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He had no idea who his family had been. Fishermen, from the snatches he could remember. His own patterns of speech did not give him away, because he had schooled himself to speak like a gentleman. That much he had discovered about himself in some of the time when he had been obliged to find out, to learn from others who he had been, the mistakes and the enemies he had made. His were never complete memories, just flashes and things other people had told him. Perhaps his judgment of Harry Exeter had been based too much on who he was now, not considering that he might once have been very different. But Exeter himself would know! “Do you think Doyle could have been bribed by someone with an old score to settle?” he asked.
“It’s a brutal thing to do,” Hester replied. “If it was just for money, why didn’t they take the money and give her back? There’s more than money behind it, William.”
“I’ve asked him, but he doesn’t seem to know.”
“Have you considered that he might have a very good idea, but intends to get his own vengeance? It wouldn’t be unnatural. Or possibly that it is something he can’t afford to have the police know? Please, when you do find out who it is, be careful! Be very careful that Exeter doesn’t use you to lead him to the man behind it, and take his revenge before you can stop him.” Her face was tired and frightened in the lamplight, and, with her hair lying loose over her shoulders, she looked vulnerable.
Suddenly Monk could imagine very easily that if anyone hurt her, let alone did to her what they had done to Kate Exeter, he would want to kill them himself, with his own hands, tear them apart like the carcass of an animal.
“William!”
“I’m listening,” he answered. “Yes, I’ll be careful. But I owe him a debt, Hester. I made a promise to him, and I failed appallingly to keep it.”
She drew in her breath to argue; he knew what she was going to say. He put the tea down, leaned forward and kissed her, gently at first, and then more deeply.
* * *
—
THE NEXT DAY, HE woke late and went straight to see Exeter again.
Exeter was in the hallway with his coat on and a heavy walking stick in his hand, about to go out. A look of intense relief filled his face. “I was coming to see you. I thought a lot about what you said. It’s a hard thing to face, Monk—and God knows, I have—but you were perfectly right.” He winced looking into Monk’s eyes in the clear light of the hall. “If you’re decisive, if you take life by the neck and fight, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. But always there will be other men who long to do the same and haven’t the courage. They’re too afraid of pain and humiliation to take a chance. So they don’t win either…at least, never enough. You know what I mean, don’t you.” It was a statement of fact. “A man doesn’t hate your win, he hates himself because he could have done it, but can’t admit that. Didn’t you find that, on the Barbary Coast? You did…I can see it in your face. God help me, I never thought it would cost me this!” For a moment he turned away, and Monk stood still, knowing exactly what he meant and that he needed his moment of grief.
Exeter turned back to face Monk. “Kate was different. No one hated her—not anyone who would even think of something like this, let alone know how to go ahead and do it.” He gave a bleak smile and put the cane back in the stand. He took his coat off and hung it up. “Come inside, please.”
Monk took his own coat off and followed Exeter into the withdrawing room, where a maid was clearing the ashes out of the hearth.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll just be a few minutes. But the fire’s lit in the morning room.”
Monk went to the morning room as directed and was standing in front of the fire a few minutes later when Exeter returned. Without his coat on, he looked thinner, even stooped a little. He had aged visibly in the days since the murder. The vitality seemed to have drained out of him. Without asking Monk to be seated, he slumped into the chair on the opposite side of the fire.
Monk felt the guilt rising inside him, and tightness seized his chest.
“What is it?” Exeter asked. “You know something, or you wouldn’t have come again so soon. You are not responsible for me, you know.” He gave a ghost of a smile. “Perhaps one of your men did betray us, but we all put trust where we shouldn’t, at one time or another. You have to give a man the benefit of the doubt, until you have proof. I daresay he was not greedy so much as frightened. It is a terrible thing to fear for your own life.” His voice sank a little. “Worse to fear for the life of someone you love, who trusts you. Child? A mother or sister? You can blame them in the heat of your own loss, but when you think about it afterward, you understand, at least most of the time, your heart may be another thing.” He sat silent for a moment, watching while Monk struggled to find an answer that did not sound trite yet conveyed his understanding, even his respect for such a compassionate and forgiving view. He was not sure in similar circumstances he could have risen above the torment of his own grief.
Exeter was still looking at him when the ease left his face, his body stiffening, and he gradually leaned forward. “You have something to tell me, haven’t you?” he asked hoarsely. “You know that it was not just the money, or Kate; it was hatred for me. The money was to disguise that! So I wouldn’t start racking my mind to think of all the people who blamed me at one time or another, because I succeeded where they failed. Someone’s hate has grown monstrous, hideous, consumed everything in them that used to be good.”
“No…I…” Monk began.
“Don’t evade it,” Exeter said, a sudden gentleness in his voice. “It isn’t a kindness. I have to accept some…some creature from my past has let jealousy devour what was good in him, and…and destroyed any happiness and even his own sanity. I’ve been feeling it lately…not just thinking about it, although I’ve done that—of course I have. I’ve been followed sometimes, felt as if I’ve been watched. I suppose that makes sense. If I hated someone to that depth and saw their loss but left them living, hurting, aware of it, I would come to witness what I had done. Simply imagining it would not be enough. Eventually, I would have to see him, taste the pain in him, perhaps even let him know that it was I who brought it all on him.” He gave his head a little shake, as if it would rid him of something. “Maybe even make him physically afraid, wonder what I was going to do next.”
Monk was startled and worried. Was Exeter losing his grip on reality? Or was he possibly right? It made a certain sense. Monk had come here to ask him if he might have told Doyle any details of the plan to rescue Kate and hand over the ransom money. The demand for money had been their way into the case. It had made Exeter believe it was greed, and that he could buy his wife back again. It was an additional piece of cruelty.
Monk looked at Exeter again now and saw the fear in his face, in his body, the desperation in his eyes. What could he do? He had no men that Exeter would trust, and even if he did, he could hardly guard him night and day, indefinitely. The only answer was to find the truth, the man behind Lister, which was probably the man who had killed him, or the man behind that!
“Doyle is the answer,” he said. “I’m convinced of it and we’ll prove it. In the meantime, trust no one and avoid being alone wherever you can.
“And I would advise you not to go out unnecessarily, especially after dark. That’s a miserable restriction, I know, but please, God, it won’t be for long.”
Exeter sighed. “Thank you, Monk, you’re a decent man.”
CHAPTER
13
MONK LEFT EXETER WITH a new determination to follow the course of the money, and then Doyle. The only way to do that was to go and see him. He had obtained a letter from Exeter’s solicitor granting him access to certain of his accounts, so that Doyle would not be in a position to deny him.
He went in the middle of the afternoon and was told that Mr. Doyle was occupied at the moment, but if he cared to wait, Mr. Doyle would see him in half an hou
