William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

saw him. His gray hair was very sparse, and he looked at her with shortsighted blue eyes.
    “Yes I do, very much,” she answered honestly. “The more I look at it, the more it pleases me.”
    “It is my favorite,” he agreed. “Perhaps because it is unfinished. Completed it might have been harder, more final. This leaves room for the imagination, almost a sense of collaboration with the artist.”
    She knew precisely what he meant, and found herself smiling at him.
    They moved on to discuss other things, and she questioned him shamelessly because she was so interested, and because she was so comfortable with him. He had traveled in many foreign places, and indeed spoke the German language fluently. He seemed not to have been enraptured with scenery, totally unlike herself, but he had met and fallen into conversations with all manner of unlikely people in little old shops which he loved rummaging through. No one was too outwardly ordinary to excite his interest, or for him to have discovered some aspect of their lives which was unique.
    She barely noticed that Rathbone was an hour late, and when he came in in a flurry of apologies, she was amused to see the consternation in his face that no one had missed him, except the cook, whose preparations were discommoded.
    “Never mind,” Henry Rathbone said easily, rising to his feet. “It is not worth being upset about. It cannot be helped. Miss Latterly, please come into the dining room; we shall do the best we can with what there is.”
    “You should have started without me,” Oliver said with a flash of irritation across his face. “Then you would have had it at its best.”
    “There is no need to feel guilty,” his father replied. Heindicated where Hester was to sit, and the manservant held her chair for her. “We know you were detained unavoidably. And I believe we were enjoying ourselves.”
    “Indeed I was,” Hester said sincerely, and took her place.
    The meal was served. The soup was excellent, and Rathbone made no comment; to do so now would be so obviously ungracious. When the fish was brought, a little dry from having had to wait, he bit into it and met Hester’s eye, but refrained from comment.
    “I spoke with Monk yesterday,” he said at length. “I am afraid we have made almost no progress.”
    Hester was disappointed, yet the mere fact that he had kept from mentioning the subject for so long had forewarned her that the news would be poor.
    “That only means that we have not yet discovered the reason,” she said doggedly. “We shall have to look harder.”
    “Or persuade her to tell us,” Oliver added, placing his knife and fork together and indicating to the manservant that he might remove the plates.
    The vegetables were a trifle overdone by any standard, but the cold saddle of mutton was perfect, and the array of pickles and chutneys with it rich and full of variety and interest.
    “Are you acquainted with the case, Mr. Rathbone?” Hester turned to Henry enquiringly, not wishing him to be excluded from the conversation.
    “Oliver has mentioned it,” he replied, helping himself liberally to a dark chutney. “What is it you hope to find?”
    “The true reason why she killed him. Unfortunately it is beyond question that she did.”
    “What reason has she given you?”
    “Jealousy of her hostess of that evening, but we know that is not true. She said she believed her husband was having an affair with this woman, Louisa Furnival, but we know that he was not, and that she knew that.”
    “But she will not tell you the truth?”
    “No.”
    He frowned, cutting off a piece of meat and spreading it liberally with the chutney and mashed potato.
    “Let us be logical about it,” he said thoughtfully. “Did she plan this murder before she committed it?”
    “We don’t know. There is nothing to indicate whether she did or not.”
    “So it might have been a spur-of-the-moment act—lacking forethought, and possibly not considering the consequences either.”
    “But she is not a foolish woman,” Hester protested. “She cannot have failed to know she would be hanged.”
    “If she was caught!” he argued. “It is possible an overwhelming fury possessed her and she acted unreasonably.”
    Hester frowned.
    “My dear, it is a mistake to imagine we are all reasonable all of the time,” he said gently. “People act from all sorts of impulses, sometimes quite contrary to their own interests, had they stopped to think. But so often