by Anne Perry
Rathbone glanced at Ravensbrook. He looked like a death’s-head.
“I were in attendance, yes sir,” Miss Ratchett replied. “But it were just a normal birth like any other, no twins, sir, just the one child. Boy … beautiful he were. Healthy child. Called him Angus, she did.”
One could have heard a tin tack drop in the court.
“What?” Rathbone demanded.
The coroner leaned forward, peering at her.
“Madam, you are aware of what you are saying? There are people in this courtroom who knew both Angus and Caleb!”
“There were one baby, sir,” Miss Ratchett repeated. “I were there. Miss Alice had one baby. I were with her for all the time she nursed him. Knew him right until his poor mother were killed. Year after Phineas Ravensbrook died in some foreign place. It were after that as his uncle took him, poor little mite. Only five, he were, an’ terrible took with his grief. Father never ’ad no time for ’im. Never owned ’im, he didn’t, nor loved ’is mother neither.” Her face betrayed her feelings for Phineas Ravensbrook.
“What you say makes no sense, madam!” the coroner cried desperately. “If there was only one child, where did Caleb come from? Who was he? And who killed Angus?”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Miss Ratchett answered levelly. “I just know there were one baby. But I do know as children have a powerful imagination! I looked after a little girl once as ’ad a friend, all imaginary, and whenever she done something wrong, she said as how it were Mary what done it, not her. She was good, Mary was bad.”
“An ordinary excuse any child might make,” the coroner said. “I have children myself, madam. I have heard many such stories.”
The Reverend Nicolson rose to his feet. “I beg your pardon, sir.” He addressed the coroner respectfully, but he would not be denied. “But is it not possible that in his unhappiness, and his feeling of rejection, obligation and loneliness, that the boy created an alternative self which would take the blame for his failures, and which would also be free to hate his uncle as he wished to, as he did in his heart?”
He raised his voice above the mounting noise in the room, the groans and murmurs of horror, pity, rage or disbelief.
“Might it not begin as an escape within the imagination of an unhappy child’s hurt and humiliation?” he asked. “And then grow into a genuine madness wherein he became two quite separate people, one who did everything to please, and earned the resultant rewards, and another who was free to feel, without guilt, all the anger and hatred for his rejection, because he was the son of a father who would not own him, and an uncle for whom he was never good enough, a reflection of the brother he envied, and upon whom he could no longer be revenged, except through the child?”
The coroner banged on his desk for silence. “Order!” he commanded. “That is a monstrous scene you paint, sir. May God forgive you for it. I should not be surprised if the Ravensbrook family cannot.” He looked at where Milo Ravensbrook sat rigid, white-faced but for the scarlet daubs on his cheeks.
But it was Enid Ravensbrook’s expression, the rage and the pity in her, which made the coroner draw in his breath, and from which Rathbone knew that Nicolson was not so far wrong.
“Absolute insanity,” Ravensbrook said between his teeth. “For God’s sake! Everyone here knows there were two brothers! This woman is either wicked or she has lost her wits. Her memory is fuddled with drink.” He swung around. “Genevieve! You have seen both Angus and Caleb!” He was shouting now. “Tell them this is preposterous!”
“I have seen them,” Genevieve said slowly. “But never together. I have never seen them at the same time. But … it couldn’t be. They were utterly different. No.” She looked at Abigail Ratchett. “No, you have to be mistaken. It was over forty-one years ago. Your memory is confused. How many babies have you delivered? Hundreds?”
“It was one baby!” Abigail Ratchett said fiercely. “I’m not drunk and I’m not mad, no matter what anyone says.”
Genevieve turned to Monk, desperation in her face. She had to raise her voice to make herself heard. “You said someone saw them together on the day Angus was killed! Find that man and bring him here. That will solve it!”
The coroner banged again, demanding silence, then turned to Monk. “Well?” he said sharply. “Did you find such a witness? If you did, what is all the nonsense? It seems you are totally irresponsible, sir!”
