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“What proof?”
“Piers’s shirt, soaked in blood, and the deeds to a strip of land along the American River where there was gold, signed over to Fin by Aaron. It’s payment for Fin swearing Aaron was somewhere else when Piers was shot.”
“Then what do you want from Monk? Surely this is proof enough?”
“It could have been anybody’s shirt,” Miriam replied. “I knew it was Piers’s because I made it for him. I recognized my own stitching, the unevenness here and there, the rhythm of the backstitching, but there is only my word for it. And what would that be against Aaron’s?”
“Gillander’s word?” Beata asked.
Miriam looked a little embarrassed. “He adores me. People would assume he would say anything to back me up, even about the deed.”
Beata was about to ask her if she was sure, but she saw it in her eyes: the pain; the helplessness; the terrible, bitter disillusion; the crumbling of beliefs.
“I see,” she said softly. “And you thought Monk might have known the truth, or at least have been able to deduce it. And do what? Ruin Aaron?”
“Along with Fin’s testimony, he might have known enough to prove that Piers went there to that place on Aaron’s orders, and died doing his job…by Aaron’s orders.”
“You have no doubt?”
“None. I wish I had. God in heaven, Beata! Do you think I want to believe the man I’m married to now killed my first husband, whom I loved beyond words, so he could have me? I feel…vile! Used and…dirty, like something you buy and sell, because you wan
t to own it. Do you think my flesh doesn’t crawl every time he touches me?”
Beata did not need to imagine that; she knew it not only in her mind but in her body’s memory, like old pain reawakened.
“McNab knows about Monk’s memory loss, which is why he now feels able to take his revenge,” she said. “He knows Monk can’t defend himself—he daren’t even take the stand to testify.” She spoke slowly. “And that means Aaron probably has to.”
“Yes…I suppose he does.” Miriam closed her eyes. “I wonder if he has any idea that I know about his part in Piers’s death, and he’s waiting for me to act. God damn McNab!”
“He was using you,” Beata said with an edge of bitterness. “What are you going to do about it?” That was a definite challenge, and it was meant to be. She was desperate, and had no intention of allowing Miriam to escape.
Miriam stared at her, waiting, thinking.
“God may very well damn McNab, eventually,” Beata went on. “In the meantime, it is up to us! You know a great deal about McNab, if you think about it. You must tell Oliver, and be prepared to testify to it, if it helps Monk. Think hard what you know, what you remember of every conversation. What did McNab want of you?” She leaned forward. “I know you think you were using him, and perhaps you were, but he came here equally as much to use you!”
A faint flush stained Miriam’s cheeks. “You don’t need to keep on reminding me. I can see it. He wanted to implicate Monk in something he wouldn’t be able to escape from. That’s clear now.”
“What did you think it was?” That sounded too critical. She might have been no wiser in Miriam’s place. She could barely imagine the fury and the grief Miriam must have felt when she realized the truth of Piers’s death. “I mean what did he pretend it was? It might help to know.”
“I learned from Fin Gillander that Monk had been in San Francisco twenty years ago,” Miriam said quietly. “I couldn’t recall him at first, but Fin recognized him straightaway and knew what kind of man he was, simply in so much as Fin liked him. He said they did many things together, or at least in the same fashion. Their paths crossed quite often. They’ve both changed, of course. People do, in twenty years. Fin is forty, and Monk must be fifty. And Monk is certainly different in that the anger inside him is gone. Whatever he was looking for, he’s found it.”
“And he’s about to lose it again!” Beata interrupted sharply.
Miriam looked at her and the pain in her face was temporarily naked. Beata realized with a rush, as if suddenly drowned in the force of a wave, that Miriam had never recovered from Piers’s death and that Aaron had never been more than an ease of the loss, and now that, too, had been shattered. Everything gentle or good in him had been wiped out by the knowledge that it was he who had killed Astley, directly or indirectly. The fact that it had been out of desire for Miriam only added guilt to the grief.
“I’m sorry,” Beata said quietly. “But we have no time for pain now. We have to find a way of proving that Pettifer’s death was an accident, caused by his own panic. Monk doesn’t know who killed Piers, or anything else about San Francisco and the gold rush. If he ever did, it’s gone from his memory. I’ll tell Oliver all you know, including about the land deed on the American River, and the shirt. But first we must prove that Monk did not have any reason to hurt Pettifer.”
Miriam frowned. “How? We don’t know anything about the enmity between McNab and Monk.”
“I know that,” Beata said. It felt dark, terribly dark, and heavy inside her as if she could not breathe. “But we must try. I shall go and see Hester. I am only getting to know her now but I think she will accept anyone’s help. I would in her place. You will think of everything you can that McNab asked you about Monk.”
Miriam swallowed hard. “Yes…of course.”
HESTER MOVED THROUGH THE days leading up to the trial as in a nightmare. Everything she thought of to prove Monk’s innocence seemed to melt into nothing as soon as she grasped hold of it. In her mind McNab grew to almost demonic brilliance.
Rathbone came to Paradise Place one evening and she asked him what she could do, what proof there was.
“There must be something!” she said desperately. Monk had loathed McNab—nobody doubted that—but he had done nothing to him.
