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“Good God, don’t you think I know that!” Monk said furiously. “If she were a young woman seeking a husband, and I were likely material, she wouldn’t do it anyway. Think what it would do to her own reputation. What gentleman will look at her now? I’m not so damned ignorant I don’t know what it will cost her. Nor is she. That’s what makes it so terrifying. She hates me enough to destroy herself in order to destroy me.”
“Then whatever you did to cause it is profound,” Rathbone said. It was not meant in cruelty, but there was no time or space to deal in less than the truth, and he was aware of his desk just beyond the door, and his next appointment. “I’m not sure how much it may protect you to know,” he went on, “but if you do search, I would begin by looking for someone who may have been unjustly convicted, or a person hanged, or jailed and perhaps died there. Don’t begin with thefts or embezzlements, or the victims of petty crime. In other words, start with the result of the investigation, not the weight of the evidence or your own certainty that the prosecution was just.”
“Will it help if I find it?” Monk asked, pinned between hope and bitterness.
Rathbone toyed with a lie, but only for an instant. Monk was not a man to give another an easy sop. He did not deserve it himself.
“Possibly not,” he answered. “Only if it comes to trial, and you could prove she has a motive of revenge. But if she has as much intelligence as you suggest, I doubt she’ll seek a prosecution. She’d be unlikely in that event to get one, certainly not a conviction, unless she had an extraordinary biased jury.” His face tightened and his eyes were steady. “She will do far more damage to you, and leave you less chance of escape, vindication, or counterattack, if she simply passes the word around. She will not land you in prison that way, but she will ruin your career. You will be reduced to—”
“I know!” Monk snapped, rising to his feet abruptly, and with a sharp intake of breath as his aching muscles and bruised body hurt him. “I shall have to scrape a living working for people in the fringes of trade or the underworld, looking for errant husbands, collecting bad debts and chasing petty thieves.” He turned his back on Rathbone and stared out of the window. “And I shall be lucky if they can afford to pay me enough for me to eat daily. There will be no more cases of any interest to Callandra Daviot, and she can’t keep supporting me for nothing. I don’t need you to tell me that. I shall have to move lodgings, and when my clothes wear out I shall be reduced to secondhand. I know all that.”
Rathbone longed to be able to say something, anything, of comfort, but there was nothing, and he was increasingly aware of the faint noises from the office, and his next client waiting.
“Then for your own peace of mind at least, you had better do all you can to discover who she is,” he said grimly. “And more importantly, who she was, and why she hates you so much she is prepared to do this.”
“Thank you,” Monk murmured as he went out, closing the door behind him and all but bumping into the clerk hovering until he should leave, and he might show in the gentleman waiting impatiently at his elbow.
Of course Rathbone was right. He had not really needed anyone to tell him, it was simply a release of the loneliness of it to hear the words from someone else, and someone who, for all their past differences, at least believed his account. And his advice regarding where to search was sound.
He walked along Vere Street deep in thought, oblivious of other pedestrians or carriages passing him by.
There was only one course open to him, and deeply as he loathed the prospect, he dared not delay. He must search his past records of cases and try to find the one in which Drusilla had been involved, albeit indirectly. At least Rathbone’s suggestions gave him somewhere to start. It would be impossible to approach Runcorn. He would be only too delighted to add to Monk’s predicament by denying him access. He had no rights to police information anymore, and Runcorn would be legally justified in refusing him. The irony of it would be the sweetest taste of victory for him at last, after all the years that Monk had trodden on his heels, mocked him and bettered him in case after case. And he would have to admit his amnesia. He had never known for certain how much Runcorn guessed, but no acknowledgment had ever passed between them. Runcorn had never had the satisfaction of being certain, and of knowing that Monk knew he knew.
Monk turned from Great Wild Street into Drury Lane.
John Evan was a different matter, as different as could be. He had not known Monk before the accident, and he had guessed the truth, working with him so closely in that first dreadful case. He had proved a good friend, loyal, despite all the odds, in the hardest of circumstances. He was young, full of charm and enthusiasm, a country parson’s son with no money at all, but the casual ease of one born to what in better times had been minor gentry. Evan had admired him. He had chosen to see the best in him. That was why it was peculiarly painful now to have to tell him of this problem and seek his help in uncovering its cause.
In fact, he almost changed his mind about going to him at all. Perhaps it would do no good, and all he would do would be to lose Evan’s regard before he had to.
That was not only the coward’s way out, it was the fool’s. Evan would learn sooner or later. Better now, and from Monk. Better at least to see him fight than allow defeat by surrender. He hailed a hansom and took it as far as the corner nearest his old station.
It was a bright morning. He had barely noticed. The sun had already melted the rime of ice on the footpath, and the harness of passing carriages winked and glistened. An errand boy was whistling as he walked with a swing in his stride.
Monk reached the police station and went straight up the steps and inside. To hesitate might lose him his courage.
“Mornin’, Mr. Monk,” the desk sergeant said with surprise. “What can we be doin’ for you?”
“I’d like to see Mr. Evan, if you please?”
“About a crime, is it, sir?”
The man’s face was unreadable, and Monk could not remember their relationship. It was probably not cordial. Monk was his senior, and the man was middle-aged. Monk had probably treated him with impatience, considering him second-rate. He winced now at what he imagined.
“I’m not sure whether it i
s or not,” he said as smoothly as he could. “I need rather more information, and perhaps advice. Is Mr. Evan in the station?”
“You won’t be needin’ ter see Mr. Runcorn, then?” the sergeant said sententiously, a very slight smile touching his lips.
“No, I won’t, thank you.” Monk met his eyes without a flicker.
“Thought not.” The sergeant’s smile widened a fraction.
“ ’Aven’t forgot the Moidore case, sir, I ’aven’t.”
Monk forced himself to smile back. “Thank you, Sergeant. A very nice memory you have, tastefully selective.”
“Yer welcome, sir. I’ll fetch Mr. Evan for yer.” And he turned and disappeared behind the door, to reappear less than a minute later. “ ’E’ll meet you in the coffee shop ’round the corner, sir, in five minutes. Wiser that way, sir.”
