The Sins of the Wolf (16 page)

But this was no time to think of himself. He must solve this absurd problem of the death of Mrs. Farraline, and Hester’s part in it.

He closed his case and took it with him as he informed his landlady briskly and without further explanation that he was off to Edinburgh on business and did not know when he would be back.

She was used to his manner and disregarded it.

“Oh yes,” she said absently. Then added, with a sharp eye to what was important to her, “And you’ll be sending the rent, no doubt, if you’re gone that long, Mr. Monk?”

“No doubt,” he agreed tersely. “You’ll keep my letters.”

“That I will. Everything will be exactly as it should be. When have you ever found it different, Mr. Monk?”

“Never,” he said grudgingly. “Good day to you.”

“Good day, sir.”

By the time he reached the prison where Hester was being held Rathbone had been as good as his word, and arrangements had been made for Monk to gain admittance, as Rathbone’s assistant, and therefore, in a sense, a legal adviser to Hester.

The wardress who took him along the gray, stone-floored passageway towards the cell was broad-backed, heavily
muscled and had an expression of intense dislike in her powerful face. It chilled Monk to see it and filled him with something as close to panic as he could remember in a long time. He knew why it was there. The woman knew the charge against Hester—that of having murdered an old lady who was her patient and who trusted her implicitly, for the chance to steal a piece of jewelry worth perhaps a few hundred pounds. That was enough to keep her in luxury for a year—but at the cost of a human life. She would have seen all sorts of tragedy, sin and despair pass through her cells, brutalized women who had murdered violent husbands, pimps or lovers; inadequate despairing women who had murdered their children; hungry and greedy women who had stolen; cunning women, crude or brazen women, ignorant, vicious, frightened, stupid—all manner of folly and vice. But there was little as despicable in her mind as an educated woman of good family who stooped to poison an old lady who was in her specific charge, and for gain of something she did not need.

There would be no forgiveness in her, not even the usual casual pity she showed for the thief and the prostitute caught in a sudden act of violence against a violent world. With the envy and frustration of the ignorant and oppressed, she would hate Hester for being a lady. And at the same time she would hate her also for not having lived up to the privilege with which she was born. To have been given it was bad enough, to have betrayed it was beyond excusing. Monk’s fear for Hester condensed into a cold, hard sickness inside him.

The wardress kept her back to him all the way along the corridor until she came to the cell door, where she inserted the heavy key into the lock and turned it. Even now she did not look at Monk. It was a mark of her utter contempt that it extended to him. Even curiosity did not alleviate it.

Inside the cell Hester was standing. She turned slowly as she heard the bolt draw back, a look of hope lighting her face. Then she saw Monk. The hope died, and was replaced
by pain, wariness and a curious flicker between expectancy and distress.

For a moment Monk was torn with emotion, familiarity, a desire to protect her, and anger with events, with Rathbone, most of all with himself.

He turned to the wardress.

“I’ll call when I want you,” he said coldly.

She hesitated, for the first time her curiosity caught. She saw something in Monk’s face which disturbed her, an instinctive knowledge that he would fight with weapons she could not match, that he would never be afraid for his own safety.

“Yes sir,” the wardress said grimly, and slammed the door closed unnecessarily hard.

Monk looked at Hester slowly and with great care. She had nothing to do here from morning till night, and yet she looked tired. There were shadows around her eyes and no color at all in her skin. Her hair was straight and she had obviously made no effort to dress it flatteringly. Her clothes were plain. She looked as if she had given up already. She must have had her own clothes sent to her lodgings, by Callandra, probably. Why had she not chosen something less drab, more defiant? Then memory flooded back of his own despair during the Grey case, when worse horror had stared him in the face, the thought not only of prison, and hanging, but the nightmare of guilt itself. It was Hester’s courage and her stinging anger which had saved him then.

How dare she give up for herself.

“You look awful,” he said icily. “What in God’s name is that you’re wearing? You look as if you’re waiting to be hanged. They haven’t even tried you yet!”

