William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

obviously the truth at the beginning.
    He was fortunate. He met Lanyon just as he was coming down the steps, the sun catching his fair, straight hair. He was surprised to see Monk and stopped, his face full of curiosity.
    “Looking for me?” he asked, almost hopefully.
    Monk smiled in self-mockery. “I am now retained for the defense,” he said frankly. He owed Lanyon the truth, and it was easier than lying or evasion.
    Lanyon grunted, but there was no criticism in his eyes. “Money or conviction?” he replied.
    “Money,” Monk replied.
    Lanyon grinned. “I don’t believe you.”
    “You asked!”
    Lanyon started to walk, a long, loping step, and Monk kept pace with him. “Sorry for the girl,” Lanyon went on. “Wish I could think she was innocent, but she was there in the yard.” He looked sideways at Monk, his face shadowed with regret, trying to read Monk’s reaction.
    Monk kept his own face expressionless. It cost him an effort.
    “How do you know?”
    “The watch you found … it was Breeland’s all right, of course, but he had given it to her as a keepsake.”
    “Did he say so?”
    Lanyon’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Do you think I would take his word for it? No, he didn’t mention it at all, and I didn’t bother to ask him. It doesn’t really matter what he says. Miss Dorothea Parfitt told us. She’s a friend of Miss Alberton’s, and apparently Miss Alberton was showing it to her, boasting a little.” His expression was rueful, leaving Monk to picture the scene himself and draw his own conclusions.
    They passed a strawberry seller’s cart.
    Monk said nothing. His mind was racing, trying to fit into one congruous whole the vision of Merrit bragging about the watch Breeland had given her as a token of his love, Merrit standing in the warehouse yard watching as Breeland forced her father and the two guards into the cramped and humiliating position, then shot them in cold blood, and the Merrit he had seen in Washington and on the ship home, young and loyal, confused by Breeland’s coldness towards her, constantly making excuses for him in her own mind, making herself believe the best of him, and now alone and in prison, frightened, facing trial and perhaps death, and yet determined not to betray him, even to save herself.
    Perhaps she was one of the world’s great lovers, but Breeland was not. He might be one of the world’s idealists, or one of its flawed obsessives, not so much a man who supported a cause as a man who needed a cause to support him, to fulfill a nature otherwise empty.
    Lanyon was waiting for an answer from him.
    “An ugly fact,” he granted. “I’m not yet ready to concede its meaning.”
    Lanyon shrugged.
    “What about Shearer?” Monk changed the subject. “What does he say for himself? Have you found the boy who delivered the message to Breeland at his rooms? Who sent it?”
    “Don’t know yet,” Lanyon answered. “Haven’t found the boy. Could be any of thousands, and he’s not coming forward. Doesn’t surprise me. Doesn’t want to be connected with a man who committed a triple murder, even supposing he knows we want him. Very likely he can’t read. Even if somebody’s told him, he’ll be keeping his head down.”
    “Merrit said it was Shearer who sent it.”
    “Nobody’s seen him since the day before Alberton was killed,” Lanyon replied again, watching for Monk’s response.
    They crossed the street just behind an open landau, with laughing ladies holding up pale parasols, their white and blue muslins fluttering in the slight breeze.
    A lemonade seller stood on the corner, now and thenshouting out his wares. Lanyon stopped and bought one, looking enquiringly at Monk, who copied him. They both drank the liquid down without interrupting themselves to speak.
    “Have you looked for him?” Monk asked as they moved on. Already the air was getting hot, but it was nothing like the stifling closeness of Washington—and London, for all its tens of thousands, its poverty and grime, its magnificence, opulence and hypocrisy, was at peace.
    “Yes, of course we have,” Lanyon replied. “Not a whisper.”
    “Don’t you think that requires an explanation?”
    Lanyon grinned. “Well, the first one that comes to mind is that he was in league with Breeland, but had the good sense to disappear completely, instead of going openly somewhere. But then he didn’t have six thousand guns to ship.”
    “Presumably he just had the money,”