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Monk knocked on the door and immediately opened it. He was in the back entrance to a large, farmhouse kitchen. Across the stone-paved floor, about ten feet away in the middle of the room, Adrienne Radnor was standing with a large-bladed vegetable knife in her hand, chopping carrots on a wooden board. For an instant she took no notice of Monk. Then she realised he was not the gardener and her eyes widened. Her hands clenched the handle of the knife and she came towards him, eyes narrowed and the blade held at the ready, low, as if she would jab with it.
Monk moved over towards the huge, black cooking range. It was hot. There were pans on it with stew coming to the boil, and a bubbling pot in another of the sort in which you cook puddings. There was enough food to satisfy eight or ten people.
The rack on which the empty pans stood was a foot away from his right hand.
She was moving forwards, closer to him with the knife blade pointing at his stomach.
He seized one of the smaller, copper saucepans and hit her on the arm with it as hard as he could. He felt it jar on bone, and the knife clattered to the floor. Adrienne gasped with pain and the blood drained from her face. She sank to her knees on the floor, her arm hanging uselessly.
For a moment there was silence.
She drew in her breath to scream.
Monk picked another of the saucepans. ‘Don’t,’ he said quietly. ‘That arm won’t mend if I hit it again. Sit down on that chair and stay there. I don’t want to have to tie you, but I can’t leave you loose.’
He kicked the knife out of the way, far enough so she could not reach it, then helped her up and on to the chair. There was enough strong kitchen twine to lash her to it beyond her ability to get free. He was surprised how many nautical knots came to him from some recesses of his memory.
Monk left her there and went silently through the door into the hall, listening for any sound of human presence. It was several moments before he was able to hear the murmur of voices.
He tiptoed to the door and listened again. He heard a man’s voice, then another different male voice, then finally a woman’s. He could not make out the words but he knew Hester’s tone, the music of it, whatever she said.
He put his fingers around the handle and turned. It gave at his touch, and he threw it open.
Inside the room was a large bed. Propped upon pillows lay an elderly man, his face gaunt as with illness, but powerful, vividly alive. His arm was strapped around the upper part and a needle held into his skin, piercing it, attached to a glass tube filled with red. It could only be blood. The tube led to a bottle, which was suspended from a metal, wire and cord contraption next to the bed.
Hester stood to the left of it, still dressed in her blue-grey nurse’s working clothes. They were crumpled and soiled with blood, as if she had worn them for days. But the joy that flooded her face when she saw Monk made her as beautiful as any woman alive.
Rand, white with fury, his eyes glittering, was just beyond her. Quick as a cat he seized a scalpel from an instrument case and reached out to take her by the shoulder.
In a sickening instant Monk knew what he intended to do. He would cut her throat if Monk did not retreat. She was, above all, what she had always been to Rand: a hostage to be used.
Hester reached forward as if to plead with Monk. Then she yanked her arm back again, hard, driving her elbow into Rand’s stomach, in exactly the vulnerable place at the curve where his ribs met.
He gasped and bent over, retching. She hit him again, this time in the face, on his top lip just under the nose, which spurted blood.
Monk grasped Rand’s arm and twisted it so that the scalpel fell, just as Hooper came into the room from the hallway.
Thirty minutes later it was almost over. Scuff had brought the horse and wagon closer and made soft beds in the hay for Charlie, Maggie and Mike. Radnor, protesting bitterly, was helped up to lie on the other side of the hay. Adrienne was still bound although Hester did what she could to set her broken arm and support it in a sling.
They were ready to begin the long ride home. They left the gardener where the local police would set him free, and lock up the house until the investigation could be completed. Hooper remained with him to see that everything was done legally and in order.
Squeaky drove the wagon home with Scuff to relieve him every so often. Worm sat beside them on the box, watching everything.
Hester and Monk sat side by side in the hay, occasionally ministering to the angry, hurt and reluctant prisoners. Largely they ignored them, even Radnor, who appeared to be the least disconcerted of them all.
Chapter Ten
OLIVER RATHBONE arrived home in London with an intense degree of pleasure, although he had enjoyed his stay in Edinburgh. It was a handsome and cultured city, but Scottish law was different from English, and always had been, and he found testifying – albeit as an expert witness on an old case – to be somewhat testing of both his skill and his memory.
He had taken a short holiday afterwards in the beautiful Trossach hills, and perhaps that was what had really troubled him. Their wild, almost haunting loveliness had increased his awareness of being alone. He had longed to turn to someone and say, ‘Isn’t that exquisite? How the light falls on the water! How the trees crowd together against the sky with such grace.’ And there was no one. No degree of kindness from strangers made up for the understanding of a friend; nothing at all for the absence of love.
He did not miss Margaret, the wife who had left him after his disbarment. No, that was not true; she had left in heart long before that. It was simply the excuse that exonerated her and made it easy. He missed what he had believed they had, what he had hoped that with time it could become.
He had telegraphed ahead the hour he expected to be home, and his manservant, Dover, met him at the door before he could turn his key.
‘Good evening, Sir Oliver,’ he said, bowing very slightly, satisfaction in his voice. ‘It is very nice to have you home again, sir. Very much has occurred in your absence, which I am sure you will wish to know. May I bring you a light supper, sir? A cold beef sandwich, perhaps, and a glass of claret?’
Rathbone felt a warmth of familiarity wrap around him. This was a new apartment since his separation from Margaret. There had been no purpose in keeping the house. It
