“And was he?”
“I don’t know,” Evan answered him. “There’s nothing to suggest it.”
Monk let out his breath slowly. He hated the misery in Evan’s eyes, the refusal to excuse him, but he had no argument. He felt the same revulsion for himself. The man might have been guilty, but why had he pushed the hurt so far? Was it worth using a woman’s jealousy to betray her lover to the Coldbath Fields, for a few pounds from the church funds, albeit the poor box?
He wouldn’t do it now. He would let it go. The shame would be enough. If the vicar knew, even if Drusilla knew in her heart, was that not all it really needed?
“It’s past,” Evan said quietly. “You can’t undo it. I wish I knew how to stop her now, but I don’t.”
“I didn’t recognize her,” Monk said sincerely, as if it meant something. “I spent hours with her, and nothing returned in my memory at all.”
Evan started to walk again and Monk kept up with him.
“Nothing!” Monk said desperately.
“It’s not so surprising.” Evan looked straight ahead of them. “She’s changed her name, and it was several years ago. Fashions are different now. I daresay she altered her appearance somewhat. Women can. It was a very trivial offense, to our eyes, but it was a scandal at the time. Sallis was trusted, and the romance came out too. Both girls’ reputations were ruined.”
All sorts of thoughts boiled up inside Monk, excuses that died before they were formed, self-disgust, remorse, confusion. None of it found easy words, and perhaps they were better unsaid anyway.
“I see.” He kept pace with Evan, their footsteps making a single sound on the pavement. “Thank you.”
They crossed Guildford Street and turned down Lamb’s Conduit Street. Monk had no idea where they were going, he was simply following, but he was glad it was not Mecklenburg Square. He had too many nightmares already.
* * *
That evening Drusilla Wyndham, as she was now known, attended a musical soiree at the home of a lady of fashion. She had dressed with great care, to set off her considerable beauty, and she fully expected to create an effect. She swept in, head high, skin glowing with the inner triumph which burned in her mind, the knowledge that the cup of revenge was at her lips, the first taste on her tongue.
And she did create an effect, but it was far from the one she had intended. A gentleman who had always shown her gallantry looked at her with alarm, and then turned his back as if he had suddenly seen someone else he must speak with immediately.
She did not take it seriously, until Sir Percy Gainsborough also effected not to have seen her, when he quite plainly had done.
The Honourable Gerald Hapsgood positively spilled his champagne in his urgency to avoid her, apologized in alarm to the lady next to him, and then in most unbecoming haste, trod on the edge of her gown and only saved his balance by catching hold of Lady Burgoyne.
The Duchess of Granby gave her a stare which would have frozen cream.
Altogether it was a most unpleasant evening, and she went home early, confused and very put out, not having said a word of what she had meant to.
Rathbone entered the courtroom of the Old Bailey for the third day of the trial with little more confidence than he had had in the beginning, but his resolution undiminished. He had hoped the police might find Angus’s body, since they had turned their full efforts towards it, but he had always known it was an outside chance. There were so many other possibilities, and Caleb’s defiance of Monk in the Greenwich marshes should have warned him. He had said they would never find Angus.
Looking at Caleb as he stood in the dock while the judge entered and took his place at the bench, and the last whispering ceased, Rathbone saw the jeering triumph in him again, the violence so close beneath the surface. Every angle of his body suggested arrogance.
“Are you ready to proceed, Mr. Rathbone?” the judge inquired. Was that a faint shred of pity in his face, as if he believed Rathbone could not win? He was a small man with a lean, weary face, full of lines that had once been pugnacious, but were now too tired for the effort.
“Yes, may it please the court, my lord,” Rathbone responded. “I call Albert Swain.”
“Albert Swain!” the usher repeated loudly. “Call Albert Swain!”
Swain, large, awkward and mumbling so badly he had to repeat almost everything, told how he had seen Caleb on the day of Angus’s disappearance, bruised, his clothes badly torn and stained. Yes, he thought it was blood. Yes, his face was bruised and swollen and his cheek gashed. What other wounds were there? He could not say. He had not looked.
Did Caleb appear to limp, or carry himself as if some limb were paining him?
He did not remember.
Try harder, Rathbone urged.
Yes, Caleb had limped.
Upon which leg?