William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

sweet from the garden.
    “That is what she told you?” Henry asked, going to the hall door and opening it to tell the butler that Oliver would be staying to dinner.
    “You doubt it?” Oliver asked, sitting in the second-most comfortable chair.
    Henry returned. “I take it with circumspection.” He sat down in the best chair and crossed his legs, but he did not relax. “What do you know of her relationship with Prince Friedrich, for example, before Gisela married him?” he asked, looking gravely at Oliver.
    Oliver repeated what Zorah had told him.
    “Are you sure that Zorah didn’t want to marry Friedrich?”
    “Of course she didn’t,” Oliver said. “She is the last sort of woman to wish to be restricted by the bounds of royal protocol. She has a hunger for freedom, a passion for life far too big for  …” He hesitated, aware from the look in his father’s eyes that he was betraying himself.
    “Perhaps,” Henry said thoughtfully. “But it is still possible to resent someone else taking something from you, even if you don’t especially want it yourself.”

2
    M
ONK RECEIVED THE LETTER
from Oliver Rathbone with interest. It came with the first post when he had only just finished breakfast. He read it still standing by the table.
    Rathbone’s cases were always serious ones, frequently involving violent crime, intense emotions, and they tested Monk’s abilities to the limit. He liked finding the outer limits of his skill, his imagination, and his mental and physical endurance. He needed to learn about himself far more than most men because a carriage accident three years before had robbed him of every shred of his memory. Except for the flickers, the remnants of light and shadow which danced across his mind, elusively, without warning every now and then, there was nothing. Occasionally those memories were pleasant, like the ones from childhood of his mother, his sister, Beth, and the wild Northumberland coast with its bare sands and infinite horizon. He heard the sound of gulls and saw in his mind’s eye the painted wood of fishing boats riding the gray-green water, and smelled the salt wind over the heather.
    Other memories were less agreeable: his quarrels with Runcorn, his superior while he was on the police force. He had sudden moments of understanding that Runcorn’s resentment of him was in large part provoked by his own arrogance. He had been impatient with Runcorn’s slightly slower mind. Hehad mocked his boss’s social ambition, and had used his knowledge of the vulnerability which Runcorn had never been able to hide. Had their roles been reversed, Monk would have hated Runcorn just as much as Runcorn hated him. That was the painful part of it: he disliked so much of what he learned of himself. Of course, there had been good things as well. No one had ever denied he had courage and intelligence, or that he was honest. Sometimes he told the truth as he saw it when it would have been kinder, and certainly wiser, to have kept silence.
    He had learned a little of his other relationships, particularly with women. None of them had been very fortunate. He seemed to have fallen in love with women who were softly beautiful, whose loveliness and gentle manners complemented his own strength and, in the end, whose lack of courage and passion for life had left him feeling lonelier than before, and disillusioned. Perhaps he had expected the things he valued from the wrong people. The truth was, he knew their relationships only from the cold evidence of facts, of which there were few, and the emotions of memory stirred by the women concerned. Not many of them were kind, and none explained.
    With Hester Latterly it was different. He had met her after the accident. He knew every detail of their friendship, if that was the term for it. Sometimes it was almost enmity. He had loathed her to begin with. Even now she frequently angered him with her opinionated manner and her stubborn behavior. There was nothing romantic about her, nothing feminine or appealing. She made no concession to gentleness or to the art of pleasing.
    No, that was not entirely true. When there was real pain, fear, grief or guilt, then no one on earth was stronger than Hester, no one braver or more patient. Give the devil her due—there was no one as brave … or as willing to forgive. He valued those qualities more than he could measure. And they also infuriated him. He was so much more attracted to women who were fun,