“Maybe they’ll call him, but it’s rather tedious and adds nothing to the case. It’s a dangerous thing to bore a jury.”

“For heaven’s sake! It’s not an entertainment!” she said savagely. “The jury is there to do the most important job of their lives, not to be amused.”

Rathbone tried not to let any emotion sharpen his voice.

“They are ordinary people, Margaret. They are frightened of making a mistake, awed that the responsibility is theirs for a decision they have had no training to reach. A man’s life hangs in the balance, and they know it. They will find it difficult to concentrate, almost impossible to remember everything, and if either Winchester or I allow their minds to wander from what we are saying, they will forget half of it. Winchester is no fool, believe me. He will not repeat anything that is irrelevant.”

“What do you mean, irrelevant?” she demanded. “How can the truth be irrelevant? It is somebody’s life … Are they stupid?” Her voice was growing higher, less within the tight effort of control that she had kept up with difficulty since her father’s arrest.

He leaned forward a little. “The description of the river where they found Parfitt is not important enough for the jury to hear it from both the local policeman and Monk,” he explained. “It has nothing to do with who Parfitt was, or who killed him. They don’t need it twice. They will cease to listen, and that matters.”

“What will Monk say?” she persisted. “He’ll shade everything because he hates Papa. He’s never forgiven him for choosing you to defend Jericho Phillips. Men like Monk can’t bear to be beaten. What are you going to do to show the jury that it’s personal, that he wanted Papa to be guilty for his own reasons?”

Rathbone saw the anger in her face, and the fear. It was as if some part of her were facing an ordeal from which she might never recover. He ached to be able to reach out to her and simply hold her, to feel that intensity of closeness where pain can be shared. But she was too tightly knotted within herself to allow it, as if he were also the enemy.

“Margaret, Monk wants to end the abominable trade in child pornography, not persecute any one person. If he wanted revenge over Phillips, for heaven’s sake, don’t you think he got it at Execution Dock?”

She stared at him. “You don’t believe me, do you? You’re siding with Monk!”

He swallowed back the exasperation that filled him. “I am trying to defend your father. Personal attacks on the police are not going to accomplish that, unless Monk makes a mistake. If he does, I will take him apart for it, friend or not.”

“Will you?” she said doubtfully.