William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

that Dr. Lambourn might have uncovered accidentally in his research.”
    Gladstone smiled with bleak goodwill but no pleasure at all. “Do what you can to save Mrs. Lambourn,” he urged. “I shudder to think of our shame exposed in the courts, but it would be doubly evil to conceal it by sacrificing an innocent woman. To do so would be to defile not only our trade but our justice as well. But I warn you, it will earn you some bitter enemies, Sir Oliver. Do what you can, gentlemen. And keep me apprised. Good day to you.”
    “Thank you, sir,” Rathbone said gratefully.
    O UTSIDE, IN THE SOMBER dignity of Downing Street, Rathbone turned to Monk.
    “I’m not sure if this makes it better or worse. Nothing is what Ithought it was. I had assumed a clever but deeply flawed man whose distorted sexual appetites had finally ended his life in tragedy and suicide; and a wife whose grief and sense of betrayal had driven her to an obscene revenge. Instead it now seems we have a remarkable man whose only flaw was to leave his opium-addicted wife without the formality of a divorce. He lived with the woman he truly loved, without deceiving her as to her situation. Out of compassion, or sense of duty, he maintained support for his wife both financial and emotional.
    “He could not be misled or bought off from writing a report on the dangers of opium use without restrictions, and was murdered for his courage. His widow, or apparent widow, loved him enough to risk her own life to redeem his reputation. His wife was not a prostitute at all, as assumed, but a woman supported by one decent man who asked nothing whatever from her. Is anything the way it appears to be?”
    Monk shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    Rathbone thought of other times in his life when suddenly nothing turned out as he had expected. The familiar had unaccountably become alien and all his confidence was swept away. Did that happen to everyone?
    He kept pace with Monk, their footsteps all but silent in the quiet street.
    “This close to a verdict, it may be impossible to turn things around, and that frightens me,” Rathbone went on. “Someone has committed two murders. I can’t believe that Lambourn’s death and Zenia Gadney’s are not connected. Amity Herne has lied on oath, but I don’t know why. Is it enmity against her brother, or against Dinah, or to justify her husband having condemned Joel’s report? Or does she have some vested interest in blocking the bill herself?”
    “I don’t know, either,” Monk admitted. “But Gladstone is right. No one is going to like us for opening up the horror of the Opium Wars!” He stopped in the street and stared at Rathbone. “But you’ll do it!”
    “Oh, yes,” Rathbone said. Then, the moment the words were past his lips, he wondered if he had just committed himself to ruining his career.

CHAPTER

17
    M ONK WAS DEEPLY SHAKEN by what Gladstone had told him. Perhaps before his amnesia he had been aware of at least some of the shame of Britain’s part in the Opium Wars, but not the depth of the greed. The violence of it and the duplicity horrified him. There was arrogance in the assumption that any country had the right to smuggle such a poisonous substance to a less technically advanced people, and by weight of superior weaponry, conquer them. Then on top of all that, they had demanded reparation for what had been the results of their own savagery.
    Had Britain been the victim, not the attacker, he would have burned with outrage at it. He would have condemned the invaders and thirsted for revenge.
    But it was his own people who had been the barbarians, the people he had believed to be civilized, to have carried some core of honor, and a better system of beliefs, to races with a dimmer sense of what was right and with laws less just.
    He sat in the glow of the firelight in his own house with the familiar pictures on the walls of the parlor, the books he had read and loved on the shelves. Scuff was asleep upstairs. Quietly he related to Hester what Mr. Gladstone had told him.
    Eventually he stood up and turned on the lamps, watching her face as she listened to him. He saw the sadness in her as he described some of the details, although he did not include them all. Did she feel as ashamed as he did? She did not look as surprised as he had expected her to.
    “Did you know all this?” He could not help asking her.
    “No,” she said quietly. “But I have seen ignorance and stupidity before. To begin