The William Monk Mysteries Read online

  “He was changed?” Monk prompted.

  She smiled slowly. She had a lovely mouth, sweeter and more sensitive than her mother-in-law’s. “Yes—but he did not lose his humor, he could still laugh and enjoy beautiful things. He gave me a musical box for my birthday.” Her smile widened at the thought of it. “It had an enamel top with a rose painted on it. It played ‘Fur Elise’—Beethoven, you know—”

  “Really, my dear!” Lovel’s voice cut across her as he turned from where he had been standing by the window. “The man is here on police business. He doesn’t know or care about Beethoven and Joscelin’s music box. Please try to concentrate on something relevant—in the remote likelihood there is anything. He wants to know if Joscelin offended someone—owed them money—God knows what!”

  Her face altered so slightly it could have been a change in the light, had not the sky beyond the windows been a steady cloudless blue. Suddenly she looked tired.

  “I know Joscelin found finances a little difficult from time to time,” she answered quietly. “But I do not know of any particulars, or whom he owed.”

  “He would hardly have discussed such a thing with my wife.” Lovel swung around sharply. “If he wanted to borrow he would come to me—but he had more sense than to try. He had a very generous allowance as it was.”

  Monk glanced frantically at the splendid room, the swagged velvet curtains, and the garden and parkland beyond, and forbore from making any remark as to generosity. He looked back at Rosamond.

  “You never assisted him, ma’am?”

  Rosamond hesitated.

  “With what?” Lovel asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “A gift?” Monk suggested, struggling to be tactful. “Perhaps a small loan to meet a sudden embarrassment?”

  “I can only assume you are trying to cause mischief,” Lovel said acidly. “Which is despicable, and if you persist I shall have you removed from the case.”

  Monk was taken aback; he had not deliberately intended offense, simply to uncover a truth. Such sensibilities were peripheral, and he thought a rather silly indulgence now.

  Lovel saw his irritation and mistook it for a failure to understand. “Mr. Monk, a married woman does not own anything to dispose of—to a brother-in-law or anyone else.”

  Monk blushed for making a fool of himself, and for the patronage in Lovel’s manner. When reminded, of course he knew the law. Even Rosamond’s personal jewelry was not hers in law. If Lovel said she was not to give it away, then she could not. Not that he had any doubt, from the catch in her speech and the flicker of her eyes, that she had done so.

  He had no desire to betray her; the knowledge was all he wanted. He bit back the reply he wished to make.

  “I did not intend to suggest anything done without your permission, my lord, simply a gesture of kindness on Lady Shelburne’s part.”

  Lovel opened his mouth to retort, then changed his mind and looked out of the window again, his face tight, his shoulders broad and stiff.

  “Did the war affect Major Grey deeply?” Monk turned back to Rosamond.

  “Oh yes!” For a moment there was intense feeling in her, then she recalled the circumstances and struggled to control herself. Had she not been as schooled in the privileges and the duties of a lady she would have wept. “Yes,” she said again. “Yes, although he mastered it with great courage. It was not many months before he began to be his old self—most of the time. He would play the piano, and sing for us sometimes.” Her eyes looked beyond Monk to some past place in her own mind. “And he still told us funny stories and made us laugh. But there were occasions when he would think of the men who died, and I suppose his own suffering as well.”

  Monk was gathering an increasingly sharp picture of Joscelin Grey: a dashing young officer, easy mannered, perhaps a trifle callow; then through experience of war with its blood and pain, and for him an entirely new kind of responsibility, returning home determined to resume as much of the old life as possible; a youngest son with little money but great charm, and a degree of courage.

  He had not seemed like a man to make enemies through wronging anyone—but it did not need a leap of imagination to conceive that he might have earned a jealousy powerful enough to have ended in murder. All that was needed for that might lie within this lovely room with its tapestries and its view of the parkland.

