William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

someone else on that train who may have seen them. That would be conclusive.”
    Monk chewed his lower lip. “It would,” he conceded. “Then who killed Alberton? And rather more awkwardly, how did the guns get from the river at Bugsby’s Marshes across the city to the Euston Square station?”
    Rathbone smiled very slightly. “That is what I shall employ you to discover. There appears to be some major fact which we have not learned. Possibly it has to do with this agent, Shearer. There is also the very unpleasant possibility that Alberton himself was involved in deception of some sort and was double-crossed by Shearer, or even by Breeland.”
    A flicker of amusement lit Monk’s eyes. “I take it that you did not greatly like Mr. Breeland.” It was made more in the tone of an observation than a question.
    Rathbone raised his eyebrows. “That surprises you?”
    “Not in the slightest. There is much in him I admire, but I cannot bring myself to like him,” Monk agreed.
    “You know, he never once asked me how Merrit was.” Rathbone heard the anger and amazement in his own voice. “He can’t see anything but his damned cause!”
    “Slavery is pretty repugnant.”
    “A lot of things are, and a great many of them spring fromobsession.” Rathbone’s voice suddenly shook with anger. “And an inability to see any point of view except your own, or to empathize with another person’s pain if he is in any way different from yourself.”
    Monk’s eyes widened. “You are absolutely right,” he said with sudden, profound seriousness. “Yes … Lyman Breeland is a very dangerous man. I wish to hell we did not have to defend him in order to defend Merrit.”
    “I see no alternative, or believe me, I should have taken it,” Rathbone assured him with feeling. “Investigate everything. I don’t believe Merrit is guilty of anything beyond falling in love with a cold fanatic of a man. He may be guilty of no more than an ability to love a theory too much and people too little. And that may lead to many sins, but not necessarily the murder of Daniel Alberton. You had better look very carefully at Philo Trace, and at this agent, Shearer, and anything else you find pertinent.”
    “And as always, you are in a hurry.”
    “Just so.” Rathbone rose to his feet. “Try hard, Monk. For Merrit Alberton’s sake, and for her mother’s.”
    “But not Breeland’s …”
    “I don’t give a damn about Breeland. Find the truth.”
    Monk walked towards the door with Rathbone, his face already furrowed in thought. “It has a nice irony to it, doesn’t it,” he observed. “I hope to hell it isn’t Trace. I rather like him.”
    Rathbone did not reply; they were both too aware of men in the past they had liked, of cases where love and hate had seemed so misplaced. Some tragedies it was too easy to understand, the emotions and judgments not nearly simple enough.

8
    M
ONK WOULD
also dearly have liked to find a way to defend Merrit without at the same time defending Breeland, but he was too much of a realist to imagine it could be done. He had watched them together on the long journey home across the Atlantic. He knew Merrit would never allow it. Whatever her belief about Breeland, or her horror at the reality of war, her own nature was based on loyalty. To have saved herself at his expense would be to deny everything she valued. It would be a kind of suicide.
    Nor did it surprise him that Breeland was still more concerned with clearing his own name, and thus the cause, than with how Merrit was enduring imprisonment and the fear and suffering that must come with it. He smiled as he thought of Rathbone’s distaste, and imagined his regard for Merrit, her youth, her enthusiasm and vulnerability. He wondered also as he strode along Tottenham Court Road, watching for a hansom, what Rathbone had felt for Judith Alberton, and if he had been sensitive to her remarkable beauty.
    The August sun was hot, shimmering up from the pavements, winking in hard, glittering light on harnesses, polished carriage doors and, at certain angles, from the windows of busy shops.
    A shoeblack boy was accepting a penny from a top-hatted customer. He winked at a girl selling muffins.
    Monk hailed a cab and gave the address of the police station, where he hoped, this early in the morning, to findLanyon still there. It was the natural place to begin, even though he was now attempting to prove the opposite from that which had seemed to be so