William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

with, I tried not to believe it, or to find excuses, or reasons why it was not the way it seemed. In the end I had to accept that most of it was true; some of it was even understated. People lie to conceal their mistakes, and then make even worse ones to cover the lies.”
    She looked at him with anxiety and a strange gentleness, as if she would have protected him from it. “Once I used to imagine that those in power were different, but most of them aren’t,” she went on. “No one likes to admit that their own people can be as greedy and cruel as any foreigners. We perform all kinds of contortions of the mind to make a reason why it isn’t really the way it looks, but we only fool the people who want to be fooled.”
    “Maybe I knew, and forgot,” he said, thinking back to his struggle to learn about himself, to piece together the evidence of what kind of a man he was, the good and the bad. There was so much then that it would have been more pleasant to deny. Some of it—small cruelties, unnecessary ones—he had in the end been unable to avoid, and had learned to face, and regret. But there was a kind of comfort in that—honesty could be its own healing.
    As if reading his thoughts, or perhaps thinking back and tracing the same path, Hester smiled at him. It was a moment of understanding that was amazingly sweet. All pain was shared, and melted away into something calmer.
    He reached out and touched her gently, and her hand closed over his.
    The silence came to a natural end.
    “Do you think that Joel Lambourn discovered something during his research that was to do with more than the damage opium can cause if used without knowledge?” she asked. “Something outside that altogether, and far more dangerous?”
    Monk had been puzzling about that himself. “I don’t see why his research would matter so much if all it contained was figures of opium misuse, deaths of children, and perhaps of addicts here and there,” he answered. “It might delay the Pharmacy Act a year or so, but other people will eventually find the same evidence. And there are other medicines that should be regulated as well. Opium importers will have to deal more honestly; apothecaries will have to take more care, measure and label acceptably. Many small traders will have to stop selling it. Thousands of people will lose a few pennies a week. Would any one of them murder Lambourn for that? And also murder Zenia Gadney in such a hideous way?”
    “No,” she said gravely. “We have missed something. Or someone. Someone who has far more to lose than a small profit.”
    “Gladstone suggested there were details that might ruin some people, if they came to be known,” Monk suggested, searching for an answer that made sense. “Is there some atrocity that Lambourn could have exposed that would ruin a reputation?”
    Hester shook her head a little. “Why would he? He didn’t need to go into details of the smuggling or the violence to prove that opium in patent medicines can kill people because they don’t know what the dosage is. And isn’t that all he wanted to prove?”
    “Perhaps he found out something else by accident?” Monk’s imagination was racing. His own ignorance appalled him. “Someone could be lying to hide … whatever it is … because they know humiliation is a bitterly painful thing to bear. Some people would rather die than be shamed—in fact, many people.”
    “I know,” she said very quietly.
    He watched her face, the sudden deep sorrow in it, and remembered too late that her father had committed suicide rather than bear the shame of the debt he owed because Joscelyn Gray had swindled him out of his money. That was the first case he had dealt with in his new life, which had begun after the amnesia. It was the case in which he and Hester had met, and he had not even thought of it in his talk of shame and suicide. He could not believe his own clumsiness.
    “Hester …” What could he say? A tide of embarrassment burned hot up his face.
    She smiled, tears in her eyes. “I wasn’t thinking of him,” she said gently. “He was unwise, he trusted an evil man, and I wasn’t there to help. I was too busy following my own somewhat self-concerned conscience in the Crimea. National shame is different.” She looked down at her lap. “Tomorrow I’ll go and see Winfarthing again, and perhaps one or two other people who might know more about the Opium Wars, and the way we fought them.”
    “I don’t think