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“Yes, that’s true. And I suppose I do like him. There is something about him that attracts…although I did see a brief glimpse of the steel beneath last time we spoke. There’s a quiet arrogance in him.”
She smiled bleakly. “And Miriam?”
“I’m not sure.” He was being completely honest. There was a passion in Miriam that disturbed him, a complexity. “I think she’s lying about something. I have a feeling that she is manipulative, but I have no idea how, or over what. She feels very deeply about something, and I believe that I am involved in it. I wish I knew what it is.”
She gave a tiny nod, barely a movement. “I know you do.”
“It all goes back to the gold rush,” he said grimly. “It has to do with Astley’s death, but there may be something else.”
“Who was there, that you know, and is here now?”
“Miriam and Aaron Clive, Fin Gillander, and me,” he answered. “That’s all I know about.”
“Not McNab?”
“No. I thought of that, and I checked his history. It was not difficult. His professional record is clear. He has never left England except for a couple of visits to France.”
“Then there’s another extraordinary coincidence, or a connection we don’t know about,” Hester said. “We’ll find out.”
That was the last thing she had a chance to say. The guard came too close to her to allow further talk, and very firmly told her that her time was up.
She rose to her feet, gave the guard an odd, barely civil stare, and walked out with her head high and her back ramrod straight. It was as if she took all the light and warmth away with her, and yet her posture was like a candle flame in the enclosing darkness.
BEATA HEARD FROM OLIVER Rathbone that Monk had been arrested and charged with having killed Pettifer deliberately, a crime for which he would be tried, and if found guilty, hanged, and suddenly her own personal future seemed of very little importance.
She was sitting opposite Rathbone in her own withdrawing room, after he had arrived with no warning and, in the eyes of some, inappropriately. She stared at the misery in his face and, knowing how deep was his friendship with Monk, she ached for him.
“What can we do?” She spoke as if they were as one without even realizing it until the words were out of her mouth. Now it was a slip that hardly mattered.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The evidence is dreadful, and I can see no way of proving it false.”
“But it is false!” she insisted.
There was a moment’s warmth in his eyes, before he answered. “Yes, I believe it is, but that is because I know Monk. To anyone else it proves guilt—not as beyond any doubt, but beyond a reasonable one.” In a quiet, almost flat voice he told her about the enmity between Monk and McNab, dating back to the hanging of Robert Nairn, and all the cumulative evidence after that.
She listened with growing fear. It was worse than she had imagined. In his face she saw the pain, even fear, of losing not a case or a battle, even a professional standing, but a friend who had proved his own loyalty, at any cost, over many years. If he could not save Monk, Rathbone would lose part of himself. It was in those moments that Beata realized how deeply she loved him. She would protect him from that, even at the cost of all she had herself.
But this required reason, and self-control.
“Was Nairn’s trial fair?” she asked, attempting to concentrate on the facts and set all feelings aside, as a lawyer must do.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “There is no question he was guilty. But Monk could have asked for some clemency, and he didn’t.”
“Why not?”
She saw the conflict in Rathbone’s face.
“Is it a matter of confidentiality, Oliver?” she asked as gently as she could. “My dear, if it’s Monk’s secrets you are guarding, are you willing to let him die to keep them?”
He looked at her steadily for several moments, appearing to turn it over in his mind, and then he reached a decision.
“He had a carriage accident in ’56,” he said gravely. “He woke up in hospital with no memory of anything whatever before that. I can’t even imagine how difficult it was for him to hide that from everyone, except Hester. He met her then, when he was investigating a crime he actually thought he might have committed himself, a very violent murder of a Crimean war hero. He was working blind, with no idea who his friends or enemies were.”
“But his memory came back?” she said, appalled by the thought of the fear and confusion he must have felt. The suffering was beyond her grasp. Many of her memories were hideous, painful, both physically and emotionally, but there was nothing hidden, no darkness unexplored with unknown terrors waiting to strike her.
“No,” he replied. “He pieced some of it together from clues, but he never remembered. He thinks he was in San Francisco, maybe even knew Aaron Clive and Piers Astley, but he remembers no facts. He had no idea why McNab hated him until he asked one of very few people who knew him before, and whom he can trust.”
“So he doesn’t remember Nairn?” She began to perceive the gulf they were in, like being at sea, with no idea even which way the land lay.
