William Monk 06 - Cain His Brother

Dear God, wasn’t that evidence enough? Jealousy had driven him insane. What more is there to understand?”
    “Why he attacked Ravensbrook now,” Monk replied, turning and standing to climb the steps back up. “What good would it have done him?”
    “None at all!” Rathbone said impatiently, following rapidly after him. “What good did killing Angus do him? Nothing except release his hatred. Perhaps he felt the same way about Ravensbrook. He had nothing to lose. Can’t hang him twice.”
    “But they weren’t necessarily going to hang him at all!” Monk said sharply, striding through the door and into the hallway. “Goode hadn’t even begun. He’s a damned clever lawyer.” They passed a group of dark-suited men talkingquietly, and almost bumped into a clerk hurrying in the opposite direction. “We know Caleb killed Angus,” Monk went on. “Or at least I do … because I heard him admit it, even boast about it. But that’s not proof. He still had hope.”
    “Maybe he didn’t know that. I’m a damned clever lawyer too!” Rathbone said at his elbow.
    “Is this what you wanted?” Monk demanded, matching Rathbone pace for pace along the corridor, coattails flying. “Can’t prove he was guilty, so deceive the poor devil into committing another murder, right there in his cell, so we can hang him for that, without a quibble? Even Ebenezer Goode couldn’t defend him from that!”
    It was on the edge of Rathbone’s tongue to give back an equally bitter response, then he looked more closely at Monk, the confusion in his face. It was not all anger. There was doubt and pain in it as well.
    “What?” he demanded, swinging to a stop.
    “Are you deaf? I said—” Monk began.
    “I heard what you said!” Rathbone snapped. “It was sufficiently stupid—I shall ignore it. I am trying to fathom what you meant. Something puzzles you, something more than simply the questions we were asking before, and now we shall almost certainly never answer.”
    “Ravensbrook said Caleb attacked him.” Monk began walking again. “And he fought him off. In the struggle Caleb was killed … accidentally.”
    “I heard it,” Rathbone agreed, going down the steps towards the cells. “Why? What are you thinking? That it was actually suicide, and Ravensbrook is covering it up? Why?” They were obliged to walk in single file for some distance, then at the bottom Monk caught up again. “It makes no sense,” Rathbone went on. “What reason could he have? The wretched man is dead, and guilty by implication, if not proof. What would he be saving him? Or anyone?”
    “Legally he’s innocent,” Monk said with a scowl. “Notyet proven guilty, whatever we know, you and I. We don’t count.”
    “For God’s sake, Monk, the public knows. And as soon as the court reconvenes, they’ll have him for trying to kill Ravensbrook as well.”
    “But as a suicide he’d be buried in unhallowed ground,” Monk pointed out. They were just outside the main door to the cells. “This way he’s not convicted of anything, only charged. People can believe whatever they want. He’ll go down in posterity as an innocent man.”
    “I should think if it’s a lie at all,” Rathbone argued, “it is more likely Ravensbrook doesn’t want to be accused of deliberately allowing the man to take his own life, morally at any time, legally while he’s in custody and on trial.”
    “Point,” Monk conceded.
    “Thank you,” Rathbone acknowledged. “I think it is most probable he is simply giving a mixture of what he knows in the confusion, and what he hopes happened. He is bound to be very shocked, and grieved, poor devil.”
    Monk did not reply, but knocked sharply on the door.
    They were permitted in with some reluctance. Rathbone had to insist in his capacity as an officer of the court, and Monk was permitted largely by instinct of the gaoler, who knew him from the past, and was used to obeying him.
    It was a small anteroom for the duty gaolers to wait. Ravensbrook was half collapsed on a wooden hard-backed chair. His hair and clothes were disheveled and there was blood splattered on his arms and chest, even on his face. He seemed in the deepest stages of shock, his eyes sunk in their sockets, unfocused. He was breathing through his mouth, gasping and occasionally swallowing and gulping air. His body was rigid and he trembled as if perished with cold.
    One gaoler stood holding a rolled-up handkerchief to a wound in Ravensbrook’s