She looked at him in a long, curious, pleading gaze, as if there were a question she did not know how to frame.
If he understood, there was no reflection of it in his expression or in his bearing. He did not offer any further explanation.
“Wait for me in the carnage,” he told her. “You will be more comfortable there. Miss Latterly will be back in a few moments.” And without anything further, he took his leave, walking rapidly towards the stairs down to the cells.
Some twenty minutes later Rathbone was outside on the entrance steps to the street, talking to Monk, who had just arrived. Ebenezer Goode came striding down, his hair flying, his face ashen. He pushed past a clerk, almost knocking the man off his feet.
“What is it?” Rathbone said with a sudden upsurge of fear. “What's happened, man? You look terrible!”
Goode seized him by the arm, half turning him around.
“He's dead! It's all over. He's dead!”
“Who's dead?” Monk demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“Caleb,” his voice was hoarse. “Caleb is dead.”
“He can't be!” Rathbone knew even as he said it that it was stupid. He was trying to deny reality, because it was ugly and he did not want to believe it.
“How?” Monk asked, cutting across Rathbone. “What happened? Did he kill himself?” He swore viciously, clenching his fist in the air. “How could they be so damnably stupid? Although I don't know why I care! Better the poor devil does it himself than drag it out to the long torture of a judicial hanging. I should be glad.” He said the words between his teeth, hard and guttural. “Why can't I Rathbone looked from Monk to Goode. The same conflicting emotions tore inside him. He should have been grateful. Caleb had in effect confessed.
Rathbone had succeeded. The Duke of Wellington's words rang in his ears about the next most terrible thing to a battle lost being a battle won.
There was no taste of victory whatever.
“It wasn't suicide,” Goode said shakily. “Ravensbrook went in to see him, as he asked. Apparently Caleb was concemed he was going to be found guilty.
He said he wanted to write a statement. Perhaps it was a confession, or an indication of something, who knows? Ravensbrook came out for a quill and a paper for him. He took them back in. Apparently the quill was poor. He found his penknife to recut it…”
Rathbone felt sick, as if he knew the words before they came.
“Caleb suddenly lurched forward, seized the knife, and attacked Ravensbrook,” Goode said, his eyes going from Rathbone to Monk, and back again.
Rathbone was startled. It was not what he had thought after all.
“They fought,” Goode went on. “Poor Ravensbrook is cut quite badly.” “God help him,” Rathbone said quietly. “That was not the ending I wanted, but perhaps it is not the worst. Thank you, Goode. Thank you for telling me.”
Chapter 11
Rathbone was stunned by the news. It was preposterous, even if not all the elements were tragic. He had never known such a thing to happen before, certainly not in this manner.
Monk was standing stock-still, his face dark.
“Come on,” Rathbone said gently. “It's all over.”
Monk did not move. “No it isn't. I don't understand it.”
Rathbone laughed abruptly. “Do you ever? Do any of us? If you thought he was going to tell you what he did with Angus, or why he killed him now, instead of sometime in the past years, you were dreaming. The wretched man was mad. Dear God, wasn't that evidence enough? Jealousy had driven him insane. What more is there to understand?”
“Why he attacked Ravensbrook now,” Monk replied, turning and standing to climb the steps back up. “What good would it have done him?”
“None at all!” Rathbone said impatiently, following rapidly after him.
“What good did killing Angus do him? Nothing except release his hatred.
Perhaps he felt the same way about Ravensbrook. He had nothing to lose.
Can't hang him twice.”
“But they weren't necessarily going to hang him at all!” Monk said sharply, striding through the door and into the hallway. “Goode hadn't even begun.
He's a damned clever lawyer.” They passed a group of dark-suited men talking quietly, and almost bumped into a clerk hurrying in the opposite direction.
“We know Caleb killed Angus,” Monk went on. “Or at least I do… because I heard him admit it, even boast about it. But that's not proof. He still had hope.”
“Maybe he didn't know that. I'm a damned clever lawyer too!” Rathbone said at his elbow.
“Is this what you wanted?” Monk demanded, matching Rathbone pace for pace along the corridor, coattails flying. “Can't prove he was guilty, so deceive the poor devil into committing another murder, right there in his cell, so we can hang him for that, without a quibble? Even Ebenezer Goode couldn't defend him from that!”
It was on the edge of Rathbone's tongue to give back an equally bitter response, then he looked more closely at Monk, the confusion in his face.
It was not all anger. There was doubt and pain in it as well.
“What?” he demanded, swinging to a stop.
“Are you deaf? I said-” Monk began.
“I heard what you said!” Rathbone snapped. “It was sufficiently stupid-I shall ignore it. I am trying to fathom what you meant. Something puzzles you, something more than simply the questions we were asking before, and now we shall almost certainly never answer.”
“Ravensbrook said Caleb attacked him.” Monk began walking again. “And he fought him off. In the struggle Caleb was killed… accidentally.” “I heard it,” Rathbone agreed, going down the steps towards the cells. “Why?
What are you thinking? That it was actually suicide, and Ravensbrook is covering it up? Why?” They were obliged to walk in single file for some distance, then at the bottom Monk caught up again. “It makes no sense,”
Rathbone went on. “What reason could he have? The wretched man is dead, and guilty by implication, if not proof. What would he be saving him? Or any- one?”
“Legally he's innocent,” Monk said with a scowl. “Not yet proven guilty, whatever we know, you and I. We don't count.”
“For God's sake, Monk, the public knows. And as soon as the court reconvenes, they'll have him for trying to kill Ravensbrook as well.”
“But as a suicide he'd be buried in unhallowed ground,” Monk pointed out.
They were just outside the main door to the cells. “This way he's not convicted of anything, only charged. People can believe whatever they want.
He'll go down in posterity as an innocent man.”
“I should think if it's a lie at all,” Rathbone argued, “it is more likely Ravensbrook doesn't want to be accused of deliberately allowing the man to take his own life, morally at any time, legally while he's in custody and on trial.”
“Point,” Monk conceded.
“Thank you,” Rathbone acknowledged. “I think it is most probable he is simply giving a mixture of what he knows in the confusion, and what he hopes happened. He is bound to be very shocked, and grieved, poor devil.”
Monk did not reply, but knocked sharply on the door.
They were permitted in with some reluctance. Rathbone had to insist in his capacity as an officer of the court,