Her expression darkened slowly from puzzlement to anger, but it was a quiet, cold emotion, no heat in it at all.

“It is a dress I used nursing,” she said calmly. “It is warm and serviceable. I don’t know why you bother to mention it. What on earth does it matter?”

He changed the subject abruptly. “I am going to Edinburgh on the train tonight Rathbone wants me to find out all I can about the Farralines. One assumes it was one of them who murdered her….”

“It is all I can think of,” she said quietly, but without conviction in her voice. “But before you ask me, I don’t know who or why. I can’t think of any reason, and I have had nothing to do here but try to think of it.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No.” There was no anger in her, only quiet, black resignation.

It infuriated him. He wanted to take her physically and shake her until she was as angry as he was, until she was enraged enough to fight and go on fighting until they knew the truth, and then force everyone else to look at it, acknowledge it and admit they had been wrong. He hated the change in her; the quietness was uncharacteristic. Not that he was so fond of the way she had been. She talked far too much, and with much too much opinion, whether she was informed or not. She was quite unlike the sort of woman that appealed to him; she had not the gentleness, the feminine warmth or the grace he admired and which quickened his pulses and awoke his desire. But still, to see her like this disturbed him profoundly.

“Then someone else did,” he said. “Unless you are telling me she committed suicide?”

“No of course she didn’t!” Now at last she was angry too. There was a faint touch of pink in her cheeks. “If you’d known her you would not even entertain such an idea.”

“Perhaps she was senile and incompetent?” he suggested. “And she killed herself by accident?”

“That’s ridiculous.” Her voice rose sharply. “She was no more senile than you are. If that is the best you can do, you are wasting my time! And Oliver’s, if he is employing you!”

He was delighted to see her spirit returning, even if it
was only in the defense of Mary Farraline; and he was thoroughly piqued by the suggestion that he was here solely at Rathbone’s request, and because he was paid. He did not know why it stung so sharply, but it was a painful thought, and he reacted instantly.

“Don’t be childish, Hester. There isn’t time, and it’s most unbecoming in a woman of your age.”

Now she was really angry. He knew it was the reference to her age, which was idiotic, but then at times she was idiotic. Most women were.

Hester looked at him with intense dislike.

“If you are going to Edinburgh to see the Farralines, they are hardly likely to tell you anything other than that they employed me to accompany Mrs. Farraline to London, to give her her medicine night and morning, and see that she was comfortable. And I failed them most dismally. I don’t know what else you would expect them to say?”

“Self-pity doesn’t become you any better than it does most people,” he said sharply. “And we haven’t time.”

She glared at him with loathing.

He smiled back, a twisting of the lips, but still relieved that she was angry enough to fight—not that he wished her to perceive that. “Of course they will say that,” he agreed. “I will ask them a great many questions.” He was formulating his plan as he spoke. “Because I shall tell them that I have come on behalf of the prosecution and wish to make sure of everything in order to have an unanswerable case. I shall pursue every detail of your stay there.”

“I was only there a day,” she said.

He ignored her. “Then in the course of so doing, I shall learn everything else I can about them. One of them murdered her. In some way, however slight, they will betray themselves.” He said it with more certainty than he felt, but he must not allow her to know that. The least he could do was protect her from the bitterest of the truth, the odds against success. He wished desperately he could do more. It was appalling to be helpless when it mattered so intensely.

The anger drained out of her as suddenly as if someone had turned out a light. Fear overtook everything else.

“Will you?” Her voice shook.

Without thinking he reached forward and took her hand, holding it tightly.

“Yes I will. I doubt it will be easy, or quick, but I will do it.” He stopped. They knew each other too well. He saw in her eyes what she was thinking, remembering—that other case they had solved together, finding the truth at last, too late—when the wrong man had been tried and hanged. “I will, Hester,” he said with passion. “I’ll find the truth, whatever it costs, and whoever I have to break to get it.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked away suddenly. For a moment she was so frightened she could hardly control herself.

He gritted his teeth.

