William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

doesn’t interest you.”
    A dull red color washed up the woman’s face and the heavy muscles in her neck tightened. She took half a step forward.
    “You watch yer mouth, Latterly, or I’ll ’ave yer! You just remember who ’olds the keys ’ere—an’ it ain’t you. I got power—and yer’ll be glad enough to ’ave me on yer side—when the end comes. I seen a lot o’ people think ’emselves brave—till the night before the rope.”
    “After a month in your charge, the rope may not seem so bad,” Hester said bitterly, but inside her stomach was knotted and her breath came unevenly. “Who is my visitor?”
    She had hoped it would be Rathbone. He was her lifeline to sanity, and hope. Callandra had been twice, but somehow Hester found herself very emotional when she saw her. Perhapsit was Callandra’s very obvious affection and the depth of her concern. Hester had felt uncontrollably lonely after she had gone. It had taken all the willpower she possessed not to give in to a fit of weeping. It was primarily the thought of the wardress’s returning, and her contempt and satisfaction, that prevented her.
    Now beyond the wardress’s powerful shoulder she could see not Rathbone but her brother Charles. He looked pale and profoundly unhappy.
    Suddenly memory overwhelmed her. She was almost drowned in the recollection of his face when she had arrived home from the Crimea after her parents’ deaths and Charles had met her at the house to tell her the full extent of the tragedy, not only the death by suicide of their father, but the broken heart so shortly afterwards which had taken their mother also, and the financial ruin left behind. He had just the same, familiar look of embarrassment and anxiety now. He looked curiously emotionally naked, and seeing him, Hester felt like a child again.
    He came in past the wardress, walking a little around her, his eyes intent on Hester.
    Hester was standing, as she had been bidden. Charles’s eyes glanced around the cell, taking in the details of the bare walls, the single deep window high above the level of anyone’s sight, the gray sky beyond the bars. Then he looked at the cot with its built-in commode. Lastly he looked at Hester, in her plain blue-gray nursing dress. He looked at her face reluctantly, as if he could not bear to see what must be there in it.
    “How are you?” he asked, his voice husky.
    She had been going to tell him, unburden herself of the loneliness and the fear, but looking at his tiredness, his red-rimmed eyes, and knowing he could do nothing whatever to help, except hurt as well and feel guilty because he was powerless, she found it impossible. She did not even consider it.
    “I’m perfectly well,” she said in a clear, precise voice.“No one could say it is pleasant, but I have survived a great deal worse without coming to any harm.”
    His whole body relaxed and some of the tension eased out of his face. He wanted to believe her and he was not going to question what she said.
    “Yes—yes, of course you have,” he agreed. “You are a remarkable woman.”
    The wardress had been waiting to give him instructions to recall her, but she felt excluded by the exchange, and she withdrew and slammed the door without speaking again.
    Charles jumped at the sound, and swung around to see the blank, iron barrier, handleless on the inside.
    “It’s all right,” Hester said quickly. “She’ll be back when your time is up.”
    He looked at her, forcing himself to smile, but it was a sickly gesture.
    “Do they feed you properly? Keep you warm enough? It feels cold here to me.”
    “It’s not bad,” she lied. “And really it isn’t so important. There must be many people who never have better.”
    He was struggling for something to say. Polite conversation seemed so ridiculous, and yet he dreaded the realities.
    Hester took the decision for him, otherwise the whole visit would have come and gone and they would never have said anything that mattered.
    “Monk has gone up to Edinburgh to find out what really happened,” she began.
    “Monk? Oh, that policeman you were … acquainted with. Do you—” He stopped, changed his mind about what he had been going to say.
    “Yes,” she finished for him. “I think he has as good a chance as anyone of learning the truth. In fact, better. He won’t accept lies, and he knows I did not kill her, so he will keep on asking and watching and thinking until he finds out who did.” She felt better