as she realized what they might think of her for such feelings.
Rathbone grinned in sudden amusement. "For example?" he asked.
"The first thing that comes to mind is if I loved someone else."
"And the second?"
"If he loved someone else." Her eyebrows rose. "Frankly I should be delighted to let him go. He sounds so - so restricting. But if I could not bear the social shame of it, what my friends would say, ox my enemies, the laughter behind my back, and above all the pity~and the other woman's victory ..."
"But he was not having an affair with Louisa," Monk pointed out. "Oh - you mean another woman entirely? Someone we have not even thought of? But why that night?"
Hester shrugged. "Why not? Perhaps he taunted her. Perhaps that was the night he told her about it. We shall probably never know what they said to one another."
"What else?"
The butler returned discreetly and enquired if there was anything more required. After asking his guests, Rathbone thanked him and bade him good-night.
Hester sighed. "Money?" she answered as the door closed. "Perhaps she overspent, or gambled, and he refused to pay her debts. Maybe she was frightened her creditors would shame her publicly. The only thing..." She frowned, looking first at one, then the other of them. Somewhere outside a dog barked. Beyond the windows it was almost dark. "The thing is, why did she say she had done it out of jealousy of Louisa? Jealousy is an ugly thing, and in no way an excuse - is it?" She turned to Rathbone again. "Will the law take any account of that? "
"None at all," he answered grimly. "They will hang her, if they find her guilty, and on this evidence they will have no choice."
"Then what can we do?" Hester's face was full of anxiety. Her eyes held Rathbone's and there was a sharp pity in them. He wondered at it. She alone of them had never met Alexandra Carlyon. His own dragging void of pity he could understand; he had seen the woman. She was a real living being like himself. He had been touched by her hopelessness and her fear. Her death would be the extinguishing of someone he knew. For Monk it must be the same, and for all his sometime ruthlessness, Rathbone had no doubt Monk was just as capable of compassion as he was himself.
But for Hester she was still a creature of the imagination, a name and a set of circumstances, no more.
"What are we going to do?" Hester repeated urgently.
"I don't know," he replied. "If she doesn't tell us the truth, I don't know what there is that I can do."
"Then ask her," Hester retorted. "Go to her and tell her what you know, and ask her what the truth is. It may be better. It may offer some ..." Her voice tailed off. "Some mitigation," she finished lamely.
"None of your suggestions were any mitigation at all," Monk pointed out. "She would hang just as surely as if it had been what she claims."
"What do you want to do, give up?" Hester snapped.
"What I want is immaterial," Monk replied. "I cannot afford the luxury of meddling in other people's affairs for entertainment."
"I'll go and see her again," Rathbone declared. "At least I will ask her."
* * * * *
Alexandra looked up as he came into the cell. For an instant her face lit with hope, men knowledge prevailed and fear took its place.
"Mr. Rathbone?" She swallowed with difficulty, as though there were some constriction in her throat. "What is it?"
The door clanged shut behind him and they both heard the lock fall and then the silence. He longed to be able to comfort her, at least to be gentle, but there was no time, no place for evasion.
"I should not have doubted you, Mrs. Carlyon," he answered, looking straight at her remarkable blue eyes. "I thought perhaps you had confessed in order to shield your daughter. But Monk has proved beyond any question at all that it was, as you say, you who killed your husband. However, it was not because he was having an affair with Louisa Furnival. He was not - and you knew he was not."
She stared at him, white-faced. He felt as if he had struck her, but she did not flinch. She was an extraordinary woman, and the feeling renewed in him that he must know the truth behind the surface facts. Why in heaven's name had she resorted to