Revenge in a Cold River

by Anne Perry

  “Yes, of course McNab,” he agreed. “Gillander knows me from San Francisco. At least he says he does. I can’t argue because I don’t know. I keep getting flashes of memory, here and then gone again. Light on the water, brighter than England, sharper-edged. I can visualize going around Cape Horn. I can see the great rocks looming up out of the fog, and hear the roar of breaking waves and the wind through the rigging. I can feel the pitch of the deck under my feet. Can that all be imagination? Isn’t it the obvious thing to assume I was really there?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And you were in Joscelyn Gray’s apartment. But you did not kill him. That is proved beyond doubt, reasonable or not.”

  “No one hated me in the Gray case,” he replied. “And Gray was a swine! From what Gillander has told me, Piers Astley was an unusually decent man.”

  “Maybe he was,” she conceded. “And maybe not.” She leaned forward a little. “William, we cannot afford to take anybody’s word for anything at all that can’t be proved. We need to count up exactly what we know, what seems to be a sensible assumption from it, and then see what answers are left.”

  Her voice was steady; she was being reasonable. But he could see the fear in her eyes, and he noticed how often she swallowed hard and had to steady her breathing before she continued. She was doing it for his sake. He knew that. When she went home she would keep that same composure as long as Scuff was there, and Hester had told him Scuff had returned to his old home as soon as he heard that Monk had been arrested. She would not give in, or cry, until she was alone.

  He wanted to reach across the battered wooden table and hold her in his arms, cling on to her. But he knew the guard would come and separate them as soon as he did. He would probably take her away, by force, if necessary. Even hurt her.

  “Who was Astley?” she asked. “Why would anyone kill him? All the reasons…”

  “Miriam Clive’s first husband,” he started to explain. As he did, he realized how little he knew about Astley’s death, and yet how important it seemed to be, as if it overshadowed everything else.

  Hester listened gravely and without interrupting.

  “So it was never solved?” she said when he finished at last. “And everybody seems to be lying about it, one way or another.”

  “Apparently. Miriam wondered if he was even dead, though according to Gillander, Astley is unquestionably dead. Also he was a good man, unusually so, and loyal to Clive through thick and thin.”

  “And then Clive married his widow soon after. Do you like Aaron Clive?”

  “What does that matter?” Monk was puzzled.

  “I just wondered. He seems, from what you have said of him, a remarkable man, not only talented, but with a grace and intelligence that hold most people’s attention, even regard.”

  “Yes, that’s true. And I suppose I do like him. There is something about him that attracts…although I did see a brief glimpse of the steel beneath last time we spoke. There’s a quiet arrogance in him.”

  She smiled bleakly. “And Miriam?”

  “I’m not sure.” He was being completely honest. There was a passion in Miriam that disturbed him, a complexity. “I think she’s lying about something. I have a feeling that she is manipulative, but I have no idea how, or over what. She feels very deeply about something, and I believe that I am involved in it. I wish I knew what it is.”

  She gave a tiny nod, barely a movement. “I know you do.”

  “It all goes back to the gold rush,” he said grimly. “It has to do with Astley’s death, but there may be something else.”

  “Who was there, that you know, and is here now?”

  “Miriam and Aaron Clive, Fin Gillander, and me,” he answered. “That’s all I know about.”

  “Not McNab?”

  “No. I thought of that, and I checked his history. It was not difficult. His professional record is clear. He has never left England except for a couple of visits to France.”

  “Then there’s another extraordinary coincidence, or a connection we don’t know about,” Hester said. “We’ll find out.”

  That was the last thing she had a chance to say. The guard came too close to her to allow further talk, and very firmly told her that her time was up.

  She rose to her feet, gave the guard an odd, barely civil stare, and walked out with her head high and her back ramrod straight. It was as if she took all the light and warmth away with her, and yet her posture was like a candle flame in the enclosing darkness.

  BEATA HEARD FROM OLIVER Rathbone that Monk had been arrested and charged with having killed Pettifer deliberately, a crime for which he would be tried, and if found guilty, hanged, and suddenly her own personal future seemed of very little importance.

  She was sitting opposite Rathbone in her own withdrawing room, after he had arrived with no warning and, in the eyes of some, inappropriately. She stared at the misery in his face and, knowing how deep was his friendship with Monk, she ached for him.

  “What can we do?” She spoke as if they were as one without even realizing it until the words were out of her mouth. Now it was a slip that hardly mattered.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The evidence is dreadful, and I can see no way of proving it false.”

  “But it is false!” she insisted.

  There was a moment’s warmth in his eyes, before he answered. “Yes, I believe it is, but that is because I know Monk. To anyone else it proves guilt—not as beyond any doubt, but beyond a reasonable one.” In a quiet, almost flat voice he told her about the enmity between Monk and McNab, dating back to the hanging of Robert Nairn, and all the cumulative evidence after that.

  She listened with growing fear. It was worse than she had imagined. In his face she saw the pain, even fear, of losing not a case or a battle, even a professional standing, but a friend who had proved his own loyalty, at any cost, over many years. If he could not save Monk, Rathbone would lose part of himself. It was in those moments that Beata realized how deeply she loved him. She would protect him from that, even at the cost of all she had herself.