“I went back,” Monk replied, his voice quiet, hard. “I found the witness, and I had him stand exactly where he had seen Angus and Caleb face each other. I stood where he said they did.”
Now, suddenly, there was not a sound in the room.
“I was before a mirror, sir,” Monk said with a brilliant smile. “I fought with my own reflection in a glass, and the man watching me relived a mirage.”
“That proves nothing!” Ravensbrook said thickly. “You have said Caleb confessed to murdering Angus. How can a man murder himself?”
“He said he had destroyed Angus,” Monk corrected.
“And that I would never find the body. That was the joke. That is why he laughed. Caleb knew of Angus, and despised him. I think Angus did not know of Caleb. He could not bear to. For him it was truly another person, a dark presence beyond himself, and he was profoundly afraid of him.”
“Nonsense!” Ravensbrook retaliated, his voice rising. “You cannot prove such a wild and totally scurrilous story. Caleb was insane, certainly, and he murdered his brother. Then when he knew he would be convicted, and hanged, in a last frenzy of hatred, he attacked me too, because, God forgive me, I always loved Angus better. If I am guilty of a sin, it is that, and only that!”
The voice was rising again. People were moving about.
“It can be proved.” Monk lifted his voice, staring at the coroner. “The body of Caleb Stone is in the morgue.” He swung around to Selina. “Madam, do you know Caleb’s body well enough to tell it from Angus’s?”
“Yeah, ’course I do,” she said without blushing.
He looked at Genevieve. “And you, Mrs. Stonefield, could you tell your husband’s body from Caleb’s?”
“Yes.” Her voice was no more than a whisper, her face bloodless.
“Then let us put an end to this farce,” the coroner commanded. “We shall take these two ladies to the morgue.” He rose, his face set, his eyes unblinking. He did not even bother with the uproar in the court or pay the slightest attention to the journalists falling over one another to get out and find messengers.
The morgue attendant pulled back the sheet and uncovered the naked body as far as the groin. The room was cold, and smelled of water and death. The candlelight was yellow and left the corners in shadow.
Selina Herries leaned on Hester’s arm, her face calm, almost beautiful, all the brashness and the anger gone from it. She looked at the face with its smooth brow, the chiseled mouth, the green eyes closed, then she looked down at the broad chest, scarred and marble white. The pattern of old injuries was quite individual.
“That’s Caleb,” she said quietly. She touched his cold cheek with her fingers, gently, as if he could feel her. “God rest him,” she whispered.
The coroner nodded and Hester went out with her. A few minutes later she returned with Genevieve. Again the morgue attendant laid back the sheet. Genevieve stared hard at the same calm face with its closed eyes, and the same white body with its old scars.
Finally her eyes filled with tears and they spilled down her cheeks in an anguish of pity, wrenching at her with a pain she would never forget.
“Yes,” she whispered so quietly that in any place but this room of death, it would not have been heard. “Yes, that is Angus. I know those scars as I know my own hand. I bandaged most of them myself. God make him whole, and give him peace at last.” She turned slowly and Hester held her in her arms while she wept the grief of all the lost pain she could not heal, the child she could not reach.
“I’ll conduct the prosecution of Ravensbrook for murder,”
Rathbone said with passion.
“You’ll never prove it,” Monk pointed out.
“That doesn’t matter!” Rathbone clenched his jaw, his body rigid. “The charge will ruin him. It will be enough.”
Monk leaned forward and picked up one of the dead hands. It was beautiful, perfect-nailed, and he knew now why Caleb had always worn gloves—to protect Angus’s hands. He folded it carefully across the other. Perhaps no one else in the room could feel so deeply and with such an intimate pity for a man divided against himself, forever in fear of a dark half he did not know.
“Be at peace,” he said. “What debts you cannot pay, we will.”
Acclaimed writer Anne Perry channeled her beloved character William Monk to answer some hard-hitting questions about his life and work.
