William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

controlled woman would have wept or screamed, thrown something just to release the tension inside herself.
    “He never used to be like this, Miss Latterly.” Her voice was tight in her throat, as if she had difficulty making herself speak. “He was willful at times, thoughtless, like most young people, but there was no cruelty in him. I don’t understand it. I thought I was so tired last night I would have slept from exhaustion. I wanted to.” She emphasized it fiercely. “I wanted simply tocease to be able to think or feel anything. But I lay awake for hours. I racked my brain trying to understand what had changed him, why he had become so different, when it had begun to happen. I found no answer. It still makes no sense to me.” She turned back to Hester, her face bleak and desperate. “Why would anyone want to beat those women? Why rape a woman who is willing anyway? Why would anyone do that? It isn’t sane.”
    “I don’t understand either,” Hester said candidly. “But obviously it is not appetite, but rather more a desire for power over someone else, a need to hurt and humiliate—” She stopped. Sylvestra was looking at her with amazement, as though she had said something new and almost inconceivable.
    “Haven’t you ever wanted to punish, not for justice but for anger?” Hester asked her.
    “I … I suppose so,” Sylvestra said slowly. “But that is hardly … yes, I suppose I have.” She stared at Hester curiously. “Are you saying it is the same thing, hideously magnified?”
    “I don’t know. I am only trying to imagine.”
    The fire settled with a shower of sparks.
    “You mean it is not appetite … but … hate?” Sylvestra asked, struggling to understand.
    “Perhaps.”
    “But why would Rhys hate such women? He doesn’t even know them.”
    “Maybe it doesn’t matter who it is. Anyone will do, the weaker, the more vulnerable, the better …”
    “Stop it!” Sylvestra took a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. It is not your fault. I asked you, and now I do not want to hear the answer.” Her hands were twisting around one another. She had scratched herself with her nails but she seemed unaware of it. “Poor Leighton. He must have suspected there was something terribly wrong for ages, and at last he had to put it to the test. And when he followed him, and he knew …” She could not finish. They stood there in the quiet, dignified room, two women imagining the same terrible scene in the alley, father and son face-to-face over a horror which had to divide them forever. And then the son had attacked, perhaps out of rage, orguilt, perhaps out of some kind of fear that he would be caught by the law, and he imagined he could escape the consequences if he fought his way out. And they had beaten and punched and kicked at each other until Leighton was dead and Rhys was so badly hurt he lost consciousness and lay there on the stones, soaked with his own blood.
    And now it was so terrible to him he could not accept that it was he who had done it. It had been another person, another self, one he did not own.
    “We must find a barrister for him,” Hester said aloud. “He must have some defense when he comes to trial. Do you have someone you wish?”
    “A barrister?” Sylvestra blinked. “Will they really try him? He is too ill. He must be mad, won’t they realize that? Corriden will tell them—”
    “He is not too mad to stand trial,” Hester said with absolute certainty. “Whether insanity will be the best defense or not, I cannot say, but you must find a barrister. Do you have someone?”
    Sylvestra seemed to find it difficult to concentrate. Her eyes looked without focus. “A barrister? Mr. Caulfield has always dealt with our affairs. Of course, I have never spoken to him. Leighton handled business, naturally.”
    “Is he a solicitor?” Hester asked, almost sure of the answer. “You need a barrister for this, someone who will appear in court to represent Rhys. He must be engaged through Mr. Caulfield, but if you do not have any preferences, I am acquainted with Sir Oliver Rathbone. He is the best barrister there is.”
    “I … suppose so …” Sylvestra was uncertain. Hester was not sure if it was her shock at the turn of events, or if now she doubted whether she wished to engage an unknown barrister, at unknown expense, to defend Rhys when she feared him guilty. Maybe it was simply too big a decision for her to make alone. She was not used to