The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [501]
“Was I unreasonable?” Monk asked, then instantly wished he had not. It was an idiotic question. What could this man answer? And yet he heard his own voice going on. “Was I … offensive?”
Markham hesitated, looking first at his plate, then up at Monk, trying to judge from his eyes whether he wanted a candid answer or flattery. Monk knew what the decision would have to be; he liked flattery, but he had never in his life sought it. His pride would not have permitted him. And Markham was a man of some courage. He liked him now. He hoped he had had the honesty and the good judgment to like him before, and to show it.
“Yes,” Markham said at last. “Although I wouldn’t ’ave said so much offensive. Offense depends on who takes it. I don’t take it. Can’t say as I always liked you—too ’ard on some people because they didn’t meet your standards, when they couldn’t ’elp it. Different men ’as different strengths, and you weren’t always prepared to see that.”
Monk smiled to himself, a trifle bitterly. Now that he was no longer on the force, Markham had shown a considerable temerity and put tongue to thoughts he would not have dared entertain even as ideas in his mind a year ago. But he was honest. That he would not have dared say such things before was no credit to Monk, rather the reverse.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Monk.” Markham saw his face. “But you did drive us terrible ’ard, and tore strips off them as couldn’t match your quickness.” He took another mouthful and ate it before adding, “But then you was right. It took us a long time, and tore to shreds a few folk on the way, as was lying for one reason or another; but in the end you proved as it weren’t Mrs. Ward at all. It was ’er ladies’ maid and the butler together. They were ’avin’ an affair, the two o’ them, and ’ad planned to rob their master, but ’e came down in the night and found them, so they ’ad to kill ’im or face a life in gaol. And personally I’d rather ’ang than spend forty years in the Coldbath Fields or the like—an’ so would most folk.”
So it was he who had proved it—he had saved her from the gallows. Not circumstance, not inevitability.
Markham was watching him, his face pinched with curiosity and puzzlement. He must find him extraordinary. Monk was asking questions that would be odd from any policeman, and from a ruthless and totally assured man like himself, beyond comprehension.
Instinctively he bent his head to slice his mutton, and kept at least his eyes hidden. He felt ridiculously vulnerable. This was absurd. He had saved Hermione, her honor and her life.
Why did he no longer even know her? He might have been keen for justice, as he was for Alexandra Carlyon—even passionate for it—but the emotion that boiled up in him at the memory of Hermione was far more than a hunger for the right solution to a case. It was deep and wholly personal. She haunted him as she could have only if he loved her. The ache was boundless for a companionship that had been immeasurably sweet, a gentleness, a gateway to his better self, the softer, generous, tender part of him.
Why? Why had they parted? Why had he not married her?
He had no idea what the reason was, and it frightened him.
Perhaps he should leave the wound unopened. Let it heal.
But it was not healing. It still hurt, like a skin grown over a place that suppurated yet.
Markham was looking at him.
“You still want to find Mrs. Ward?” he asked.
“Yes—yes I do.”
“Well she left The Grange. I suppose she had too many memories from there. And folk still talked, for all it was proved she ’ad nothing to do with it. But you know ’ow it is—in an investigation all sorts o’ things come out, that maybe ’ave nothing to do with