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“I’ll get you some fresh clothes,” Monk said straightaway. “Have you been in touch with Rathbone?”
Exeter looked puzzled. “Rathbone?”
“You’ll need a good lawyer. Well, maybe they can sort this out quickly without one, but you’re better off having somebody to speak for you, someone experienced. Do you have a regular man you would prefer? Give me his name and I’ll make sure—”
“No. No,” Exeter cut across him. “Rathbone is the best there is. My regular chap has been here, of course, but he deals with real estate and wills, civil law, that kind of thing. I need Rathbone, you’re quite right.” He frowned. “But do you think he’ll do this? Will you ask him for me? God, this is a nightmare! I still can’t believe it’s real. Why would they think such a…terrible, hellish thing? It makes no sense.” He shook his head, as if in doing it hard enough the horror would detach from him.
“I don’t know.” Monk kept his voice steady, trying to concentrate now on Exeter and the nightmare he must be going through and not let his own mind race ahead to who had made this decision, and why. What had Monk missed? Was Runcorn involved in it? Or had Doyle said something to remove the blame from himself and place it on Exeter? Was it some lie in the ledger that pointed to Exeter, of all people?
“Probably whoever did kill her has implicated you,” Monk answered Exeter’s question. “I’m afraid it may be someone you know well enough to have trusted. I’m sorry.”
Exeter stared at him. “I suppose it must,” he agreed very quietly. “Will you go to Rathbone for me? Tell him all you know and all you can find out. Please? I feel as if the whole world has suddenly turned into a bottomless pit beneath my feet. I take a step and where there was earth, suddenly there’s nothing! I can’t see the bottom of this! Help me, Monk! I didn’t do it! Maybe Rathbone can prove it—maybe…”
“Yes, of course, I can get him,” Monk promised. “He’s been in this almost from the beginning. He’ll have his own questions to ask you, but so that it doesn’t take up the precious time he has with you, and so I can find out anything I can, what ideas have you? Rivals? Jealousies? People who owe you money and won’t have to pay if you’re in jail?”
Exeter was shaken. He looked close to hysteria. “Not if I’m hanged anyway!” His voice was too high-pitched.
Monk put out his arm without thinking and took Exeter by the shoulder. “You won’t hang. We’ll find out who really did this. Think of a list of all the people who might benefit from your death, emotionally or financially, or because of personal life. It doesn’t matter who they are, we can go as high as you like, or as low. Note all of them, and tell Rathbone. He needs to know everything
there is. We can’t tell where it will lead or afford to be caught on the blind side by any information we don’t have.” He tightened his hold on Exeter. “We don’t know who did it, do we? Is there something you know and haven’t told me? To protect someone’s feelings? Or reputation?”
“Good God, don’t you think I’d tell you?” Exeter said, his voice rising almost uncontrollably, close to panic. “I’ve been over and over everything I said to anyone and…it always comes back to the money and Doyle. I’ve known him for years.” He looked steadily at Monk, searching his face for understanding. “Of course, he’s a bit of a social climber. He’s ambitious for far more than I think he’ll ever achieve. But most of people’s dreams are beyond them. Ambition is good. Dreams are what drive us to try. So often we don’t get what we want, but we get something else, and that can be good, too. At least Doyle understood other men’s dreams. He understood work and disappointment, what it takes to succeed and…and how badly you can want it.” He looked down. “I know people laughed at him now and then. I did myself. He was gauche, at times.” He looked up. “But I trusted him, and as far as I know, he never let me down.”
“He helped you get the money together for the ransom from Kate’s inheritance.”
Exeter colored faintly. “Yes. I had to. I don’t have that much money myself. I asked Latham’s permission, of course. And Celia’s. She gave it willingly. She loved Kate—and it was Kate’s money, and Doyle facilitated it because he understood.” Exeter swallowed hard. “Are you really wishing me to consider that Doyle could be behind this…this most terrible thing that happened in my life…really?”
“Who else?” Monk asked. “Someone did. Was it you?”
“Of course not! What do you think I am? For God’s sake, Monk…”
“I know,” Monk said quickly. “Then face the fact that it must be somebody else. It happened. You know that. And not only to Kate, but to Lister, the one actual kidnapper we know, and to poor Bella Franken. If it’s not you, I accept that, but if you don’t think about who it is and fight it, you will be the next victim.”
Exeter shut his eyes as if it would be easier to answer Monk if he could not see him. “I know,” he said very softly. His voice had a crack in it; he was close to losing control. “I do know, and I’m terrified.”
Monk could hear the humiliation in him, a man unused to admitting any weakness in front of someone else. Perhaps he was ashamed to admit it even to himself. He had fought hard for all he possessed, fought to own it and to keep it. And now suddenly, in less than a month, he faced losing it all, even his life.
“You can’t give in,” Monk insisted. He searched his mind for some real hope to offer, something that was not patronizing and meaningless. He had faced the same thoughts himself once, and only Hester’s belief in him had given him the will to continue.
But Exeter had not even that. Kate was gone, broken, and almost torn apart. Exeter had been betrayed, but he had met all the demands the kidnappers had made, and still he had lost her.
“We’ll find the truth,” Monk said rashly. “There are only so many people it could be. We must reason. Think clearly. We can’t let them get away with it, for justice’s sake! And, in harsher reality, because they will do it again.”
Exeter stiffened, then slowly lifted his head. “You’re right. I should stop being so…cowardly. I can’t let them win. Help me, Monk, please.”
Monk could only imagine what it had cost him to say that. He spoke before he could beg again. “Of course I will. I want the bastard caught almost as much as you do.”
Right now, he must save Exeter. There had been some grave error in his arrest. It was understandable, perhaps. Runcorn was as different from Monk as could be, but Monk understood him. If circumstances had been different, without the accident that had robbed him of memory, he could have been very like Runcorn. He had the same passion for life, and the courage and appetite to take chances and win. His flashes of the Barbary Coast, the gold rush, the open ocean and the life of the deck beneath his feet, the open sea before all, testified to that.
He had lost immediate control of the case because he had taken that quixotic plunge to try to rescue Bella Franken; he had at least saved the papers she was bringing him, but he could not continue that night. He had yielded the case to Runcorn, and Runcorn had made the arrest.
“We must get all the information we can for Rathbone,” he said, with his self-control back again. “Tell me everything you know, as far as money is concerned. For a start, exactly how much did you tell Doyle about the kidnapping? Details?”
“Does it matter now?” Exeter asked without hope. “He obviously knew it all anyway.”
“Yes, it matters,” Monk replied. “What he knew that he didn’t get from you, he learned another way. If we can prove that, we are halfway to demonstrating his guilt! The other half we must work on, but it will come far more easily. Now concentrate!”
Exeter made a deliberate effort to muster his thoughts, and then slowly, carefully, he relived some of the arrangements he had made with Doyle. As he spoke, he clearly felt again the near panic of reviewing his assets, what they would fetch if sold in such urgency, and what, as far as he could remember, he had told Doyle to do on his behalf.
