Cain His Brother (39 page)

Rathbone tried to visualize it, the fear, the violence, the confusion. It was not difficult.

“When I freed myself and managed to rise to my feet,” Ravensbrook went on, “he was lying there with the knife in his throat and blood pouring from the wound. There was nothing I could do. God help him. At least he is at some sort of peace now. He'll be spared the…” He took another long, deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “The judicial… process.”

Rathbone glanced at Monk, and saw the same look of distress in his face, and also the knowledge that there was no retreat or evasion possible.

“Thank you,” Monk acknowledged Ravensbrook, then with Rathbone behind him, walked over and pushed the cell door wider and went inside. Caleb Stone was lying on the floor in a sheet of blood. It lay in a scarlet tide around his head and shoulders. The penknife, a beautiful silver engraved thing, was lying upside down against his neck, as if it had fallen out of the wound with its own weight. There was no question that he was dead. The beautiful green eyes were open, and quite blind. There was in his face a look of resignation, as if he had at last let go of something which was both a possession and a torture, and the ease of it had surprised him.

Monk looked for something to tell him some fact beyond that which Ravensbrook or the gaoler had said, and saw nothing. There were no contradictions, no suggestions of anything additional, anything unexplained by the account of a simple, stupid piece of violence. The only question was had he been impulsive, in a sudden overwhelming rage, perhaps like the rage that had killed Angus, or had it been a deliberately planned way of committing suicide before the hangman could take his life in the slow, exquisite mindtorture of conviction, sentence and hanging?

He turned to Rathbone, and saw an understanding of the same question in his face.

Before either of them could form it in words there was a noise behind them, the heavy clank of an iron bolt in a lock, and then Hester's voice. Monk swung around and came out of the cell, almost pushing Rathbone forward into the outer room.

“Lord Ravensbrook!” Hester glanced once at the gaoler, still holding the blood-soaked handkerchief against Ravensbrook's chest, then moved forward and dropped to her knees. “Where are you hurt?” she said, as if he had been a child-quite soothingly, but with the voice of authority.

He raised his head and stared at her.

“Where are you hurt?” she repeated, putting her hand gently over the gaoler's and moving the kerchief away very slowly. No gush of blood followed it; in fact, it seemed to have clotted and dried already. “Please, allow me to take your coat off,” she asked. “I must see if you are still bleeding.” It seemed an unnecessary comment. There was so much blood he must still be losing it at a considerable rate.

“Should you, miss?” Jimson asked. He had returned with her and was staring at Ravensbrook dubiously. “Might make it worse. Better wait till the doctor gets 'ere. 'E's bin sent fer.”

“Take it off!” Hester ignored Jimson, and started to pull on Ravensbrook's shoulders to ease the jacket away from him. He did nothing, and she moved his arm aside from where he had been holding it across his chest. “Take the other one!” she ordered Monk. “It will slip away if you hold it properly.”

He did as he was bid, and gently she pulled the coat off, leaving it in Monk's hands. The shirt beneath was surprisingly white and not nearly as badly stained as Monk had expected. Indeed, there were only four marks that he could see, one on the front of the left shoulder, one on the left forearm, and two on the right side of the chest. None of them were bright scarlet or puddled in blood. Only the one on the shoulder that he had been holding was still shining wet.

“Doesn't look too bad,” Hester said dispassionately. She turned to the first gaoler. “I don't suppose you have any bandages? No, I thought not.

Have you cloths of any sort?”

The man hesitated.

“Right,” she nodded. “Then take off your shirt. It will have to do. I'll use the tails.” She smiled very dryly. “And yours too, Mr. Rathbone, I think. I need a white one.” She ignored Monk, and his immaculate linen.

Even in this contingency she was apparently aware of his finances. Rathbone drew in a sharp breath, and thoughts of voluminous petticoats floated into his mind, and out again. He obeyed.

“Have you any spirits?” she asked the gaoler. “A little brandy for restorative purposes, perhaps?” She looked at Ravensbrook. “Have you a hip flask, my lord?”

“I don't require brandy,” he said with a very slight shake of the head.

“Just do what is necessary, woman.”

“I wasn't going to give it to you,” she answered. “Have you any?”

He stared at her with seeming incomprehension.

