William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

Place, and took only a moment to speak, rather formally, to Hester. She thanked him yet again for his work on her behalf, and he looked embarrassed, so she pursued it no further.
    By nine o’clock she and Monk were alone, everyone else having departed for the morning train south. It was a windy day but not unpleasant, and fitful shafts of sunlight gave it a brightness out of keeping with both their moods. They stood side by side on Princes Street, staring up its handsome length towards the rise of the new town, and Ainslie Place.
    “I don’t know where you think you are going to stay,” Monk said with a frown. “The Grassmarket is most unsuitable, and you cannot afford the hotel where Callandra was.”
    “What is wrong with the Grassmarket?” she demanded.
    “It’s not suitable for a woman alone,” he replied irritably. “For heaven’s sake, I thought your own common sense would have told you that! The neighborhood is rough, and a great deal of it none too clean.”
    She looked at him witheringly. “Worse than Newgate?” she inquired.
    “Acquired a taste for it, have you?” he said, tight-lipped.
    “Then leave me to attend to my own accommodation,” she said rashly. “And let us proceed to Ainslie Place.”
    “What do you mean ‘us’? I’m not taking you!”
    “I do not require you to. I am perfectly capable of taking myself. I believe I shall walk there. It is not an unpleasant day and I should welcome a little exercise. I have not had much of late.”
    Monk shrugged and set out at a smart pace, so smart she was obliged almost to run to keep up with him. She had no breath to continue the conversation.
    They arrived after ten, Hester with sore feet and feeling too heated for comfort, and by now in a very different temper. Damn Monk!
    He, on the contrary, was looking rather pleased with himself.
    The door of number seventeen was opened by McTeer. His dismal expression fell even farther when he saw Monk, and approached disastrous proportions when he saw Hester behind him.
    “And who will ye be wanting?” he said slowly, rolling the words on his tongue as if he were making a prognostication of doom. “Have ye come for Mr. McIvor?”
    “No, of course not,” Monk said. “We have no power to come for anybody.”
    McTeer snorted. “I thought maybe ye were the poliss….”
    It still jarred Monk that he was no longer a policeman and had no power whatever. His new status gave him freedom, and at the same time robbed him of half the ability to use it to its uttermost.
    “Then ye’ll be wanting Mrs. McIvor, no doubt,” McTeer finished for himself. “Mr. Alastair is no here at this time o’ day.”
    “Of course not,” Monk agreed. “I should be obliged to see whoever I may.”
    “Aye, aye, I daresay. Well, you’d better come in.” And reluctantly McTeer pulled the door wide enough open to allow them to pass into the hall, with its giant picture of Hamish Farraline dominating the room.
    Hester stared at it with curiosity as McTeer withdrew. Monk waited impatiently.
    “What are you going to say?” Hester asked him.
    “I don’t know,” he replied tersely. “It can’t be prescribed and followed like a dose of medicine.”
    “Medicine is not prescribed and followed regardless,” she contradicted. “You watch the progress of the patient and do whatever you think best according to his response.”
    “Don’t be pedantic.”
    “Well, if you don’t know now, you had better make up your mind very rapidly,” she replied. “Oonagh will be herein a moment, unless she sends a message that she will not receive you.”
    He turned his back, but remained standing close to her. She was right, and it irritated him almost beyond bearing. There had been too much emotion in the last few weeks, and he was profoundly disturbed by it. He hated his feelings to be beyond his control. The anger brought back memories which frightened him, recent memories of confusion and fear. The possibility of failure was another all too recent memory he preferred not to reawaken. The emotion caused by the knowledge that she might very easily die was a profound and deeply confused turmoil he chose to ignore. If he did so for long enough, he could sink into all the other memories he had lost.
    She did not interrupt his thoughts again until McTeer returned to say that they would be received in the library. He did not say by whom.
    When he opened the library door and announced them, all three of the women were there: