Defend and Betray Read online

  Evan swung around with surprise, and pleasure lit his face immediately. He was a lean young man with a long, aquiline nose, hazel eyes and an expression of gentle, lugubrious humor. Now he was quite openly delighted.

  “Mr. Monk!” He had never lost the sense that Monk was his superior and must be treated with a certain dignity. “How are you? Are you looking for me?” There was a definite note of hope in his voice.

  “I am,” Monk confessed, more pleased at Evan’s eagerness than he would willingly have expected, or conceded.

  Evan ordered a pint of cider and a thick mutton-and-pickle sandwich, made with two crusty slices, and another pint for Monk, then made his way over to a corner where they could be relatively private.

  “Yes?” he said as soon as they were seated. “Have you a case?”

  Monk half hid his smile. “I’m not sure. But you have.”

  Evan’s eyebrows shot up. “I have?”

  “General Carlyon.”

  Evan’s disappointment was apparent. “Oh—not much of a case there, I’m afraid. Poor woman did it. Jealousy is a cruel thing. Ruined a good many lives.” His face puckered. “But how are you involved in it?” He took a large bite from his sandwich.

  “Rathbone is defending her,” Monk answered. “He hired me to try and find out if there are any mitigating circumstances—and even if it is possible that it was not she who killed him but someone else.”

  “She confessed,” Evan said, holding his sandwich in both hands to keep the pickle from sliding out.

  “Could be to protect the daughter,” Monk suggested. “Wouldn’t be the first time a person confessed in order to take the blame for someone they loved very deeply.”

  “No.” Evan spoke with his mouth full, but even so his doubt was obvious. He swallowed and took a sip of his cider, his eyes still on Monk. “But it doesn’t look like it in this case. We found no one who saw the daughter come downstairs.”

  “But could she have?”

  “Can’t prove that she didn’t—just no cause to think she did. Anyway, why should she kill her father? It couldn’t possibly gain her anything, as far as she was concerned; the harm was already done. She is married and had a child—she couldn’t go back to being a nun now. If she’d killed him, then …”

  “She’d have very little chance indeed of becoming a nun,” Monk said dryly. “Not at all a good start to a life of holy contemplation.”

  “It was your idea, not mine.” Evan defended himself, but there was an answering flick of humor in his eyes. “And as for anyone else—who? I can’t see Mrs. Carlyon confessing to save Louisa Furnival from the gallows, can you?”

  “Not intentionally, no, only unintentionally, if she thought it was Sabella.” Monk took a long pull from his cider.

  Evan frowned. “We thought it was Sabella to begin with,” he conceded. “Mrs. Carlyon only confessed when it must have seemed to her we were going to arrest Sabella.”

  “Or Maxim Furnival,” Monk went on. “Perhaps he was jealous. It looks as if he had more cause. It was Louisa who was doing the flirting, setting the pace. General Carlyon was merely responding.”

  Evan continued with his sandwich, and spoke with his mouth full again.

  “Mrs. Furnival is the sort of woman who always flirts. It’s her manner with most men. She even flirted with me, in a sort of way.” He blushed very slightly, not at the memory—he was a most personable young man, and he had been flirted with before—but at reciting it to Monk. It sounded so unbecomingly immodest. “This can’t have been the first time she made a public spectacle of exercising her powers. Why, if he put up with it all these years—the son is thirteen so they have been married fourteen years at least, and actually I gather quite a lot longer—why would Maxim Furnival suddenly lose his head so completely as to murder the general? From what I gather of him, General Carlyon was hardly a romantic threat to him. He was a highly respectable, rather pompous soldier well past his prime, stiff, not much sense of humor and not especially handsome. He had money, but so has Furnival.”

  Monk said nothing, and began to wish he had ordered a sandwich as well.

  “Sorry,” Evan said sincerely. “I really don’t think there is anything you can do for Mrs. Carlyon. Society will not see any excuses for murdering a husband out of jealousy because he flirted. In fact, even if he had a full-blown affair and flaunted it publicly, she would still be expected to turn the other way, affect not to have seen anything amiss, and behave with dignity.” He looked apologetic and his eyes were full of regret. “As long as she was provided for financially, and had the protection of his name, she would be considered to have a quite satisfactory portion in life, and must do her duty to keep the sanctity and stability of the home—whether he wished to return to it or not.”

  Monk knew he was right, and whatever his private thoughts of the morality of it, that was how she would be judged. And of course any jury would be entirely composed of men, and men of property at that. They would identify with the general. After all, what would happen to them if women were given the idea that if their husbands flirted they could get away with killing them? She would find very short shrift there.

  “I can tell you the evidence as we found it if you like, but it won’t do any good,” Evan said ruefully. “There’s nothing interesting in it; in fact nothing you couldn’t have deduced for yourself.”

  “Tell me anyway,” Monk said without hope.

  Evan obliged, and as he had said, there was nothing of any use at all, nothing that offered even a thread to follow.

