Rathbone opened his mouth to speak, then sensed something deeper and beyond words, and said nothing.
“I met her in the Botanic Gardens earlier in the day,” Monk went on. “She was very distressed, and still passionately convinced that Dalgarno was guilty. We more or less quarreled about it, at least that is what it would appear to be to any onlookers, and there were many.”
Rathbone leaned forward a little across the desk, concentrating intensely.
Monk felt hot, and then cold. He was shivering. “She grasped at me, as if to demand my attention. Then, in pulling away she tore the button off my coat. It was my button in her hand.”
“Several hours later? When fighting with her murderer?” Rathbone said softly. “Monk, are you telling me the whole truth? If I am to defend you, I need it.”
Monk looked up at him slowly, dreading what he would see. “I came to ask you to defend Dalgarno,” he said, ignoring Rathbone’s surprise. “I think he may be innocent. Either way, I need him to be defended to the best of anyone’s ability. If he hangs, I have to be certain, beyond any doubt at all-reasonable or otherwise, that he killed her.”
“I am more concerned about keeping your neck out of the noose,” Rathbone said earnestly. “You knew this woman, you were seen to quarrel with her the day of her death, and your coat button was in her hand. And you didn’t tell me what happened to the letters which incriminated you.”
“I took them,” Monk told him. “Runcorn asked me to show him the rooms where she lived. I saw them before he did. I took them, and burnt them when I got home.”
Rathbone let out a long sigh. “I see. And to whom were these letters written?”
“Someone called Emma, but I don’t know anything else, except that she did not live in London. I went back”-he saw Rathbone wince, and ignored it-“and looked for more, an address book, but I didn’t find one.”
“Were they regular correspondents?”
Monk’s voice was hoarse. “I don’t know!” He did not mention the diary. No one had heard about it, and he clung to the tiny thread of hope that somehow it would still tell him something about Katrina which could provide a link, however fragile. And there was something of her dreams in it he wanted to protect. Perhaps if he were honest, that was it.
“I see,” Rathbone repeated softly. “And you are afraid your actions will hang a man who may be innocent.” That was not a question. He knew Monk well enough for it not to need to be.
Monk looked at him steadily. “Yes. Please?”
“He may have his own barrister already,” Rathbone warned. “But I will do everything I can, I promise you.”
Monk started to say “You’ve got to,” and realized how foolish that was. He was asking a favor for which he could not pay, perhaps an impossible one. “Thank you,” he said instead.
Rathbone smiled slightly, like a moment’s sun on a winter landscape. “Then let us begin. If Dalgarno did not kill her, and you did not, then who did? Do you have any idea at all?”
“No,” Monk said simply. It was the bare truth. He realized how very little he knew about Katrina Harcus. He could have described her to the minutest detail-her hair, her face, her remarkable eyes, the way she moved, the inflections of her voice. He could have told Rathbone what she had worn almost every time he had seen her. But until the day of her death he had not even known where she lived, let alone where she came from or anything of her daily life, her family or her past.
Rathbone tightened his lips for a second, then with an effort forbore from making any comment on Monk’s gullibility. Perhaps if he considered it, he knew as little about some of his own clients. “Well then, the first thing you can do is find out everything else you can about her, and as rapidly as possible,” he said bleakly. “Go wherever it takes you, but report to me every day.” He knew he did not need to emphasize that.
Monk stood up. Rathbone had been light in his condemnation, saying nothing of criticism or blame, but Monk knew him well enough to be aware of his thoughts. He felt as crushed by the mere fact of them as if they all had been put into speech.
Rathbone handed him the funds he would need.
“Thank you,” Monk accepted, hating it. Whether Rathbone would get any of it back from Dalgarno was still an open question, but Monk could not afford to refuse. He had no idea where his search would take him. Not only would Dalgarno’s life depend on it, but his own conscience, his identity, and if things came to the worst, his life too. If it seemed Dalgarno would be convicted, then he would have to tell the court of the paper he had found at Katrina’s rooms, and destroyed, and show them that the coat button was his. Then how could even Rathbone save him from the rope?
And yet he was innocent. Perhaps Dalgarno was also.
“I need to start with Dalgarno himself,” he said aloud. “Get me an interview with him.”
The clock had struck nine by the time Monk stood in the Newgate cell, Rathbone sitting to the side in the only chair. Dalgarno, pale and unshaven, paced back and forth restlessly, his face already haggard from the shock of realization that ahead of him lay the possibility of the gallows.
“I didn’t kill her!” he said desperately, his voice rising, close to breaking.
Monk kept his own emotions icily under control. It was the only way to approach thinking with any clarity.
“Then someone else did, Mr. Dalgarno,” he replied. “No jury will acquit you unless you provide them with an alternative.”
“I don’t know who did, for God’s sake!” Dalgarno cried out wildly. “Do you think I’d be standing here in prison if I did?” He stared at Monk as if he were a complete fool.
Monk felt a pity for him, and a guilt for his own part in it, but he also could not like the man. He had treated Katrina Harcus badly, whether he had killed her or not.
“Hysteria won’t help,” he said with chill. “Logic is the only thing that may. What do you know about her? And please tell me everything, and the truth, whether it is flattering to you or not. Your life may depend upon it. It is no time for protecting your reputation or your vanity.”
Dalgarno glared at him, then at Rathbone.
Rathbone nodded almost imperceptibly.
“I met her at a garden party,” Dalgarno began, his tone now subdued. “She was charming, full of life. I thought she was the most interesting woman I had ever seen. But I knew nothing of her social background, except that she was obviously well-bred and had sufficient means to dress in the height of fashion.”
“Who were her friends?” Monk asked.
Dalgarno rattled off half a dozen names. They meant nothing to Monk, but he saw Rathbone register recognition.
“Maybe one of them killed her,” Dalgarno said desperately. “I can’t think why, but God knows I didn’t. Why would I? I didn’t want to marry her, and she seems to think I did.” He colored faintly. “But there was no fraud-I swear!” He waved his hands jerkily. “We may have shaved a little here and there, but everyone does.”
Monk did not comment on that. It was irrelevant now. “That is precisely why I need to know more about her, Mr. Dalgarno. Someone killed her. Where did she come from? What about her family?”
“I don’t know!” Dalgarno said impatiently. “We didn’t discuss it.”
“But you were intending to marry her,” Monk pointed out. “As an ambitious young man, surely you enquired?”
Dalgarno blushed. “I… I believe she came originally from the Liverpool area. She said both her parents were dead.”
It made excellent sense. The fraud she had accused Dalgarno of practicing was almost an exact copy of the one for which Dundas had been convicted. Had she grown up in the Liverpool area she could have heard of it, and of the crash she had told Monk about with such horror.
He asked other questions, but for a man who had claimed to be in love, Dalgarno knew surprisingly little about her. But then Monk recalled with brutal honesty how little he had known, or cared, about some of the young women with whom he had thought himself in love.
Perhaps it was because he had known Hester since the first months after the accident, and she had crowded all others out of anything but the surface of his mind. She was real; they were only idealizations he had thought he wanted.
