Funeral in Blue Page 7

  “When did she first meet Allardyce?” Runcorn went on.

  “I don’t know. About four or five months ago, I think.”

  “She didn’t say?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  Runcorn questioned him for several more minutes but knew he was achieving nothing. When there was a sharp knock on the door and a medical student asked if Kristian was ready to see patients again, both Monk and Runcorn were happy to leave.

  “Was Maude Oldenby the only patient you visited?” Runcorn asked as Kristian stood at the door.

  The ghost of a smile touched Kristian’s lips. “No. I also saw Mrs. Mary Ann Jackson, of 21 Argyle Street.” He went out and closed the door quietly. They heard his footsteps down the corridor.

  Neither of them remarked that Argyle Street was rather a long way from Haverstock Hill, but only a few hundred yards from Acton Street.

  “He’s lying,” Runcorn said when they were outside on the pavement again.

  “What about?” Monk said curiously.

  “I don’t know,” Runcorn said, beginning to walk rapidly and avoiding Monk’s gaze. “But he is. Don’t you know what your wife is doing and who her friends are?”

  “Yes . . . but . . .”

  “But what? But nothing. He knows. He’s lying. Let’s take the omnibus back.”

  They did, and Monk was glad of it; it made conversation impossible, and he was able to concentrate on his own thoughts. He would have defended Kristian to Runcorn, out of loyalty to Callandra, but he also was convinced that Kristian was lying. Without saying as much, he had affected to know almost nothing of Elissa’s daily life. Certainly he was dedicated to medicine, but he was also a warm and emotional man. He was deeply moved by his wife’s death, and when he had spoken of their days in Vienna the passion of it was still there in him, taking him back to it whether he wished or not.

  What had happened since then? It was thirteen years. How much did people change in that time? What did they learn of each other that became unbearable? Infatuation died, but did love? What was the difference? Did one learn that too late? Was it Elissa that Kristian still so obviously cared for, or the memory of the time when they had fought for liberty and high idealism on the barricades of Vienna?

  Did Callandra know anything of this? Had she ever even met Elissa? Or, like Monk, had she imagined some tedious woman with whom Kristian was imprisoned in an honorable but intolerably lonely marriage of convenience? He had a cold, gripping fear that it was the latter.

  What if she had then discovered this woman Argo Allardyce had seen, the woman whose beauty haunted him and stared out of the canvas to capture the imagination of the onlooker?

  What did one love in a woman? Love was surely for honor and gentleness, courage, laughter and wisdom, and a hundred thoughts shared. But infatuation was for what the heart thought it saw, for what the vision believed. A woman with a face like Elissa Beck’s could have provoked anything!

  Hester went to the hospital early, in part to see how Mary Ellsworth was progressing. She found her weak and a little nauseous, but with no fever, and no swelling or suppuration around the wound. However, even if the operation were entirely successful, she knew even better than Kristian did that that was only the beginning of healing. Mary’s real illness lay in her mind, the fears and anxieties, the introspection and the numbing boredom that crippled her days.

  Hester spoke with her for a little while, trying to encourage her, then went to find Callandra. She looked in the patients’ waiting rooms and was told by a young nurse that she had seen Callandra in the front hall, but when Hester got there she met only Fermin Thorpe, looking angry and important. He seemed about to speak to Hester, then with a curt gesture of irritation he turned on his heel and went the other way. Callandra came from one of the wards, her hair flying up in a gray-brown streamer, the main coil of it askew.

  “That man is an interfering nincompoop!” she said furiously, her face flushed, her eyes bright. “He wants to reduce the allowance of porter every day for nurses. I don’t approve of drunkenness any more than he does, but he’d get far better work out of them if he increased their food ration! It’s drink on an empty stomach that does it.” She blinked. “Talking about stomachs, how is Mary Ellsworth?”

  Hester smiled a little bleakly. “Miserable, but there’s no infection in the wound.”

