William Monk 06 - Cain His Brother

more dead men than you have. I shall be quite all right.” And she walked in, brushing his shoulder. He had replaced his jacket and it looked odd with no shirt beneath.
    Inside she stood still and looked down at the crumpled form of Caleb Stone. She stared at him for several seconds before she frowned a little, then with a deep sigh, straightened up and came out again. Her eyes met Rathbone’s.
    “What are you going to do?” she asked quietly.
    “Go home and get a shirt,” he replied with a twisted smile. “There isn’t anything else we can do, my dear. There’s no case to prosecute or defend anymore. If Mrs. Stonefield wishes me to act for her in the matter of formally acknowledging her husband’s death, then of course I will do so. First we must deal with this matter, which I imagine the judge will do when court reconvenes tomorrow morning.”
    “Is there something which worries you?” Monk said suddenly, looking at her closely. “What is it?”
    “I … I don’t think I am quite certain …” She frowned in concentration, but seemed unwilling to add more.
    “Then come to my house and dine,” Rathbone invited her, and included Monk with a gesture. “That is, if you do not have to return with Lady Ravensbrook, or go back to Limehouse?”
    “No.” She shook her head. “The typhoid is past its worst. In fact, there have been no new cases for over twodays, and many of those who are left are beginning to recover. I … I would like to think further on Caleb Stone.”
    Before even considering it they ate a surprisingly good meal. Rathbone’s house was warm and quiet, furnished in the discreet fashion of half a century earlier, the excellent chair lines of the Regency. It made for comfort and a sense of space.
    Hester had not thought she would wish to eat at all, but when the meal was placed before her, and she had not had to take any part in its preparation, she found that she was, after all, quite hungry.
    When the last course was completed Rathbone sat back and looked across at her.
    “Well, what is it that worries you? Are you afraid it was suicide? And if it was, does it really matter? Who would it help to prove it, even if we could?”
    “Why would he commit suicide now?” she asked, fumbling through the ideas jumbled in her mind, the memory of the wounds she had seen and the small, very sharp knife, almost like a scalpel, lying with the very end of its blade in Caleb’s neck and its silver handle in the sheet of blood beside him. “His defense had not even begun!”
    “Perhaps he had no hope it could succeed?” Monk suggested.
    “You don’t believe that,” Rathbone said instantly. “Could he have killed himself in remorse? Perhaps hearing the evidence somehow brought it back to him. Or more likely it was seeing Ravensbrook, and knowing the grief it had brought him, and of course Genevieve.”
    “Genevieve?” Monk’s eyebrows rose. “He loathed her. She was part of all that he despised in Angus: the comfortable, pious wife with her smiling, complacent face and her total ignorance of the tragedy and reality of the kind of life he led, the poverty and the hardship and the dirt.”
    “You don’t know anything about Genevieve, do you?” Hester looked from one to the other of them, and saw theblank incomprehension in their faces. “No, of course you don’t. She grew up in Limehouse.…”
    Rathbone was astonished. He sat quite still, except for a slight parting of his lips.
    Monk, on the other hand, gave a snort of disbelief and moved his hand sharply to dismiss the idea as preposterous, knocking his elbow against his empty wineglass and clinking it against its neighbor.
    “Yes, she did!” Hester said sharply. “I’ve just spent nearly a month in Limehouse, and I know the people she grew up with. They remember her. Her name used to be Ginny Motson.”
    Monk looked astonished. His face was almost expressionless with surprise.
    “I assume you wouldn’t say that unless you were sure beyond question?” Rathbone said gravely. “This is not gossip, is it?”
    “No, of course it isn’t,” Hester answered, the scene over the mistake clear in her mind. “She told me herself, when she realized I had guessed.”
    They sat silently for several minutes, turning over those new and amazing thoughts. The butler came in and removed the last of the dishes and brought the port, offering it to Monk and Rathbone. He bowed civilly to Hester, but disregarded her otherwise. She puzzled