Page 32 of The Sins of the Wolf (William Monk 5)

It was a vicious satisfaction to him to see Monk’s face blanch even further and his eyes widen fractionally with shock, as if he had sustained a heavy and totally unexpected blow.

The two stood facing each other across Rathbone’s desk in frozen silence for seconds. Then Monk absorbed the shock and recovered himself, far more rapidly than Rathbone had expected him to, more rapidly than he had himself.

“I presume we are agreed that Hester did not kill her?” Monk said levelly. “In spite of any evidence to the contrary?”

Rathbone smiled bleakly, remembering Monk’s own fearful suspicions of himself when he had awakened in his amnesia, the struggle through the tightening webs of evidence. He saw the same memories in Monk’s eyes and for an instant their understanding was as clear as the dawn light. Even great distances seemed close enough to touch. Enmity vanished.

“Of course,” Rathbone agreed. “We know only a fraction of the truth. When we know it all, the story will be utterly different.”

Monk smiled.

Then the moment vanished.

“And what makes you think we shall ever know it all?” Monk demanded. “Who, in God’s name, ever knows all the truth about anything? Do you?”

“If I know enough about the facts to put it beyond dispute,” Rathbone said coldly, “that would be sufficient. Are you willing to help in the practicalities, or do you wish to stand there arguing the nicer philosophical points of it?”

“Oh, practicalities?” Monk said sarcastically, his eyebrows high. “What had you in mind?” His gaze swept the desk, searching for something achieved, some sign of progress, and found nothing.

Rathbone was acutely aware of his inadequacies, and what he had actually been doing between the time Daly left and Monk arrived was getting rid of all other pressing matters to leave himself free to attend to the Farraline case, but he refused to explain himself to Monk.

“There are three possibilities,” he said in a hard, level voice.

“Obviously,” Monk snapped back, “she might have taken an overdose herself, by accident….”

“No she didn’t.” Rathbone contradicted him with satisfaction. “She did not take it herself at all. The only accident could be if someone else filled the vial wrongly before it left the Farraline house in Edinburgh. If she took anything herself then it was deliberate, and must have been suicide, which is physically the second possibility, but from the circumstances, and her personality as Hester described her, quite out of the question.”

“And the third is murder,” Monk finished. “By someone other than Hester. Presumably someone in Edinburgh who filled the medicine vial with a lethal dose and left Hester to administer it.”

“Precisely.”

“Accident or murder. Who prepared the dose? The doctor? An apothecary?” Monk asked.

“I don’t know. That is one of a number of questions to be answered.”

“What about the daughter, Griselda Murdoch?” Monk moved impatiently about the office as if he could not bear to remain still. “What do you know of her?”

“Only that she is recently married and is expecting her first child, and is apparently anxious about her health. Mrs. Farraline was coming south to reassure her.”

“Reassure her? What do you mean? How could she reassure her? What could she know that Mrs. Murdoch didn’t know herself?” Monk looked irritated, as if the nonsense of the answer were stupidity on Rathbone’s part.

“For heaven’s sake, man, I’m not a midwife. I don’t know,” Rathbone said waspishly, sitting down in his chair again. “Perhaps it was some childhood complaint she was worried about.”

Monk ignored his reply. “I assume there is money in the family?” he said, turning back to face Rathbone.

“It appears so, but they may be mortgaged to the hilt, for all I know. It is one of the many things to find out.”

“Well, what are you doing about it? Aren’t there lawyers in Scotland? There must be a man of affairs. A will?”

“I shall attend to it,” Rathbone said between his teeth. “But it takes time. And whatever the answer, it will not tell us what happened in the railway carriage, nor who tampered with the medicine cabinet before they even boarded the train. The best we can hope for is some light on family affairs and the motives of the Farraline household. It may be money, but we cannot sit here waiting with our arms folded in the hope that it will be.”

Monk’s eyebrows shot up, and he regarded Rathbone’s elegant figure, seated with his legs crossed, with intense dislike.

Curiously, Rathbone found it did not anger him. Complacency would have. Any kind of calm would have incensed him, because it would have meant Monk was not afraid, that it did not matter to him enough to reach his emotions and cut them raw. Lack of fear in Monk would not have comforted him. The danger was real; only a fool would not see it

“I want you to go to Edinburgh,” Rathbone said with a tiny smile. “I shall provide funds, of course. You are to learn everything you can about the Farraline family, all of them.”

“And what are you going to do?” Monk demanded again, standing in front of the desk, feet slightly apart, hands clenched at his sides.