William Monk 02 - A Dangerous Mourning

awkward for you if a visiting lady is … interested?”
    “Yes sir—have to be careful.”
    “I imagine men get jealous?”
    Percival was puzzled; he had not forgotten why he was here. Monk could see the thoughts flicker across his face, and none of them provided explanation.
    “I suppose they might,” he said carefully.
    “Might?” Monk raised his eyebrows. His voice was patronizing, sarcastic. “Come, Percival, if you were a gentleman, wouldn’t you be jealous as the grave if your fine lady preferred the attentions of the footman to yours?”
    This time the smirk was unmistakable, the thought was too sweet, the most delicious of all superiorities, better, closer to the essence of a man than even money or rank.
    “Yes sir—I imagine I would be.”
    “Especially over a woman as comely as Mrs. Haslett?”
    Now Percival was confused. “She was a widow, sir. Captain Haslett died in the war.” He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “And she didn’t have any admirers that were serious. She wouldn’t look at anyone—still grieving over the captain.”
    “But she was a young woman, used to married life, and handsome,” Monk pressed.
    The light was back in Percival’s face. “Oh yes,” he agreed. “But she didn’t want to marry again.” He sobered quickly. “And anyway, nobody’s threatened me—it was her that was killed. And there wasn’t anyone close enough to be that jealous. Anyhow, even if there was, there wasn’t anyone else in the house that night.”
    “But if there had been, would they have had cause to be jealous?” Monk screwed up his face as if the answer mattered and he had found some precious clue.
    “Well—” Percival’s lips curled in a satisfied smile. “Yes—I suppose they would.” His eyes widened hopefully. “Was there someone here, sir?”
    “No.” Monk’s expression changed and all the lightness vanished. “No. I simply wanted to know if you had had an affair with Mrs. Haslett.”
    Suddenly Percival understood and the blood fled from his skin, leaving him sickly pale. He struggled for words and could only make strangled sounds in his throat.
    Monk knew the moment of victory and the instinct to kill; it was as familiar as pain, or rest, or the sudden shock of cold water, a memory in his flesh as well as his mind. And he despised himself for it. This was the old self surfacing through the cloud of forgetting since the accident; this was the man the records showed, who was admired and feared, who had no friends.
    And yet this arrogant little footman might have murdered Octavia Haslett in a fit of lust and male conceit. Monk could not afford to indulge his own conscience at the cost of letting him go.
    “Did she change her mind?” he asked with all the old edge to his voice, a world of biting contempt. “Suddenly saw the ridiculous vulgarity of an amorous adventure with a footman?”
    Percival called him something obscene under his breath, then his chin came up and his eyes blazed.
    “Not at all,” he said cockily, his terror mastered at least on the surface. His voice shook, but his speech was perfectly clear. “If it was anything to do with me, it’d be Rose, the laundrymaid. She’s infatuated with me, and jealous as death. She might have gone upstairs in the night with a kitchen knife and killed Mrs. Haslett. She had reason to—I hadn’t.”
    “You are a real gentleman.” Monk curled his lip with disgust, but it was a possibility he could not ignore, and Percival knew it. The sweat of relief was glistening on the footman’s brow.
    “All right.” Monk dismissed him. “You can go for now.”
    “Do you want me to send Rose in?” he asked at the door.
    “No I don’t. And if you want to survive here, you’ll do well not to tell anyone of this conversation. Lovers who suggest their mistresses for murder are not well favored by other people.”
    Percival made no reply, but he did not look guilty, just relieved—and careful.
    Swine, Monk thought, but he could not blame him entirely. The man was cornered, and too many other hands were turning against him, not necessarily because they thought he was guilty, but someone was, and that person was afraid.
       At the end of another day of interviews, all except that with Percival proving fruitless, Monk started off towards the police station to report to Runcorn, not that he had anything conclusive to say, simply that Runcorn had demanded it.
    He was walking the last mile in the crisp late-autumn