Anne Perry - The Sins of the Wolf

“If I know enough about the facts to put it beyond dispute,” Rathbone said coldly, “that would be sufficient. Are you willing to help in the practicalities, or do you wish to stand there arguing the nicer philosophical points of it?”

“Oh, practicalities?” Monk said sarcastically, his eyebrows high. “What had you in mind?” His gaze swept the desk, searching for something achieved, some sign of progress, and found nothing.

Rathbone was acutely aware of his inadequacies, and what he had actually been doing between the time Daly left and Monk arrived was getting rid of all other pressing matters to leave himself free to attend to the Farraline case, but he refused to explain himself to Monk.

‘There are three possibilities,” he said in a hard, level voice.

“Obviously,” Monk snapped back, “she might have taken an overdose herself, by accident…”

“No she didn’t” Rathbone contradicted him with satisfaction. “She did not take it herself at all. The only accident could be if someone else filled the vial wrongly before it left the Farraline house in Edinburgh. If she took anything herself then it was deliberate, and must have been suicide, which is physically the second possibility, but from the circumstances, and her personality as Hester described her, quite out of the question.”

“And the third is murder,” Monk finished. “By someone other than Hester. Presumably someone in Edinburgh who filled the medicine vial with a lethal dose and left Hester to administer it.”

“Precisely.”

“Accident or murder. Who prepared the dose? The doctor? An apothecary?” Monk asked.

“I don’t know. That is one of a number of questions to be answered.”

“What about the daughter, Griselda Murdoch?” Monk moved impatiently about the office as if he could not bear to remain still. “What do you know of her?”

“Only that she is recently married and is expecting her first child, and is apparently anxious about her health. Mrs. Farraline was coming south to reassure her.”

“Reassure her? What do you mean? How could she reassure her? What could she know that Mrs. Murdoch didn’t know herself?” Monk looked irritated, as if the nonsense of the answer were stupidity on Rathbone’s part.

“For heaven’s sake, man, I’m not a midwife. I don’t know,” Rathbone said waspishly, sitting down in his chair again. “Perhaps it was some childhood complaint she was worried about.”

Monk ignored his reply. “I assume there is money in the family?” he said, turning back to face Rathbone.

“It appears so, but they may be mortgaged to the hilt, for all I know. It is one of the many things to find out.”

“Well, what are you doing about it? Aren’t there lawyers in Scodand? There must be a man of affairs. A will?”

“I shall attend to it,” Rathbone said between his teeth. “But it takes time. And whatever the answer, it will not tell us what happened in the railway carriage, nor who tampered with the medicine cabinet before they even boarded the train. The best we can hope for is some light on family affairs and the motives of the Farraline household. It may be money, but we cannot sit here waiting with our aims folded in the hope that it will be.”

Monk’s eyebrows shot up, and he regarded Rathbone’s elegant figure, seated with his legs crossed, with intense dislike.

Curiously, Rathbone found it did not anger him. Complacency would have. Any kind of calm would have incensed him, because it would have meant Monk was not afraid, that it did not matter to him enough to reach his emotions and cut them raw. Lack of fear in Monk would not have comforted him. The danger was real; only a fool would not see it.

“I want you to go to Edinburgh,” Rathbone said with a tiny smile. “I shall provide funds, of course. You are to learn everything you can about the Farraline family, all of them.”

“And what are you going to do?” Monk demanded again, standing in front of the desk, feet slightly apart, hands clenched at his sides.

Rathbone looked at him icily, in part because there was so very little that was of use yet. His real skill was in the courtroom, faced with witnesses and a jury. He knew how to smell a lie, how to twist and turn words until they trapped the liar, how to uncover truth beneath the layers of deceit, the fog of ignorance and forgetfulness, how to probe like a surgeon until he extracted the damning fact But he had no witnesses yet, except Hester herself, and she knew so desperately little.

“I am going to learn more of the medical facts,” he replied. “And the legal ones you pointed out earlier. And I shall prepare for trial.”

The word trial seemed to sober Monk out of his anger as sharply as a dash of cold water in the face. He stood still, staring at Rathbone. He made as if to say something, then changed his mind. Perhaps there was nothing that was not already known.

“I’ll go and see Hester first,” he said quietly. “Arrange it” His face tightened. “I have to know all she can tell me about them. We need everything we can find, even impressions, things half heard, thoughts, memories… anything at all. God knows how I am going to get them to admit me, let alone speak to me.”

“Lie to them,” Rathbone said with a twisted smile. “Don’t tell me that offends you!”

Monk gave him a filthy look, but did not answer. He stood stiffly for a moment, then turned on his heel and went to the door.

“You said something about funds,” he said with acute dislike. It occurred to Rathbone with a sudden flash of insight that Monk loathed having to ask. He would like to have done it without assistance, for Hester’s sake.

Monk saw the understanding in Rathbone’s eyes, and it infuriated him, both to be read so easily and that Rathbone should know his financial state, and perhaps even more, his care for Hester. He had not wished to know that himself. The color burned up his cheeks and his mouth tightened.

“Clements has it ready for you,” Rathbone answered. “And a ticket for tonight’s train to Edinburgh. It leaves at quarter past nine.” He glanced at the gold watch at his waistcoat, a beautiful piece with an engraved case. “Go to your lodgings and pack whatever you will need, and I will make arrangements for you to visit the prison. Write from Edinburgh with whatever progress you make.”

“Of course,” Monk agreed. He hesitated for a moment, then opened the door and went out.

Monk went back to his lodgings with his mind in a daze. Hester charged with murder. It had the horrible quality of a nightmare; the brain would not accept it, and yet the gut knew it was violently and dreadfully real. It had an air of familiarity, as if he had known it all before.

He packed all the clean linen he would be likely to need, and socks, shaving brush and razor, hairbrush, toiletries, and a spare pair of boots. He could not foresee how long he would be there. So far as he knew he had not been to Edinburgh before. He had no idea how cold it would be. Probably like Northumberiand. But then he could remember that only in snatches, and in pictures, not sensation. Still, that hardly mattered now.

He knew why the sinking feeling was familiar, the fear and the mixture of disbelief and complete acceptance. It was like his own experience of being both hunter and the hunted when he had first awakened in the hospital after the accident. He had not even known his own name, discovering himself piece by piece as he pursued Joscelin Grey’s murderer. He still knew far from all of himself nearly two years later, and much of what he had learned, seeing it through the eyes of others, half remembered, half guessed at, was confusing to him, full of qualities he did not like.

But this was no time to think of himself. He must solve this absurd problem of the death of Mrs. Farraline, and Hester’s part in it.