  Monk went back to the bar and ordered a sandwich and two more pints of cider, then after a few more minutes of conversation about other things, bade Evan farewell and left the public house. He went out into the busy street with a sense of the warmth of friendship which was still a flavor to be relished with a lingering surprise, but even less hope for Alexandra Carlyon than before.

  Monk would not go back to Rathbone and admit defeat. It was not proved. Really he had no more than Rathbone had told him in the beginning. A crime had three principal elements, and he cited them in his mind as he walked along the street between costermongers’ barrows, young children of no more than six or seven years selling ribbons and matches. Sad-faced women held bags of old clothes; indigent and disabled men offered toys, small handmade articles, some carved of bone or wood, bottles of this and that, patent medicines. He passed by news vendors, singing patterers and every other inhabitant of the London streets. And he knew beneath them in the sewers there would be others hunting and scavenging a living, and along the river shore seeking the refuse and the lost treasures of the wealthier denizens of the great city.

  Motive had failed him. Alexandra had a motive, even if it was a self-defeating and short-sighted one. She had not looked like a woman torn by a murderously jealous rage. But that might be because it had been satisfied by his death, and now she could see the folly, and the price of it.

  Sabella had motive, but it was equally self-defeating, and she had not confessed. Indeed she seemed genuinely concerned for her mother. Could it be she had committed the crime, in a fit of madness, and did not even remember it? From her husband’s anxiety, it seemed not impossible he thought so.

  Maxim Furnival? Not out of jealousy over Louisa, unless the affair were a great deal deeper than anyone had so far discovered. Or was Louisa so in love with the general she would have caused a public scandal and left her husband for him? On the evidence so far that was absurd.

  Louisa herself? Because the general had flirted with her and then rejected her? There was no evidence whatsoever to suggest he had rejected her at all. On the contrary, there was every indication he was still quite definitely interested—although to what degree it was impossible to say.

  Means. They all had the means. All it required was a simple push when the general was standing at the turn of the stairs with his back to the banister, as he might if he had stopped to speak to someone. He would naturally face them. And the halberd was there f
or anyone to use. It did not require strength or skill. Any person of adult height could have used his or her body’s weight to force that blade through a man’s chest, although it might take an overtowering passion to sink it to the floor.

  Opportunity. That was his only course left. If the events of the dinner party had been retold accurately (and to imagine them all lying was too remote and forced an idea to entertain), then there were four people who could have done it, the four he had already considered: Alexandra, Sabella, Louisa and Maxim.

  Who else was in the house and not at the party? All the servants—and young Valentine Furnival. But Valentine was little more than a child, and by all accounts very fond of the general. That left the servants. He must make one last effort to account for their whereabouts that evening. If nothing else, it might establish beyond question whether Sabella Pole could have come downstairs and killed her father.

  He took a hansom—after all, Rathbone was paying for it—and presented himself at the Furnivals’ front door. Although he wanted to speak to the servants, he must obtain permission first.

  Maxim, home early, was startled to see him, and even more to hear his request, but with a smile that conveyed both surprise and pity he granted it without argument. Apparently Louisa was out taking tea with someone or other, and Monk was glad of it. She was far more acute in her suspicion, and might well have hindered him.

  He began with the butler, a very composed individual well into his late sixties, with a broad nose and a tight, satisfied mouth.

  “Dinner was served at nine o’clock.” He was uncertain whether to add the “sir” or not. Precisely who was this person making enquiries? His master had been unclear.

  “Which staff were on duty?” Monk asked.

  The butler’s eyes opened wide to convey his surprise at such an ignorant question.

  “The kitchen and dining room staff, sir.” His voice implied “of course.”

  “How many?” Monk kept his patience with difficulty.

  “Myself and the two footmen,” the butler replied levelly. “The parlormaid and the downstairs maid who serves sometimes if we have company. In the kitchen there were the cook, two kitchen maids and a scullery maid—and the bootboy. He carries things if he’s needed and does the occasional errand.”

  “In all parts of the house?” Monk asked quickly.

  “That is not usually required,” the butler replied somberly.

  “And on this occasion?”

  “He was in disgrace, sent to the scullery.”

  “What time in the evening was that?” Monk persisted.

  “Long before the general’s death—about nine o’clock, I gather.”

  “That would be after the guests arrived,” Monk observed.

  “It would,” the butler agreed grimly.

  It was only idle curiosity which made him ask, “What happened?”

  “Stupid boy was carrying a pile of clean linen upstairs for one of the maids, who was busy, and he bumped into the general coming out of the cloakroom. Wasn’t looking where he was going, I suppose—daydreaming—and he dropped the whole lot. Then instead of apologizing and picking them up, like any sensible person, he just turned on his heel and fled. The laundress had a few hard words to say to him, I can promise you! He spent the rest of the evening in the scullery. Didn’t leave it.”

  “I see. What about the rest of the staff?”

  “The housekeeper was in her sitting room in the servants’ wing. The tweenies would be in their bedroom, the upstairs maids in theirs, the stillroom maid had an evening off to go and visit her mother, who’s been took poorly. Mrs. Furnival’s ladies’ maid would be upstairs and Mr. Furnival’s valet likewise.”

