No one needed to answer her. Runcorn looked at Monk intently. “Is it really possible someone killed him to silence him, and bury his report? But why?”
Monk answered, his voice a little hoarse. “Yes, I am beginning to think it is possible. And there has to be a reason, something deeper than just wanting to delay his report, and thus the bill.”
They sat without speaking for several moments. The fire burned gently in the hearth, creating a warm light and a soft, whispering sound.
“What are you going to do?” Melisande said at last, looking at Runcorn. There was fear both in her voice and in her face.
Runcorn looked back at her. Monk had never before seen emotion so naked or so intensely readable in his face. It was as if he and Melisande were alone in the room. He cared intensely what she thought of him, yet he knew he must make the decision alone.
Monk barely drew breath, willing Runcorn to give the right answer.
Ash collapsed in the fireplace and the coals settled.
“If we do nothing, we become part of this … conspiracy, if there is one,” Runcorn said at last. “I’m sorry, but we must learn the truth. If Lambourn was murdered then we must find out and prove who did it, and who concealed it, and why.” He put out his hand gently and touched hers. “It may be very dangerous.”
She smiled at him, her eyes bright with fear and pride. “I know.”
Monk had no need to answer her question for himself. He had come to Runcorn in the first place because this was precisely what he feared. He admitted to himself now that if he had truly believed Dinah Lambourn was guilty, he would not have taken the case to Rathbone, let alone pursue the evidence himself.
Runcorn stood up and stoked the fire.
They talked a little more, making further plans to report to Rathbone. Then Monk said good night and went outside into the dark street. The rain had stopped, but it was colder. At this late hour, it might be difficult to get a cab. He would have a better chance if he went toward the lamplit streets in the center of the town, where there were clubs and theaters with other people looking for transport, perhaps even a place where cabbies ate, or waited for fares.
He was walking briskly along the footpath, seeing clearly enough in the light from a few lamps at front doors, when he was aware of someone behind him. His first thought was that it might be another person hoping to find a hansom. Their steps were quiet and they seemed to be moving very rapidly. He stepped aside to let them pass. It was at that instant that he felt the blow on his shoulder, so hard it numbed his whole left arm. Had it landed on his head it would have knocked him senseless.
His assailant regained his balance and swung again, but this time Monk lashed out with his foot hard and high. He caught the man in the groin and the attacker pitched forward. Monk raised his knee under the man’s jaw as he collapsed, snapping his head back so hard Monk was afraid he might have broken his neck. The cudgel clattered away across the pavement and into the gutter.
Monk’s own left arm was still paralyzed.
The man rolled over, gasping, struggling to get up onto his hands and knees.
Relieved that he was alive, Monk kicked him again, hard, in the lower chest where it would knock the wind out of him.
The man coughed and retched.
Monk straightened up. There was another figure on the far side of the street, not running toward him, as someone might do if he meant to help, but moving easily, carrying something in his right hand.
Monk swung round. There was a dense shadow ahead of him also, maybe the bulk of someone half concealed in a doorway. He turned on his heel, his left arm still leaden and throbbing with pain. He ran as fast as he could back the way he had come.
He was less than a mile from Runcorn’s house. He did not know how many more attackers there might be. He was in an area he did not know, and it was close to midnight. His left arm was useless.
He did not go directly back to Runcorn’s house. Whoever was after him would expect that. He kept to the broader streets, going as fast as he could, around the back, through other people’s gardens, and eventually arrived at Runcorn’s kitchen door, searching desperately for a sign someone was still up.
He saw nothing. He crouched in the back garden, trying to be invisible among rows of vegetables and a potting shed. He could not imagine Runcorn doing anything as domestic as gardening. He smiled to himself, in spite of the fact he was beginning to shiver. He could not stay out here. For one thing it was extremely cold and beginning to rain again, and he was hurt. More urgently, sooner or later they would think to look here for him. Very likely, it would be sooner!
He picked up a handful of small stones out of the earth and tossed them at one of the upstairs windows.
Silence.
He tried again, harder.
This time the window opened and Runcorn put his head out, just visible as a greater darkness against the night sky.
Monk stood up slowly. “They’re after us,” he said in the dark. “I was attacked.”
The window closed and a moment later the back door opened and Runcorn came out, a jacket over his nightshirt. He said nothing but helped Monk in, locked the back door again, and shot the bolt home, then looked Monk up and down.
“Well, at least we know we’re right,” he said drily. “We’ve got a spare room. Are you bleeding?”
“No, just can’t move my arm.”
“I’ll fetch you a clean nightshirt, and a stiff whisky.”
Monk smiled. “Thank you.”
Runcorn stood still for a moment. “Like the way it used to be, isn’t it?” he said with a bleak satisfaction. “Only better.”
CHAPTER 12
Oliver Rathbone sat in his chamber in the Old Bailey trying to compose his mind to begin the defense of Dinah Lambourn, on the charge of murdering Zenia Gadney. It was the highest-profile case he had appeared in for some time. He had already received considerable criticism for taking it at all. Of course, the remarks had been oblique. Everyone knew that all accused persons had the right to be represented in court, whoever they were and whatever they were charged with, regardless of the certainty of their guilt. That was the law.
Personal revulsion was an entirely different matter. Acknowledging mentally that somebody should represent her was quite different from actually doing it yourself.
“Not a wise move, Rathbone,” one of his friends had said, shaking his head and pursing his mouth. “Should have let some hungry young beggar take it, one who has nothing to lose.”
Rathbone had been stung. “Is that who you’d want defending your wife?” he had demanded.
“My wife wouldn’t hack a prostitute to death and dump her in the river!” the man had replied with heat.
“Maybe Dinah Lambourn didn’t, either,” Rathbone had responded, wishing he had not been foolish enough to allow himself to be drawn into this discussion.
Perhaps the man had been right. As he sat in the big, comfortable chair and looked at the papers spread out on his desk, he wondered if he had been rash. Had he accepted this as a sort of suicide of his own, a self-inflicted punishment for failing Margaret?
The newspapers were running banner headlines about the trial. Some journalists had described Dinah as a woman consumed with hatred toward her own sex. They suggested she was insanely jealous, given to delusions, and had driven Lambourn to suicide with her possessiveness.
Another paper’s editorial pointed out that if the jury sanctioned a woman committing a hideous and depraved murder because her husband had resorted to a prostitute, there was no end to the slaughter that that might lead to.
And of course Rathbone had heard some women siding with Dinah, saying that men who consorted with prostitutes defiled the marriage bed, not only by the betrayal of their vows, but more immediately and physically by the possibility of returning to a loyal wife and bringing to her the diseases of the whorehouse, and thus of course to their children. And what about the money such men lavished on their own appetites, even while in the act of denying their wives household necessities?