“Yer feelin' faint, miss?” the gaoler said with concern.

The shadow of a smile touched her lips. “No thank you. I wanted to clean the wounds. Water will do if that's all there is, but brandy would have been better.”

Rathbone passed her the glass of water Ravensbrook had declined. Monk moved forward and fished in Ravensbrook's jacket and found the flat, silver engraved flask, opened it and set it where she could reach it.

In silence they watched her work, cleaning away the blood first with cloths from the gaoler's coarse shirt, then with a little brandy, which must have stung when it was applied, from the involuntary oath escaping Ravensbrook, and the clenched teeth and gulp of pain.

But even Monk could see that the wounds were not deep, more gashes and cuts than genuine stabs.

She then bound them with bandages made from almost all of Rathbone's fine Egyptian cotton shirt, which she tore with great abandon and considerable dexterity, and, Monk thought, not a little satisfaction. He glanced at Rathbone and saw him wince as the cloth ripped.

“Thank you,” Ravensbrook said stiffly when she was finished. “I am obliged to you again, Miss Latterly. You are extremely efficient. Where is my wife?”

“In your carriage, my lord,” she replied. “I daresay she will be at home by now. I took the liberty of instructing the coachman to take her. She may become ill if she sits waiting in this chill. I am sure someone will find you a hansom immediately.”

“Yes,” he said after a moment. “Of course.” He looked at Rathbone. “If you need me for anything, I can be found at my home. I cannot think what else there is to do now, or to say. I assume the judge will make whatever remarks he believes necessary, and that will be an end to it. Good day, gentlemen.” He stood up and, walking very uprightly and with a slight sway, made his way to the door. “Oh.” He turned and looked at Rathbone. “I presume I may have the liberty of giving him a decent burial? After all, he has not been found guilty of anything, and I am his only relative.” He swallowed painfully.

“I can see no reason why not,” Rathbone agreed, suddenly touched by a sense of overwhelming loss, deeper than mere death, a bereavement of the spirit, of the past as well as the future. “I will attend to the formalities, my lord, if you wish?”

“Yes. Yes, thank you,” Ravensbrook accepted. “Good day.” And he went out of the door. Now no longer locked, it swung to heavily behind him.

Hester looked towards the cell.

“You don't need to,” Rathbone stepped in front of her. “It's most unpleasant.”

“Thank you, Oliver, for your sensitivity,” she said bleakly. “But I have seen far more dead men than you have. I shall be quite all right.” And she walked in, brushing his shoulder. He had replaced his jacket and it looked odd with no shirt beneath.

Inside she stood still and looked down at the crumpled form of Caleb Stone.

She stared at him for several seconds before she frowned a little, then with a deep sigh, straightened up and came out again. Her eyes met Rathbone's.

“What are you going to do?” she asked quietly.

“Go home and get a shirt,” he replied with a twisted smile. “There isn't anything else we can do, my dear. There's no case to prosecute or defend anymore. If Mrs. Stonefield wishes me to act for her in the matter of for- mally acknowledging her husband's death, then of course I will do so. First we must deal with this matter, which I imagine the judge will do when court reconvenes tomorrow morning.”

“Is there something which worries you?” Monk said suddenly, looking at her closely. “What is it?”

“I… I don't think I am quite certain…” She frowned in concentration, but seemed unwilling to add more.

“Then come to my house and dine,” Rathbone invited her, and included Monk with a gesture. “That is, if you do not have to return with Lady Ravensbrook, or go back to Limehouse?”

“No.” She shook her head. “The typhoid is past its worst. In fact, there have been no new cases for over two days, and many of those who are left are beginning to recover. I… I would like to think further on Caleb Stone.”

Before even considering it they ate a surprisingly good meal. Rathbone's house was warm and quiet, furnished in the discreet fashion of half a century earlier, the excellent chair lines of the Regency. It made for comfort and a sense of space.

Hester had not thought she would wish to eat at all, but when the meal was placed before her, and she had not had to take any part in its preparation, she found that she was, after all, quite hungry.

When the last course was completed Rathbone sat back and looked across at her.

“Well, what is it that worries you? Are you afraid it was suicide? And if it was, does it really matter? Who would it help to prove it, even if we could?”

