William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

two crusty slices, and another pint for Monk, then made his way over to a corner where they could be relatively private.
    “Yes?” he said as soon as they were seated. “Have you a case?”
    Monk half hid his smile. “I’m not sure. But you have.”
    Evan’s eyebrows shot up. “I have?”
    “General Carlyon.”
    Evan’s disappointment was apparent. “Oh—not much of a case there, I’m afraid. Poor woman did it. Jealousy is a cruel thing. Ruined a good many lives.” His face puckered. “But how are you involved in it?” He took a large bite from his sandwich.
    “Rathbone is defending her,” Monk answered. “He hired me to try and find out if there are any mitigating circumstances—and even if it is possible that it was not she who killed him but someone else.”
    “She confessed,” Evan said, holding his sandwich in both hands to keep the pickle from sliding out.
    “Could be to protect the daughter,” Monk suggested. “Wouldn’t be the first time a person confessed in order to take the blame for someone they loved very deeply.”
    “No.” Evan spoke with his mouth full, but even so his doubt was obvious. He swallowed and took a sip of his cider, his eyes still on Monk. “But it doesn’t look like it in this case. We found no one who saw the daughter come downstairs.”
    “But could she have?”
    “Can’t prove that she didn’t—just no cause to think she did. Anyway, why should she kill her father? It couldn’t possibly gain her anything, as far as she was concerned; the harm was already done. She is married and had a child—she couldn’t go back to being a nun now. If she’d killed him, then …”
    “She’d have very little chance indeed of becoming a nun,” Monk said dryly. “Not at all a good start to a life of holy contemplation.”
    “It was your idea, not mine.” Evan defended himself, but there was an answering flick of humor in his eyes. “And as for anyone else—who? I can’t see Mrs. Carlyon confessing to save Louisa Furnival from the gallows, can you?”
    “Not intentionally, no, only unintentionally, if she thought it was Sabella.” Monk took a long pull from his cider.
    Evan frowned. “We thought it was Sabella to begin with,” he conceded. “Mrs. Carlyon only confessed when it must have seemed to her we were going to arrest Sabella.”
    “Or Maxim Furnival,” Monk went on. “Perhaps he was jealous. It looks as if he had more cause. It was Louisa who was doing the flirting, setting the pace. General Carlyon was merely responding.”
    Evan continued with his sandwich, and spoke with his mouth full again.
    “Mrs. Furnival is the sort of woman who always flirts. It’s her manner with most men. She even flirted with me, in a sort of way.” He blushed very slightly, not at the memory—he was a most personable young man, and he had been flirted with before—but at reciting it to Monk. It sounded so unbecomingly immodest. “This can’t have been the first time she made a public spectacle of exercising her powers. Why, if he put up with it all these years—the son is thirteen so they have been married fourteen years at least, and actually I gather quite a lot longer—why would Maxim Furnival suddenly lose his head so completely as to murder the general? From what I gather of him, General Carlyon was hardly a romantic threat to him. He was a highly respectable, rather pompous soldier well past his prime, stiff, not much sense of humor and not especially handsome. He had money, but so has Furnival.”
    Monk said nothing, and began to wish he had ordered a sandwich as well.
    “Sorry,” Evan said sincerely. “I really don’t think there is anything you can do for Mrs. Carlyon. Society will not see any excuses for murdering a husband out of jealousy because he flirted. In fact, even if he had a full-blown affair and flaunted it publicly, she would still be expected to turn the other way, affect not to have seen anything amiss, and behave with dignity.” He looked apologetic and his eyes were full of regret. “As long as she was provided for financially, and had the protection of his name, she would be considered to have a quite satisfactory portion in life, and must do her duty to keep the sanctity and stability of the home—whether he wished to return to it or not.”
    Monk knew he was right, and whatever his private thoughts of the morality of it, that was how she would be judged. Andof course any jury would be entirely composed of men, and men