William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

are you going to do? How can we help Rathbone?”
    “I don’t know.” He was unhappy and annoyed. “If we can prove it was murder, that may be all Zorah really wants. Perhaps she accused Gisela because the Princess is the one person who would have to fight to clear her name. Maybe that was the only way to force a trial and a public investigation.”
    “But what about Rathbone?” she insisted. “He is the one who has undertaken to defend her. How will finding someone else guilty help him?”
    “I don’t suppose it will,” he said testily, moving away from the mantelpiece. “But if that’s the truth, then that is all I can do. I assume you don’t want me to manufacture evidence to convict Gisela simply to assist Rathbone out of a predicament he’s dug himself into because he was fascinated by a German countess with outrageous opinions and listened to his heart, not his head? Or do you?”
    She should have been furious with him for his vitriolic remarks and for deliberately trying to make her jealous by mentioning Zorah in these terms, the more so because he had succeeded. But for once she could read him too easily, and his motive at least was flattering. She smiled. “Find as much of the truth as you can,” she said quite lightly. “I expect he will make something worth having of it, even if it is only the dignity of saving a reputation and making a decent apology for a misplaced belief. The truth may be hard to take, but lies are always worse, in the end. Perhaps silence would have been best, but it’s too late for that now.”
    “Silence?” he said with a sharp laugh. “Between twowomen like that? And I can’t even speak to Gisela, because she is receiving nobody.” He took another step forward. “Tell Rathbone I’ll write to him from Venice … if there’s anything to say.”
    “Of course. I’ll see you when you return.” She was about to add something about doing all he could, then caught his eye and kept the silence he had referred to so scathingly. She would miss him, knowing he was not even in London, but she certainly did not say that.

5
    A
S M ONK HAD TOLD H ESTER,
his journey was first to Dover, then across the Channel to Calais, then to Paris, and then the final, large and very gracious train which took him for a long journey south and east to Venice. Stephan von Emden had gone two days before and was to meet him when he arrived, so he was traveling alone.
    The trip was both fascinating and exhausting, particularly since, apart from one journey up to Scotland, he was unfamiliar with travel of any distance. If he had ever been out of Great Britain before, it was lost in that part of his memory which he could not retrieve. Snatches came back when some experience echoed something from the past and produced a fragment, sharp and unrelated, puzzling him more than it enlightened. Usually it was no more than an impression, a face seen for a moment, perhaps a powerful emotion connected with it, sometimes pleasant, more often one of anxiety or regret. Why was it that pain seemed to return more easily? Was that something about his life or his nature? Or do the darker things simply mark themselves on the mind in a different way?
    He spent much of the time, as the train rattled and swayed through the countryside, thinking of the case he was pursuing, perhaps fruitlessly. Hester’s attitude rankled with him. He had not appreciated that she was so fond of Rathbone. Perhaps hehad never thought about it, but now he could see from the tension and the anxiety in her that she was concerned. She had seemed hardly able to think of anything else.
    Possibly, her anxiety was well founded. Rathbone had been uncharacteristically rash in taking Zorah Rostova’s case before looking into it more thoroughly. It would be extremely difficult to defend. The more Monk learned, the more apparent did that become. The very best they could hope for would be some limitation of the damage.
    He felt guilt at traveling in a manner he could not possibly have afforded on his own means. He was going to a country he had never been to before, so far as he knew, and on what he sincerely believed would be a hopeless quest, and doing it at Zorah’s expense. Perhaps honor should have dictated that he tell her directly that he did not know what he was looking for and thought there was only the slightest chance he could learn anything that would help her cause. In her interest, the best advice would be to apologize quickly