“Why would he commit suicide now?” she asked, fumbling through the ideas jumbled in her mind, the memory of the wounds she had seen and the small, very sharp knife, almost like a scalpel, lying with the very end of its blade in Caleb's neck and its silver handle in the sheet of blood beside him. “His defense had not even begun!”

“Perhaps he had no hope it could succeed?” Monk suggested.

“You don't believe that,” Rathbone said instantly. “Could he have killed himself in remorse? Perhaps hearing the evidence somehow brought it back to him. Or more likely it was seeing Ravensbrook, and knowing the grief it had brought him, and of course Genevieve.”

“Genevieve?” Monk's eyebrows rose. “He loathed her. She was part of all that he despised in Angus: the comfortable, pious wife with her smiling, complacent face and her total ignorance of the tragedy and reality of the kind of life he led, the poverty and the hardship and the dirt.”

“You don't know anything about Genevieve, do you?” Hester looked from one to the other of them, and saw the blank incomprehension in their faces. “No, of course you don't. She grew up in Limehouse…”

Rathbone was astonished. He sat quite still, except for a slight parting of his lips.

Monk, on the other hand, gave a snort of disbelief and moved his hand sharply to dismiss the idea as preposterous, knocking his elbow against his empty wineglass and clinking it against its neighbor.

“Yes, she did!” Hester said sharply. “I've just spent nearly a month in Limehouse, and I know the people she grew up with. They remember her. Her name used to be Ginny Motson.”

Monk looked astonished. His face was almost expressionless with surprise.

“I assume you wouldn't say that unless you were sure beyond question?”

Rathbone said gravely. “This is not gossip, is it?”

“No, of course it isn't,” Hester answered, the scene over the mistake clear in her mind. “She told me herself, when she realized I had guessed.” They sat silently for several minutes, turning over those new and amazing thoughts. The butler came in and removed the last of the dishes and brought the port, offering it to Monk and Rathbone. He bowed civilly to Hester, but disregarded her otherwise. She puzzled him, and his uncertainty showed in his face.

“It would explain a number of things,” Monk conceded at last. “Her dread of poverty, above all. No woman who had not known it should fear it as she does. I thought it was simple love of comfort. I'm glad it isn't.” Hester smiled. She knew Monk's vulnerability where certain women were concerned.

He had been a startlingly poor judge of character before, but she did not refer to that. It was a precisely delicate subject just now. “Then was it Angus, or perhaps Caleb, who taught her to carry herself like a lady, and speak like one?” Rathbone mused. “If it were Caleb, then that may have been the cata lyst which turned his rivalry with Angus into hatred. She met Angus when he came to see Caleb, and perhaps she fell in love with him, or less attractively, saw a chance to get out of the poverty and squalor of Limehouse into something far better, and she took it.”

“And you think Caleb might have loved her?” Hester said, raising her eyebrows. “So much that after he had killed Angus, for having taken her away from him, he now felt such remorse, on looking at her face in the courtroom, that he killed himself halfway through the trial? And Lord Ravensbrook allowed him to, and is prepared to conceal it? No.” She shook her head sharply. “She told me she was never Caleb's woman, and I believe her. She had no reason to lie, and I don't think she did. Anyway, it makes no sense. If what you are saying were true, he would have written whatever it was he sent for the paper and ink to say. Unless, of course, you think Lord Ravensbrook took it? But why would he?”

Rathbone regarded his port, shining ruby red in the candlelight, but did not touch it.

“You're right,” he conceded. “It doesn't make sense.”

“And I don't see Caleb Stone taking his own life out of remorse, honestly,”

Monk added. “There was more than hatred in him. I don't know what, a terrible emotion that clawed at his heart or his belly, or both, but there was a wild humor in it, a kind of pain that was far subtler than remorse.

And does it matter now?” He looked from one to the other of them, but the shadow in his eyes and the sense of unhappiness in him answered the question more vividly than words could have done.

No one bothered to affirm it. It was tangible in the air, the quiet candlelight of the dinner table gleaming on unused silver and winking in the blood-red colors of the untouched port glasses.

“If it was not suicide, then either it was accident or murder,” Rathbone stated. He looked at Hester. “Was it exactly as Ravensbrook said?”