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“Did he?” She sounded only slightly surprised. “Well, maybe they have. It must be Kenneth, but I don’t know why. Although Uncle Hector does drink an awful lot, and sometimes talks the most terrible nonsense. He remembers things I don’t think ever happened, and confuses one time with another. I wouldn’t take a lot of notice.”
He was about to say that he had to, in order to guard the prosecution, but he was weary of lies, especially useless ones, and this was not the night for more of them. He had had to reverse all his judgments of Eilish. She was anything but shallow or lazy, and far from stupid. Of course she had to sleep half the morning; she gave up most of the night. And gave it to those who returned her no public or financial reward for it. And yet she was obviously more than pleased with what she received. In this bare lamplit room she glowed with a deep joy. Now he knew why she walked with her head high and her step proud, where the secret smile came from and the thoughts that were removed from the family conversations.
And he knew why Baird McIvor loved her above his own wife.
Actually he knew in that moment also that Hester would have liked her, even admired her.
“I’m not trying to prove that Miss Latterly killed your mother,” he said impulsively. “I’m trying to prove that she did not.”
She looked at him curiously. “For money? No. Do you love her?”
“No.” Then instantly he wished he had not denied it so quickly. “Not in the way you mean,” he added, feeling his face burn. “She is a great friend, a very deep friend. We have shared many experiences in the pursuit of justice in other cases. She …”
Eilish was smiling. Again there was a faint hint of mockery in her eyes.
“You don’t need to explain, Mr. Monk. In fact, please don’t. I don’t believe you anyway. I know what it is to love when you really don’t want to at all.” Without warning the laughter vanished totally from her face and deep pain replaced it. Perhaps pain had been closer to the surface all the time. “It changes all your plans and alters everything. One moment you are playing on the shore, the next the tide has you, and struggle as you might, you cannot get back to the land again.”
“You are speaking of your own feelings, Mrs. Fyffe. I am a friend of Miss Latterly. I don’t feel in the least like that about her.” He said all the words clearly and vehemently, and he knew from her face that she did not believe him. He was angry, and there was a curious choking in his throat. He felt absurdly disloyal. “It is perfectly possible to be friendly with someone without a feeling anything like the one you describe,” he said again.
“Of course it is,” she agreed, moving to the door. “I will walk with you as far as the Grassmarket, to see you are safe.”
It was ludicrous. He was a powerful man, armed with a stick, and she was a slender woman, six inches shorter and built like a flower. She made him think of an iris in the sun. He laughed outright.
She led the way down the dim stairs back to the way out, talking to him over her shoulder as he followed.
“How many times have you been struck on the way, Mr. Monk?”
“Twice, but …”
“Was it painful?”
“Yes, but …”
“I’ll see you home, Mr. Monk.” There was only the faintest shadow of a smile on her lips.
He took a deep breath. “Thank you, Mrs. Fyffe.”
In Newgate, Hester swung from moods of hard-fought-for hope, down to engulfing despair, and up the long incline back to hope again. The boredom and the sense of helplessness were the worst afflictions. Physical labor, however pointless, would have dulled the edges of pain, and she would have slept. As it was she lay awake in almost total darkness, shivering with cold, her imagination torturing her with infinite possibilities—and always returning to the same one, the short walk from the cell to the shed where the rope awaited her. She was not afraid of death itself, it was that she realized with icy pain that the belief she thought she had as to what lay after was simply not strong enough to stand in the face of reality. She was frightened as she had never been before. Even in the battlefield death would have been sudden, without warning or time to think. And after all she had not been alone. She had faced it with others, almost all of them suffering far more than she. Her mind had been filled with what she could do for them; it had left no room for thoughts of herself. Now she realized what a blessing that had been.
The wardresses continued to treat her with a coldness and unique scorn, but she became accustomed to it and the small irritant gave her something to fight against, as one digs nails into the palm of the hand when fighting a greater agony.
One particularly cold day the cell door opened and, after the briefest word from the wardress, her sister-in-law, Imogen, came in. Hester was surprised to see her; she had accepted Charles’s word as final and had not expected him to relent. The darker the outlook became, the less likely was he to
do so.
Imogen was fashionably dressed, as if going to pay afternoon calls on Society, her skirts broad-sweeping and flounced, her bodice tight and her sleeves elaborately decorated. Her bonnet was trimmed with flowers.
“I’m sorry,” she said instantly, seeing Hester’s face and glancing only momentarily at the bare cell. “I had to tell Charles I was going to call on the Misses Begbie. Please don’t tell him I was here, if you don’t mind. I—I would rather not face a quarrel just now.” She looked both embarrassed and apologetic. “He—” She stopped.
“He commanded you not to come,” Hester finished for her. “Don’t worry, of course I shall not tell him.” She wanted to thank Imogen for coming—she really was grateful—and yet the words stuck in her mouth. It all sounded artificial, when it should have been most real.
Imogen fished in her reticule and brought out sweet-smelling soap and a little bag of dried lavender so fragrant Hester could smell it even from two yards distance, and the femininity of it brought the tears uncontrollably to her eyes.
Imogen looked up quickly and her polite expression vanished and emotion flooded her face. Impulsively she dropped the soap and lavender and moved forward, taking Hester in her arms and holding her with a strength Hester would not have thought her to possess.
“We’ll win!” she said fiercely. “You didn’t kill that woman and we’ll prove it. Mr. Monk may not be very nice, but he is wildly clever, and quite ruthless. Remember how he solved the Grey case when everyone thought it was impossible. And he is on your side, my dear. Don’t ever give up hope.”
Hester had managed to keep her composure with every other visitor she had had, even Callandra, difficult as that had been, but now she found it too much. The long denial would not last anymore. Clinging on, she wept in Imogen’s arms until she was exhausted and a kind of peace of despair came over her. Imogen’s words had been intended to comfort, but perversely they had focused her mind on the truth she had been struggling against all the time since she had first been moved here from the Coldbath Fields. All that Monk, or anyone else, could do might not be enough. Sometimes innocent people were hanged. Even if Monk or Rathbone were to prove the truth afterwards, it would be no comfort to her, and certainly no help.
