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Rathbone remained standing also, a tacit mark of companionship. “What happened?” he asked. He knew this was what Monk had come to tell him.
“We planned it down to the last detail,” Monk replied, staring into the flames. “We even altered a couple of things at the last moment, just as we landed. I hate that place.” His voice grated with emotion. “It’s cold and wet, everything sour and rotting as it slowly sinks into the slime.”
Rathbone’s face grew paler and the lines around his mouth clearer as he realized the depth of Monk’s defeat, if not its entire nature.
“No doubt they chose it for that reason,” said Rathbone. “And because Exeter would be utterly lost in it, and unable to fight back or follow them. But I hadn’t thought he cared about keeping the money, and still less about their being arrested!”
“I don’t think that he did,” Monk said flatly. Now that it came to saying the actual words, it was even harder than he had expected. “But he did care about getting Kate back.” He watched Rathbone’s face as he slowly guessed what may have happened.
“You mean…they took the money, but kept her? What do they want? More money? I don’t think he has it! I think it took an extraordinary effort to raise this much.”
“No.” Monk forced himself to say it. “They killed her—horribly. Slashed her to bits…” He choked to a stop.
Rathbone went ash pale. “Oh God!” He seemed about to say something more, and then re
alized the futility of it. Monk would not have said such a thing were it not the complete and unarguable truth. “He knows…?” Rathbone began.
“Yes. He was one of the first into the place where it happened. He saw her.” Monk would never forget that cry.
“Did you get any of them?” Rathbone asked.
“No. We hurt a few quite badly, and most of my men were hurt, some more than others. They knew where we were.” That was the hardest thing to say. It was the one thing he still had to deal with, and he didn’t know where to begin. How could he have been so wrong about one of his men? And it was like a drop of ink in a glass of water. It stained everything. Who would do such a thing? And why? Greed? Fear? Hatred? Some kind of hideous error?
Rathbone shook his head. “I suppose you don’t know how…or from who?”
“Not yet.”
Beata came back into the room with an armful of clothes. She spoke to Monk. “Go and try these on. See if something fits. If you want a hot bath, please have one. The soup will be another ten minutes at least, and I’ll not serve it until you are ready.”
He hesitated. It seemed an unnecessary self-indulgence.
“If you succumb to pneumonia, you are no use to anyone,” she said firmly. “From the look on your face, you’re going to have a lot to do in the next little while. You’ll need to be at your best.”
He looked at her calm, clear eyes and read in them compassion, but not an ounce of yielding. He smiled and took the clothes.
Twenty minutes later he was back by the fire in the sitting room, tasting a dish of hot soup. He felt a lot better physically, and he certainly looked it in some of Rathbone’s older clothes, which came close to fitting him, though he was taller and broader in the chest and shoulders. Beata had taken his clothes and promised to return them when they had been dealt with. She had said it with a twisted little smile and sadness in her eyes. The coat, she had said, would probably be a week, at least.
Rathbone waited until the soup was finished and then looked straight at Monk. “Tell me what happened. I don’t know whether I need to know, but I might.”
Monk recited everything as well as he could, both his own memory and the accounts of his men.
“I see,” Rathbone said at last. “Is it possible that the kidnappers also took another hostage?”
Monk was confused. “What do you mean?”
“Someone else,” Rathbone explained patiently. “Perhaps someone belonging to one of your men? To assure his cooperation?”
Monk let his breath out slowly. The thought had not occurred to him. How stupid! How obvious, now that he saw it. It was the one thing that would explain such a betrayal. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “But I shall find out. Poor devil! That I could understand. But it doesn’t explain why they killed Kate, and so savagely. We are looking for an enemy, either of hers or of Exeter’s. You would think that anyone so bestial would stand out, wouldn’t you? They ought to have red eyes, or huge canine teeth, or some other feature that would mark them as different.”
Rathbone smiled uneasily, but his eyes held no criticism. “Monk, you know as well as I do that the face of evil is not so easily recognizable. The worst people I’ve ever known look pretty much like anyone else. And they didn’t think they were evil. They had done a thorough job of convincing themselves that they were justified, even that they were the victims of some persecution or other. The raving madman is perfectly easy to recognize. It’s the one who believes he’s good, that all he does is justified, who is hard to see. The one who is in the center of his own universe is the real danger.” He sighed. “Poor Exeter. He must be devastated.”
“He was. I’ve got to go and see him, see if he has any idea who is behind Kate’s murder, if he can scrape his brain together enough to think at all, that is. I wouldn’t blame him if he drank himself into oblivion.”
“You have to see him tonight?” Beata asked. “You’re exhausted.”
“Tomorrow I shall have to start searching for any evidence there is, find out if anybody along the river heard anything, knew anything. And more than that, which of my men betrayed us…whatever his reason. I hate this more than…” He did not finish the sentence; it was irrelevant anyway.
Half an hour later he forced himself to stand up and take his leave. He went out to look for a cab to take him to Exeter’s house, having got the address from Rathbone. The street was quiet. A hansom passed him at a brisk trot. A carriage turned down a mews entrance toward its own stables, home for the night. He envied them.