  “Thank you, Lady Shelburne,” he said formally. “You have given me a much clearer picture of him than I had. I am most grateful.” He turned to Lovel. “Thank you, my lord. If I might speak with Mr. Menard Grey—”

  “He is out,” Lovel replied flatly. “He went to see one of the tenant farmers, and I don’t know which so there is no point in your traipsing around looking. Anyway, you are looking for who murdered Joscelin, not writing an obituary!”

  “I don’t think the obituary is finished until it contains the answer,” Monk replied, meeting his eyes with a straight, challenging stare.

  “Then get on with it!” Lovel snapped. “Don’t stand here in the sun—get out and do something useful.”

  Monk left without speaking and closed the withdrawing room door behind him. In the hall a footman was awaiting discreetly to show him out—or perhaps to make sure that he left without pocketing the silver card tray on the hall table, or the ivory-handled letter opener.

  The weather had changed dramatically; from nowhere a swift overcast had brought a squall, the first heavy drops beginning even as he left.

  He was outside, walking towards the main drive through the clearing rain, when quite by chance he met the last member of the family. He saw her coming towards him briskly, whisking her skirts out of the way of a stray bramble trailing onto the narrower path. She was reminiscent of Fabia Shelburne in age and dress, but without the brittle glamour. This woman’s nose was longer, her hair wilder, and she could never have been a beauty, even forty years ago.

  “Good afternoon.” He lifted his hat in a small gesture of politeness.

  She stopped in her stride and looked at him curiously. “Good afternoon. You are a stranger. What are you doing here? Are you lost?”

  “No, thank you ma’am. I am from the Metropolitan Police. I came to report our progress on the murder of Major Grey.”

  Her eyes narrowed and he was not sure whether it was amusement or something else.

  “You look a well-set-up young man to be carrying messages. I suppose you came to see Fabia?”

  He had no idea who she was, and for a moment he was at a loss for a civil reply.

  She understood instantly.

  “I’m Callandra Daviot; the late Lord Shelburne was my brother.”

  “Then Major Grey was your nephew, Lady Callandra?” He spoke her correct title without thinking, and only realized it afterwards, and wondered what experience or interest had taught him. Now he was only concerned for another opinion of Joscelin Grey.

  “Naturally,” she agreed. “How can that help you?”

  “You must have known him.”

  Her rather wild eyebrows rose slightly.

  “Of course. Possibly a little better than Fabia. Why?”

  “You were very close to him?” he said quickly.

  “On the contrary, I was some distance removed.” Now he was quite certain there was a dry humor in her eyes.

  “And saw the clearer for it?” He finished her implication.

  “I believe so. Do you require to stand here under the trees, young man? I am being steadily dripped on.”

  He shook his head, and turned to accompany her back along the way he had come.

  “It is unfortunate that Joscelin was murdered,” she continued. “It would have been much better if he could have died at Sebastopol—better for Fabia anyway. What do you want of me? I was not especially fond of Joscelin, nor he of me. I knew none of his business, and have no useful ideas as to who might have wished him such intense harm.”

  “You were not fond of him yourself?” Monk said curiously. “Everyone says he was charming.”

/>   “So he was,” she agreed, walking with large strides not towards the main entrance of the house but along a graveled path in the direction of the stables, and he had no choice but to go also or be left behind. “I do not care a great deal for charm.” She looked directly at him, and he found himself warming to her dry honesty. “Perhaps because I never possessed it,” she continued. “But it always seems chameleon to me, and I cannot be sure what color the animal underneath might be really. Now will you please either return to the house, or go wherever it is you are going. I have no inclination to get any wetter than I already am, and it is going to rain again. I do not intend to stand in the stable yard talking polite nonsense that cannot possibly assist you.”

  He smiled broadly and bowed his head in a small salute. Lady Callandra was the only person in Shelburne he liked instinctively.

  “Of course, ma’am; thank you for your …” He hesitated, not wanting to be so obvious as to say “honesty.” “… time. I wish you a good day.”

  She looked at him wryly and with a little nod and strode past and into the harness room calling loudly for the head groom.

