A Sudden, Fearful Death Page 12

  Barrymore was still confused. He looked at Monk without comprehension.

  “What do you want to know about Prudence? I cannot conceive of any reason at all why anyone who knew her would wish her harm.”

  “I heard she served in the Crimea?”

  Unconsciously Barrymore straightened his shoulders. “Yes, indeed she did.” There was pride in his voice. “She was one of the first to go out there. I remember the day she left home. She looked so terribly young.” His eyes looked far beyond Monk into some place in his own inner vision. “Only the young are so very confident. They have no idea what the world may bring them.” He smiled with intense sadness. “They don’t imagine that failure or death may come to them. It will always be someone else. That is immortality, isn’t it? The belief.”

  Monk did not interrupt.

  “She took one tin trunk,” Barrymore went on. “Just a few plain blue gowns, clean linen, a second pair of boots, her Bible and journal, and her books on medicine. She wanted to be a doctor, you see. Impossible, I understand that, but it didn’t stop her wanting it. She knew a great deal.” For the first time he looked directly at Monk. “She was very clever, you know, very diligent. Studying came naturally to her. Nothing like her sister, Faith. She is quite different. They loved one another. After Faith was married and moved north, they wrote to each other at least once a week.” His voice was thick with emotion. “She’s going to be …”

  “How were they different?” Monk asked, interrupting him for his own sake.

  “How?” He was still gazing into the park, and the memories of happiness. “Oh, Faith was always laughing. She loved to dance. She cared about things, but she was such a flirt, then, so pretty. She found it easy to make people like her.” He was smiling. “There were a dozen young men who were longing to court her. She chose Joseph Barker. He seemed so ordinary, a little shy. He even stuttered now and again when he was nervous.” He shook his head a little as if it still surprised him. “He couldn’t dance, and Faith loved to dance. But she had more sense than her mother or I. Joseph has made her very happy.”

  “And Prudence?” Monk prompted.

  The light died out of his face.

  “Prudence? She did not want to marry, she only cared about medicine and service. She wanted to heal people and to change things.” He sighed. “And always to know more! Of course her mother wanted her to marry, but she turned away all suitors, and there were several. She was a lovely girl….” Again he stopped for a moment, his feelings too powerful to hide.

  Monk waited. Barrymore needed time to recover control and master the outward show of his pain. Somewhere beyond the garden a dog barked, and from the other direction came the sound of children laughing.

  “I’m sorry,” Barrymore said after a few moments. “I loved her very much. One should not have favorite children, but Prudence was so easy for me to understand. We shared so many things—ideas—dreams …” He stopped, again his voice thick with tears.

  “Thank you for sparing me your time, sir.” Monk rose to his feet. The interview was unbearable, and he had learned all he could. “I will see what I can find from the hospital, and perhaps any other friends you think she may have spoken to lately and who may have some knowledge.”

  Barrymore recalled himself. “I have no idea how they could help, but if there is anything …”

  “I would like to speak to Mrs. Barrymore, if she is well enough.”

  “Mrs. Barrymore?” He seemed surprised.

  “She may know something of her daughter, some confidence perhaps, which might seem trivial but could lead us to something of importance.”

  “Oh—yes, I suppose so. I will ask her if she feels well enough.” He shook his head very slightly. “I am amazed at her strength. She has borne this, I think, better than I.” And with that observation, he excused himself and went to seek his wife.

  He returned a few moments later and conducted Monk to another comfortable well-furnished room with flowered sofas and chairs, embroidered samplers on the walls, and many small ornaments of various types. A bookcase was filled with books, obviously chosen for their contents, not their appearance, and a basket of silks lay open next to a tapestry on a frame.

  Mrs. Barrymore was far smaller than her husband, a neat little woman in a huge skirt, her fair hair graying only slightly, pulled back under a lace cap. Of course today she was wearing black, and her pretty, delicately boned face showed signs that she had wept very recently. But she was perfectly composed now and greeted Monk graciously. She did not rise, but extended to him a beautiful hand, partially covered by a fingerless lace mitten.