  “And the outside staff?”

  “Outside, sir.” The butler looked at him with open contempt.

  “They have no access to the house?”

  “No sir, they have no need.”

  Monk gritted his teeth. “And none of you heard the general fall onto the suit of armor, or the whole thing come crashing down?”

  The butler’s face paled, but his eyes were steady.

  “No sir. I already told the police person who enquired. We were about our duties, and they did not necessitate any of us coming through the hall. As you may have observed, the withdrawing room is to the rear of the house, and by that time dinner was well finished. We had no cause to pass in that direction.”

  “After dinner were you all in the kitchen or the pantry clearing away?”

  “Yes sir, naturally.”

  “No one left?”

  “What would anyone leave for? We had more than sufficient to keep us busy if we were to get to bed before one.”

  “Doing what, precisely?” It galled Monk to have to persist in the face of such dignified but subtly apparent scorn. But he would not explain to the man.

  Because his master had required it, the butler patiently answered these exceedingly tedious and foolish questions.

  “I saw to the silver and the wine, with the assistance of the first footman. The second footman tidied up the dining room and set everything straight ready for morning, and fetched more coal up in case it was required—”

  “The dining room.” Monk interrupted. “The second footman was in the dining room. Surely he would have heard the armor go over?”

  The butler flushed with annoyance. He had been caught out.

  “Yes sir, I suppose he would,” he said grudgingly. “If he’d been in the dining room when it happened.”

  “And you said he fetched up coal. Where from?”

  “The coal cellar, sir.”

  “Where is the door to it?”

  “Back of the scullery … sir.” The “sir” was heavy with irony.

  “Which rooms would he bring coal for?”

  “I …” The butler stopped. “I don’t know, sir.” His face betrayed that he had realized the possibilities. For the dining room, the morning room, the library or billiard room the footman would have crossed the hall.

  “May I speak with him?” Monk did not say please; the request was only a formality. He had every intention of speaking with the man regardless.

  The butler was not going to put himself in the position of being wrong again.

  “I’ll send him to you.” And before Monk could argue that he would go to the man, which would give him an opportunity to see the servants’ area, the butler was gone.

  A few minutes later a very nervous young man came in, dressed in ordinary daytime livery of black trousers, shirt and striped waistcoat. He was in his early twenties, fair haired and fair skinned, and at the moment he was extremely ill at ease. Monk guessed the butler had reasserted his authority over the situation by frightening his immediate junior.

  Out of perversity Monk decided to be thoroughly pleasant with the young man.

  “Good morning,” he said with a disarming smile—at least that was how it was intended. “I apologize for taking you from your duties, but I think you may be able to help me.”

  “Me sir?” His surprise was patent. “ ’Ow can I do that, sir?”

  “By telling me, as clearly as you can remember, everything you did the evening General Carlyon died, starting after dinner when the guests went to the withdrawing room.”

  The footman screwed up his face in painfully earnest concentration and recounted his usual routine.

  “Then what?” Monk prompted.

  “The withdrawing room bell rang,” the footman answered. “And since I was passing right by there, I answered it. They wanted the fire stoked, so I did it.”

  “Who was there then?”

  “The master wasn’t there, and the mistress came in just as I was leaving.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I—er …”

  “Had another word with the kitchen maid?” Monk took a guess. He smiled as he said it.

  The footman colored, his eyes downcast. “Yes sir.”

  “Did you fetch the coal buckets for the library?”
r />   “Yes sir—but I don’t remember how many minutes later it was.” He looked unhappy. Monk guessed it was probably quite some time.

  “And crossed the hall to do it?”

  “Yes sir. The armor was still all right then.”

  So whoever it was, it was not Louisa. Not that he had held any real hope that it might be.

  “Any other rooms you took coal for? What about upstairs?”

  The footman blushed hotly and lowered his eyes.

  “You were supposed to, and didn’t?” Monk guessed.

  The footman looked up quickly. “Yes I did, sir! Mrs. Furnival’s room. The master doesn’t care for a fire at this time o’ the year.”

  “Did you see someone, or something, when you were upstairs?”

  “No sir!”

  What was the man lying about? There was something; it was there in his pink face, his downcast eyes, his awkward hands and feet. He was riddled with guilt.

  “Where did you go upstairs? What rooms did you pass? Did you hear something, an argument?”

  “No sir.” He bit his lip and still avoided Monk’s eyes.

  “Well?” Monk demanded.

  “I went up the front stairs—sir …”

  Suddenly Monk understood. “Oh, I see—with the coal buckets?”

  “Yes sir. Please sir …”

  “I shan’t tell the butler,” Monk promised quickly.

  “Thank you, sir! I—thank you sir.” He swallowed. “The armor was still there, sir; and I didn’t see the general—or anyone else, except the upstairs maid.”

  “I see. Thank you. You have helped me considerably.”

  “Have I sir?” He was doubtful, but relieved to be excused.

  Next Monk went upstairs to find the off-duty housemaids. It was his last hope that one of them had seen Sabella.