William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

nice,” Monk said with a half smile, turning to Cassian. “Another gift from Mr. Erskine?”
    “Yes—no!” Cassian stopped. “Yes.” His chin tightened, his lower lip came forward, as if to defy argument.
    “Very generous of him,” Monk commented, feeling sick inside. “Anything else he gave you?”
    “No.” But his eyes swiveled for an instant to his jacket, hanging on the hook behind the door, and Monk could just see the end of a colored silk handkerchief poking out from an inside pocket.
    “He must be very fond of you,” he said, hating himself for the hypocrisy.
    Cassian said nothing.
    Monk turned back to Miss Buchan.
    “Thank you,” he said wearily. “There isn’t a great deal more to ask.”
    She looked doubtful. It was plain she did not see any meaning to the questions about the gifts; it had not occurred to her to suspect Peverell Erskine. Perhaps it was just as well. He stayed a few moments longer, asking other things as they came to his mind, times and people, journeys, visitors, nothing that mattered, but it disguised the gifts and their meaning.
    Then he said good-bye to the child, thanked Miss Buchan, and left Carlyon House, his knowledge giving him no pleasure. The sunlight and noise of the street seemed far away, the laughter of two women in pink-and-white frills, parasols twirling, sounding tinny in his ears, the horses’ hooves loud, the hiss of carriage wheels sibilant, the cry of a peddler a faraway irritant, like the buzzing of a bluebottle fly.
        Hester arrived home from the trial weary and with very little to tell Major Tiplady. The day’s evidence had been largely what anyone might have foreseen, first Peverell Erskinesaying, with something that looked vaguely like reluctance, what an excellent man Thaddeus Carlyon had been.
    Rathbone had not tried to shake him, nor to question his veracity nor the accuracy of his observations.
    Next Damaris Erskine had been asked about her brother, and had echoed her husband’s sentiments and seconded his observations. Rathbone had not asked her anything else at all, but had reserved the right to recall her at a later time, should that prove to be in the interests of the defense.
    There had been no revelations. The crowd was growing more intense in their anger towards Alexandra. The general was the kind of man they most liked to admire—heroic, upright, a man of action with no dangerous ideas or unnerving sense of humor, no opinions they would have to disapprove of or feel guilty about understanding, a good family man whose wife had most hideously turned on him for no sane reason. Such a woman should be hanged, to discourage all other women from such violence, and the sooner the better. It was murmured all through the day, and said aloud when finally the court rose for the weekend.
    It was a discouraging day, and she came back to Great Titchfield Street tired and frightened by the inevitability of events, and the hatred and incomprehension in the air. By the time she had recounted it all to Major Tiplady she was close to tears. Even he could find no hope in the situation; the best he could offer was an exhortation to courage, the greatest of all courage, to continue to fight with all one has even when victory seems beyond possibility.
        The following day a crisp wind blew from the east but the sky was sharp blue and flowers were fluttering in the wind. It was Saturday, and there was no court sitting, so there was brief respite. Hester woke with a sense not of ease but of greater tension because she would rather have continued with it now that it was begun. This was only prolonging the pain and the helplessness. It would have been a blessing were there anything more she could do, but although she had been awake, turning and twisting, thrashing it over and over in hermind, she could think of nothing. They knew the truth of what had happened to Alexandra, what she had done, and why—exactly, passionately and irrevocably why. She had not known there was another man, let alone two others, or who they were.
    There was little point in trying to prove it was old Randolf Carlyon; he would never admit it, and his family would close around him like a wall of iron. To accuse him would only prejudice the crowd and the jury still more deeply against Alexandra. She would appear a wild and vicious woman with a vile mind, depraved and obsessed with perversions.
    They must find the third man, with either irrefutable proof or sufficient