William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

It’s not the sort of thing you can go out and hire.”
    “Of course it isn’t. I’ll lay any odds you like that it’s Quinlan. No wonder he’s so damned arrogant. He knows they can’t do without him, and they know it too. He has them over a barrel. Poor little Eilish. I expect she was his price.”
    “That’s unspeakable!” she said in horror. “Nobody would …” Then she stopped. What she had been going to say was absurd, and she knew it. Women had been given in marriage to suit the ambitions or the convenience of their families since time immemorial, and for worse reasons than this. At least she was still at home, and participated in the wealth. And Quinlan was roughly her own age, and not uncomely, or drunken, diseased or otherwise repellent. And it was even possible he had cared for her originally, before she betrayed him by falling in love, however unwillingly, with Baird. Or was that Oonagh’s attempt at self-protection, to marry her exquisite younger sister to a man who would possess her and brook no disloyalty?
    Poor Oonagh—she had failed. Their acts might be without blemish, but no one could govern their dreams.
    Monk laid the notes back gently, exactly as he had found them.
    “Do you suppose Mary knew?” Hester asked in a whisper. “I … I hope not. I hate to think of her being party to this. I know it is not as evil as really hurting people … it’s only greedy, but …”
    He looked at her, his face bleak, the lean planes of his cheeks and brow harsh in the lamp’s glow, his nose exaggerated.
    “It’s a filthy crime,” he said between his teeth. “You sound as if there is no victim, because you aren’t thinking. What would you do if half your money was worth nothing and you didn’t know which half? How would you live? Who could you trust?”
    “But …” There were no words, and she stopped.
    “People would be afraid to sell,” he went on savagely. “You might trade, but who with? Who wants what you have to offer and can give you what you need? Ever since man acquired goods and leisure, specialized his skills and learned to cooperate one with another for everyone’s benefit, we have used a common means of exchange—money. In fact, ever since we began anything one could call civilization and learned that we are more than a collection of individuals, each for himself, and formed the concept of community, money has been pivotal. Pollute that, and you strike at the root of all society.”
    She stared at him, comprehension of the magnitude of it dawning inside her, of the totality of the damage.
    “And words,” he went on, his face burning with the fierceness of his emotion. “Words are our means of communication, that which raises man above the beasts. We can think, we have concepts, we can write and pass our beliefs from one land to another, one generation to the next. Pollute our relationships with flattery and manipulation, our language with lies, propaganda, self-serving use of images,the prostitution of words and meaning, and we can no longer reach each other. We become isolated. Nothing is real. We drown in a morass of the sham, the expedient. Deceit, corruption and betrayal … they are the sins of the wolf.” He stopped abruptly, staring at her as if he had only just that moment really seen her.
    “The wolf?” she urged. “What do you mean? What wolf?”
    “The lowest circle of hell,” he answered slowly, rolling the words as though one by one. “The last pit of all. Dante. The three great circles of hell. The leopard, the lion and! the wolf.”
    “Do you remember where you read that, who taught it you?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
    He waited so long she thought he had not heard her.
    “No …” He winced. “No, I don’t. I’m trying … but it’s just out of reach. I didn’t even know I knew it at all until I started to think about forgery. I …” He shrugged very slightly and turned away. “We’ve learned all we need to here. This could be the reason Mary was killed. If she learned about it somehow, they’d have to keep her silent.”
    “Who? Which one?”
    “God knows. Perhaps Quinlan. Maybe she knew about it anyway. That’s for the police to discover. Come on. We can’t find out anything more here.” He picked up the lantern and went back towards the way they had come in. It took him a moment or two to find the door because it had swung closed again. “Damn,” he said irritably. “I could have sworn I left it