The William Monk Mysteries Page 11

  Monk stared at him, but Evan did not look away. Monk felt the heat of shock ripple through him.

  “Including Runcorn?” he said very quietly.

  “I think so.”

  “And you?”

  Evan was transparently surprised. “No, not me,” he said simply. He made no protestations, and Monk believed him.

  “Good.” He drew a deep breath. “Well, we’ll go and see Mr. Yeats tomorrow.”

  “Yes sir.” Evan was smiling, the shadow gone. “I’ll be here at eight.”

  Monk winced inwardly at the time, but he had to agree. He said good-night and turned to go home.

  But out in the street he started walking the other way, not consciously thinking until he realized he was moving in the general direction of St. Marylebone Church. It was over two miles away, and he was tired. He had already walked a long way in Shelburne, and his legs were aching, his feet sore. He hailed a cab and when the driver asked him, he gave the address of the church.

  It was very quiet inside with only the dimmest of light through the fast-graying windows. Candelabra shed little yellow arcs.

  Why the church? He had all the peace and silence he needed in his own rooms, and he certainly had no conscious thought of God. He sat down in one of the pews.

  Why had he come here? No matter how much he had dedicated himself to his job, his ambition, he must know someone, have a friend, or even an enemy. His life must have impinged on someone else’s—beside Runcorn.

  He had been sitting in the dark without count of time, struggling to remember anything at all—a face, a name, even a feeling, something of childhood, like the momentary glimpse at Shelburne—when he saw the girl in black again, standing a few feet away.

  He was startled. She seemed so vivid, familiar. Or was it only that she seemed to him to be lovely, evocative of something he wanted to feel, wanted to remember?

  But she was not beautiful, not really. Her mouth was too big, her eyes too deep. She was looking at him.

  Suddenly he was frightened. Ought he to know her? Was he being unbearably rude in not speaking? But he could know any number of people, of any walk of life! She could be a bishop’s daughter, or a prostitute!

  No, never with that face.

  Don’t be ridiculous, harlots could have faces with just that warmth, those luminous eyes; at least they could while they were still young, and nature had not yet written itself on the outside.

  Without realizing it, he was still looking at her.

  “Good evening, Mr. Monk,” she said slowly, a faint embarrassment making her blink.

  He rose to his feet. “Good evening, ma’am.” He had no idea of her name, and now he was terrified, wishing he had never come. What should he say? How well did she know him? He could feel the sweat prickly on his body, his tongue dry, his thoughts in a stultified, wordless mass.

  “You have not spoken for such a long time,” she went on. “I had begun to fear you had discovered something you did not dare to tell me.”

  Discovered! Was she connected with some case? It must be old; he had been working on Joscelin Grey since he came back, and before that the accident. He fished for something that would not commit him and yet still make sense.

  “No, I’m afraid I haven’t discovered anything else.” His voice was dry, artificial to his own ears. Please God he did not sound so foolish to her!

  “Oh.” She looked down. It seemed for a moment as if she could not think of anything else to say, then she lifted her head again and met his eyes very squarely. He could only think how dark they were—not brown, but a multitude of shadows. “You may tell me the truth, Mr. Monk, whatever it is. Even if he killed himself, and for whatever reason, I would rather know.”

  “It is the truth,” he said simply. “I had an accident about seven weeks ago. I was in a cab that overturned and I broke my arm and ribs and cracked my head. I can’t even remember it. I was in hospital for nearly a month, and then went north to my sister’s to regain my strength. I’m afraid I haven’t done anything about it since then.”

  “Oh dear.” Her face was tight with concern. “I am sorry. Are you all right now? Are you sure you are better?”

  She sounded as if it mattered to her. He found himself warmed ridiculously by it. He forced from his mind the idea that she was merely compassionate, or well-mannered.

