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“Yes—yes, of course they will. Well, let us at least min their plates. They could still be evidence, in the event the police find them. Anyway, as you say, forgery is very evil; it is a pollution, a corruption of our means of exchange with one another. We ought to end this much of it.” And without waiting for him to follow, she went over and lifted up one of the plates, then froze.
“What is it?” he said immediately.
“Don’t let’s break them,” she said with a tingle of quite genuine pleasure. “Let’s just mar them, so little they don’t realize it, but enough that when they have printed all the money, unless they look at it very carefully, they will still pass it. But the first person who does look at it will know it is wrong. That would be more effective, wouldn’t it? And a better revenge …”
“Excellent! Let’s find the engraving tools and the acid. Be careful you don’t get any of it on your skin. And not on your dress, in case they notice it.”
They set about it with determination, working side by side, erasing here and there, making little blotching marks, but always discreetly, until they had in some way marred every single plate. It took them until after two in the morning, and the lamp was burning low. And now that there was nothing more to do, they were also growing increasingly aware of the cold. Without thinking, they automatically sat close together on some boxes of paper, huddled in the corner, and above the colder floor level. There were no drafts; the room was effectively sealed. And after their concentration on the plates had gone, they were also aware that the air was getting stale. A great deal of the space was already taken up with boxes and machinery.
“I can’t believe Mary knew about this,” Hester said again, her mind still hurt by the thought, teased by memories of the woman she had known, or thought she had known, on the London train. “I really don’t think she would have lived off forgery all those years.”
“Perhaps she viewed it as you did,” Monk replied, staring into the little pool of light the lantern made. “A victimless crime, just a little greed.”
She did not reply for several minutes. He had not met Mary, and she did not know how to convey the sense of honesty she had felt in her.
“Do you suppose they all did?” she said at length.
“No,” he said immediately, then apparently realized the logical position in which he had placed himself. “All right, perhaps she didn’t. If she did, then all this”—he inclined his head towards the presses—“was no reason to kill her. If she didn’t, how do you suppose she found out? She wouldn’t have come down here looking for this room. If she knew, why did she not call the police? Why go off to London? It was urgent, but hardly an emergency. There was certainly time to attend to this first.” He shook his head. “But would Mary have exposed her own family to scandal, ruin and imprisonment? Wouldn’t she just have demanded they stop? That would be reason to kill her?”
“If I were a forger,” she replied, “I’d have said, ‘Yes, Mother,’ and moved it somewhere else. It would be infinitely safer than killing her.”
He did not reply, but lapsed into thought.
It was getting even colder. They moved closer yet, the warmth of each other comforting, even the steady rhythm of breathing a kind of safety in the threat of enclosing darkness and the knowledge that time was short and every second that passed meant one fewer left.
“What did she say—on the train?” Monk asked presently.
“She talked about the past, for the most part.” She thought back yet again to that evening. “She traveled then. She danced at the ball in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo, you know?” She stared into the darkness, speaking softly. It seemed appropriate to the mood and it saved energy. They were sitting so close together whispering would serve. “She described it to me, the colors and the music, the soldiers in their uniforms, all the scarlets and the blues and golds, the cavalrymen, the artillery, the hussars and dragoons, the Scots Greys.” She smiled as she pictured Mary’s face and the light in it as she relived that night. “She spoke of Hamish, how elegant he was, how dashing, how all the ladies loved him.”
“Was Hector sober then?” he asked.
“Oh yes. She spoke of Hector too, he was always quieter, tenderer—that isn’t the word she used, but that is what she meant. And she said he was actually a better soldier.” She smiled. “She described the band and the gaiety, the laughter at any joke at all, the hectic dancing, whirling ’round and ’round, the lights and color, the brilliance of jewels and the candle flames and the flash of reds.” She drew in a deep breath. “And the knowledge in everyone that tomorrow perhaps one in ten of them would die, and two or three be injured, maybe marred for life, limbs lost, blinded, God knows what. Whatever they thought or felt, no one spoke of it, and the musicians never missed a beat. Wellington himself was there. It was the high tide of history. All Europe hung in the balance.”
She swallowed and tried to keep her voice from shaking. She must have Mary’s courage. She had faced death before, and worse death. She would be with Monk, and in spite of all the enmity they had shared, the quarrels and the anger and the contempt, she would not have had anyone else there, except for his sake. “She said how terrified she was for Hector, but she never allowed him to know,” she finished.
“You mean Hamish,” he corrected.
“Do I? Yes, of course I do. The air is getting thin, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“She spoke about her children as well, mostly Oonagh and Alastair, how close they had always been, even when they were young.” She recounted what she could remember of Mary’s story of the night of the storm, and finding the two together, comforting each other.
“A very remarkable woman, Oonagh,” he said softly. “A little frightening, so much strength.”
“Alastair must have strength too, or he would not be Procurator Fiscal. It must have taken courage to refuse to prosecute Galbraith. Apparently it was a very big case, very political, and everyone expected him to face trial and be found guilty. I think Mary did too.”
“From what the woman in front of us in the church said, he has refused to prosecute quite a few. Are you cold?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Do you want my coat?”
“No—then you’ll be cold.”
He took it off. “Don’t argue,” he said grimly, and began to put it around her.
“Put it ’round both of us.” She moved so that was possible.
