“I should think so,” she answered frankly, weighing her words and aware that she believed them true. “It would also be a matter of protecting the reputation of a dead friend, for Judith’s sake too. I can understand that, even if I don’t know whether I would do it myself or not.”
His eyes widened. “At the expense of the truth? You!”
She looked back at him, trying to read his expression, but not with any intent to moderate how she answered.
“I don’t know. Not all truths need to be told. Some shouldn’t. I just don’t know which they are.”
“Yes, you do.” There was a black shadow in his face. “They are those which cause the innocent to suffer, and create a divide between people because of lies … even lies of silence.”
She did not understand the depth of feeling behind his words. It was as if he were angry with her, as he had been when they had first known each other and he had thought her hypocritical, even cold. Perhaps then there had been parts of her that were locked away, too quick to condemn what she did not understand and was afraid of, but not now!
She did not know how to break through the barrier. She could not find it, touch it, but she knew absolutely that it was there. What had she said that had created it? Why did he not know her better than to misunderstand? Or love her enough to break it himself?
“I don’t know what the truth is,” she said quietly, looking down at the table. “I think it more likely it had to do with Shearer, whether he meant to sell the guns to the pirates, or Trace, or Breeland, or just anyone who wanted them.”
“I can’t find Shearer.” His voice was flat. “No one has seen him since before the murders.”
“Doesn’t that say a great deal in itself?” she asked. “If he were not involved somehow, wouldn’t he still be here? Wouldn’t he be doing all he could to help, and perhaps improve his own position in the business? He might even hope to be some sort of manager.”
He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, moving about the small room restlessly.
“It isn’t enough,” he said grimly. “You can see it, and I can, but we can’t rely on a jury. Breeland had the guns. He was involved. He might have persuaded Shearer actually to commit the murders, probably for the price of the guns, which could be enough to corrupt many men. I admit, I don’t care if Breeland hangs for it. To corrupt another man to betrayal and murder is an even deeper sin than doing it yourself. But it won’t help Merrit because it doesn’t prove she had no knowledge of it.”
“But …” She started to protest, then realized with a crushing weight that he was right. Not only would the jury be less likely to believe it because of her closeness to Breeland, and the fact that she had gone willingly with him, dropping her watch in the warehouse yard, but she herself, in her misguided loyalty to him, would not deny it.
“There are dark places in everybody,” he said in the silence. “People you believe you know have violence and ugliness it is hard to accept, and impossible to understand.” There was anger in his voice and a pain she heard only too clearly. She wished to ask what he had discovered that he had not told her, but she knew from the angle of his body, the part of his face she could see, half turned away from her as it was, that he would not tell her.
She stood up to clear away the dishes and carry them through to the kitchen. She would not mention it again, at least not tonight.
Monk went to bed early. He was tired, but far more than that he wished to avoid speaking with Hester. He had shut himself out, and he did not know how to deal with it.
In the morning he woke early and left Hester still asleep. At least he thought she was. He was not certain. He wrote a hasty note telling her he had gone to the river again to pursue the matter of the guns, the money, and anything he could learn about the company who dealt with the pirates, then he left. He would find something to eat, if he felt like it, somewhere on the road. There were plenty of peddlers around with sandwiches and pies. The general mass of working people had no facilities to cook, and ate in the street. He did not want to risk Hester’s waking and finding him in the kitchen, because he would have to give some explanation, or openly avoid it, and he was not ready to face so much inward pain.
From the very moment he awoke in the hospital his past had been an unknown land which carried too many areas of darkness, too many ugly surprises. He should have had the sense, the self-restraint, to have guarded his feelings more. He had known then that marriage was not for him. Love and its vulnerabilities were for those with uncomplicated lives, who knew themselves and whose darkest recesses of the soul were only the ordinary envies and petty acts of retreat that affected everyone.
He had not been prepared for someone like Hester, who forced from him emotions he could not stifle or control, and in the end could not even deny.
He should have found the strength to! Or at least the sense of self-preservation.
Too late now. The wound was there, wide open.
He went out of the house, closing the front door softly, and walked as quickly as he could along Fitzroy Street and into Tottenham Court Road. He had no choice but to examine the blackmail issue more closely. His revulsion against the idea was no excuse; in fact, it impelled him to do all he could to test it against the facts, and if possible disprove it.
It was too early to obtain permission to examine Alberton’s finances. Rathbone would not be at his offices in Vere Street at this hour. However, Monk could write a note asking for the necessary authority, and leave it for him.
Then he would pursue Baskin and Company, who had been named as the intermediary for the pirates’ guns.
The river was busy in the early morning. Tides waited on no man’s convenience, and already dockers, ferrymen, bargees and stokers were busy. He saw coal backers, bent double under their heavy sacks, keeping a precarious balance as they climbed out of the deep holds. Men shouted to one another, and the cries of gulls circling low in hope of fish, the clatter of chains and metal on metal, were loud in the air above the ever-present surge and slap of water.
“Never ’eard of it, guv,” the first man answered cheerfully when Monk asked for the company. “In’t now’ere ’round ’ere. Eh! Jim! Yer ever ’eard o’ Baskin and Company?”
