William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

children, and her husband. They wouldn’t be looking for hidden doors into attics. Why would they?”
    “They wouldn’t,” she agreed. She looked toward the gun and its extraordinary mechanism. “It would have taken quite a lot of trouble to rig this up, and whoever did it hasn’t been able to come back to get rid of it. That must mean it’s Drew, mustn’t it? This is what he wanted to come for—to get rid of it before anyone found it.”
    “Yes,” he said. “But we can’t prove it. He could affect to be just as surprised as we are. All he has to do is say that he wanted the rest of the church papers, in order to pay the bills outstanding, and carry on. And he can,” he added bitterly.
    “No. All London must know about the embezzlement now,” Hester argued. “And if they didn’t with Taft’s trial and then his death, they will with Oliver’s.”
    “Then Drew can go to Manchester, or Liverpool, or Newcastle,” he pointed out. “There are plenty of other cities.” He bent to look at the contraption again. “So simple,” he said, tightening his lips into a thin line. “I wonder why no one heard the real shot. Pillow, I suppose. It explains why the daughters and the wife were killed as well. They must have known who else was in the house. He couldn’t afford to leave them alive.”
    Hester shuddered. She tried to block out of her imagination the scene as it must have been, the fear and the tragedy. Had Drew shot Taft first, and then gotten rid of the witnesses? Or had he killed them first, separately, keeping them all silent? How loud would you have to scream in the silence of the night to be heard by the neighbors? Someone tired and sound asleep might not hear even a stranger in the room, let alone a woman fighting for her life in the house next door, across fifty feet of garden with trees and bushes. The thought of it chilled her through.
    Monk had finished searching. He had found the bullet, lower down in the wall than he had expected. The recoil must have jerked the gun out of alignment. He left it where it was. It would be evidence. He was standing back at the trapdoor again, waiting for her.
    She pulled her attention back to the present, glad to be taken away from her imaginings. She walked over to him. “What are we going to do now?” she asked.
    “See what else we can find,” he replied, holding her hand while she moved across to grasp the rungs and climb down.
    They searched the rest of the house for anything else of significanceand found nothing beyond a few goose feathers under one of the chairs in the morning room, which was where Taft had been found. It might indicate that a pillow had been used to muffle the sound of the shot, but it certainly did not prove it.
    “I wonder what time Taft was actually shot,” Monk said, chewing his lip a little. “It can’t have been all that long before he was found, or the body would have been too cold.”
    “About three,” Hester suggested. “Drew was back home at five, we know, because he woke his valet. But he could well have been here at three.”
    “It doesn’t have to have been Drew,” Monk argued.
    She looked at him witheringly. “Who else? It wasn’t a burglar. This was prepared very carefully by someone who was here often enough to know about the ladder into the attic and who could set up that contraption feeling confident that he would be able to come back here, without raising suspicion, to take it down again.”
    Monk went on playing devil’s advocate. She understood what he was doing.
    “Why?” he asked. “Murdering four people is pretty extreme.”
    “Maybe in his mind it was only one,” she reasoned. “Just Taft himself, because he knew how deeply Drew was implicated. He couldn’t be trusted, especially once the case turned against him. Mrs. Taft and the daughters were just necessary tidying up.”
    He thought for a moment. “But wasn’t there always the risk that Taft would turn against him to free himself?”
    “It seemed that he trusted not,” she replied. “But then he was exposed in the photograph and was forced to change his evidence entirely. So if Taft really didn’t know about Drew’s perversions, that might well have been the end of any loyalty Taft felt toward Drew, and certainly the end of any belief that Drew could, or would, help him stay out of prison.” She knew she was right even before his face broke into a smile and he straightened up.
    “Right, I believe you,” he said with