  “How do you do, Mr. Monk? My husband tells me you are a friend of Lady Callandra Daviot, who was a patron of poor Prudence’s. It is most kind of you to take an interest in our tragedy.”

  Monk silently admired Barrymore’s diplomacy. He had not thought of such an elegant way of explaining it.

  “Many people are moved by her loss, ma’am,” he said aloud, brushing her fingertips with his lips. If Barrymore chose to present him as a gentleman, he would play the part; indeed, he would find acute satisfaction in it. Even though undoubtedly it was done for Mrs. Barrymore’s benefit, to spare her the feeling that her life was being pried into by lesser people.

  “It is truly terrible,” she agreed, blinking several times. Silently she indicated where he might be seated, and he accepted. Mr. Barrymore remained standing beside his wife’s chair, a curiously remote and yet protective attitude. “Although perhaps we should not be taken totally by surprise. That would be naive, would it not?” She looked at him with startlingly clear blue eyes.

  Monk was confused. He hesitated, not wanting to preempt her by saying the wrong thing.

  “Such a willful girl,” Mrs. Barrymore went on, pinching in her mouth a little. “Charming and lovely to look at, but so set in her ways.” She stared beyond Monk toward the window. “Do you have daughters, Mr. Monk?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Then my advice would be of little use to you, except of course that you may one day.” She turned back to him, her lips touched by the ghost of a smile. “Believe me, a pretty girl can be an anxiety, a beauty even more so, even if she is aware of it, which does guard against certain dangers—and increases others.” Her mouth tightened. “But an intellectual girl is immeasurably worse. A modest girl, comely but not ravishing, and with enough wit to know how to please but no ambitions toward learning, that is the best of all possible worlds.” She looked at him carefully to make sure he understood. “One can always teach a child to be obedient, to learn the domestic arts and to have good manners.”

  Mr. Barrymore coughed uncomfortably, shifting his weight to the other foot.

  “Oh, I know what you are thinking, Robert,” Mrs. Barrymore said as if he had spoken. “A girl cannot help having a fine mind. All I am saying is that she would have been so much happier if she had contented herself with using it in a suitable way, reading books, writing poetry if she so wished, and having conversations with friends.” She was still perched on the edge of her chair, her skirts billowed around her. “And if she desired to encourage others, and had a gift for it,” she continued earnestly, “then there is endless charitable work to be done. Goodness knows, I have spent hours and hours upon such things myself. I cannot count the numbers of committees upon which I have served.” She counted them off on her small mittened fingers. “To feed the poor, to find suitable accommodation for girls who have fallen from virtue and cannot be placed in domestic service anymore, and all manner of other good causes.” Her voice sharpened in exasperation. “But Prudence would have none of that. She would pursue medicine! She read all sorts of books with pictures in them, things no decent woman should know!” Her face twisted with distaste and embarrassment. “Of course I tried to reason with her, but she was obdurate.”

  Mr. Barrymore leaned forward, frowning. “My dear, there is no use in trying to make a person different from the way she is. It was not in Prudence’s natu
re to abandon her learning.” He said it gently, but there was a note of weariness in his voice as if he had said the same thing many times before and, as now, it had fallen on deaf ears.

  Her neck stiffened and her pointed chin set in determination.

  “People have to learn to recognize the world as it is.” She looked not at him but at one of the paintings on the wall, an idyllic scene in a stable yard. “There are some things one may have, and some one may not.” Her pretty mouth tightened. “I am afraid Prudence never learned the difference. That is a tragedy.” She shook her head. “She could have been so happy, if only she had let go of her childish ideas and settled down to marry someone like poor Geoffrey Taunton. He was extremely reliable and he would have had her. Now, of course, it is all too late.” Then without warning her eyes filled with tears. “Forgive me,” she said with a ladylike sniff. “I cannot help but grieve.”

