Wiliam Monk 01 - The Face of a Stranger

struggling for the stick, crashing into furniture, upsetting chairs. The very violence of it was a catharsis, and all the pent-up fear, the nightmare of rage and the agonizing pity poured forth and he barely felt the pain of blows, even the breaking of his ribs when Grey caught him a tremendous crack on the chest with his stick.
    But Monk's weight and strength told, and perhaps his rage was even stronger than Grey's fear and all his held-in anger of years of being slighted and passed over.
    Monk could remember quite clearly now the moment when he had wrested the heavy stick out of Grey's hands and struck at him with it, trying to destroy the hideous-ness, the blasphemy he saw, the obscenity the law was helpless to curb.
    Then he had stopped, breathless and terrified by his own violence and the storm of his hatred. Grey was splayed out on the floor, swearing like a trooper.
    Monk had turned and gone out, leaving the door swinging behind him, blundering down the stairs, turning his coat collar up and pulling his scarf up to hide the abrasion on his face where Grey had hit him. He had passed Grim-wade in the hall. He remembered a bell ringing and Grim-wade leaving his position and starting upstairs.
    Outside the weather was fearful. As soon as he had opened the door the wind had blown it against him so hard it had knocked him backwards. He had put his head down and plunged out, the rain engulfing him, beating in his face cold and hard. He had his back to the light, going into the darkness between one lamp and the next.
    There was a man coming towards him, towards the light and the door still open in the wind—for a moment he saw his face before he turned and went in. It was Menard Grey.
    Now it all made obvious and tragic sense—it was not George Latterly's death, or the abuse of it, which had spurred Joscelin Grey's murder, it was Edward Daw-lish's—and Joscelin's own betrayal of every ideal his brother believed.
    And then the joy vanished just as suddenly as it had come, the relief evaporated, leaving him shivering cold. How could he prove it? It was his word against Menard's. Grimwade had been up the stairs answering the bell, and seen nothing. Menard had gone in the door Monk had left open in the gale. There was nothing material, no evidence—only Monk's memory of Menard's face for a moment in the gaslight.
    They would hang him. He could imagine the trial now, himself standing in the dock, the ridiculousness of trying to explain what manner of man Joscelin Grey had been, and that it was not Monk, but Joscelin's own brother Menard who had killed him. He could see the disbelief in their faces, and the contempt for a man who would try to escape justice by making such a charge.
    Despair closed around him like the blackness of the night, eating away strength, crushing with the sheer weight of it. And he began to be afraid. There would be the few
    short weeks in the stone cell, the stolid warders, at once pitying and contemptuous, then the last meal, the priest, and the short walk to the scaffold, the smell of rope, the pain, the fighting for breath—and oblivion.
    He was still drowned and paralyzed by it when he heard the sound on the stairs. The latch turned and Evan stood in the doorway. It was the Worst moment of all. There was no point in lying, Evan's face was full of knowledge, and pain. And anyway, he did not want to.
    "How did you know?" Monk said quietly.
    Evan came in and closed the door. "You sent me after Dawlish. I found an officer who'd served with Edward Dawlish. He didn't gamble, and Joscelin Grey never paid any debts for him. Everything he knew about him he learned from Menard. He took a hell of a chance lying to the family like that—but it worked. They'd have backed him financially, if he hadn't died. They blamed Menard for Edward's fall from honor, and forbade him in the house. A nice touch on Joscelin's part."
    Monk stared at him. It made perfect sense. And yet it would never even raise a reasonable doubt in a juror's mind.
    "I think that is where Grey's money came from—cheating the families of the dead," Evan continued. "You were so concerned about the Latterly case, it wasn't a great leap of the imagination to assume he cheated them too—and that is why Charles Latterly's father shot himself." His eyes were soft and intense with distress. "Did you come this far the first time too--before the accident?"
    So he knew about the memory also. Perhaps it was all far more obvious than he believed;