  “Yes, yes thank you; although there are blanks in my memory.” Why had he told her that? To explain his behavior—in case it hurt her? He was taking too much upon himself. Why should she care, more than courtesy required? He remembered Sunday now; she had worn black then too, but expensive black, silk and fashionable. The man accompanying her had been dressed as Monk could not afford to be. Her husband? The thought was acutely depressing, even painful. He did not even think of the other woman.

  “Oh.” Again she was lost for words.

  He was fumbling, trying to find a clue, sharply conscious of her presence; even faintly, although she was several feet away, of her perfume. Or was it imagination?

  “What was the last thing I told you?” he asked. “I mean—” He did not know what he meant.

  But she answered with only the merest hesitation.

  “Not a great deal. You said Papa had certainly discovered that the business was fraudulent but you did not know yet whether he had faced the other partners with it or not. You had seen someone, although you did not name him, but a certain Mr. Robinson disappeared every time you went after him.” Her face tightened. “You did not know whether Papa could have been murdered by them, to keep his silence, or if he took his own life, for shame. Perhaps I was wrong to ask you to discover. It just seemed so dreadful that he should choose that way rather than fight them, show them for what they are. It’s no crime to be deceived!” There was a spark of anger in her now, as though she were fighting to keep control of herself. “I wanted to believe he would have stayed alive, and fought them, faced his friends, even those who lost money, rather than—” She stopped, otherwise she would have wept. She stood quite still, swallowing hard.

  “I’m sorry,” he said very quietly. He wanted to touch her, but he was hurtfully aware of the difference between them. It would be a familiarity and would break the moment’s trust, the illusion of closeness.

  She waited a moment longer, as if for something which did not come; then she abandoned it.

  “Thank you. I am sure you have done everything you could. Perhaps I saw what I wished to see.”

  There was a movement up the aisle, towards the door of the church, and the vicar came down, looking vague, and behind him the same woman with the highly individual face whom Monk had seen on the first occasion in the church. She also was dressed in dark, plain clothes, and her thick hair with a very slight wave was pulled back in a manner that owed more to expediency than fashion.

  “Mrs. Latterly, is that you?” the vicar asked uncertainly, peering forward. “Why my dear, what are you doing here all by yourself? You mustn’t brood, you know. Oh!” He saw Monk. “I beg your pardon. I did not realize you had company.”

  “This is Mr. Monk,” she said, explaining him. “From the police. He was kind enough to help us when Papa … died.”

  The vicar looked at Monk with disapproval.

  “Indeed. I do think, my dear child, that it would be wiser for all of us if you were to let the matter rest. Observe mourning, of course, but let your poor father-in-law rest in peace.” He crossed the air absently. “Yes—in peace.”

  Monk stood up. Mrs. Latterly; so she was married—or a widow? He was being absurd.

  “If I learn anything more, Mrs. Latterly”—his voice was tight, almost choking—“do you wish me to inform you?” He did not want to lose her, to have her disappear into the past with everything else. He might not discover anything, but he must know where she was, have a reason to see her.

  She looked at him for a long moment, undecided, fighting with herself. Then she spoke carefully.

  “Yes please, if you will be so kind, but ple
ase remember your promise! Good night.” She swiveled around, her skirts brushing Monk’s feet. “Good night, Vicar. Come, Hester, it is time we returned home; Charles will be expecting us for dinner.” And she walked slowly up towards the door. Monk watched her go arm in arm with the other woman as if she had taken the light away with her.

  Outside in the sharper evening air Hester Latterly turned to her sister-in-law.

  “I think it is past time you explained yourself, Imogen,” she said quietly, but with an edge of urgency in her voice. “Just who is that man?”

  “He is with the police,” Imogen replied, walking briskly towards their carriage, which was waiting at the curbside. The coachman climbed down, opened the door and handed them in, Imogen first, then Hester. Both took his courtesy for granted and Hester arranged her skirts merely sufficiently to be comfortable, Imogen to avoid crushing the fabric.

