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“What are you going to say?” Hester asked him.
“I don’t know,” he replied tersely. “It can’t be prescribed and followed like a dose of medicine.”
“Medicine is not prescribed and followed regardless,” she contradicted. “You watch the progress of the patient and do whatever you think best according to his response.”
“Don’t be pedantic.”
“Well, if you don’t know now, you had better make up your mind very rapidly,” she replied. “Oonagh will be here in a moment, unless she sends a message that she will not receive you.”
He turned his back, but remained standing close to her. She was right, and it irritated him almost beyond bearing. There had been too much emotion in the last few weeks, and he was profoundly disturbed by it. He hated his feelings to be beyond his control. The anger brought back memories which frightened him, recent memories of confusion and fear. The possibility of failure was another all too recent memory he preferred not to reawaken. The emotion caused by the knowledge that she might very easily die was a profound and deeply confused turmoil he chose to ignore. If he did so for long enough, he could sink into all the other memories he had lost.
She did not interrupt his thoughts again until McTeer returned to say that they would be received in the library. He did not say by whom.
When he opened the library door and announced them, all three of the women were there: Eilish, pale as a ghost, her eyes dark with fear; Deirdra, tense and unhappy, glancing all the time at Eilish; and Oonagh, composed and grave, and somewhat apologetic. It was she who came forward to greet first Hester, then Monk. As always, she was not lost for words.
“Miss Latterly, no expression of regret can suffice for what you have endured, but please believe that we are truly sorry, and as far as we have any par
t in it, we apologize profoundly.”
It was a noble speech, most especially considering that it was her own husband who now stood so openly accused.
Eilish looked wretched, and Monk felt an unaccustomed wave of pity for her. Quinlan’s behavior could only be acutely embarrassing to her.
Hester was generous about it, whatever her underlying feelings.
“You have no call to apologize, Mrs. McIvor. You were newly bereaved in most fearful circumstances. I think you acted with dignity and restraint. I would be pleased to have done as well.”
A slight smile touched Oonagh’s lips.
“You are very gracious, Miss Latterly, more generous than I think I should be”—the smile broadened for a moment—“were we to change places.”
Eilish made a strangled sound in her throat.
Deirdra turned to her, but Oonagh ignored the interruption, and looked at Monk.
“Good morning, Mr. Monk. McTeer gave no indication as to why you have come. Was it simply to accompany Miss Latterly, that we might apologize to her?”
“I did not come for apologies,” Hester cut across him before he could speak. “I came to say how highly I regarded your mother, and in spite of all that has happened since we last met, I regard her loss as the worst of it.”
“That is generous of you,” Oonagh accepted. “Yes, she was a remarkable person. She will be greatly missed, outside the family as well as within it.”
They seemed to be on the point of being shown out again, and Monk had asked nothing at all.
“I have already expressed my regrets, long ago,” he said somewhat abruptly. “I came to ask if you wished my assistance in the matter. It is far from resolved, and the police will not allow it to rest. They cannot.”
“As an agent of inquiry?” Oonagh’s fair eyebrows rose curiously. “To help us obtain another verdict of ‘not proven’?”
“Do you think Mr. McIvor is guilty?”
It was an appalling thing to ask. There was a shocked, breathless silence. Even Hester gasped and bit her lip. A coal settled in the grate and outside beyond the windows a dog barked.
“No!” Eilish said at last, her voice a sob in her throat. “No, of course not!”
Monk was ruthless. “Then you will need to prove that it was someone else, or he will take Miss Latterly’s place at the rope’s end.”
“Monk!” Hester exploded. “For heaven’s sake!”
“You find the truth ugly?” he said. “I would have thought you, of all people, would not now balk at the reality.”
