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Boothroyd was staring at him as if he could scarcely believe his ears.
“Of all the things I disapprove of,” Rathbone went on, lowering his voice a little, but still just as passionate and just as freezingly angry, “I think that two men loving each other in the privacy of their own homes, involving no outsiders, is neither my business nor is it my interest, and I have no desire to make it so.”
“I am surprised you call it love,” Boothroyd said with some astringence. “Although perhaps I should not be.”
“Love is a euphemism for a lot of relationships,” Rathbone snapped back, feeling his cheeks burn as he understood what Boothroyd meant, but the rage in him refused to correct it, dear as he knew it might cost him.
“The Bible says it is a sin,” Boothroyd pointed out. “I think all Christian men agree.”
“So is lusting after a woman in your heart,” Rathbone pointed out. “Christ was rather specific about that. Most of us are guilty of it nevertheless. I am, and will probably continue to be. Would you legislate against it?”
“Don’t be absurd!”
“Precisely,” Rathbone agreed between clenched teeth, his voice crystalline with precision. “There are a great many things which are better left to God to judge, and I think whatever Melville or Wolff does in private is among them.”
“You are in a minority!” Boothroyd replied sharply, drinking the whiskey he had originally brought for Rathbone and rising to his feet.
“That does not make me wrong,” Rathbone answered him.
“It will make you damned well misunderstood!” Boothroyd warned.
“So I see.” Rathbone arched his brows sarcastically and remained sitting. “But I do not find that an adequate reason to change.”
“On your own head be it!” Boothroyd turned and walked away, leaving Rathbone furious, embarrassed and frightened, but absolutely determined not to change.
7
WHILE RATHBONE WAS STRUGGLING SO fruitlessly in court, knowing he could only lose, Monk was already planning to pursue every avenue into the possible weaknesses in any member of the Lambert family. Zillah herself was the one whose flaws would have most relevance to the issue, so it was with her he began. Not that he expected to succeed. She was almost certainly exactly what she appeared to be, and regrettably, Killian Melville was also what he appeared to be. The whole issue was a tragedy which, with even ordinary common sense, need not have happened.
He began to walk restlessly back and forth across the room.
Zillah Lambert was less than half his age, a child of financial privilege and complete innocence as to the ways of the world. As far as he knew, this was the first misfortune ever to strike he
r. How could he begin to understand her life?
He would have welcomed Hester’s advice, and perhaps even more, Callandra’s. But Callandra was still in Scotland and it was too soon to call on Hester again, although she remained curiously sharp in his mind.
His contacts in the underworld of crime and poverty on the borders of the law were of no use to him. Zillah Lambert lived the closed life of girls just turning into women, leaving the schoolroom and preparing for marriage, seeking husbands—and love, if possible. Perhaps they dreamed of glamour, romance, teeming emotions before the steadier years ahead of domesticity and children, of making their mark in society, and eventually of settling with a mature resignation and exercise of power—and, one hoped, serene prosperity. It was a life unimaginable to him, totally feminine, and of a dependency not in the least attractive. But it was apparently what most women wished.
He did not need gossip, but something tangible enough to make Lambert withdraw his case. It was an ugly thing to seek. Monk’s sympathies were largely with Zillah Lambert, because however you looked at it, Melville had behaved like a fool. And so had Rathbone for taking the case and allowing it to come to trial. He could not win. He should have settled long before this.
Unless, of course, there really was something about Zillah which Melville had discovered when it was too late, but out of regard for her or for her father, who had been his patron and friend, or even possibly because he could not prove it, he had felt unable to marry her.
Monk owed him at least that possibility.
He stopped pacing the floor, collected his hat and coat and set out to find someone who frequented the same circles as the Lamberts and might give him a word, a remark let slip, anything he could follow which might unravel into whatever it was Melville had learned. He had only a hazy idea who, but certainly they would not come to him while he was sitting in Fitzroy Street.
He was crossing Tottenham Court Road, only half watching the traffic, when a better idea came to him. It should have been obvious from the beginning. If Melville had discovered this blemish, whatever it was, then he should follow Melville’s path, not Zillah Lambert’s. And that would necessarily be far easier. He changed direction abruptly and strode south towards Oxford Street, passing fashionable ladies, men about business and a steadily thickening stream of traffic. He had a definite goal.
By late afternoon he knew far more of Killian Melville’s daily habits, his working hours, which were extraordinarily long, his very restricted social life, and his solitary recreation, which seemed only an extension of his work, by walks taken alone and apparently deep in thought. Melville spent hours in art galleries and museums, but always on his own, except for rare encounters with a dark and slightly eccentric man named Isaac Wolff, who was apparently also an intellectual of some sort, given to study of some artistic work, but of a more literary nature.
His flash of inspiration had not worked. If Melville had learned something about Zillah Lambert, it had been by chance and not in the course of his usual day.
Monk returned home tired and with sore feet and a filthy temper, also a determination not to be beaten. If ordinary intelligence failed, then he had little left to lose. He would resort to bravado and what amounted in effect to lies.
When he had had more money from a regular salary in the police force, even if not a generous salary, he had spent a great deal of it on clothes. From his days as a banker, he still had silk shirts he had cared for, beautifully cut boots and dancing shoes which he seldom wore, two suits of cutaway jacket and tails, several very good gold studs and cuff links. He was too vain to have allowed himself to grow out of clothes he could not now afford to replace.
He dressed with the utmost care, gritted his teeth against the humiliation of possible rejection, and set out for a long and testing evening.