  Monk walked back along the driveway again—as she had surmised, through a considerable shower—and out past the gates. He followed the road for the three miles to the village. Newly washed by rain, in the brilliant bursts of sun it was so lovely it caught a longing in him as if once it was out of his sight he would never recall it clearly enough. Here and there a coppice showed dark green, billowing over the sweep of grass and mounded against the sky, and beyond the distant stone walls wheat fields shone dark gold with the wind rippling like waves through their heavy heads.

  It took him a little short of an hour and he found the peace of it turning his mind from the temporary matter of who murdered Joscelin Grey to the deeper question as to what manner of man he himself was. Here no one knew him; at least for tonight he would be able to start anew, no previous act could mar it, or help. Perhaps he would learn something of the inner man, unfiltered by expectations. What did he believe, what did he truly value? What drove him from day to day—except ambition, and personal vanity?

  He stayed overnight in the village public hostelry, and asked some discreet questions of certain locals in the morning, without significantly adding to his picture of Joscelin Grey, but he found a very considerable respect for both Grey’s brothers, in their different ways. They were not liked—that was too close a relationship with men whose lives and stations were so different—but they were trusted. They fitted into expectations of their kind, small courtesies were observed, a mutual code was kept.

  Of Joscelin it was different. Affection was possible. Everyone had found him more than civil, remembering as many of the generosities as were consistent with his position as a son of the house. If some had thought or felt otherwise they were not saying so to an outsider like Monk. And he had been a soldier; a certain honor was due the dead.

  Monk enjoyed being polite, even gracious. No one was afraid of him—guarded certainly, he was still a Peeler—but there was no personal awe, and they were as keen as he to find who had murdered their hero.

  He took luncheon in the taproom with several local worthies and contrived to fall into conversation. By the door with the sunlight streaming in, with cider, apple pie and cheese, opinions began to flow fast and free. Monk became involved, and before long his tongue got the better of him, clear, sarcastic and funny. It was only afterwards as he was walking away that he realized that it was also at times unkind.

  He left in the early afternoon for the small, silent station, and took a clattering, steam-belching journey back to London.

  He arrived a little after four, and went by hansom straight to the police station.

  “Well?” Runcorn inquired with lifted eyebrows. “Did you manage to mollify Her Ladyship? I’m sure you conducted yourself like a gentleman?”

  Monk heard that slight edge to Runcorn’s voice again, and the flavor of resentment. What for? He struggled desperately to recall any wisp of memory, even a guess as to what he might have done to occasion it. Surely not mere abrasiveness of manner? He had not been so stupid as to be positively rude to a superior? But nothing came. It mattered—it mattered acutely: Runcorn held the key to his employment, the only sure thing in his life now, in fact the very means of it. Without work he was not only completely anonymous, but within a few weeks he would be a pauper. Then there would be only the same bitter choice for him as for every other pauper: beggary, with its threat of starvation or imprisonment as a vagrant; or the workhouse. And God knew, there were those who thought the workhouse the greater evil.

  “I believe Her Ladyship understood that we are doing all we can,” he answered. “And that we had to exhaust the more likely-seeming possibilities first, like a thief off the streets. She understands that now we must consider that it may have been someone who knew him.”

  Runcorn grunted. “Asked her about him, did you? What sort of feller he was?”

  “Yes sir. Naturally she was biased—”

  “Naturally,” Runcorn agreed tartly, shooting his eyebrows up. “But you ought to be bright enough to see past that.”

  Monk ignored the implication. “He seems to have been her favorite son,” he replied. “Considerably the most likable. Everyone else gave the same opinion, even in the village. Discount some of that as speaking no ill of the dead.” He smiled twistedly. “Or of the son of the big house. Even so, you’re still left with a man of unusual charm, a good war record, and no especial vices or weaknesses, except that he found it hard to manage on his allowance, bit of a temper now and then, and a mocking wit when he chose; but generous, remembered birthdays and servants’ names—knew how to amuse. It begins to look as if jealousy could have been a motive.”

  Runcorn sighed.

