwell. It is his standing in that role that I believe may be of help to us.”

  “Proceed, Sir Oliver,” Aldridge directed. “But I would like to see you make this relevant as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Rathbone turned to Dobokai again. The witness stand was a small tower in the open area of the court, and the person in it, having climbed a small staircase up to it, was able to look down on the arena of the court.

  “Mr. Dobokai,” Rathbone resumed. “Clearly these appalling events have greatly disturbed the lives of those in your community. There must be fear, dismay among people. I am led to believe that you have done a great deal to prevent panic in the streets, and even civil violence. Am I correct in that judgment?”

  Dobokai hesitated only a moment.

  Hester wondered what Rathbone was doing, other than playing for time.

  “I hope my efforts have helped,” Dobokai said.

  Rathbone smiled. “I am certain they have. Modesty is very becoming, Mr. Dobokai, but we are here very desperately searching for the truth. Please put such feelings aside for the moment. You are a natural leader. You have helped the police both in guarding the community from panic, and in doing all you can to find out who is responsible for these crimes.”

  Burnside shifted his position, as if he was uncomfortable.

  “Yes, sir,” Dobokai replied.

  “You found the first body, that of Mr. Fodor,” Rathbone continued. “I imagine the police made a very thorough examination of your whereabouts at the time Fodor was killed? It would be usual, and cast no suspicion upon you, simply a routine procedure to rule you out.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dobokai sounded perfectly comfortable.

  Hester knew that Monk had done everything he could to challenge Dobokai’s statement, and had failed.

  “Did you know Dr. Fitzherbert?” Rathbone asked.

  “No, sir. I have excellent health, but should I require a doctor, I would use the Hungarian in our community.”

  “You did not, for example, encounter him in Hungary? Before you left?”

  Dobokai shifted his weight a little. Inner discomfort? Or simply that he had stood in exactly that position long enough?

  “No, sir.”

  “That is what I thought you would say.” Rathbone smiled. “Thank you. I may have questions for you later, but you have been very clear.” He walked back to his place and sat down.

  Burnside called Dr. Hyde to the stand.

  Hyde looked well scrubbed and barbered. His fair hair was thinning a little, but he was still a vigorous man, and clearly not in a good temper. Perhaps he knew Burnside and did not like him.

  Hester wondered if Rathbone had noticed this, and would use it. Above all, she wished passionately to know if Rathbone actually believed Fitz could be innocent. It would be enough if he believed the possibility, even if not the actual likelihood.

  Hyde was describing the scene of Fodor’s death as he had found it. He spared no details.

  Watching the jurors’ faces, Hester could sense their distress, and now and then one of them glanced up at Fitz in the dock. She did not want to look up herself. She had missed her chance earlier, and if she did so now, he would think she was seeing him with the same horror that was on other people’s faces.

  Would they be more moved by emotion than by reason? The horror had to be paid for. If the police had charged Fitz, then they must have thought that he was guilty. No sane man could let him go.

  She felt panic and despair rise inside her.

  Hyde was still describing the scene, and the bayonet sticking out of Fodor’s chest.

  Burnside went on to ask him about the second victim, and his answers were equally vivid and shocking, and delivered with the same curt words.

  They adjourned for lunch, and resumed in the early afternoon. Burnside asked Hyde to describe the third victim, and the fourth.

  “And they all died in agony, drenched in their own blood?” Burnside finished dramatically. “Their fingers smashed just to create pain. Fingers are intensely sensitive, are they not, Dr. Hyde?”