  But this required reason, and self-control.

  “Was Nairn’s trial fair?” she asked, attempting to concentrate on the facts and set all feelings aside, as a lawyer must do.

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “There is no question he was guilty. But Monk could have asked for some clemency, and he didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She saw the conflict in Rathbone’s face.

  “Is it a matter of confidentiality, Oliver?” she asked as gently as she could. “My dear, if it’s Monk’s secrets you are guarding, are you willing to let him die to keep them?”

  He looked at her steadily for several moments, appearing to turn it over in his mind, and then he reached a decision.

  “He had a carriage accident in ’56,” he said gravely. “He woke up in hospital with no memory of anything whatever before that. I can’t even imagine how difficult it was for him to hide that from everyone, except Hester. He met her then, when he was investigating a crime he actually thought he might have committed himself, a very violent murder of a Crimean war hero. He was working blind, with no idea who his friends or enemies were.”

  “But his memory came back?” she said, appalled by the thought of the fear and confusion he must have felt. The suffering was beyond her grasp. Many of her memories were hideous, painful, both physically and emotionally, but there was nothing hidden, no darkness unexplored with unknown terrors waiting to strike her.

  “No,” he replied. “He pieced some of it together from clues, but he never remembered. He thinks he was in San Francisco, maybe even knew Aaron Clive and Piers Astley, but he remembers no facts. He had no idea why McNab hated him until he asked one of very few people who knew him before, and whom he can trust.”

  “So he doesn’t remember Nairn?” She began to perceive the gulf they were in, like being at sea, with no idea even which way the land lay.

  “Only what he can read about,
or other people can tell him,” he agreed.

  “And San Francisco? Is that the same?”

  “Yes. He has flashes of familiarity, but he doesn’t know if it’s memory or imagination. He seems to know how to work a schooner, but knowing that means he could have been across the Atlantic, or simply around the coast of Britain. And up into the North Sea. He knows from the evidence of others that he grew up on the coast of Northumberland.”

  “And Astley, you say?” Beata asked. “Can’t he remember him at all?”

  “No. But they were wild, rough days in ’49. A world away from here. Gillander and Clive both say Monk was there, but they could be lying. So could anyone else, or even all of them.”

  “Oh…” Her mind raced through the chaos of unknown facts, people, possibilities, trying to find something to grasp on to. She would have given anything to be able to remember Monk herself, but she couldn’t. “But he didn’t intentionally kill Pettifer?”

  “I’m certain of that. But it isn’t enough.”

  “No…of course it isn’t.” She wanted to help, to think of something that would spark hope, but false hope was worse than useless; it was also dangerous. “We need the truth, or as much of it as we can find.” She was used to the law. She had listened to Ingram going on about it for enough years. Sometimes she could still see it in her dreams: the anger in his face, too close to hers, shouting at her. But that did not matter now. Only saving Monk mattered. “And we need to divide the case into what we can prove, and what we believe because we deduce it, or we trust the people concerned,” she finished.

  The ghost of a smile touched Rathbone’s face. “If I thought I understood the reason people did whatever they did, then I would know where to look for other facts, proof, connections between things. I could make a line of reasoning and find what is missing, or at least enough of it to be believable to a jury. Nobody does things without some reason.”

  “Oh, I know something that perhaps you don’t….”

  His eyes widened, but he did not interrupt.

  “Miriam and Aaron Clive are about the only people I have spent any time with since Ingram’s death, largely for reasons of propriety. One occasion I was there McNab called. It wasn’t to see Aaron over some business matter, but to see Miriam.”

  Rathbone was startled. “How would he even know her?”

  “They have some concern together, some interest. I’m trying to remember exactly what I overheard….”

  “You were there?” There was surprise in his voice.

  “In the hall, just outside the door,” she replied, feeling a heat rise in her face. “I excused myself to allow them privacy. But I waited in the hall. There was no one else there and the sound of their voices carried. There was information they wanted from each other. Monk’s name was mentioned. But even when I didn’t catch the words, I could hear the depth of conviction in their voices. It mattered intensely to Miriam. I think it was to do with San Francisco. So if Monk was there, that would make sense.”

  “But why did McNab care about Monk and San Francisco? Do you remember anything he said?” he asked with growing interest.

  “I can’t remember why, but I think it was to do with Piers Astley’s death. I remember very clearly wondering if she was relieved….” She felt embarrassed even by the thought, but this was not a time to be concerned with herself. “If perhaps he had been cruel to her and that was why he had been killed.”

  There was confusion in his face. Did he know anything of what Ingram had done to her, beyond the little she had said? She must not allow it to matter now. It was the truth, and maybe more of it would have to come out: details rather than generalities with carefully blurred edges. Oliver might have to know. Did she want to live her whole life hiding things from him, skirting around the real words, inventing explanations…at heart, deceiving him? He would know it, wouldn’t he? It was his profession to know other people were lying, half-lying, evading what they could not bear to see.

  “So you think Astley’s death was to do with his being cruel?” he said very gently. He made no move to touch her, and yet it was almost as if he had. She often thought what sensitive hands he had, and imagined them holding hers.