  “And no heart in her,” Callandra said for her. All the time she was speaking her eyes were seeking Hester’s, looking desperately for some reassurance, some inner comfort that this nightmare would be brief and any moment they would all waken and find it was explained, proved sad, but some kind of release.

  Hester longed to be able to tell her so, but she could not bring herself to, even for a day or two’s ease. “No, no heart,” she agreed. “But perhaps when it doesn’t hurt quite so much she’ll be better.”

  “No more laudanum?” Callandra asked, pity softening her face.

  “No. It’s too easy to depend on it. And it can be caustic, which is the last thing she needs with that wound in her stomach. Believe me, she’d sooner have the pain of the moment!”

  Callandra hesitated, as if she were reading double and triple meanings into the words, then she smiled at her own foolishness and poked her flying hair back into the knot on the back of her head and went purposefully towards the apothecary’s room, leaving Hester to take a quick cup of tea with one of the nurses and then catch the omnibus back to Grafton Street.

  In the afternoon Hester busied herself with housework, a large part of which was quite unnecessary. Her housekeeper came in three days a week and did most of the laundry, ironing and scrubbing. Everything that mattered had already been done, but she was too restless to sit still, so she began to clean out the kitchen cupboards, setting everything from them onto the table. Surely it must have been the artists’ model who was killed, and Kristian’s wife the unfortunate witness? It was the only answer that made sense.

  Except that of course it wasn’t obvious at all.

  She had every cupboard empty and a bowl full of soapy water on the bench, ready to begin scrubbing, when the doorbell rang and she was obliged to go and answer it.

  Charles was on the step, looking even more haggard than three days ago, with hollows around his eyes like bruises, and a cut on his jaw, but this time he was at no loss for words.

  “Oh, Hester, I’m so glad you’re home.” He came inside, moving stiffly, without waiting for her to ask. “I was afraid you might be at a hospital . . . or something. Are you still . . . no, I suppose you’re not. I mean . . . it’s . . .” He stood in the center of the room, and took a couple of deep breaths.

  Hester interrupted him. “When you followed Imogen the other evening, you said it was somewhere in the direction of the Royal Free Hospital, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Swinton Street. Why?”

  “Do you now know of someone she might have been visiting?” Hester asked.

  “No.” The word came so quickly it almost cut off the question, but if anything, the fear in his eyes increased. He started to say something else. It seemed to be a denial, then he stopped. “I suppose you heard that there was a double murder in Acton Street, just beyond the hospital?” He was watching her intently.

  “Yes, a doctor’s wife and an artists’ model.”

  “Oh my God!” His legs folded, and he sank down into the armchair.

  For a moment she was afraid he had collapsed. “Charles!” She knelt in front of him, clasping his hands, intensely relieved to feel strength in them. She was about to say that the locality didn’t mean anything and could have no connection with Imogen when, like a drench of cold water, she realized that he was afraid that it did. He was lying by misdirection and evasion. He was refusing to look at whatever it was that hovered just beyond his words.

  “Charles!” she started again, more urgently. “What do you know about where she is going? You followed her to Swinton Street, which is a block from Acton Street . . .”

  He
jerked his head up. “That’s not where she went the night of the murders!” he said abruptly. “I know that, because I followed her myself.”

  “Where did she go?” she asked.

  “South of High Holborn,” he said immediately. “Down Drury Lane, just beyond the theater, nowhere near the top of the Gray’s Inn Road.” He stared at her almost defiantly.

  Why was he so quick to deny that Imogen had been there?

  She stood up and moved away, turning her back to him so he would not see the anxiety in her face. “I understand they were killed in an artist’s studio,” she said almost lightly. “The model worked for him and spent quite a lot of time there, and the doctor’s wife went for a sitting because he was painting a portrait of her.”

  “Then the artist did it,” he said quickly. “The newspapers didn’t say that.”

  “Apparently, he wasn’t there. A misunderstanding, I suppose.”

  He sat silently.

