Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [49]
“I am sorry!” he said with genuine shame. “My thoughts were absent for only a moment—a memory … a—a painful one—of another time like this.”
The anger drained out of her. She shrugged her shoulders, turning away again.
“It doesn’t matter. None of it makes any difference.”
He pulled his thoughts together with an effort.
“Your daughter quarreled with her father that evening …”
Instantly she was on guard again, her body rigid, her eyes wary.
“She has a very fierce temper, Mrs. Carlyon—she seemed to be on the edge of hysteria when I was there. In fact I gathered that her husband was anxious for her.”
“I already told you.” Her voice was low and hard. “She has not been well since the birth of her child. It happens sometimes. It is one of the perils of bearing children. Ask anyone who is familiar with childbirth—and …”
“I know that,” he agreed. “Women quite often become temporarily deranged—”
“No! Sabella was ill—that’s all.” She came forward, so close he thought she was going to grasp his arm, then she stood still with her hands by her sides. “If you are trying to say that it was Sabella who killed Thaddeus, and not I, then you are wrong! I will confess it in court, and will certainly hang”—she said the word plainly and deliberately, like pushing her hand into a wound—“rather than allow my daughter to take the blame for my act. Do you understand me, Mr. Monk?”
There was no jar of memory, nothing even faintly familiar. The echo was as far away now as if he had never heard it.
“Yes, Mrs. Carlyon. It is what I would have expected you to say.”
“It is the truth.” Her voice rose and there was a note of desperation in it, almost of pleading. “You must not accuse Sabella! If you are employed by Mr. Rathbone—Mr. Rathbone is my lawyer. He cannot say what I forbid him to.”
It was half a statement, half a reassurance to herself.
“He is also an officer of the court, Mrs. Carlyon,” he said with sudden gentleness. “He cannot say something which he knows beyond question to be untrue.”
She stared at him without speaking.
Could his memory have something to do with that older woman who wept without distorting her face? She had been the wife of the man who had taught him so much, upon whom he had modeled himself when he first came south from Northumberland. It was he who had been ruined, cheated in some way, and Monk had tried so hard to save him, and failed.
But the image that had come to him today was of a young woman, another woman like Alexandra, charged with murdering her husband. And he had come here, like this, to help her.
Had he failed? Was that why she no longer knew him? There was no record of her among his possessions, no letters, no pictures, not even a name written down. Why? Why had he ceased to know her?
The answers crowded in on him: because he had failed, she had gone to the gallows …
“I shall do what I can to help, Mrs. Carlyon,” he said quietly. “To find the truth—and then you and Mr. Rathbone must do with it whatever you wish.”
4
At mid-morning on May 11, Hester received an urgent invitation from Edith to call upon her at Carlyon House. It was hand-written and delivered by a messenger, a small boy with a cap pulled over his ears and a broken front tooth. It requested Hester to come at her earliest convenience, and that she would be most welcome to stay for luncheon if she wished.
“By all means,” Major Tiplady said graciously. He was feeling better with every day, and was now quite well enough to be ferociously bored with his immobility, to have read all he wished of both daily newspapers and books from his own collection and those he requested from the libraries of friends. He enjoyed Hester’s conversation, but he longed for some new event or circumstance to intrude into his life.
“Go and see the Carlyons,” he urged. “Learn something of what is progressing