Read William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry for Free Online Page B

myself, I promise you.”
    She hesitated, torn between love and good sense.
    “Let me at least see him!” she pleaded. “Take me. I promise I shall not be a burden. I am in command of myself!”
    He hesitated only a moment. “Of course. Take a little brandy, just to revive yourself, then I shall accompany you.” He glanced at Evan. “I am sure you are finished here, Sergeant. Anything else you need to know can wait until a more opportune time.”
    It was dismissal, and Evan accepted it with a kind of relief. There was little more he could learn there. Perhaps later he would speak to the valet and other servants. The coachman might know where his master was in the habit of going. In the meantime there were people he knew in St. Giles, informers, men and women upon whom pressure could be placed, judicious questions asked, and a great deal might be learned.
    “Of course,” he conceded, rising to his feet. “I shall try to bother you as little as possible, ma’am.” He took his leave as the doctor was taking the decanter of brandy from the butler and pouring a little into a glass.
    Outside in the street, where it was beginning to snow, Evan turned up his coat collar and walked briskly. He wondered what Monk would have done. Would he have thought of some brilliant and probing questions whose answers would have revealed a new line of truth to follow and unravel? Would he have felt any less crippled by pity and horror than Evan did? Had there been something obvious which his emotion had prevented him from seeing?
    Surely the obvious thing was that father and son had gone whoring in St. Giles and been careless, perhaps paid less than the asking price, perhaps been too high-handed or arrogantshowing off their money and their gold watches, and some ruffians, afire with drink, had attacked them and then, like dogs at the smell of blood, run amok?
    Either way, what could the widow know of it? He was right not to harry her now.
    He put his head down against the east wind and increased his pace.

2
    R hys Duff was kept in the hospital for a further two days, and on Monday, the fifth day after the attack, he was brought home, in great pain and still without having spoken a word. Dr. Corriden Wade was to call every day or, as Rhys progressed, every second day, but of course it would be necessary to have him professionally nursed. At the recommendation of the young policeman on the case, and having made appropriate enquiries as to her abilities, Wade agreed to the employment of one of the women who had gone out to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, a Miss Hester Latterly. She was of necessity used to caring for young men who had suffered near-mortal injuries in combat. She was considered an excellent choice.
    To Hester herself it was an agreeable change after having nursed an elderly and extremely trying lady whose problems were largely matters of temper and boredom, only slightly exacerbated by two broken toes. She could probably have managed just as well with a competent lady’s maid, but she felt more dramatic with a nurse and impressed her friends endlessly by likening her plight to that of the war heroes Hester had nursed before her.
    Hester kept a civil tongue with difficulty, and only because she required the employment in order to survive. Her father’s financial ruin had meant she had no inheritance. Her elder brother, Charles, would always have provided for her, as men were expected to provide and care for their unmarried female relations, but such dependence would be suffocating to a womanlike Hester, who had tasted an extraordinary freedom in the Crimea and a responsibility at once both exhilarating and terrifying. She was certainly not going to spend the rest of her days in quiet domesticity being obedient and grateful to a rather unimaginative if kindly brother.
    It was infinitely preferable to bite one’s tongue and refrain from telling Miss Golightly she was a fool … for the space of a few weeks.
    Hester