Mortalis: All your readers see how busy you are solving crimes. Do you think violent crime has become more rampant during Victorian times than it was in the past? Are the police getting better at solving it?
William Monk: Very definitely better. Believe it or not in the 1700s it was worse. As for police getting better at solving it—in the 1600s, 1700s—what police?
M: Do you prefer working for the police force or as a private investigator?
WM: I am now in the police force again, and apart from the challenges of having command of men, trying to live up to their expectations of a leader, and being answerable to superiors whom I do not always admire, I prefer the financial security of police work for my family. I would rather worry about crime than money. Also I don’t have to look for work, it comes to me. And I am growing to like and trust my superior, Inspector Orme.
On the downside, I cannot refuse a case, no matter how I may dislike it. But then I couldn’t afford to before, at any rate.
M: How do you think Hester’s experience in the Crimean War prepared her for solving mysteries now?
WM: I’m not sure that it did directly. It contributed to making her who she is, and that helps everything. I think she would have always been a crusader for something, but ultimately her time in Crimea was the ideal thing for her in regards to her courage and compassion, her anger against injustice and with the frequent stupidity of those in authority. I don’t think it chose her, she chose it.
M: If you could go back in time and erase the coach accident that caused your amnesia, would you?
WM: Never! It was painful and confusing, but it gave me the chance to start over, to see myself from the outside. It was an opportunity for clarity that few people ever have. Without it I would have continued in all my arrogance and with many mistakes. This way at least I have the chance to address these failings.
M: What is the worst part of your job?
WM: Knowing that I am answerable to my superiors, and they can countermand me due to political pressures on them. It happens sometimes.
M: What has been your most frightening experience?
WM: Physically—being underground in the total darkness of the sewers, not knowing which way to go or if I could get out. Emotionally—not knowing myself or what I might have done during the time I can’t remember.
M: What is your favorite possession?
WM: I don’t know yet.
M: What do you do to relax?
WM: I walk with Hester in the park near my home, and look across at the river.
Read on
for an excerpt of
the next thrilling novel in the
WILLIAM MONK SERIES
Weighed in the Balance
PUBLISHED BY BALLANTINE BOOKS
Available at bookstores everywhere
MONK RECEIVED THE LETTER from Oliver Rathbone with interest. It came with the first post when he had only just finished breakfast. He read it still standing by the table.
Rathbone’s cases were always serious ones, frequently involving violent crime, intense emotions, and they tested Monk’s abilities to the limit. He liked finding the outer limits of his skill, his imagination, and his mental and physical endurance. He needed to learn about himself far more than most men because a carriage accident three years before had robbed him of every shred of his memory. Except for the flickers, the remnants of light and shadow which danced across his mind, elusively, without warning every now and then, there was nothing. Occasionally those memories were pleasant, like the ones from childhood of his mother, his sister, Beth, and the wild Northumberland coast with its bare sands and infinite horizon. He heard the sound of gulls and saw in his mind’s eye the painted wood of fishing boats riding the gray-green water, and smelled the salt wind over the heather.
Other memories were less agreeable: his quarrels with Runcorn, his superior while he was on the police force. He had sudden moments of understanding that Runcorn’s resentment of him was in large part provoked by his own arrogance. He had been impatient with Runcorn’s slightly slower mind. He had mocked his boss’s social ambition, and had used his knowledge of the vulnerability which Runcorn had never been able to hide. Had their roles been reversed, Monk would have hated Runcorn just as much as Runcorn hated him. That was the painful part of it: he disliked so much of what he learned of himself. Of course, there had been good things as well. No one had ever denied he had courage and intelligence, or that he was honest. Sometimes he told the truth as he saw it when it would have been kinder, and certainly wiser, to have kept silence.
He had learned a little of his other relationships, particularly with women. None of them had been very fortunate. He seemed to have fallen in love with women who were softly beautiful, whose loveliness and gentle manners complemented his own strength and, in the end, whose lack of courage and passion for life had left him feeling lonelier than before, and disillusioned. Perhaps he had expected the things he valued from the wrong people. The truth was, he knew their relationships only from the cold evidence of facts, of which there were few, and the emotions of memory stirred by the women concerned. Not many of them were kind, and none explained.
