The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [181]
“I know,” he said quietly. “It looks as if the Farralines win in the end. I’m sorry.”
She looked around with sudden fury. “Well, can’t we at least destroy this machine that prints the money? Can’t we smash the plates or something?”
He smiled, then he started to laugh, quietly and with genuine amusement.
“Bravo! Yes, by all means, let’s ruin them. That’ll be something accomplished.”
“It’ll make them very angry,” she said thoughtfully. “They might be enraged and kill us.”
“My dear girl, if we are not already suffocated to death, they’ll kill us anyway. We know enough to hang them … we just don’t know which ones.”
She took a deep breath to steady herself. Although she had already realized it, it was different to hear him say so.
“Yes—yes, of course they will. Well, let us at least min their plates. They could still be evidence, in the event the police find them. Anyway, as you say, forgery is very evil; it is a pollution, a corruption of our means of exchange with one another. We ought to end this much of it.” And without waiting for him to follow, she went over and lifted up one of the plates, then froze.
“What is it?” he said immediately.
“Don’t let’s break them,” she said with a tingle of quite genuine pleasure. “Let’s just mar them, so little they don’t realize it, but enough that when they have printed all the money, unless they look at it very carefully, they will still pass it. But the first person who does look at it will know it is wrong. That would be more effective, wouldn’t it? And a better revenge …”
“Excellent! Let’s find the engraving tools and the acid. Be careful you don’t get any of it on your skin. And not on your dress, in case they notice it.”
They set about it with determination, working side by side, erasing here and there, making little blotching marks, but always discreetly, until they had in some way marred every single plate. It took them until after two in the morning, and the lamp was burning low. And now that there was nothing more to do, they were also growing increasingly aware of the cold. Without thinking, they automatically sat close together on some boxes of paper, huddled in the corner, and above the colder floor level. There were no drafts; the room was effectively sealed. And after their concentration on the plates had gone, they were also aware that the air was getting stale. A great deal of the space was already taken up with boxes and machinery.
“I can’t believe Mary knew about this,” Hester said again, her mind still hurt by the thought, teased by memories of the woman she had known, or thought she had known, on the London train. “I really don’t think she would have lived off forgery all those years.”
“Perhaps she viewed it as you did,” Monk replied, staring into the little pool of light the lantern made. “A victimless crime, just a little greed.”
She did not reply for several minutes. He had not met Mary, and she did not know how to convey the sense of honesty she had felt in her.
“Do you suppose they all did?” she said at length.
“No,” he said immediately, then apparently realized the logical position in which he had placed himself. “All right, perhaps she didn’t. If she did, then all this”—he inclined his head towards the presses—“was no reason to kill her. If she didn’t, how do you suppose she found out? She wouldn’t have come down here looking for this room. If she knew, why did she not call the police? Why go off to London? It was urgent, but hardly an emergency. There was certainly time to attend to this first.” He shook his head. “But would Mary have exposed her own family to scandal, ruin and imprisonment? Wouldn’t she just have demanded they stop? That would be reason to kill her?”
“If I were a forger,” she replied, “I’d have said, ‘Yes, Mother,’ and moved it somewhere