The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [50]
He knew why the sinking feeling was familiar, the fear and the mixture of disbelief and complete acceptance. It was like his own experience of being both hunter and the hunted when he had first awakened in the hospital after the accident. He had not even known his own name, discovering himself piece by piece as he pursued Joscelin Grey’s murderer. He still knew far from all of himself nearly two years later, and much of what he had learned, seeing it through the eyes of others, half remembered, half guessed at, was confusing to him, full of qualities he did not like.
But this was no time to think of himself. He must solve this absurd problem of the death of Mrs. Farraline, and Hester’s part in it.
He closed his case and took it with him as he informed his landlady briskly and without further explanation that he was off to Edinburgh on business and did not know when he would be back.
She was used to his manner and disregarded it.
“Oh yes,” she said absently. Then added, with a sharp eye to what was important to her, “And you’ll be sending the rent, no doubt, if you’re gone that long, Mr. Monk?”
“No doubt,” he agreed tersely. “You’ll keep my letters.”
“That I will. Everything will be exactly as it should be. When have you ever found it different, Mr. Monk?”
“Never,” he said grudgingly. “Good day to you.”
“Good day, sir.”
By the time he reached the prison where Hester was being held Rathbone had been as good as his word, and arrangements had been made for Monk to gain admittance, as Rathbone’s assistant, and therefore, in a sense, a legal adviser to Hester.
The wardress who took him along the gray, stone-floored passageway towards the cell was broad-backed, heavily muscled and had an expression of intense dislike in her powerful face. It chilled Monk to see it and filled him with something as close to panic as he could remember in a long time. He knew why it was there. The woman knew the charge against Hester—that of having murdered an old lady who was her patient and who trusted her implicitly, for the chance to steal a piece of jewelry worth perhaps a few hundred pounds. That was enough to keep her in luxury for a year—but at the cost of a human life. She would have seen all sorts of tragedy, sin and despair pass through her cells, brutalized women who had murdered violent husbands, pimps or lovers; inadequate despairing women who had murdered their children; hungry and greedy women who had stolen; cunning women, crude or brazen women, ignorant, vicious, frightened, stupid—all manner of folly and vice. But there was little as despicable in her mind as an educated woman of good family who stooped to poison an old lady who was in her specific charge, and for gain of something she did not need.
There would be no forgiveness in her, not even the usual casual pity she showed for the thief and the prostitute caught in a sudden act of violence against a violent world. With the envy and frustration of the ignorant and oppressed, she would hate Hester for being a lady. And at the same time she would hate her also for not having lived up to the privilege with which she was born. To have been given it was bad enough, to have betrayed it was beyond excusing. Monk’s fear for Hester condensed into a cold, hard sickness inside him.
The wardress kept her back to him all the way along the corridor until she came to the cell door, where she inserted the heavy key into the lock and turned it. Even now she did not look at Monk. It was a mark of her utter contempt that it extended to him. Even curiosity did not alleviate it.
Inside the cell Hester was standing. She turned slowly as she heard the bolt draw back, a look of hope lighting her face.