William Monk 02 - A Dangerous Mourning

tersely. “There always is. I think someone writes a pile of them and sends one in every time he thinks the occasion excuses it. What else? Does anyone speculate as to whether Percival is actually guilty or not?”
    Evan looked very young. Monk could see the shadow of the boy in him so clearly behind the man, the vulnerability in the mouth, the innocence in the eyes.
    “None that I saw. Everyone wants him hanged,” Evan said miserably. “There seems to be general relief all ’round, and everyone is very happy to call the case closed and put an end to it. The running patterers have already started composing songs about it, and I passed one selling it by the yard on the Tottenham Court Road.” His words were sophisticated, but his expression belied them. “Very lurid, and not much resemblance to the truth as we saw it—or thought we did. All twopenny dreadful stuff, innocent widow and lust in the pantry, going to bed with a carving knife to defend her virtue, and the evil footman afire with unholy passions creeping up the stairs to have his way with her.” He looked up at Monk. “They want to bring back drawing and quartering. Bloodthirsty swine!”
    “They’ve been frightened,” Monk said without pity. “An ugly thing, fear.”
    Evan frowned. “Do you think that’s what it was—in Queen Anne Street? Everyone afraid, and just wanted to put it onto someone, anyone, to get us out of the house, and to stop thinking about each other and learning more than they wanted to know?”
    Monk leaned forward, pushing the plates away, and rested his elbows on the table wearily.
    “Perhaps.” He sighed. “God—I’ve made a mess of it! The worst thing is that Percival will hang. He’s an arrogant and selfish sod, but he doesn’t deserve to die for that. But nearly as bad is that whoever did kill him is still in that house, and is going to get away with it. And try as they might to ignore things, forget things, at least one of them has a fair idea whoit is.” He looked up. “Can you imagine it, Evan? Living the rest of your life with someone you know committed murder and let another man swing for it? Passing them on the stairs, sitting opposite them at the dinner table, watching them smile and tell jokes as if it had never happened?”
    “What are you going to do?” Evan was watching him with intelligent, troubled eyes.
    “What in hell’s name can I do?” Monk exploded. “Runcorn’s arrested Percival and will send him to trial. I haven’t any evidence I’ve not already given him, and I’m not only off the case, I’m off the force. I don’t even know how I’m going to keep a roof over my head, damn it. I’m the last person to help Percival—I can’t even help myself.”
    “You’re the only one who can help him,” Evan said quietly. There was friendship in his face and understanding, but no moderation of the truth. “Except perhaps Miss Latterly,” he added. “Anyway, apart from us, there’s no one else who’s going to try.” He stood up from the chair, uncoiling his legs. “I’ll go and tell her what happened. She’ll know about Percival, of course, and the fact that it was Tarrant and not you will have told her something was wrong, but she won’t know whether it’s illness, another case, or what.” He smiled with a wry twist of his lips. “Unless of course she knows you well enough to have guessed you lost your temper with Runcorn?”
    Monk was about to deny that as ridiculous, then he remembered Hester and the doctor in the infirmary, and had a sudden blossoming of fellow-feeling, a warmth inside evaporating a little of the chill in him.
    “She might,” he conceded.
    “I’ll go to Queen Anne Street and tell her.” Evan straightened his jacket, unconsciously elegant even now. “Before I’m thrown off the case too and I’ve no excuse to go back there.”
    Monk looked up at him. “Thank you—”
    Evan made a little salute, with more courage in it than hope, and went out, leaving Monk alone with the remnants of his breakfast.
    He stared at the table for several minutes longer, his mind half searching for something further, then suddenly a shaft of memory returned so vividly it stunned him. At some other time he had sat at a polished dining table in a room filled with gracious furniture and mirrors framed in gilt and a bowl offlowers. He had felt the same grief, and the overwhelming burden of guilt because he could not help.
    It was the home of the mentor of whom he had