  “What do you mean, ‘with’?” Hester demanded as the carriage moved forward. “One does not accompany the police; you make it sound like a social event! ‘Miss Smith is with Mr. Jones this evening.’ ”

  “Don’t be pedantic,” Imogen criticized. “Actually you can say it of a maid as well—‘Tilly is with the Robinsons at present’!”

  Hester’s eyebrows shot up. “Indeed! And is that man presently playing footman to the police?”

  Imogen remained silent.

  “I’m sorry,” Hester said at length. “But I know there is something distressing you, and I feel so helpless because I don’t know what it is.”

  Imogen put out her hand and held Hester’s tightly.

  “Nothing,” she said in a voice so low it could only just be heard above the rattle of the carriage and the dull thud of hooves and the noises of the street. “It is only Papa’s death, and all that followed. None of us are over the shock of it yet, and I do appreciate your leaving everything and coming home as you did.”

  “I never thought of doing less,” Hester said honestly, although her work in the Crimean hospitals had changed her beyond anything Imogen or Charles could begin to understand. It had been a hard duty to leave the nursing service and the white-hot spirit to improve, reform and heal that had moved not only Miss Nightingale but so many other women as well. But the death of first her father, then within a few short weeks her mother also, had made it an undeniable duty that she should return home and be there to mourn, and to assist her brother and his wife in all the affairs that there were to be attended to. Naturally Charles had seen to all the business and the finances, but there had been the house to close up, servants to dismiss, endless letters to write, clothes to dispose of to the poor, bequests of a personal nature to be remembered, and the endless social facade to be kept up. It would have been desperately unfair to expect Imogen to bear the burden and that responsibility alone. Hester had given no second thought as to whether she should come, simply excused herself, packed her few belongings and embarked.

  It had been an extraordinary contrast after the desperate years in the Crimea with the unspeakable suffering she had seen, the agony of wounds, bodies torn by shot and sword; and to her even more harrowing, those wasted by disease, the racking pain and nausea of cholera, typhus and dysentery, the cold and the starvation; and driving her almost beyond herself with fury, the staggering incompetence.

  She, like the other handful of women, had worked herself close to exhaustion, cleaning up human waste where there were no sanitary facilities, excrement from the helpless running on the floor and dripping through to the packed and wretched huddled in the cellars below. She had nursed men delirious with fever, gangrenous from amputations of limbs lost to everything from musket shot, cannon shot, sword thrust, even frostbite on the exposed and fearful bivouacs of the winter encampments where men and horses had perished by the thousands. She had delivered babies of the hungry and neglected army wives, buried many of them, then comforted the bereaved.

  And when she could bear the pity no longer she had expended her last energy in fury, fighting the endless, idiotic inadequacy of the command, who seemed to her not to have the faintest grasp of ordinary sense, let alone management ability.

  She had lost a brother, and many friends, chief among them Alan Russell, a brilliant war correspondent who had written home to the newspapers some of the unpalatable truths about one of the bravest and foolhardiest campaigns ever fought. He had shared many of them with her, allowing her to read them before they were posted.

  Indeed in the weakness of fever he had dictated his last letter to her and she had sent it. When he died in the hospital at Scutari she had in a rash moment of deep emotion written a dispatch herself, and signed his name to it as if he were still alive.

  It had been accepted and printed. From knowledge gleaned from other injured and feverish men she had learned their accounts of battle, siege and trench warfare, crazy charges and long weeks of boredom, and other dispatches had followed, all with Alan’s name on them. In the general confusion no one realized.

  Now she was home in the orderly, dignified, very sober grief of her brother’s household mourning both her parents, wearing black as if this were the only loss and there were nothing else to do but conduct a gentle life of embroidery, letter writing and discreet good works with local charities. And of course obey Charles’s continuous and rather pompous orders as to what must be done, and how, and when. It was almost beyond bearing. It was as if she were in suspended animation. She had grown used to having authority, making decisions and being in the heart of emotion, even if overtired, bitterly frustrated, full of anger and pity, desperately needed.

