Page 114 of A Breach of Promise (William Monk 9)

No one spoke.

Monk held Hester even closer, hardly aware that he was almost crushing her.

Minutes passed.

It was bitterly cold.

Loomis looked up at last.

“I’m afraid there isn’t enough left to tell anything,” he said quietly, his voice hoarse, almost breaking with disappointment. “I can take samples, but I doubt it will prove anything. Too many years … it’s just … gone!”

Hester loosed herself from Monk’s grasp and went forward to the coffin. She leaned over and looked in. Byrne lowered the lamp for her. Very slowly she put her hands down and moved the strands of clothes aside herself, going deeper than Loomis had.

Monk waited. He could feel his teeth chattering.

The wail of the foghorn came up from the river again.

One of the constables whispered the Lord’s name to himself.

Hester lifted her hand high under the lantern, looking at something in it, showing it to Loomis.

“Glass!” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat. “Ground glass. It’s still here. Under where the stomach used to be. She fed him ground glass. That’s why he bled to death!”

Monk felt the sweat break out on his skin, and found he was shaking.

“Got her!” Loomis said softly and with infinite satisfaction. “Sexton, put a guard on this, exactly as it is. On pain of complicity in murder, don’t move that body! Do you understand me?”

Very gently, Hester replaced the glass where she had found it.

The sexton nodded. The police moved closer, lanterns wavering, held high.

Loomis rubbed his hands down the sides of his trousers. Perhaps he too was sweating.

Hester turned around and came back to Monk. Loomis and the others were gradually moving away. There was only one lantern left for them to follow.

“We did it,” she said softly. She held her hands down, away from him. He had to reach for them to hold them in his. She was so cold they were like ice.

“Yes, we did,” he whispered back. “Thank you.”

She turned to pull away, but he held on to her. This was not the time, after all they had seen of prejudices and facile judgments, and it was most certainly not the place, but the words came to his lips and would not be stopped.

“Hester?”

“What?” She was shuddering with cold and shock.

He wanted to hold her closer but he knew she would refuse.

“Hester, will you marry me?”

She was silent for so long he thought she was not going to answer, possibly even that she had not heard him. He was about to repeat it when she spoke.

“Why?” she asked, looking at him, although she could hardly have seen his face in the light of the single lantern sitting on the gravestone to their side.

“Because I love you, of course!” he said sharply, feeling vulnerable and suddenly terrified she would refuse. A pit of loneliness loomed up in front of his imagination worse than the yawning grave beside them. “And I don’t want ever to be without you,” he added.

“I think that’s a good reason,” she said very softly. “Yes, I will.” And she did not resist in the slightest when he drew her closer to him and kissed her again, and again, and again.