William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

quietly.
    She looked at him again, then saw something in his eyes, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Gawd!” she said in no more than a sigh. Her other hand instinctively reached for the younger of the children and gripped his hand. “That … that wa’n’t ’er, was it?”
    “I think it may be,” Monk answered. “I’m sorry.”
    The woman seized the boy and picked him up, holding him close to her. He was perhaps two. Sensing her fear, he began to cry.
    “What number did she live at?” Monk persisted.
    “Number fourteen,” the woman replied, nodding her head in the direction of the house opposite and to the left.
    “Has she family?”
    “Not as I ever saw. She were very quiet. Didn’t bother no one.”
    “Who else might know more about her?”
    “I dunno. Mebbe Mrs. ’Iggins up at number twenty. I seen ’em talking once or twice.”
    “Do you know if she worked anywhere?”
    “In’t none o’ my business. I can’t ’elp yer.” She held the child tighter and moved to close the door.
    “Thank you.” Monk stepped back and he and Orme turned away. There was nothing further to ask her.

CHAPTER

2
    “S IR O LIVER ?” THE JUDGE said inquiringly.
    Oliver Rathbone rose to his feet and stepped to the center of the courtroom floor. It was almost like an arena; he was surrounded by the gallery behind him, the jury on his left in their two rows of high seats, and the judge in front in the great carved chair, mounted as if it were a throne. The witness stand was almost above him, up the steps in its own little tower.
    He had stood here in major trials for most of his adult life, as one of England’s most brilliant lawyers. Usually he felt intensely about a case, whether he was acting for the defense or the prosecution. Often the battle was for a man’s life. Today he was committed to the defense because it was his job—but he was still uncertain in his own mind if the accused was guilty or not. That gave him a rare feeling of emptiness. He could put no passion into this work, no fierce care for the sake of justice. He would be no more than competent, and that was far from enough to satisfy his nature.
    But very little had been going well lately. The things that mattered seemed to have slipped beyond his control ever since the Ballinger case, and all the miserable decisions that had led to the final split between his wife, Margaret, and himself.
    He concentrated on the witness, making himself recall the details of his testimony and one by one attack each point that was vulnerable, forcing the man to contradict himself so the jury would think him devious and unreliable.
    He succeeded. This was the last witness of the day and the court was adjourned. Rathbone rode home in a hansom cab and arrived comparatively early. It was one of those calm, still evenings of deepening winter when the storms are all yet to come. It was not cold enough for frost. As he stepped out of the cab and paid the driver, there was no bite in the air. The last of the neighbor’s chrysanthemums were still heavy with bloom, and their earthy smell was sweet as he passed them.
    A year ago he would have been happy to be home with this extra time to spend. But that was before the whole business of the barges on the river with their obscene pleasures, their abuse of children, and their final descent into murder.
    He and Margaret had been happy before all that—in fact increasingly so with each passing week. There had been tenderness, an understanding between them that filled all kinds of longings he had hardly acknowledged he felt earlier in his life.
    Now, as he went in through the front door and the butler took his hat and coat, he felt the heavy silence in the house.
    “Good evening, Sir Oliver.” The man was polite as always.
    “Good evening, Ardmore,” Rathbone replied automatically. The butler, and the cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Wilton, might be the only people whose voices he would hear until he left his house again tomorrow morning. The soundlessness would grow thick and oppressive, almost like another presence in the home.
    It was absurd. He was becoming maudlin. Silence had never bothered him when he was single, which had been a long enough time. In fact, back then he had found it rather pleasant after the constant noise of his chambers, or the courtroom. An occasional dinner with his friends, especially Monk and Hester, had been all the companionship he wished for—apart, of course, from visiting his father out