“Mr. Monk would like to talk to you for a while,” Miss Buchan said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I don't know what he has to say, but it might be important for your mother, so pay him attention and tell him all the truth you know.”

“Yes, Miss Buchan,” the boy said obediently, his eyes on Monk, solemn but not yet frightened. Perhaps all his fear was centered in the courtroom at the Old Bailey and the secrets and the pain which would be torn apart and exposed there, and the decisions that would be made. His voice was flat and he looked at Monk warily.

Monk was not used to children, except the occasional urchin or working child his normal routine brought him into contact with. He did not know how to treat Cassian, who had so much of childhood in his protected, privileged daily life, and nothing at all in his innermost person.

“Do you know Mr. Furnival?” he asked bluntly, and felt clumsy in asking, but small conversation was not his milieu or his skill, even with adults.

“No sir,” Cassian answered straightaway.

“You have never met him?” Monk was surprised.

“No sir.” Cassian swallowed. “I know Mrs. Furnival.”

It seemed irrelevant. “Do you.” Monk acknowledged it only as a courtesy. He looked at Miss Buchan. “Do you know Mr. Furnival?”

“No I do not.”

Monk turned back to Cassian. “But you know your sister Sabella's husband, Mr. Pole?” he persisted, although he doubted Fenton Pole was the man he needed.

“Yes sir.” There was no change in Cassian's expression except for a slight curiosity, perhaps because the questions seemed so pointless.

Monk looked at the boy's hands, still grasping the piece of gold.

“What is that?”

Cassian's fingers closed more tightly on it and there was a faint pink color fresh in his cheeks. Very slowly he held it out for Monk to take.

Monk picked it up. The watch fob opened up to be a tiny pair of scales, such as the blind figure of Justice carries. A chill touched him inside.

“That's very handsome,” he said aloud. “A present?”

Cassian swallowed and said nothing.

“From your uncle Peverell?” Monk asked as casually as he could.

For a moment no one moved or spoke, then very slowly Cassian nodded.

“When did he give it to you?” Monk turned it over as if admiring it further.

“I don't remember,” Cassian replied, and Monk knew he was lying.

Monk handed it back and Cassian took it quickly, closing his hand over it again and then putting it out of sight in his pocket.

Monk pretended to forget it, walking away from the window towards the small table where, from the ruler, block of paper, and jar of pencils, it was obvious Cassian did his schoolwork since coming to Carlyon House. He felt Miss Buchan watching him, waiting to intervene if he trespassed too far, and he also felt Cassian tense and his eyes follow him. A moment later he came over and stood at Monk's elbow, his face wary, eyes troubled.

Monk looked at the table again, at the other items. There was a pocket dictionary, a small book of mathematical tables, a French grammar and a neat folding knife. At first he thought it was for sharpening pencils, then he saw what an elegant thing it was, far too sophisticated for a child. He reached out for it, out of the corner of his eye saw Cassian tense, his hand jerk upward, as if to stop him, then freeze motionless.

Monk picked up the knife and opened it. It was fine-bladed, almost like a razor, the sort a man uses to cut a quill to repair the nib. The initials p.e. were engraved on the handle.

“Very nice,” Monk said with a half smile, turning to Cassian. “Another gift from Mr. Erskine?”

“Yes-no!” Cassian stopped. “Yes.” His chin tightened, his lower lip came forward, as if to defy argument.

“Very generous of him,” Monk commented, feeling sick inside. “Anything else he gave you?”

“No.” But his eyes swiveled for an instant to his jacket, hanging on the hook behind the door, and Monk could just see the end of a colored silk handkerchief poking out from an inside pocket.

“He must be very fond of you,” he said, hating himself for the hypocrisy.

Cassian said nothing.

Monk turned back to Miss Buchan.

“Thank you,” he said wearily. “There isn't a great deal more to ask.”

She looked doubtful. It was plain she did not see any meaning to the questions about the gifts; it had not occurred to her to suspect Peverell Erskine. Perhaps it was just as well. He stayed a few moments longer, asking other things as they came to his mind, times and people, journeys, visitors, nothing that mattered, but it disguised the gifts and their meaning.

Then he said good-bye to the child, thanked Miss Buchan, and left Carlyon House, his knowledge giving him no pleasure. The sunlight and noise of the street seemed far away, the laughter of two women in pink-and-white frills, parasols twirling, sounding tinny in his ears, the horses' hooves loud, the hiss of carriage wheels sibilant, the cry of a peddler a feraway irritant, like the buzzing of a bluebottle fly.

Hester arrived home from the trial weary and with very little to tell Major Tiplady. The day's evidence had been largely what anyone might have foreseen, first Peverell Erskine saying, with something that looked vaguely like reluctance, what an excellent man Thaddeus Carlyon had been.

Rathbone had not tried to shake him, nor to question his veracity nor the accuracy of his observations.

Next Damaris Erskine had been asked about her brother, and had echoed her husband's sentiments and seconded his observations. Rathbone had not asked her anything else at all, but had reserved the right to recall her at a later time, should that prove to be in the interests of the defense.

There had been no revelations. The crowd was growing more intense in their anger towards Alexandra. The general was the kind of man they most liked to admire-heroic, upright, a man of action with no dangerous ideas or unnerving sense of humor, no opinions they would have to disapprove of or feel guilty about understanding, a good family man whose wife had most hideously turned on him for no sane reason. Such a woman should be hanged, to discourage all other women from such violence, and the sooner the better. It was murmured all through the day, and said aloud when finally the court rose for the weekend.

It was a discouraging day, and she came back to Great Titchfield Street tired and frightened by the inevitability of events, and the hatred and incomprehension in the air. By the time she had recounted it all to Major Tiplady she was close to tears. Even he could find no hope in the situation; the best he could offer was an exhortation to courage, the greatest of all courage, to continue to fight with all one has even when victory seems beyond possibility.

The following day a crisp wind blew from the east but the sky was sharp blue and flowers were fluttering in the wind. It was Saturday, and there was no court sitting, so there was brief respite. Hester woke with a sense not of ease but of greater tension because she would rather have continued with it now that it was begun. This was only prolonging the pain and the helplessness. It would have been a blessing were there anything more she could do, but although she had been awake, turning and twisting, thrashing it over and over in her mind, she could think of nothing. They knew the truth of what had happened to Alexandra, what she had done, and why-exactly, passionately and irrevocably why. She had not known there was another man, let alone two others, or who they were.

There was little point in trying to prove it was old Randolph Carlyon; he would never admit it, and his family would close around him like a wall of iron. To accuse him would only prejudice the crowd and the jury still more deeply against Alexandra. She would appear a wild and vicious woman with a vile mind, depraved and obsessed with perversions.