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“When I was twenty-two I killed a man. He abused an old man I respected. Made mock of him, humiliated him. We fought. I did not intend to, at least I don’t think I did … but I killed him. He struck his head against the curb. I served three years in prison for it. That was when I met Arkwright. When I was set free I left Yorkshire and came north to Scotland. I made my way quite successfully, and put the past behind me. I had all but forgotten it, until one day Arkwright turned up and threatened to tell everyone unless I paid him. I couldn’t—I had barely enough means for myself, and I would have had to explain to Oonagh….” He said her name as if she were a stranger, some figure that represented authority. “Of course I couldn’t. I hesitated for days, close to despair.”
“I remember….” Eilish whispered, staring at him with anguish, as though even now she yearned to be able to comfort him and heal the past.
Quinlan made a noise of impatience and turned away.
“Mary knew,” Baird continued, his voice rasping with hurt. “She knew something was troubling me more than I could bear, and in the end I told her….”
He did not even notice Eilish stiffen and a sudden surprise and pain in her face. He did not seem to realize it was different, no longer an agony for the past, or for him, but a hurt for herself.
Quinlan smiled. “Told her you’d served time in prison,” he said with blatant disbelief.
“Yes.”
“You expect us to believe that?” Alastair looked grim, doubt written plain in his expression. “Really, Baird, that’s asking too much. Could you prove it?”
“No—except that she gave me permission to lease the croft to Arkwright, for his silence.” Baird looked up and met Alastair’s eyes for the first time.
It was an absurd story. Why would a woman like Mary Farraline accept a man with such a past—and even help him? And yet Monk found himself at least half believing it.
Quinlan gave a sharp bark of laughter.
“Come on, Baird, that isn’t even clever,” Kenneth said with a smile, letting his foot slide off the fender and sitting down in the nearest chair. “I could think of a better excuse than that.”
“No doubt you have—frequently,” Oonagh said dryly, regarding her younger brother with contempt. It was the first time Monk had seen an expression of contention or open criticism on her face, and it surprised him. The peacemaker was rattled at last. He looked at her puckered mouth, the anxiety marked deep between her brows, but still could only guess what emotions burned inside her. He could make no hazard as to whether she had known or even suspected her husband had such a shadowed past.
Or was that what she had sought to do all the time? Was that the blindingly obvious thing he had always missed, that Oonagh loved her husband, in spite of his obsession with her younger sister, and that she sought to protect him from both his reckless past and his tortured present.
Quite suddenly he saw her in a different light, and his admiration for her leaped beyond the mere courage and composure she had shown to something of classical magnitude; she was a woman who bore herself with silence and generosity almost immeasurable.
Instinctively he turned to Eilish, to see if she had the remotest conception of what she had done, however unwittingly. But all he could see was disillusion and the scalding pain of rejection. In his desperation Baird had turned not to her, but to her mother. She was excluded. He had not even trusted her with it afterwards. He would not have. She had learned it publicly, from a stranger.
And little as he admired it, in that instant he knew exactly what she felt, all the loneliness, the confusion, the feelings of unworthiness, the longing to strike back and hurt just as much. Because he knew now what else had happened in the lifeboat so long ago. He had tried so hard, and yet someone else had been the hero. Someone else had retrieved his mistake and saved the man on the doomed ship. In his mind’s eye he could see the boy, a year or two older, standing balanced on the slippery deck, hurling the rope at risk of being pitched overboard, drenched to the skin, lashing it fast, heaving the man out of that awful chasm.
No one had said anything to him, no one had blamed him, and yet his ears rang with the other boy’s praises, not just his skill, but his courage. That was what hurt, his quickness of thought, his self-denial and his courage, the qu
alities Monk had wanted above all.
It was the same with Eilish. Above all she had wanted to be loved and trusted.
They were each of them regarding Monk now; the judgment awaited.
Quinlan had decided, but then he had from the beginning. “If you believe all that, you’re a fool,” he said bitterly. “We’d do better to call the police before Monk does. Or do you plan to pay him off as well? It’s too late to avoid scandal, if that has occurred to anyone?” He looked around with wide eyes. “One of us did it. No one can escape that.”
“Scandal,” Deirdra said thoughtfully, her face intent. “Is it not possible that Baird is telling the truth, and Mother-in-law paid off this Arkwright to avoid scandal?”
There was a long silence. Oonagh turned to Baird.
“Why didn’t you say that?” she asked him.
“Because I don’t believe it is true,” he said, answering her very directly, his dark eyes staring into hers. “Mary was not the sort of person to do that.”
“Of course she was,” Alastair said, then glanced at Oonagh with abject apology, having just realized what he had said.
“I think we had best leave this for the present,” Oonagh said decisively. “We do not know the truth….”
Hester spoke for the first time.
“Mrs. Farraline mentioned Mr. McIvor to me several times on the train, always with affection,” she said very quietly. “I cannot imagine she was paying blackmail simply to keep the family name out of scandal. If she were doing that, she would have loathed him, perhaps even required that he go away….”
