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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 tri
