William Monk 09 - A Breach of Promise

Monk’s opinion as well. Whatever his emotions towards Monk, and they were wildly varied, he respected Monk’s intelligence and his judgment. They had fought too many issues side by side, embraced too many causes together passionately, at any cost, not to know each other in a way few people are privileged to share.
    “Then either he is lying,” Monk responded, watching Rathbone closely, “or there is something about himself he is not telling you.”
    “Precisely,” Rathbone agreed. “But I have no idea which it is or what the something may be.”
    “Are you employing me to find out … against your own client?” Monk asked. “He’ll hardly pay you for that! Or thank you, either.”
    “No, I’m not,” Rathbone said sharply. “I would like a woman’s judgment on the situation. Callandra is in Scotland. I want to ask Hester.” He searched Monk’s face and saw his eyes widen very slightly but no more. Whatever Monk thought, he kept it concealed. “I don’t know her present case. I thought you might.”
    “No, I don’t,” Monk answered without a flicker. “But I know how to find out. If you wish I shall do so.” He glanced at the clock. “I assume it is urgent?”
    “Are you expecting someone?” Rathbone misunderstood deliberately.
    Monk shrugged very slightly and stepped forward from the mantel. The half smile touched his lips again. “Not for breakfast,” he answered, crossing the room. He managed to move with the grace of suppressed energy. Always, even when weary or seeming beaten, he gave the air of one who might be dangerous to antagonize. Rathbone had never tested his physical strength, but he knew that not even the despair or the defeats of the past, the close and terrible personal danger which had plumbed the bottom of his emotional power, had broken him. The last dreadful moments of the affair in Mecklenburg Square must have come close. Hester had seen the worst extreme, but she had not betrayed it, and he knew she never would—just asshe would never have told Monk anything about the moments between herself and Rathbone.
    “I suppose you have eaten?” Monk asked with assumption of the answer in his voice. “I haven’t. If you want to join me for at least a cup of tea, you’re welcome. Tell me a little bit more about this life-and-death case of yours … for breach of promise, hurt feelings and questioned reputation. Business must be hard for you to be reduced to this!”
    It was nearly noon before Monk arrived at Rathbone’s rooms and simply handed him a slip of paper on which was written an address and the name “Gabriel Sheldon.” He passed it to Rathbone with a slight smile.
    Rathbone glanced at it. “Thank you,” he said simply. He did not know what else to add. It was a strangely artificial situation. They knew each other in some ways so well. Rathbone knew far more of Monk than anyone else except Hester—and possibly Callandra Daviot and John Evan, the sergeant who had worked with Monk before Monk left the police force following a violent quarrel with his superior. But Evan had seen him only intermittently since then; Rathbone had worked with him every few months. They had stood together in victory and despair, in mental and physical exhaustion, in the elation of triumph and the strange, acute pain of pity. Even if they had never voiced it, they each understood what the other felt.
    Rathbone knew that Monk had lost his past, everything, until four years ago. He had discovered himself as a man in his forties, not a man he always liked, sometimes a man he despised, even feared. Rathbone had watched Monk struggle to regain his memory, and had seen the courage it required of Monk to look at what he had been: the occasional cruelty, the hasty judgments, made too often in ignorance and from fear. Monk had hesitated at times, flinching from what he would find, but in the end he had never refused to look.
    Rathbone admired him for it. Indeed, he would have protected him and defended him were it possible. A part of himliked Monk quite naturally, despite their widely differing backgrounds. Rathbone was born to comfort and had received an excellent education with all the grace and social status which such an eduction afforded. Monk was the son of a fisherman from the far northeast, on the Scottish borders. His education had been struggled for, given as charity by the local vicar, who appreciated a boy of intellectual promise and driving will, and was prepared to tutor