Anne Perry - Defend and Betray

“Mrs. Carlyon-was it your daughter, and not you, who killed your husband?”

She swung around to him, her eyes wide, very blue. She really did have a most unusual face. Now it was full of anger and fear, ready to fight in an instant.

“No-Sabella had nothing to do with it! I have already told you, Mr. Rathbone, it was I who killed him. I absolutely forbid you to bring her into it, do you understand me? She is totally innocent. I shall discharge you if you suggest for a moment anything else!”

And that was all he could achieve. She would say nothing more. He rose to his feet.

“I will see you again, Mrs. Carlyon. In the meantime speak of this to no one, except with my authority. Do you understand?” He did not know why he bothered to say this. All his instincts told him to decline the case. He could do very little to help a woman who deliberately killed her husband without acceptable reason, and a flirtation at a dinner party was not an acceptable reason to anyone at all. Had she found him in bed with another woman it might be mitigating, especially if it were in her own house, and with a close friend. But even that was not much. Many a woman had found her husband in bed with a maid and been obliged to accept in silence, indeed to keep a smile on her face. Society would be more likely to criticize her for being clumsy enough to find them, when with a little discretion she could have avoided placing herself-and him-in such a situation.

“If that is what you wish,” she said without interest. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Rathbone.” She did not even ask who had sent him.

“It is what I wish,” he answered. “Good day, Mrs. Carlyon. “ What an absurd parting. How could she possibly have a good anything?

Rathbone left the prison in a turmoil of mind. Every judgment of intelligence decreed that he decline the case. And yet when he hailed a hansom he gave the driver instructions to go to Grafton Street, where William Monk had his rooms, and not to High Holborn and Peverell Erskine's offices, where he could tell him politely that he felt unable to be of any real assistance to Alexandra Carlyon.

All the way riding along in the cab at a steady trot his mind was finding ways of refusing the case, and the most excellent reasons why he should. Any competent barrister could go through the motions of pleading for her, and for half the sum. There was really nothing to say. It might well be more merciful not to offer her hope, or to drag out the proceedings, which would only prolong the pain of what was in the end inevitable.

And yet he did not reach forward and tap on the window to redirect the cabby. He did not even move in his seat until they stopped at Grafton Street and he climbed down and paid the man. He even watched him move away along towards the Tottenham Court Road and turn the corner without calling him back.

A running patterer came along the footpath, a long lean man with fair hair flopping over his brow, his singsong voice reciting in easy rhymes some domestic drama ending in betrayal and murder. He stopped a few yards from Rathbone, and immediately a couple of idle passersby hesitated to hear the end of his tale. One threw him a threepenny piece.

A costermonger walked up me middle of the street with his barrow, crying his wares, and a cripple with a tray of matches hobbled up from Whitfield Street.

There was no purpose in standing on the paving stones. Rathbone went up and knocked on the door. It was a lodging house, quite respectable and spacious, very suitable for a single man of business or a minor profession. Monk would have no need of a house. From what he could remember of him, and he remembered him very vividly, Monk preferred to spend his money on expensive and very well-cut clothes. Apparently he had been a vain and highly ambitious man, professionally and socially. At least he had been, before the accident which had robbed him of his memory, at first so totally that even his name and his face were strange to him. All his life had had to be detected little by little, pieced together from fragments of evidence, letters, records of his police cases when he was still one of the most brilliant detectives London had seen, and from the reactions of others and their emotions towards him.

Then had come his resignation over the Moidore case, both on principle and in fury, because he would not be ordered against his judgment. Now he struggled to make a living by doing private work for those who, for one reason or another, found the police unsuitable or unavailable to them.

The buxom landlady opened the door and then, seeing Rathbone's immaculate figure, her eyes widened with surprise. Some deep instinct told her the difference between the air of a superior tradesman, or a man of the commercial classes, and this almost indefinably different lawyer with his slightly more discreet gray coat and silver-topped cane.

“Yes sir?” she enquired.

“Is Mr. Monk at home?”

“Yes sir. May I tell 'im 'o's calling?”

“Oliver Rathbone.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Rathbone. Will you come in, sir, an' I'll fetch 'im down for yer.”

“Thank you.” Obediently he followed her into the chilly morning room, with its dark colors, clean antimacassars and arrangement of dried flowers, presumably set aside for such purposes.

She left him, and a few minutes later the door opened again and Monk came in. Immediately he saw Monk, all the old emotions returned in Rathbone: the instinctive mixture of liking and dislike; the conviction in his mind that a man with such a face was ruthless, unpredictable, clever, wildly humorous and quick tongued, and yet also vindictive, fiercely emotional, honest regardless of whom it hurt, himself included, and moved by the oddest of pity. It was not a handsome face; the bones were strong and finely proportioned, the nose aquiline and yet broad, the eyes startling, but the mouth was too wide and thin and there was a scar on the lower lip.

“Morning Monk,” Rathbone said dryly. “I have a thankless case which needs some investigation.”

Monk's eyebrows rose sharply. “So naturally you came to me? Should I be obliged?” Humor flashed across his face and vanished. “I presume it is not also moneyless? You certainly do not work for the love of it.” His voice was excellent. He had trained himself to lose his original lilting provincial Northumbrian accent, and had replaced it with perfectly modulated Queen's English.

“No.” Rathbone kept his temper without difficulty. Monk might irritate him, but he was damned if he would allow him to dictate the interview or its tone. “The family has money, which naturally I shall use in what I deem to be the client's best interest. That may be to employ you to investigate the case-but I fear there will be little to find that will be of use to her.”

“You are quite right,” Monk agreed. “It does sound thankless. But since you are here, I presume you want me to do it anyway.” It was not a question but a conclusion. “You had better tell me about it.”

With difficulty Rathbone kept his equanimity. He would not permit Monk to maneuver him into defensiveness. He smiled deliberately.

“Have you read of the recent death of General Thaddeus Carlyon?”

“Naturally.”

“His wife has confessed to killing him.”

Monk's eyebrows rose and there was sarcasm in his face, but he said nothing.

“There has to be more than she has told me,” Rathbone went on levelly, with some effort. “I need to know what it is before I go into court.”

“Why does she say she did it?” Monk sat down astride one of the two wooden chairs, facing Rathbone over the back of it. “Does she accuse him of anything as a provocation?”

“Having an affair with the hostess of the dinner party at which it happened.” This time it was Rathbone who smiled bleakly.