given.
Monk's bitter solution of the case had crushed her totally, and it was something she would never forgive.
Rosamond, Lovel's wife, sat to her mother-in-law's left, composed and solitary.
The judge spoke his brief summation and the jury retired. The crowd remained in its seats, fearful lest they lose their places and miss the climax of the drama.
Monk wondered how often before he had attended the trial of someone he had arrested. The case notes he had searched so painstakingly to discover himself had stopped short with the unmasking of the criminal. They had shown him a careful man who left no detail to chance, an intuitive man who could leap from bare evidence to complicated structures of motive and opportunity, sometimes brilliantly, leaving others plodding behind, mystified. It also showed relentless ambition, a career built step by step, both by dedicated work and hard hours and by maneuvering others so he was in the place, at the time, when he could seize the advantage over less able colleagues. He made very few mistakes and forgave none in others. He had many admirers, but no one apart from Evan seemed to like him. And looking at the man who emerged from the pages he was not surprised. He did not like him himself.
Evan had met him only after the accident. The Grey case had been their first together.
He stood waiting for another fifteen minutes, thinking about the shreds he knew of himself, trying to picture the rest, and unsure whether he would find it familiar, easy to understand, therefore to forgive-or a nature he neither liked nor respected. Of the man before, or apart from his work, there was nothing, not a letter or memento that had meaning.
The jury was returning, their faces tense, eyes anxious. The buzz of voices ceased, there was no sound but the rustle of fabric and squeak of boots.
The judge asked if they had reached a verdict, and if it had been the verdict of them all.
They answered that they had. He asked the foreman what it was, and he replied: 'Guilty-but we plead for clemency, my lord. Most sincerely, we ask that you give all the mercy allowed you, within the law-sir.'
Monk found himself standing to attention, breathing very slowly as if the very sound of it in his ears might lose him some fraction of what was said. Beside him someone coughed, and he could have hit the man for his intrusion.
Was Hester here? Was she waiting as he was?
He looked at Menard Grey, who had risen to his feet and appeared, for all the crowd around him, as alone as a man could be. Every person in this entire paneled and vaulted hall was here to see judgment upon him, his life, or death. Beside him Rathbone, slimmer, and at least three inches shorter, put out a hand to steady him, or perhaps simply to let him feel a touch and know someone else was at least aware.
'Menard Grey,' the judge said very slowly, his face creased with sadness and something that looked like both pity and frustration. 'You have been found guilty of murder by this court. Indeed, you have wisely not pleaded otherwise. That is to your credit. Your counsel has made much of the provocation offered you, and the emotional distress you suffered at the hands of the victim. The court cannot regard that as an excuse. If every man who felt himself ill used were to resort to violence our civilization would end.''
There was a ripple of anger around the room, a letting out of breath in a soft hiss.
'However,' the judge said sharply, 'the fact that great wrongs were done, and you sought ways to prevent them, and could not find them within the law, and therefore committed this crime to prevent the continuation of these wrongs to other innocent persons, has been taken into account when considering sentence. You are a misguided man, but it is my judgment that you are not a wicked one. I sentence you to be transported to the land of Australia, where you will remain for a period of twenty-five years in Her Majesty's colony of Western Australia.' He picked up his gavel to signal the end of the matter, but the sound of it was drowned in the cheering and stamping of feet and the scramble as the press charged to report the decision.
Monk did not find a chance to speak to Hester, but he did see her once, over the heads of a score of people. Her eyes were shining, and the tiredness suggested by her severe hairstyle, and the plain stuff of her dress, was wiped away by the glow of triumph-and utter relief. In that instant she was almost beautiful. Their eyes met and the moment was shared. Then she was carried along and he lost sight of her.
He also saw Fabia Grey as she was leaving, her body stiff, her face bleak and white with hatred. She walked alone, refusing to allow her daughter-in-law to help her, and her eldest and only remaining son chose to walk behind, head erect, a faint, tiny smile touching his mouth. Callandra Daviot would be with Rathbone. It was she, not Menard's own family, who had employed him, and she who would settle the account.
He did not see Rathbone, but he could imagine his triumph, and although it was what Monk also wanted most and had worked for, he found himself resenting Rathbone's success, the smugness he could so clearly envision in the lawyer's face and the gleam of another victory in his eyes.
He went straight from the Old Bailey back to the police station and up to Runcorn's office to report his progress to date in the Queen Anne Street case.
Runcorn looked at Monk's extremely smart jacket and his eyes narrowed and a flick of temper twitched in his high, narrow cheeks.
'I've been waiting for you for two days,' he said as soon as Monk was through the door. 'I assume you are working hard, but I require to be informed of precisely what you have learned-if anything! Have you seen the newspapers? Sir Basil Moidore is an extremely influential man. You don't seem to realize who we are dealing with, and he has friends in very high circles-cabinet ministers, foreign ambassadors, even princes.'
“He also has enemies within his own house,'' Monk replied with more flippancy than was wise, but he knew the case was going to become uglier and far more difficult than it was already. Runcorn would hate it. He was terrified of offending authority, or people he thought of as socially important, and the Home Office would press for a quick solution because the public was outraged. At the same time he would be sick with fear lest he offend Moidore. Monk would be caught in the middle, and Runcorn would be only too delighted, if the results at last gave him the opportunity, to crush Monk's pretensions and make his failure public.
Monk could see it all ahead, and it infuriated him that even foreknowledge could not help him escape.
'I am not amused by riddles,' Runcorn snapped. 'If you have discovered nothing and the case is too difficult for you, say so, and I shall put someone else on it.'
Monk smiled, showing his teeth. 'An excellent idea-sir,' he answered. 'Thank you.'
'Don't be impertinent!' Runcorn was thoroughly out of countenance. It was the last response he had expected. 'If you are giving me your resignation, do it properly, man, not with a casual word like this. Are you resigning?' For a brief moment hope gleamed in his round eyes.
'No sir.' Monk could not keep the lift in his voice. The victory was only a single thrust; the whole battle was already lost. 'I thought you were offering to replace me on the Moi-dorecase.'
'No I am not. Why?' Runcorn's short, straight eyebrows rose. 'Is it too much for your skills? You used to be the best detective on the force-at least that was what you told everyone!' His voice grated with sour satisfaction. 'But you've certainly lost your sharpness since your accident. You didn't do badly with the Grey case, but it took you long enough. I expect they'll hang Grey.' He looked at Monk with satisfaction. He was sharp enough to have read Monk's feelings correctly, his sympathy for Menard.
'No they won't,' Monk retorted. 'They brought in the verdict this afternoon. Deportation for twenty-five years.' He smiled, letting his triumph show. 'He could make quite a decent life for himself in Australia.''
'If he doesn't die of fever,' Runcorn said spitefully. 'Or get killed in a riot, or starve.'
'That could happen in London.' Monk kept his face expressionless.
'Well, don't stand there like a fool.' Runcorn sat down behind his desk. 'Why are you afraid of the Moidore case? You think it is beyond your ability?'
'It was someone in the house,' Monk answered.
'Of course it was someone in the house.' Runcorn glared at him. 'What's the matter with you, Monk? Have you lost your wits? She was killed in the bedroom-someone broke in. No one suggested she was dragged out into the street.'
Monk took malicious pleasure in disabusing him.
'They were suggesting a burglar broke in,' he said, framing each word carefully and precisely, as if to someone slow of understanding. He leaned a little forward.”I am saying that no one broke in and whoever murdered Sir Basil's daughter, he-or she-was in the house already-and is still in the house. Social tact supposes one of the servants; common sense says it is far more probably one of the family.''