  “So you don’t need to worry,” she continued, as if she had dismissed the matter. “Anyone walking about in the evening is in no more danger in Swinton Street than anywhere else.”

  She heard his intake of breath. He was frightened, confused, and now feeling even more alone. Would it persuade him at last to be more open?

  But the silence remained.

  Her patience broke and she swung around to face him. “What is it you are afraid of, Charles? Do you think Imogen knows someone who might be involved with this? Argo Allardyce, for example?”

  “No! Why on earth should she know him?” But the color washed up his face, and he must have felt its heat. “I don’t know!” he burst out. “I don’t know what she’s doing, Hester! One day she’s elated, the next she’s in despair. She dresses in her best clothes and goes out without telling me where. She lies about things, about where she’s been, who she’s visited. She gets unsigned messages about meeting someone, and she knows from the handwriting who it is and where to go!”

  He fished in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, offering it to her. She took it. It was simply an agreement to meet, no place given, and unsigned. Charles pressed his hands over his face, leaving white marks on his cheeks, and he winced sharply when he touched his jaw. “She’s changed so much I can hardly recognize her sometimes, and I don’t know why!” he said wretchedly. “She won’t tell me anything . . . she doesn’t trust me anymore. What can I think?” His eyes were hot and desperate, begging for help.

  Hester heard all the details of what he said, but overriding it all she heard the panic in him, the knowledge that he had lost control and for the first time in his life his emotions were in a chaos he could not hide.

  “I don’t know,” she said gently, going over to him again. “But I’ll do everything I can to find out, I promise you.” She looked at him more closely, seeing the darkening bruises. “What did you do to your face?”

  “I . . . I fell. It doesn’t matter. Hester . . .”

  “I know,” she said gently. “You think perhaps you would rather not find out the truth, but that isn’t so. As long as you don’t know, you will imagine, and all the worst things will be there in your mind.”

  “I suppose . . . but . . .” He stood up awkwardly, as if his joints hurt. “I’m really not sure, Hester. Perhaps I’m worrying . . . I mean . . . women can be . . .”

  She gave him a withering look.

  “Well . . . not you, of course . . .” He foundered again, his face pale, blotches of dull color on his cheeks.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she contradicted. “I can be as irrational as anybody else, or at least I can appear so to a man who doesn’t understand me. If you recall, Papa thought so. But that was because he didn’t wish to understand that I wanted something to do just as much as you or James.”

  “Oh, far more!” The faint ghost of a smile crossed his mouth. “I never wanted anything with the fierceness you did. I think you terrified him.”

  “I shall go and see Imogen this afternoon,” she promised.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. “At least warn her. Tell her how dangerous it is. She doesn’t listen to me.”

  When she arrived in Endsleigh Gardens she was let in by Nell, the parlormaid she had known for years.

  “Oh, Miss Hester!” Nell looked taken aback. “I’m afraid Mrs. Latterly’s out at the minute. But come in. She’ll be back in half an hour or so, and I’m sure she’d want to see you. Can I get you anything? A cup of tea?”

  “No, thank you, Nell, but I will wait, thank you,” Hester accepted, and followed her to the drawing room to possess herself with patience until Imogen should arrive. She sat down as Nell left, then, the moment after the door was closed, stood up again. She was too restless to remain on the sofa with her hands folded. She began to wander around the room, looking at the familiar furniture and pictures.

  How could she gain Imogen’s confidence sufficiently to learn what it was that had changed her? Surely her husband’s sister was the last person Imogen would trust with the confidence that she was betraying him. And if Hester asked her a question to which the answer was a lie, it would only deepen the gulf between them.

  She stopped in front of a small watercolor next to the mantelpiece. It was attractive, but she did not recognize it. Somehow in her mind she had seen a portrait there, a woman wearing a Renaissance pearl headdress.

  She lifted it slightly and saw underneath a darker oval on the wallpaper. She was right, the portrait had been there. She looked around the room and did not find it. She went through to the dining room and it was not there, either, nor was it in the hall. It hardly mattered, but its absence occupied her mind while she waited.

