The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [147]
Despair closed around him like the blackness of the night, eating away strength, crushing with the sheer weight of it. And he began to be afraid. There would be the few short weeks in the stone cell, the stolid warders, at once pitying and contemptuous, then the last meal, the priest, and the short walk to the scaffold, the smell of rope, the pain, the fighting for breath—and oblivion.
He was still drowned and paralyzed by it when he heard the sound on the stairs. The latch turned and Evan stood in the doorway. It was the worst moment of all. There was no point in lying, Evan’s face was full of knowledge, and pain. And anyway, he did not want to.
“How did you know?” Monk said quietly.
Evan came in and closed the door. “You sent me after Dawlish. I found an officer who’d served with Edward Dawlish. He didn’t gamble, and Joscelin Grey never paid any debts for him. Everything he knew about him he learned from Menard. He took a hell of a chance lying to the family like that—but it worked. They’d have backed him financially, if he hadn’t died. They blamed Menard for Edward’s fall from honor, and forbade him in the house. A nice touch on Joscelin’s part.”
Monk stared at him. It made perfect sense. And yet it would never even raise a reasonable doubt in a juror’s mind.
“I think that is where Grey’s money came from—cheating the families of the dead,” Evan continued. “You were so concerned about the Latterly case, it wasn’t a great leap of the imagination to assume he cheated them too—and that is why Charles Latterly’s father shot himself.” His eyes were soft and intense with distress. “Did you come this far the first time too—before the accident?”
So he knew about the memory also. Perhaps it was all far more obvious than he believed; the fumbling for words, the unfamiliarity with streets, public houses, old haunts—even Runcorn’s hatred of him. It did not matter anymore.
“Yes.” Monk spoke very slowly, as if letting the words fall one by one would make them believable. “But I did not kill Joscelin Grey. I fought with him, I probably hurt him—he certainly hurt me—but he was alive and swearing at me when I left.” He searched Evan’s countenance feature by feature. “I saw Menard Grey go in as I turned in the street. He was facing the light and I was going away from it. The outer door was still open in the wind.”
A desperate, painful relief flooded Evan’s face, and he looked bony and young, and very tired. “So it was Menard who killed him.” It was a statement.
“Yes.” A blossom of gratitude opened wide inside Monk, filling him with sweetness. Even without hope, it was to be treasured immeasurably. “But there is no proof.”
“But—” Evan began to argue, then the words died on his lips as he realized the truth of it. In all their searches they had found nothing. Menard had motive, but so had Charles Latterly, or Mr. Dawlish, or any other family Joscelin had cheated, any friend he had dishonored—or Lovel Grey, whom he might have betrayed in the cruelest way of all—or Monk himself. And Monk had been there. Now that they knew it, they also knew how easily provable it was, simply find the shop where he had bought that highly distinctive stick—such a piece of vanity. Mrs. Worley would remember it, and its subsequent absence. Lamb would recall seeing it in Grey’s flat the morning after the murder. Imogen Latterly would have to admit Monk had been working on the case of her father’s death.
The darkness was growing closer, tighter around them, the light guttering.
“We’ll have to get Menard to confess,” Evan said at last.
Monk laughed harshly. “And how do you propose we should do that? There’s no evidence, and he knows it. No one would take my word against his that I saw him, and kept silent about it till now. It will