William Monk 02 - A Dangerous Mourning

sort. If he once let go of the rage he might crumble and terror would win; the darkness of the night would be unbearable without the burning of hate.
    “Because I don’t think you killed her,” Monk replied.
    Percival laughed harshly, his eyes black and accusing. But he said nothing, just stared in helpless and terrible knowledge.
    “But even if I were still on the case,” Monk went on very quietly, “I don’t know what I should do, because I have no idea who did.” It was an overwhelming admission of failure,and he was stunned as he heard himself make it to Percival of all people. But honesty was the very least of all he owed him.
    “Very impressive,” Percival said sarcastically, but there was a brief flicker of something in his face, rapid as the sunlight let through the trees by a turning leaf, then gone again. “But since you are not there, and everyone else is busy covering their own petty sins, serving their grievances, or else obliged to Sir Basil, we’ll never know—will we?”
    “Hester Latterly isn’t.” Instantly Monk regretted he had said it. Percival might take it for hope, which was an illusion and unspeakably cruel now.
    “Hester Latterly?” For an instant Percival looked confused, then he remembered her. “Oh—the terribly efficient nurse. Daunting woman, but you’re probably right. I expect she is so virtuous it is painful. I doubt she knows how to smile, let alone laugh, and I shouldn’t think any man ever looked at her,” he said viciously. “She’s taken her vengeance on us by spending her time ministering to us when we are at our most vulnerable—and most ridiculous.”
    Monk felt a deep uprush of rage for the cruel and unthinking prejudice, then he looked at Percival’s haggard face and remembered where he was, and why, and the rage vanished like a match flame in a sea of ice. What if Percival did need to hurt someone, however remotely? His was going to be the ultimate pain.
    “She came to the house because I sent her,” Monk explained. “She is a friend of mine. I hoped that someone inside the household in a position where no one would pay much regard to them might observe things I could not.”
    Percival’s amazement was as profound as anything could be over the surface of the enormous center of him, which knew nothing but the slow, relentless clock ticking away his days to the last walk, the hood, the hangman’s rope around his neck, and the sharp drop to tearing, breaking pain and oblivion.
    “But she didn’t learn anything, did she?” For the first time his voice cracked and he lost control of it.
    Monk loathed himself for stupidly giving this knife thrust of hope, which was not hope at all.
    “No,” he said quickly. “Nothing that helps. All sorts of trivial and ugly little weaknesses and sins—and that Lady Moidorebelieves the murderer is still in the house, and almost certainly one of her family—but she has no idea who either.”
    Percival turned away, hiding his face.
    “What did you come for?”
    “I’m not sure. Perhaps simply not to leave you alone, or to think no one believes you. I don’t know if it helps, but you have the right to know. I hope it does.”
    Percival let out an explosion of curses, and swore over and over again until he was exhausted with repeating himself and the sheer, ugly futility of it. When he finished Monk had gone and the cell door was locked again, but through the tears and the bloodless skin, there was a very small light of gratitude, ease from one of the clenched and terrible knots inside him.
       On the morning Percival was hanged Monk was working on the case of a stolen picture, more probably removed and sold by a member of the family in gambling debt. But at eight o’clock he stopped on the pavement in Cheapside and stood still in the cold wind amid the crowd of costers, street peddlers of bootlaces and matches and other fripperies, clerks on errands, a sweep, black-faced and carrying a ladder, and two women arguing over a length of cloth. The babble and clatter rolled on around him, oblivious of what was happening in Newgate Yard, but he stood motionless with a sense of finality and a wounding loss—not for Percival individually, although he felt the man’s terror and rage and the snuffing out of his life. He had not liked him, but he had been acutely aware of his vitality, his intensity of feeling and thought, his identity. But his greatest loss was for justice which had failed. At the moment when