  She noticed other small differences: a vase she did not recognize; a silver snuffbox, which had been on the mantelpiece for years, was not there now; a lovely alabaster horse was gone from the side table near the hall door.

  She was still wondering about the changes when she heard the front door close, a murmur of voices, and a moment later Imogen’s footsteps across the hall.

  She threw the door open and swept in, her skirts wide, a lace fichu around her neck. Her dark eyes were shining and there was a flush on her cheeks. “Hello, Hester,” she said cheerfully. “Twice in the space of four days! Have you suddenly taken to visiting everyone you know? Anyway, it’s very pleasant to see you.” She gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, then stepped back to look at the table. “No tea? I suppose it’s far too early, but surely you’d like something? Nell says you have been here for three quarters of an hour. I’m so sorry. I’ll speak to her . . .”

  “Please don’t,” Hester said quickly. “She offered me tea and I declined. And don’t go to any trouble now. I expect you have only just come from luncheon?”

  “What?” Imogen looked for a moment as if nothing had been farther from her mind, then she laughed. It was an excited, happy sound. “Yes . . . of course.” She seemed too restless to sit down, moving around the room with extraordinary energy. “Then if you don’t want to eat or drink, what can I offer you? I’m quite sure you don’t want gossip. You don’t know any of the people I do. Anyway, they are the most crashing bores most of the time. They say and do the same things every day, and nearly all of them are completely pointless.” She whirled around, sending her skirts flying. “What is it, Hester? Are you collecting support for some charity or other?” She was speaking rapidly, the words falling over each other. “Let me guess! A hospital? Do you want me to see if I know any friends whose daughters want to become respectable, hardworking young ladies in a noble cause? Miss Nightingale is such a heroine they just might! Although it’s not quite as fashionable as it was at the end of the war. After all, we aren’t fighting with anyone just now, or are we? Of course, there’s always America, but that’s really none of our business.” Her eyes were bright and she was staring at Hester expectantly.

  “No, it never occurred to me to solicit help from any of your friends,” Hester replied with a slight edge. “People have to go into nursing
because they care about it, not because anyone asked them, or they couldn’t marry the people they wished to.”

  “Oh, please!” Imogen said with a sharp wave of her hand. “You sound so pompous. I know you don’t mean to, but really . . .”

  Hester kept her temper with difficulty. “Do you know Argo Allardyce?” she asked.

  Imogen’s eyebrows rose. “What a marvelous name! I don’t think so. Who is he?”

  “An artist whose model has just been murdered,” Hester replied, watching her closely.

  “I don’t read newspapers.” Imogen shrugged very slightly. “I’m sorry, of course, but things like that happen.”

  “And a doctor’s wife was murdered at the same time,” Hester continued, watching her face. “In Acton Street, just around the corner from Swinton Street.”

  Imogen froze, her body stiff, her eyes wide. “A doctor’s wife?”

  “Yes.” Hester felt a flutter of fear inside her like nausea. “Elissa Beck.”

  Imogen was sheet white. Hester was afraid she was going to faint. “I’m sorry,” she said swiftly, going to Imogen to support her in case she staggered or fell.

  Imogen waved her away sharply and stepped back to the sofa, sinking down on it, her skirts puffing around her. She put her hands up to cover her face for a moment. “I was there,” she said hoarsely, her voice scratching as if her throat ached. “I mean, just around the corner! I . . . I called on a friend. How awful!”

  Hester hated pursuing matters now, but the thought of Charles drove her. “What kind of friend?”

  Imogen looked up, startled. “What?”

  “What kind of friend do you have in that area?”

  A flash of temper lit Imogen’s eyes. “That is not your concern, Hester! I have no intention of explaining myself to you, and it is intrusive of you to ask!”

  “I’m trying to save you from getting involved in a very ugly investigation,” Hester said sharply. “You were in Swinton Street, one block from where the murders took place. What were you doing there, and can you explain it satisfactorily?”