The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [112]
Argyll leaned back in his chair, resting his fingertips together and staring at Monk without anger. “I’ll be better at it, Mr. Monk, if you can find me cause to have those company books examined. I think young Mr. Kenneth may very well have embezzled a bawbee here and there to keep his mistress … but we’ll need more than a suggestion if we are to say that to the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh.”
“I’D get it for you,” Monk said grimly.
Argyll raised his black eyebrows. “Legally, if you please. It will be no use to us otherwise.”
“I know that,” Monk said between his teeth. “There won’t be a mark on him, nor will he have cause for a complaint of any sort. Just do your part.”
Rathbone winced again.
Monk shot another glance at Argyll, then without speaking again opened the door and went out.
Hester had passed the journey from London to Edinburgh in the guard’s van, in a state which was certainly not sleep, or anything like the rest that sleep should bring, and yet it had all the qualities of a dream. There was no sense of direction, she could as easily have been traveling south as north, and this time there was no footwarmer. She was manacled to the wardress, who sat rigid with anxiety, her face set like iron. Every time Hester closed her eyes she expected to see Mary Farraline when she opened them again, and hear her soft, cultured Highland voice with the Edinburgh intonation recounting some memory from the past, filled with humor and enjoyment.
She was the last to disembark from the train, and by the time she and the wardress stepped out onto the platform, most of the other passengers were moving towards the gates up into the street.
The police escort was there, four large constables holding truncheons and looking nervously from left to right.
“Come on, Latterly,” the wardress said sharply, yanking at Hester’s manacled hands. “No dithering around, now!”
“I’m not going to escape!” Hester said with wry contempt.
The wardress gave her a filthy look, and it was several seconds before Hester realized why. Then as the constables closed in around her, and there was an angry shout from a few yards away, suddenly she understood. They were here not to prevent her escape but to protect her.
A woman screamed.
“Murderess!” someone yelled hoarsely.
“Hang ’er!” another shouted out, and a surge of bodies buffeted the constables and they lurched forward, unwittingly almost knocking Hester off her feet.
A dozen yards away a newsboy was calling out about the trial.
“Burn her!” a voice shouted quite clearly and chillingly, a woman’s voice, shrill with hatred. “Burn the witch! Put her to the fires!”
Hester felt herself chilled as if by ice. It was terrifying to feel such a passion thick in the air, it was a kind of madness. There was no reasoning with it, no logic, no pity. She had not even been tried yet.
A missile flew past her cheek and clattered against the carriage door.
“Now then, now then!” another constable’s voice said with rising panic barely suppressed. “Move along. You got no business here. Move along or I’ll have to take you in charge for disturbing the peace. You let the courts do their job. Time enough then for hanging. Move along….”
“Don’t stare there, stupid!” The wardress tugged at Hester again, bruising her wrists where the manacles dug into her.
“Come on, miss, we can’t stand about here,” the largest constable said, more gently. “We got to keep you safe.”
Hurriedly and awkwardly, still pushed and heaved by the crowd, now sullen, they made their way off the platform and up to the street.
They were driven in a closed van straight to the prison, where more wardresses awaited her, their faces hard, eyes angry.
She said nothing, asked no questions, and passed into the cell in silence, her head high, her thoughts islanded from them. She remained there until the middle of the afternoon, when she was escorted to another small room, bare but for a wooden table and two hard wooden chairs.
There was a man already there, tall and broad-shouldered, and to judge from his gray hair and beard and from the lines