William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

credit to Monk, rather the reverse.
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Monk.” Markham saw his face. “But you did drive us terrible ’ard, and tore strips off them as couldn’t match your quickness.” He took another mouthful and ate it before adding, “But then you was right. It took us a long time, and tore to shreds a few folk on the way, as was lying for one reason or another; but in the end you proved as it weren’t Mrs. Ward at all. It was ’er ladies’ maid and the butler together. They were ’avin’ an affair, the two o’ them, and ’ad planned to rob their master, but ’e came down in the night and found them, so they ’ad to kill ’im or face a life in gaol. And personally I’d rather ’ang than spend forty years in the Coldbath Fields or the like—an’ so would most folk.”
    So it was he who had proved it—he had saved her from the gallows. Not circumstance, not inevitability.
    Markham was watching him, his face pinched with curiosity and puzzlement. He must find him extraordinary. Monk was asking questions that would be odd from any policeman, and from a ruthless and totally assured man like himself, beyond comprehension.
    Instinctively he bent his head to slice his mutton, and kept at least his eyes hidden. He felt ridiculously vulnerable. This was absurd. He had saved Hermione, her honor and her life.Why did he no longer even know her? He might have been keen for justice, as he was for Alexandra Carlyon—even passionate for it—but the emotion that boiled up in him at the memory of Hermione was far more than a hunger for the right solution to a case. It was deep and wholly personal. She haunted him as she could have only if he loved her. The ache was boundless for a companionship that had been immeasurably sweet, a gentleness, a gateway to his better self, the softer, generous, tender part of him.
    Why? Why had they parted? Why had he not married her?
    He had no idea what the reason was, and it frightened him.
    Perhaps he should leave the wound unopened. Let it heal.
    But it was not healing. It still hurt, like a skin grown over a place that suppurated yet.
    Markham was looking at him.
    “You still want to find Mrs. Ward?” he asked.
    “Yes—yes I do.”
    “Well she left The Grange. I suppose she had too many memories from there. And folk still talked, for all it was proved she ’ad nothing to do with it. But you know ’ow it is—in an investigation all sorts o’ things come out, that maybe ’ave nothing to do with the crime but still are better not known. I reckon there’s no one as ’asn’t got something they’d sooner keep quiet.”
    “No, I shouldn’t think so,” Monk agreed. “Where did she go, do you know?”
    “Yes—yes, she bought a little ’ouse over Milton way. Next to the vicarage, if I remember rightly. There’s a train, if you’ve a mind to get there.”
    “Thank you.” He ate the treacle pudding with a dry mouth, washed it down with the cider, and thanked Markham again.
        It was Sunday just after midday when he stood on the step of the Georgian stone house next to the vicarage, immaculately kept, weedless graveled path, roses beginning to bloom in the sun. Finally he summoned courage to knock on the door. It was a mechanical action, done with a decision of themind, but almost without volition. If he permitted his emotions through he would never do it.
    It seemed an age of waiting. There was a bird singing somewhere behind him in the garden, and the sound of wind in the young leaves in the apple trees beyond the wall around the vicarage. Somewhere in the distance a lamb bleated and a ewe answered it.
    Then without warning the door opened. He had not heard the feet coming to the other side. A pert, pretty maid stood expectantly, her starched apron crisp, her hair half hidden by a lace cap.
    His voice dried in his throat and he had to cough to force out the words.
    “Good morning, er—good afternoon. I—I’m sorry to trouble you at this—this hour—but I have come from London—yesterday …” He was making an extraordinary mess of this. When had he ever been so inarticulate? “May I speak with Mrs. Ward, please? It is a matter of some importance.” He handed her a card with his name, but no occupation printed.
    She looked a little doubtful, but regarded him closely, his boots polished and very nearly new, his trousers with a little dust on the ankles from his walk up from the station, but why not on such a pleasant day? His coat was