Her voice sounded thin even in her own ears. “But Genevieve is convinced Caleb has killed him. She told me that in the past Angus has come home with knife scars that no one else knows about. He would not call a doctor. He was ashamed of them. I think that is why she did not tell you. She does not wish anyone to think Angus was not able to stand up for himself, or that he was a coward. Angus . . .” She did not know how to phrase what she thought and make it seem sensible. She could almost hear Monk's sarcastic dismissal even before she spoke. “Angus loved Caleb,” she went on hastily. “They were very close as children. Perhaps that bond still existed, for him, and he could never believe Caleb would hurt him. Maybe he could even have felt guilty for his own success, when Caleb had so little. That could be why he kept going back-to try to help him-for his own conscience's sake. And pity can be a very hard thing to take. It can eat more deeply into the soul than being hated or ignored.”

He looked at her in silence for a long time. She did not look away, but stared back.

“Perhaps,” he conceded at length. For the first time his imagination could conceive of the emotions within Caleb, the explosion of rage which could end in such violence. “It could explain both why Angus did not simply leave him to rot, which is what it would seem he both wanted and deserved, and why Caleb was stupid enough to kill the one man on the earth who still cared about him. But it doesn't help me find Angus.”

“Well, if it was Caleb who killed him, at least you have some idea where to look,” she pointed out. “You can stop wasting your time trying to find out if Angus had a secret mistress or gambling debts. He was probably just as decent as he seemed, but even if he wasn't, you don't need to find out, and you certainly don't need to tell Genevieve-or Lord Ravensbrook. They are both convinced he was an extraordinarily good man. Everything they knew of him was honorable, generous, patient, loyal and innately decent. He read stories to his children, brought his wife flowers, liked to sing around the piano, and was good at flying a kite. If he is dead, isn't that loss enough? You don't have to find his weaknesses too, do you, simply in the name of truth?”

“I'm not doing it in the name of truth,” he said, his face screwed up with irritation and pain at the thought. “I want, in the name of truth, to find out what happened to him.”