  “Messy,” he said decidedly, his left eye narrowing again. “Never like having to dig into family relationships, and the higher you go the nastier you get.” He pulled his coat a little straighter without thinking, but it still did not sit elegantly. “That’s your society for you; cover their tracks better than any of your average criminals, when they really try. Don’t often make a mistake, that lot, but oh my grandfather, when they do!” He poked his finger in the air towards Monk. “Take my word for it, if there’s something nasty there, it’ll get a lot worse before it gets any better. You may fancy the higher classes, my boy, but they play very dirty when they protect their own; you believe it!”

  Monk could think of no answer. He wished he could remember the things he had said and done to prompt Runcorn to these flavors, nuances of disapproval. Was he a brazen social climber? The thought was repugnant, even pathetic in a way, trying to appear something you are not, in order to impress people who don’t care for you in the slightest, and can most certainly detect your origins even before you open your mouth!

  But did not most men seek to improve themselves, given opportunity? But had he been overambitious, and foolish enough to show it?

  The thing lying at the back of his mind, troubling him all the time, was why he had not been back to see Beth in eight years. She seemed the only family he had, and yet he had virtually ignored her. Why?

  Runcorn was staring at him.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Yes sir.” He snapped to attention. “I agree, sir. I think there may be something very unpleasant indeed. One has to hate very much to beat a man to death as Grey was beaten. I imagine if it is something to do with the family, they will do everything they can to hush it up. In fact the eldest son, the present Lord Shelburne, didn’t seem very eager for me to probe it. He tried to guide me back to the idea that it was a casual thief, or a lunatic.”

  “And Her Ladyship?”

  “She wants us to continue.”

  “Then she’s fortunate, isn’t she?” Runcorn nodded his head with his lips twisted. “Because that is precisely what you are going to do!”

  Monk recognized a dismissal.

  “Yes sir; I’ll start with Yea
ts.” He excused himself and went to his own room.

  Evan was sitting at the table, busy writing. He looked up with a quick smile when Monk came in. Monk found himself overwhelmingly glad to see him. He realized he had already begun to think of Evan as a friend as much as a colleague.

  “How was Shelburne?” Evan asked.

  “Very splendid,” he replied. “And very formal. What about Mr. Yeats?”

  “Very respectable.” Evan’s mouth twitched in a brief and suppressed amusement. “And very ordinary. No one is saying anything to his discredit. In fact no one is saying anything much at all; they have trouble in recalling precisely who he is.”

  Monk dismissed Yeats from his mind, and spoke of the thing which was more pressing to him.

  “Runcorn seems to think it will become unpleasant, and he’s expecting rather a lot from us—”

  “Naturally.” Evan looked at him, his eyes perfectly clear. “That’s why he rushed you into it, even though you’re hardly back from being ill. It’s always sticky when we have to deal with the aristocracy; and let’s face it, a policeman is usually treated pretty much as the social equal of a parlor maid and about as desirable to be close to as the drains; necessary in an imperfect society, but not fit to have in the withdrawing room.”

  At another time Monk would have laughed, but now it was too painful, and too urgent.

  “Why me?” he pressed.

  Evan was frankly puzzled. He hid what looked like embarrassment with formality.

  “Sir?”

  “Why me?” Monk repeated a little more harshly. He could hear the rising pitch in his own voice, and could not govern it.

  Evan lowered his eyes awkwardly.

  “Do you want an honest answer to that, sir; although you must know it as well as I do?”

  “Yes I do! Please?”

  Evan faced him, his eyes hot and troubled. “Because you are the best detective in the station, and the most ambitious. Because you know how to dress and to speak; you’ll be equal to the Shelburnes, if anyone is.” He hesitated, biting his lip, then plunged on. “And—and if you come unstuck either by making a mess of it and failing to find the murderer, or rubbing up against Her Ladyship and she complains about you, there are a good few who won’t mind if you’re demoted. And of course worse still, if it turns out to be one of the family—and you have to arrest him-”