William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

“A victimless crime, just a little greed.”
    She did not reply for several minutes. He had not met Mary, and she did not know how to convey the sense of honesty she had felt in her.
    “Do you suppose they all did?” she said at length.
    “No,” he said immediately, then apparently realized the logical position in which he had placed himself. “All right, perhaps she didn’t. If she did, then all this”—he inclined his head towards the presses—“was no reason to kill her. If she didn’t, how do you suppose she found out? She wouldn’t have come down here looking for this room. If she knew, why did she not call the police? Why go off to London? It was urgent, but hardly an emergency. There was certainly time to attend to this first.” He shook his head. “But would Mary have exposed her own family to scandal, ruin and imprisonment? Wouldn’t she just have demanded they stop? That would be reason to kill her?”
    “If I were a forger,” she replied, “I’d have said, ‘Yes, Mother,’ and moved it somewhere else. It would be infinitely safer than killing her.”
    He did not reply, but lapsed into thought.
    It was getting even colder. They moved closer yet, the warmth of each other comforting, even the steady rhythm of breathing a kind of safety in the threat of enclosing darkness and the knowledge that time was short and every second that passed meant one fewer left.
    “What did she say—on the train?” Monk asked presently.
    “She talked about the past, for the most part.” She thought back yet again to that evening. “She traveled then. She danced at the ball in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo, you know?” She stared into the darkness, speaking softly. It seemed appropriate to the mood and it saved energy. They were sitting so close together whispering would serve. “Shedescribed it to me, the colors and the music, the soldiers in their uniforms, all the scarlets and the blues and golds, the cavalrymen, the artillery, the hussars and dragoons, the Scots Greys.” She smiled as she pictured Mary’s face and the light in it as she relived that night. “She spoke of Hamish, how elegant he was, how dashing, how all the ladies loved him.”
    “Was Hector sober then?” he asked.
    “Oh yes. She spoke of Hector too, he was always quieter, tenderer—that isn’t the word she used, but that is what she meant. And she said he was actually a better soldier.” She smiled. “She described the band and the gaiety, the laughter at any joke at all, the hectic dancing, whirling ’round and ’round, the lights and color, the brilliance of jewels and the candle flames and the flash of reds.” She drew in a deep breath. “And the knowledge in everyone that tomorrow
perhaps
one in ten of them would die, and two or three be injured, maybe marred for life, limbs lost, blinded, God knows what. Whatever they thought or felt, no one spoke of it, and the musicians never missed a beat. Wellington himself was there. It was the high tide of history. All Europe hung in the balance.”
    She swallowed and tried to keep her voice from shaking. She must have Mary’s courage. She had faced death before, and worse death. She would be with Monk, and in spite of all the enmity they had shared, the quarrels and the anger and the contempt, she would not have had anyone else there, except for his sake. “She said how terrified she was for Hector, but she never allowed him to know,” she finished.
    “You mean Hamish,” he corrected.
    “Do I? Yes, of course I do. The air is getting thin, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    “She spoke about her children as well, mostly Oonagh and Alastair, how close they had always been, even when they were young.” She recounted what she could rememberof Mary’s story of the night of the storm, and finding the two together, comforting each other.
    “A very remarkable woman, Oonagh,” he said softly. “A little frightening, so much strength.”
    “Alastair must have strength too, or he would not be Procurator Fiscal. It must have taken courage to refuse to prosecute Galbraith. Apparently it was a very big case, very political, and everyone expected him to face trial and be found guilty. I think Mary did too.”
    “From what the woman in front of us in the church said, he has refused to prosecute quite a few. Are you cold?”
    “Yes, but it doesn’t matter.”
    “Do you want my coat?”
    “No—then you’ll be cold.”
    He took it off. “Don’t argue,” he said grimly,