  “It would be inhuman not to,” Monk said quickly. “She was a remarkable woman by all accounts, and one who brought comfort to many who were in the throes of intense suffering. You must be very proud of her.”

  Mr. Barrymore smiled, but was too filled with emotion to speak.

  Mrs. Barrymore looked at Monk with faint surprise, as if his praise for Prudence puzzled her.

  “You speak of Mr. Taunton in the past tense, Mrs. Barrymore,” he continued. “Is he no longer alive?”

  Now she looked thoroughly startled. “Oh yes. Yes indeed, Mr. Monk. Poor Geoffrey is very much alive. But it is too late for Prudence, poor girl. Now, no doubt, Geoffrey will marry that Nanette Cuthbertson. She has certainly been pursuing him for long enough.” For a moment her face changed and an expression came on it not unlike spite. “But as long as Prudence was alive, Geoffrey would never look at her. He was ’round here only last weekend, asking after Prudence, how she was doing in London and when we expected her home again.”

  “He never understood her,” Mr. Barrymore said sadly. “He always believed it was only a matter of waiting and she would come ’round to his way of thinking, that she’d forget nursing and come home and settle down.”

  “And so she would,” Mrs. Barrymore said hastily. “Only she might have left it too late. There are only so many years when a young woman is attractive to a man who wishes to marry and have a family.” Her voice rose in exasperation. “Prudence did not seem to appreciate that, though goodness knows how often I told her. Time will not wait for you, I said. One day you will realize that.” Again her eyes filled with tears and she turned away.

  Mr. Barrymore was embarrassed. He had already argued with his wife once on this issue in front of Monk, and there seemed nothing more to say.

  “Where would I find Mr. Taunton?” Monk asked. “If he saw Miss Barrymore quite often, he may even know of someone who was causing her anxiety or distress.”

  Mrs. Barrymore looked back at him, jerked out of her grief momentarily by a question which she found extraordinary.

  “Geoffrey? Geoffrey would not know anyone likely to—to commit murder, Mr. Monk! He is a most excellent young man, as respectable as one could wish. His father was a professor of mathematics.” She invested the last word with great importance. “Mr. Barrymore knew him, before he died about four years ago. He left Geoffrey very well provided for.” She nodded. “I am only surprised he has not married before now. Usually it is a financial restriction that prevents young men from marrying. Prudence did not know how fortunate she was that he was prepared to wait for her to change her mind.”

  Monk could offer no opinion on that.

  “Where does he live, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Geoffrey?” Her eyebrows rose. “Little Ealing. If you go down Boston Lane and turn right, then follow the road about a mile and a quarter or so, then on your left you will find the Ride. Geoffrey lives along there. After that, you will have to ask. I think that is simpler than my trying to describe the house, although it is most attractive; but then they all are along there. It is a most desirable area.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Barrymore, that is very clear. And how about Miss Cuthbertson, who apparently fancied herself Miss Barrymore’s rival? Where might I find her?”

  “Nanette Cuthbertson?” Again the look of dislike marred her expression. “Oh, she lives on Wyke Farm, right at the other side of the railway line, on the edge of Osterley Park.” She smiled again, but with her lips only.

  “Very agreeable really, especially for a girl who is fond of horses and that type of thing. I don’t know how you will get there. It is a long way ’round, by Boston Lane. Unless you can hire a vehicle of some sort, you will have to walk over the fields.” She waved her mittened hand in the air in a curiously graceful gesture. “If you begin westwards as you are level with Boston Farm, that should bring you to about the right place. Of course I always go by pony cart, but I think my judgment is correct.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Barrymore.” He rose to his feet, inclining his head courteously. “I apologize for intruding, and am most grateful for your help.”

  Barrymore looked at him quickly. “If you learn anything, would it be within the ethics of your profession to let us know?”

