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“But not Breeland’s …”
“I don’t give a damn about Breeland. Find the truth.”
Monk walked towards the door with Rathbone, his face already furrowed in thought. “It has a nice irony to it, doesn’t it,” he observed. “I hope to hell it isn’t Trace. I rather like him.”
Rathbone did not reply; they were both too aware of men in the past they had liked, of cases where love and hate had seemed so misplaced. Some tragedies it was too easy to understand, the emotions and judgments not nearly simple enough.
8
Monk would also dearly have liked to find a way to defend Merrit without at the same time defending Breeland, but he was too much of a realist to imagine it could be done. He had watched them together on the long journey home across the Atlantic. He knew Merrit would never allow it. Whatever her belief about Breeland, or her horror at the reality of war, her own nature was based on loyalty. To have saved herself at his expense would be to deny everything she valued. It would be a kind of suicide.
Nor did it surprise him that Breeland was still more concerned with clearing his own name, and thus the cause, than with how Merrit was enduring imprisonment and the fear and suffering that must come with it. He smiled as he thought of Rathbone’s distaste, and imagined his regard for Merrit, her youth, her enthusiasm and vulnerability. He wondered also as he strode along Tottenham Court Road, watching for a hansom, what Rathbone had felt for Judith Alberton, and if he had been sensitive to her remarkable beauty.
The August sun was hot, shimmering up from the pavements, winking in hard, glittering light on harnesses, polished carriage doors and, at certain angles, from the windows of busy shops.
A shoeblack boy was accepting a penny from a top-hatted customer. He winked at a girl selling muffins.
Monk hailed a cab and gave the address of the police station, where he hoped, this early in the morning, to find Lanyon still there. It was the natural place to begin, even though he was now attempting to prove the opposite from that which had seemed to be so obviously the truth at the beginning.
He was fortunate. He met Lanyon just as he was coming down the steps, the sun catching his fair, straight hair. He was surprised to see Monk and stopped, his face full of curiosity.
“Looking for me?” he asked, almost hopefully.
Monk smiled in self-mockery. “I am now retained for the defense,” he said frankly. He owed Lanyon the truth, and it was easier than lying or evasion.
Lanyon grunted, but there was no criticism in his eyes. “Money or conviction?” he replied.
“Money,” Monk replied.
Lanyon grinned. “I don’t believe you.”
“You asked!”
Lanyon started to walk, a long, loping step, and Monk kept pace with him. “Sorry for the girl,” Lanyon went on. “Wish I could think she was innocent, but she was there in the yard.” He looked sideways at Monk, his face shadowed with regret, trying to read Monk’s reaction.
Monk kept his own face expressionless. It cost him an effort.
“How do you know?”
“The watch you found … it was Breeland’s all right, of course, but he had given it to her as a keepsake.”
“Did he say so?”
Lanyon’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Do you think I would take his word for it? No, he didn’t mention it at all, and I didn’t bother to ask him. It doesn’t really matter what he says. Miss Dorothea Parfitt told us. She’s a friend of Miss Alberton’s, and apparently Miss Alberton was showing it to her, boasting a little.” His expression was rueful, leaving Monk to picture the scene himself and draw his own conclusions.
They passed a strawberry seller’s cart.
Monk said nothing. His mind was racing, trying to fit into one congruous whole the vision of Merrit bragging about the watch Breeland had given her as a token of his love, Merrit standing in the warehouse yard watching as Breeland forced her father and the two guards into the cramped and humiliating position, then shot them in cold blood, and the Merrit he had seen in Washington and on the ship home, young and loyal, confused by Breeland’s coldness towards her, constantly making excuses for him in her own mind, making herself believe the best of him, and now alone and in prison, frightened, facing trial and perhaps death, and yet determined not to betray him, even to save herself.
Perhaps she was one of the world’s great lovers, but Breeland was not. He might be one of the world’s idealists, or one of its flawed obsessives, not so much a man who supported a cause as a man who needed a cause to support him, to fulfill a nature otherwise empty.
Lanyon was waiting for an answer from him.
“An ugly fact,” he granted. “I’m not yet ready to concede its meaning.”
Lanyon shrugged.
“What about Shearer?” Monk changed the subject. “What does he say for himself? Have you found the boy who delivered the message to Breeland at his rooms? Who sent it?”