With Hester Latterly it was different. He had met her after the accident. He knew every detail of their friendship, if that was the term for it. Sometimes it was almost enmity. He had loathed her to begin with. Even now she frequently angered him with her opinionated manner and her stubborn behavior. There was nothing romantic about her, nothing feminine or appealing. She made no concession to gentleness or to the art of pleasing.
No, that was not entirely true. When there was real pain, fear, grief or guilt, then no one on earth was stronger than Hester, no one braver or more patient. Give the devil her due—there was no one as brave … or as willing to forgive. He valued those qualities more than he could measure. And they also infuriated him. He was so much more attracted to women who were fun, uncritical, charming; who knew when to speak, how to flatter and laugh, how to enjoy themselves; who knew how to be vulnerable in the little things it was so easy to supply, and yet not discard the great things, the sacrifices which cost too much, asked of the fabric of his nature and his dreams.
He stood in his room, which Hester had arranged so as to be more inviting to prospective clients for his services, now that he had acrimoniously departed from the police force. Investigation, so far as he knew, was his only art. He read Rathbone’s letter, which was short and lacking in detail.
Dear Monk,
I have a new case in which I require some investigation which may be complicated and delicate. The case, when it comes to trial, will be hard fought and most difficult to prove. If you are willing and able to undertake it, please present yourself at my chambers at the soonest possible moment. I shall endeavour to make myself available.
Yours,
Oliver Rathbone
It was unlike Rathbone to give so little information. He sounded anxious. If the urbane and so very slightly condescending Rathbone was worried, that in itself was sufficient to intrigue Monk. Their relationship was of grudging mutual respect tempered by spasms of antipathy born of an arrogance, an ambition, and an intelligence in common, and temperaments, social background, an
d professional training entirely different. It was added to by the very specific thing they shared, cases they had fought together and in which they had believed passionately, disasters and triumphs; and by a deep regard for Hester Latterly, denied by each of them as anything more than a sincere friendship.
Monk smiled to himself and, collecting his jacket, went to the door to find a hansom cab from Fitzroy Street, where he lodged, to Vere Street and Rathbone’s offices.
Monk, duly engaged by Rathbone, went to the Countess’s apartments off Piccadilly just before four o’clock in the afternoon. He thought it a likely time to find her at home. And if she were not there, then she would almost certainly return in time to change for dinner—if she still continued to go out for dinner after having publicly made such a startling accusation. She would hardly be on most people’s guest lists anymore.
The door was opened by a maid he assumed to be French. She was small and dark and very pretty, and he remembered from somewhere that fashionable ladies who could afford it had French maids. Certainly this girl spoke with a decided accent.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Good afternoon.” Monk did not feel it necessary to try to win anyone’s liking. The Countess was the person in need of help, if she had not already placed herself beyond it. “My name is William Monk. Sir Oliver Rathbone”—he recalled the “sir” only just in time to include it—“asked me to call upon the Countess Rostova to see if I could be of assistance.”
The maid smiled at him. She really was very pretty indeed.
“But of course. Please come in.” She opened the door wider and held it while he passed her and walked into a spacious but unremarkable vestibule. There was a large urn of daisies of some sort on a jardiniere. He could smell the rich summery aroma of them. She closed the door, then led him straight into a farther room and invited him to wait while she summoned her mistress. He stood and stared around him. The room was utterly alien to his taste or experience, and yet he did not feel uncomfortable. He wondered what Rathbone had made of it. It obviously belonged to someone who did not give a fig for convention. He walked over to look more closely at the ebony-fronted bookcase. The books inside were in several languages: German, French, Russian and English. There were novels, poetry, accounts of travels, and some philosophy. He took out one or two and saw that they all opened quite easily, as if they had been well handled. They were not there for effect, but because someone liked to read them.