William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

demonstrated how acutely concerned Rathbone was. It would have taken an emotional involvement of extraordinary depth to cause him to abandon his dignity sufficiently to come on such a completely pointless errand. Normally, if nothing else, his awareness of Monk’s perception of it would have been enough to keep him at home.
    But the comfort all that gave him very quickly wore off as the train steamed and rattled its way out of the station and through the rain-soaked darkness of the London rooftops and the occasional glimpse in gaslight of emptying streets, wet cobbles gleaming, lamps haloed in mist, here and there a hansom about to do business.
    He imagined Rathbone returning to his office to sit behind his desk shuffling papers uselessly and trying to think what to do that would help, and Hester alone in the narrow cell in Newgate, frightened, huddling beneath the thin blankets, hearing the hard sound of boot heels on the stone floor and the clang of keys in the lock, seeing the hatred in the wardresses’ faces. And he had no illusions about that. They thought her guilty of a despicable crime; there would be no pity. The fact that she had not yet been tried would weigh little with them.
    Why couldn’t Hester be like other women, and choose a more sensible occupation? What normal woman traveled allover the place, alone, to nurse people she had never even met? Why did he bother himself with her? She was bound to meet with disaster some time or other. It was only extraordinary good luck she had not encountered it already in the Crimea. And he was stupid to allow his feelings to be engaged at all. He did not like the kind of woman she was, he never had. Almost everything about her irritated him in one way or another.
    But then common humanity required that he do everything he could to help. People trusted him, and so far as he knew, he had never betrayed a trust in his life. At least not intentionally. He had failed his mentor, years ago, that much he now remembered. But that was different. It was a failure through lack of ability, not in any way because he had not tried everything he could. It was not kindness; every evidence he had discovered about himself showed he was not a kind man. But he was honorable. And he had never suffered injustice.
    No. He winced and smiled bitterly. That was untrue. He had never suffered legal injustice. He had certainly been unjust often enough himself—unjust to his juniors, overcritical, too quick to judge and to blame.
    But however much it hurt, there was no point wallowing in the past. Nothing could change it. The future lay in his own power. He would find out who had killed Mary Farraline, and why, and he would prove it. Apart from his own pride, Hester deserved that. She was frequently foolish, almost always overbearing, acid-tongued, opinionated and arbitrary; but she was totally honest. Whatever she said about the journey from Edinburgh would be the truth. She would not even lie to herself to cover a mistake, let alone to anyone else. And this was a rare quality in anyone, man or woman.
    And of course she had not killed Mary Farraline. The idea was ludicrous. She might have killed someone in outrage—she would certainly have the courage and the passion—but never for gain. And if she had killed someoneshe deemed to be monstrous enough to warrant such an act, she would not have done it that way. She would have done it face-to-face. She would have struck her over the head, or stabbed her with a blade, not poisoned her in her sleep. There was nothing devious in Hester. Above all else, she had courage.
    Hester would survive this. She had suffered worse in the Crimea, physical hardships of a greater order, terrible cold, probably hunger too, weeks without proper sleep—and danger as well, danger of injury or disease, or both. She had been on the battlefield within sound of the guns, within range of them, for all he knew. Of course she would survive a week or two in Newgate. It was absurd to be frightened for her. She was not an ordinary woman to faint or weep in the face of hardship. She would suffer, of course, she was as susceptible as anyone else, but she would rise above it.
    His part was to go to the Farraline house and learn the truth.
    But as the evening lengthened into night and those around him drifted into weary sleep, the sanguine mood left him, and all he could see as he grew colder and stiffer and more tired was the difficulty of discovering anything useful from a