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“You mean, does Oliver believe Exeter? Oh, I think so. He told me he did,” she said with certainty. “Why? Are you wondering about Exeter now?” There was no avoiding the candor in her eyes.
“No, I’m wondering how we can pin Doyle down. I would never have judged him to be so clever. I thought of him as a dull, local bank manager with ambitions to be socially acceptable, to go to the gentlemen’s clubs as a member in his own right, not dependent on being a guest of his clients. I imagine managing all their money must be hard enough on his pride without being condescended to socially.”
“If he wanted money and perhaps to feel superior for once,” she asked, “then why kill Kate?”
“Because she recognized him,” he said. “He couldn’t afford to let her live.”
“And Bella Franken?”
“Because she knew there was something wrong with the ledgers.”
“And Lister, the real kidnapper?”
“He didn’t want to share the money. And perhaps he tried a little blackmail.”
“And the other men? There were far more than just Lister there. There had to be. Or did Doyle kill Lister alone? Does he look like a man who could take on a wiry, fighting sort of man like Lister?”
“Not at all. He must have taken him by surprise.”
“I thought you said he was on the run, in an open boat?”
“He was,” he agreed.
“So there must have been two of them, at least. You can’t leave a boat to drift while you stop off and cut someone’s throat!”
A coldness crept into Monk, as if they had inadvertently left the back door open. “You don’t think we’ll get him off, do you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know that we’re there yet. I’m sorry.”
She had said “we.” That was a kind of warmth, a comfort.
“Do you think Hooper betrayed me?” He was afraid of her answer, and yet that mattered to him so much he could not leave it unasked any longer.
“Hooper? Of course not! What makes you even ask, William?”
Because I know things that you don’t, he thought. Painful things that might cost everything one has. And I care more than I ever thought I would, or wanted to. But you won’t hear that, without tearing yourself apart.
“William?” she asked very quietly.
He could not answer honestly, so he said nothing at all.
CHAPTER
19
THE FOLLOWING DAY, HOOPER was the first to testify. It was years since he had been so nervous about anything. He had nothing to say that was untrue, or was in any way his f
ault. He had done exactly as ordered. He did not know of anything that could have been done differently. Ravenswood was prosecuting Exeter and doing it, so far, without accusing the River Police of any kind of incompetence, except for one of them having betrayed them all to the kidnappers. And that had been hanging over them since the night they went home weary and so bitterly defeated.
Still, he climbed the steps to the top of the stand with a dry mouth. He swore to his identity and to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in a hoarse voice. Twice he had to clear his throat. The truth, yes—but the whole truth? Even his identity? The mutiny was always there in his mind, because he knew that others knew it. Fisk, for certain.
And Monk knew. At least, he knew what Hooper had told him, but did he believe it? Behind Hooper’s gravity, even his gentleness, did he now doubt his loyalty? Was he disappointed even if his reason told him not to be, reminding him of his own vulnerability? The renegade that Runcorn had described Monk to have been would have understood it, and he would have agreed with it. But what about Monk now, the commander of the Thames River Police?
Sharp in Hooper’s mind, with a cutting edge that hurt more than he would have believed, he also cared what Celia Darwin thought of him. He wanted her to see him as an honest and loyal man, a man to be respected, above all trusted, even with the possibility of the charge of mutiny over his head for the rest of his life. He could not court her—and he wanted to very much. But he could at least keep her good opinion of him, the belief that he was a man she could have loved, not someone she would never knowingly have associated with.
“Mr. Hooper…” Ravenswood’s voice broke through his thoughts.
“Yes, sir,” he replied, standing a little straighter.