  Now Charles was driven frantic because he could not understand her or comprehend the change in her from the brooding, intellectual girl he knew before, nor could he foresee any respectable man offering for her in marriage. He found the thought of having her living under his roof for the rest of her life well nigh insufferable.

  The prospect did not please Hester either, but then she had no intention of allowing it to come to pass. As long as Imogen needed her she would remain, then she would consider her future and its possibilities.

  However, as she sat in the carriage beside Imogen while they rattled through the dusk streets she had a powerful conviction that there was much troubling her sister-in-law and it was something that, for whatever reasons, Imogen was keeping secret, telling neither Charles nor Hester, and bearing the weight of it alone. It was more than grief, it was something that lay not only in the past but in the future also.

  5

  MONK AND EVAN saw Grimwade only briefly, then went straight up to visit Yeats. It was a little after eight in the morning and they hoped to catch him at breakfast, or possibly even before.

  Yeats opened the door himself; he was a small man of about forty, a trifle plump, with a mild face and thinning hair which fell forward over his brow. He was startled and there was still a piece of toast and orange preserve in his hand. He stared at Monk with some alarm.

  “Good morning, Mr. Yeats,” Monk said firmly. “We are from the police; we would like to speak to you about the murder of Major Joscelin Grey. May we come in please?” He did not step forward, but his height seemed to press over Yeats and vaguely threaten him, and he used it deliberately.

  “Y-yes, y-yes of course,” Yeats stuttered, backing away, still clutching the toast. “But I assure you I d-don’t know anything I haven’t already t-told you. Not you—at least—a Mr. Lamb who was—a—”

  “Yes I know.” Monk followed him in. He knew he was being oppressive, but he could not afford to be gentle. Yeats must have seen the murderer face-to-face, possibly even been in collusion with him, willingly or unwillingly. “But we have learned quite a few new facts,” he went on, “since Mr. Lamb was taken ill and I have been put on the case.”

  “Oh?” Yeats dropped the toast and bent to pick it up, ignoring the preserve on the carpet. It was a smaller room than Joscelin Grey’s and overpoweringly furnished in heavy oak covered in photographs and embroidered linen. There were antimacassars on bo
th the chairs.

  “Have you—” Yeats said nervously. “Have you? I still don’t think I can—er—could—”

  “Perhaps if you were to allow a few questions, Mr. Yeats.” Monk did not want him so frightened as to be incapable of thought or memory.

  “Well—if you think so. Yes—yes, if …” He backed away and sat down sharply on the chair closest to the table.

  Monk sat also and was conscious of Evan behind him doing the same on a ladder-back chair by the wall. He wondered fleetingly what Evan was thinking, if he found him harsh, overconscious of his own ambition, his need to succeed. Yeats could so easily be no more than he seemed, a frightened little man whom mischance had placed at the pivot of a murder.

  Monk began quietly, thinking with an instant’s self-mockery that he might be moderating his tone not to reassure Yeats but to earn Evan’s approval. What had led him to such isolation that Evan’s opinion mattered so much to him? Had he been too absorbed in learning, climbing, polishing himself, to afford friendship, much less love? Indeed, had anything at all engaged his higher emotions?

  Yeats was watching him like a rabbit seeing a stoat, and too horrified to move.

  “You yourself had a visitor that night,” Monk told him quite gently. “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know!” Yeats’s voice was high, almost a squeak. “I don’t know who he was! I told Mr. Lamb that! He came here by mistake; he didn’t even really want me!”

  Monk found himself holding up his hand, trying to calm him as one would with an overexcited child, or an animal.

  “But you saw him, Mr. Yeats.” He kept his voice low. “No doubt you have some memory of his appearance, perhaps his voice? He must have spoken to you?” Whether Yeats was lying or not, he would achieve nothing by attacking his statement now; Yeats would only entrench himself more and more deeply into his ignorance.