Why was she so stupidly independent? Why could she not weep like other women? Then he could have held her, offered some kind of comfort—which would have been meaningless. And he would have hated it. He could not bear the way she was, and yet for her to change would have been even worse.

And he hated the fact that he could not dismiss it and walk away. It was not simply another case. It was Hester—and the thought of failure was unendurable.

“Tell me about them,” he commanded gruffly. “Who are the Farralines? What did you think of them? What were your impressions?”

She turned and looked at him with surprise. Then slowly she mastered her emotions and replied.

“The eldest son is Alastair. He is the Procurator Fiscal—”

He cut across her. “I don’t want facts. I can find them for myself, woman. I want your feelings about the man. Was he happy or miserable? Was he worried? Did he love his mother or hate her? Was he afraid of her? Was she a possessive
woman, overprotective, critical, domineering? Tell me something!”

She smiled wanly.

“She seemed generous and very normal to me….”

“She’s been murdered, Hester. People don’t commit murder without a reason even if it is a bad one. Somebody either hated her or was afraid of her. Why? Tell me more about her. And don’t tell me what a charming person she was. People sometimes murder young women because they are too charming, but not old ones.”

Hester’s smile grew a little wider.

“Don’t you think I’ve lain here trying to think why anyone would kill her? Alastair did seem a little anxious, but that could have been over anything. As I said, he is the Procurator Fiscal….”

“What is a Procurator Fiscal?” This was not a time to stand on his pride and blunder on in ignorance.

“Something like the Crown Prosecutor, I think.”

“Hmm.” Possibilities arose in his mind.

“And the youngest brother, Kenneth, was bound on an appointment the family knew little of. They assumed he was courting someone and they had not met her.”

“I see. What else?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. Quinlan, that is Eilish’s husband—”

“Who is Eilish? Did you say Eilish? What kind of a name is that?”

“I don’t know. Scottish, I presume. She is the middle daughter. Oonagh is the eldest. Griselda is the youngest.”

“What about Quinlan?”

“He and Baird McIvor, Oonagh’s husband, seemed to dislike each other. But I don’t see how any of that could lead to murder. There are always undercurrents of likes and dislikes in any family, most particularly if they all live under one roof.”

“God forbid!” Monk said with feeling. The thought of living so closely with other people appalled him. He was
jealous of his privacy and he did not wish to account for himself to anyone at all, least of all someone who knew him intimately.

She misunderstood him.

“No one would murder for the freedom to leave.”

“Wasn’t the house hers?” he asked instantly. “What about the money? No, don’t bother to answer. You wouldn’t know anyway. Rathbone will find that out. Tell me exactly what you did from the time you arrived at the house until you left. When were you alone? Where was the dressing room or wherever the medicine case was left?”

“I’ve already told Oliver all that,” she protested.

“I want it from you,” he said coldly. “I can’t work on secondhand evidence. And I’ll ask you my own questions, not his.”

She complied without further argument, sitting on the edge of the cot, and carefully in exact detail, telling him all she could remember. From the ease of her words, and the fact that she did not hesitate, he knew she had rehearsed it many times. It made him acutely aware of how she must have lain in the cell in the dark, frightened, far too intelligent not to be fully aware of the magnitude of the danger, even of the possibility they might never learn the truth, or that if they did it would be too late to save her. She had seen it happen. Monk himself had failed before.

By God he would not fail this time, no matter who it cost.

“Thank you,” he said at length, rising to his feet. “Now I must go. I must catch the train north.”

She stood up. Her face was very white.

He wanted to say something which would ease her fear, something to give her hope—but it would be a lie, and he had never lied to her.

She drew in her breath to speak, and then changed her mind.

He could not leave without saying something—but what?
What was there that would not be an insult to her courage and her intelligence?

She gave a little sniff. “You must go.”

On impulse he took her hand and raised it to his lips, and then let it go and strode the three steps to the door. “I’m ready!” he shouted, and the next moment the key clanged in the lock and the door swung open. He left without looking backwards.