William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

hard and cold below her, her back to the wall. She must look ridiculous. Then, on second thought, everyone passing would only think she was drunk—not collapsed with relief. She sat there for several more moments before climbing up, holding the railing and swallowing hard before setting out again along the passage.
    Monk exploded with anger when he heard about it in his lodgings. His face was white and his eyes narrow and lips drawn back.
    “You stupid creature,” he said in a hard low voice. “You fatuous, dangerous, sheep-brained idiot! Callandra said you were tired, but she didn’t say you’d taken leave of what littlesense you have.” He glared at her. “There’s no point in asking you what you thought you were doing! Quite obviously you didn’t think! Now I’ve got to go and look after you as if you were a child—a little child, not even a sensible one.”
    She had been profoundly frightened, but now she was sufficiently safe, she could give rein to anger also.
    “Nothing happened to me,” she said icily. “You asked me to go there—”
    “Callandra asked you,” he interrupted with a curl of his lip.
    “If you like,” she said equally quickly, and with a tight hard smile to match his. “Callandra asked me in order to assist you in getting the information that you could not have found yourself.”
    “That she thought I could not have found,” he corrected again.
    She raised her eyebrows very high. “Oh—was she mistaken? I cannot understand how. I have not seen you around the corridors or in the wards and operating rooms. Or was that dresser who fell over the slop pail yesterday you in heavy disguise?”
    A flash of amusement crossed his eyes but he refused to give way to it.
    “I do not risk my life in idiotic ways to get information!” he said coldly.
    “Of course not,” she agreed, aching to hit him, to feel the release of physical action and reaction, to contact him more immediately than with words, however stinging the sarcasm. But self-preservation restrained her hand. “You always play very safe, no risk at all,” she went on. “No danger to yourself. To hell with the results. How unfortunate if the wrong man is hanged—at least we are all safe. I have noticed that is your philosophy.”
    In a cooler temper he would not have responded to that, but his anger was still boiling.
    “I take risks when it is necessary. Not when it is merely stupid. And I think what I’m doing first!”
    This time she did laugh, loudly, uproariously, and in a most undignified and unladylike fashion. It felt wonderful. All the tensions and fears fled out of her, the fury and the loneliness, and she laughed even harder. She could not have stopped even if she had tried and she did not try.
    “Stupid woman,” he said between his teeth, his face coloring. “God preserve me from the half-witted!” He turned away because he was about to laugh as well, and she knew it as surely as if he had.
    Eventually, with tears streaming down her face, she regained control of herself and fished for a handkerchief to blow her nose.
    “If you have composed yourself?” he said, still trying to maintain a frigid expression. “Then perhaps you will tell me if you have learned anything useful, either in this operation or in any other?”
    “Of course,” she said cheerfully. “That is what I came for.” She had already decided, without even having to consider it, that she would not tell him about Callandra’s feelings for Kristian Beck. It was a totally private matter. To mention it would be a kind of betrayal. “The corridor is almost deserted at that time of day, and the few who do pass along it are either rushed or too tired to remark anything, or both. They didn’t notice me, and I don’t think they would have noticed anyone else either.”
    “Not even a man?” he pressed, his attention fully back on the case again. “In trousers and jacket, rather than a dresser’s clothes?”
    “It’s very dim. I don’t think they would have,” she said thoughtfully. “One would simply have to have turned one’s back and pretended to be putting something down the chute. At that time in the morning people have been on duty all night and are too exhausted to mind anyone else’s business. Their own is more than enough. They are thinking of lying down somewhere and going to sleep. That’s about all that matters.”
    He looked at her more closely.
    “You look tired,” he said after a moment’s consideration.