William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

allow the rest of the dinner party to know that his wife had pushed him downstairs. It has far too much of the ridiculous.”
    She drew breath, and let it out again without speaking.
    “Had he ever beaten you?” he asked. “Seriously?”
    She did not look at him. “No,” she said very quietly. “It would help if he had, wouldn’t it? I should have said yes.”
    “Not if it is untrue. Your word alone would not be greatly helpful anyway. Many husbands beat their wives. It is not alegal offense unless you feared for your life. And for such a profound charge you would need a great deal of corroborative evidence.”
    “He didn’t beat me. He was a—a very civilized man—a hero.” Her lips curled in a harsh, wounding humor as she said it, as if there were some dark joke behind the words.
    He knew she was not yet prepared to share it, and he avoided rebuff by not asking.
    “So why did you kill him, Mrs. Carlyon? You were not passionately jealous. He had not threatened you. What then?”
    “He was having an affair with Louisa Furnival—publicly—in front of my friends and family,” she repeated flatly.
    He was back to the beginning. He did not believe her; at least he did not believe that was all. There was something raw and deep that she was concealing. All this was surface, and laced with lies and evasions. “What about your daughter?” he asked.
    She turned back to him, frowning. “My daughter?”
    “Your daughter, Sabella. Had she a good relationship with her father?”
    Again the shadow of a smile curled her mouth.
    “You have heard she quarreled with him. Yes she did, very unpleasantly. She did not get on well with him. She had wished to take the veil, and he thought it was not in her best interest. Instead he arranged for her to marry Fenton Pole, a very agreeable young man who has treated her well.”
    “But she has still not forgiven her father, even after this time?”
    “No.”
    “Why not? Such a grudge seems excessive.”
    “She—she was very ill,” she said defensively. “Very disturbed—after the birth of her child. It sometimes happens.” She stared at him, her head high. “That was when she began to be angry again. It has largely passed.”
    “Mrs. Carlyon—was it your daughter, and not you, who killed your husband?”
    She swung around to him, her eyes wide, very blue. Shereally did have a most unusual face. Now it was full of anger and fear, ready to fight in an instant.
    “No—Sabella had nothing to do with it! I have already told you, Mr. Rathhone, it was I who killed him. I absolutely forbid you to bring her into it, do you understand me? She is totally innocent. I shall discharge you if you suggest for a moment anything else!”
    And that was all he could achieve. She would say nothing more. He rose to his feet.
    “I will see you again, Mrs. Carlyon. In the meantime speak of this to no one, except with my authority. Do you understand?” He did not know why he bothered to say this. All his instincts told him to decline the case. He could do very little to help a woman who deliberately killed her husband without acceptable reason, and a flirtation at a dinner party was not an acceptable reason to anyone at all. Had she found him in bed with another woman it might be mitigating, especially if it were in her own house, and with a close friend. But even that was not much. Many a woman had found her husband in bed with a maid and been obliged to accept in silence, indeed to keep a smile on her face. Society would be more likely to criticize her for being clumsy enough to find them, when with a little discretion she could have avoided placing herself—and him—in such a situation.
    “If that is what you wish,” she said without interest. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Rathbone.” She did not even ask who had sent him.
    “It is what I wish,” he answered. “Good day, Mrs. Carlyon.” What an absurd parting. How could she possibly have a good anything?
    Rathbone left the prison in a turmoil of mind. Every judgment of intelligence decreed that he decline the case. And yet when he hailed a hansom he gave the driver instructions to go to Grafton Street, where William Monk had his rooms, and not to High Holborn and Peverell Erskine’s offices, where he could tell him politely that he felt unable to be of any real assistance to Alexandra Carlyon.
    All the way riding along in the cab at a steady trot his mind was finding ways of refusing the case, and the most excellent