  “I shall report to Lady Callandra, but I have no doubt she will tell you,” Monk answered. He would have no compunction whatever in telling this quiet, grieving man anything that would help him, but he thought Barrymore would find it easier from Callandra, and it would be a way to avoid telling him anything that might be true but merely painful, and of no consequence in pursuing or convicting whoever murdered Prudence Barrymore. He thanked them again, and again expressed his condolences. Mr. Barrymore accompanied him to the door, and he took his leave.

  It was a very pleasant day, and he enjoyed the half hour it took him to walk from Green Lane to Little Ealing and find the home of Geoffrey Taunton. And the time gave him the opportunity to formulate in his mind what he would say. He did not expect it to be easy. Geoffrey Taunton might even refuse to see him. People react differently to grief. With some, the anger comes first, long before the simple acceptance of pain. And of course it was perfectly possible that Geoffrey Taunton might have been the one who killed her. Perhaps he was not as willing to wait as he had been in the past, and his frustration had finally boiled over? Or maybe it was passion of a different sort which had run out of control, and then he regretted it and wished to marry this Nanette Cuthbertson instead. He must remember to ask Evan precisely what the medical examiner’s report had said. For example, had Prudence Barrymore been with child? From her father’s account of her, that seemed unlikely, but then fathers are frequently ignorant of that aspect of their daughters’ lives, from preference or by design.

  It really was a splendid day. The fields stretched out on either side of the lane, light wind rippling through the wheat, already turning gold. In another couple of months the reapers would be out, backs bent in the heat and the grain dust, the smell of hot straw everywhere, and the wagon somewhere behind them with cider and loaves of bread. In his imagination he could hear the rhythmic swishing of the scythe, feel the sweat on his bare skin, and the breeze, and then the shelter of the wagon, the thirst, and the cool sweet cider, still smelling of apples.

  When had he ever done farm laboring? He searched his mind and nothing came. Was it here in the south, or at home in Northumberland, before he had come to London to learn commerce, make money, and becoming something of a gentleman?

  He had no idea. It was gone, like so much else. And perhaps it was as well. It might belong to some personal memory, like the one of Hermione, which still cut so deep into his emotions. It was not losing her, that was nothing. It was his own humiliation, his misjudgment, the stupidity of having loved so much a woman who had not in her the capacity to love in return. And she had been honest enough to admit that she did not even wish to. Love was dangerous. It could hurt. She did not want hostages to fortune and she said so.

  No, definitely any memories he chased from now on would be professional ones. There at least he was safe. He was brilliant.
Even his bitterest enemy, and so far that was Runcorn, had never denied his skill, his intelligence, or his intuition, and the dedication which harnessed them all and had made him the best detective in the force. He strode briskly. There was no sound but his own steps and the wind across the fields, faint and warm. In the early morning there could have been larks, but now it was too late.

  And there was another reason, apart from the gratification of pride, why he should remember all he could. He needed to make his living by detection now, and without the memory of his past contacts with the criminal underworld, the minutiae of his craft, the names and faces of those who owed him debts or who feared him, those who had knowledge he would find useful, those who had secrets to hide. Without all this he was handicapped, starting again as a beginner. He needed to know more fully who his friends and his enemies were. Blindfolded by forgetting, he was at their mercy.

  The warm sweet scent of honeysuckle was thick around him. Here and there long briers of wild rose trailed pink or white sprays of bloom.

  He turned right into the Ride and after a hundred yards found an old carter leading his horse along the lane. He inquired after Geoffrey Taunton, and, after a few minutes’ suspicious hesitation, was directed.

  The house was gracious from the outside, and the plaster showed signs of having been fairly recently embellished with new pargetting in rich designs. The half timbering was immaculate. Presumably that was all done when Geoffrey Taunton came into his father’s money.

  Monk walked up the neat gravel drive, which was weed-less and recently raked, and knocked at the front door. It was now early afternoon and he would be fortunate to find the master of the house at home; but if he were out, then he would endeavor to make an appointment for a later time.