  “I think Miriam has known terrible pain,” she murmured, trying very hard to grasp the truth. “And it has to do with Astley.”

  “Who was responsible for his death?” Rathbone asked.

  “They didn’t know at the time, and I’m not sure if they do now. But what if she needs to know, and that’s what she wanted to find from Monk?”

  “But Monk doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t even know if he was there.”

  “She doesn’t know that.”

  He bit his lip thoughtfully. “Very interesting, because McNab does know that Monk has no memory.”

  “Then he is deceiving Miriam if he is telling her that Monk can help. I wonder why? It is somehow to trap Monk, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly. If that is what they were talking about.”

  “Is he wanting her somehow to get at Monk?”

  “He doesn’t need to. In the attempt to rescue Pettifer, and his panicking and accidental drowning, McNab has all he needs to convict Monk. All other plans could be abandoned.”

  “But why would McNab claim Monk had killed Pettifer on purpose?” She knew from his face, even before she finished speaking, that there was a terrible answer to that.

  “Because Monk blamed him for Orme’s death,” he said. “And from what Monk has now told me, he was right to.”

  “Was Pettifer to blame for that? Did McNab set it up, but use Pettifer to do it?”

  “It looks like it,” he said. “I need to know a great deal more before I can present any defense at all, and have proof of it. Monk himself thinks that the key to the whole thing is the death of Astley. He’s afraid that somehow they’ll make it look as if he killed him. He can’t defend himself because he can’t remember.”

  “It’s thousands of miles out of the court’s jurisdiction,” Beata pointed out.

  “Of course it is,” he said. “But if the evidence can be made to indicate that Monk was responsible, jurisdiction won’t matter. They’ll introduce it as motive, and it will have marked him as a man who would kill if provoked. All the objections and ruling it out of evidence won’t make the jury forget it, or put it out of their consideration. There are words and acts that you cannot take from your mind.”

  “Then we need to find out whatever anyone knows about who really did kill Astley,” she said with absolute certainty. “I will speak to Miriam.”

  “Beata…” He leaned forward as if to take her hands, and stopped.

  “Don’t try to dissuade me, Oliver,” she said quietly. “We don’t have any time to waste on pointless arguments. And it is pointless. I can speak to her in ways that you cannot. And don’t try to close me out for my sake. It would not be a favor, and I don’t need protecting. Close me out only if you think I will do more harm than good.” She looked at him steadily, meeting his eyes.

  She had not intended to challenge him to anything today, or even in a future close enough to consider, yet here she was doing exactly that. In her own way she was asking him if she was to be part of his future, or not. Now it was too late to be discreet, or take a step back.

  This time, almost without thinking about it, he put his hand over hers. “It may be unpleasant,” he said. “You may learn things about her you would prefer not to have known.”

  “Oliver, would you caution Hester Monk in such a way?”

  He looked completely taken aback, and for a moment could find no words.

  “Then let me answer the question for you,” she responded. “No, you would not. You would expect her to fight side by side with you—from what I have heard, maybe even a step in front of you, of all of us. And I believe you once loved her….” That was difficult to say. She had never truly and completely loved anyone but Oliver. She realized that as she spoke now.

  “Did I say that?” He looked puzz
led and embarrassed.

  “You didn’t need to, my dear,” she replied. “It is in your face when you speak of her.”

  “We could not have made each other happy,” he said frankly. “It is a very good thing we did not try. I think she would always have loved Monk…and I will always love you.”

  She felt the hot tears of relief fill her eyes. But this was no time for more questions and answers. She was ready—fully, heart-deep ready—but saving Monk came first. Afterward there would be time for everything else.

  “Then I have all I want,” she whispered. “But we must see that Monk does also. I shall call on Miriam and see if I can oblige her to tell me the truth about Piers Astley, and anything she knows about Monk in California.”

  “Please, be careful!”

  “I have weathered and survived a great deal worse than an uncomfortable conversation over the tea cakes, I assure you.”

  “But—”

  “I have cultivated a serene and perhaps fragile look because it has served me well, but it is only skin deep.” Then she wondered if she had said too much. She had meant it to be light, but some of the old pain must be visible. He was too clever to have missed it.

  He was also too sensitive to acknowledge his understanding now. But the time would come, and perhaps soon.

  “I will call on Miriam Clive today,” she said decisively. “The hour is a little late, but needs must, and it is certainly the devil who is driving!”

  Rathbone did not answer but all the unspoken words were in his look.

  —

  WHEN RATHBONE HAD GONE, Beata called her footman and asked for the coach to be made ready to take her immediately to visit Mrs. Clive. She did consider going to see Hester, so that they might compare notes with each other and so work more effectively. But she knew that Hester would be distracted with anxiety, or perhaps think Beata was taking too much upon herself. Maybe she was, but she was beyond worrying about who approved of her, or who did not. She had been in San Francisco and she knew Miriam. It had been a world different from anything a London woman could imagine, even one who had nursed in the Crimea. Better to do this first, and ask forgiveness afterward if she had committed any social gaffes.