The face of a stranger

by Anne Perry

  "More fortunate than Joscelin Grey!" Monk said baldly.

  Wigtight's face changed in only the minutest of ways— a shadow, no more. Had Monk not been watching for it he would have missed it altogether.

  "Joscelin Grey?" Wigtight repeated. Monk could see in his face the indecision whether to deny knowing him or admit it as a matter of common knowledge. He decided the wrong way.

  "I know no such person, sir."

  "YouVe never heard of him?" Monk tried not to press too hard. He hated moneylenders with far more anger than reason could tell him of. He meant to trap this soft, fat man in his own words, trap him and watch the bloated body struggle.

  But Wigtight sensed a pitfall.

  "I hear so many names," he added cautiously.

  "Then you had better look in your books," Monk suggested. "And see if his is there, since you don't remember."

  "I don't keep books, after debts are paid." Wigtight's wide, pale eyes assumed a blandness. "Matter of discretion, you know. People don't like to be reminded of their hard times."

  "How civil of you," Monk said sarcastically. "How about looking through the lists of those who didn't repay you?"

  "Mr. Grey is not among them."

  "So he paid you." Monk allowed only a little of his triumph to creep through.

  "I have not said I lent him anything."

  "Then if you lent him nothing, why did you hire two men to deceive their way into his flat and ransack it? And incidentally, to steal his silver and small ornaments?" He saw with delight that Wigtight flinched. "Clumsy, that, Mr. Wigtight. You're hiring a very poor class of ruffian these days. A good man would never have helped himself on the side like that. Dangerous; brings, another charge into it—and those goods are so easy to trace."

  "You're police!" Wigtight's understanding was sudden and venomous.

  "That's right."

  "I don't hire thieves." Now Wigtight was hedging, trying to gain time to think, and Monk knew it.

  "You hire collectors, who turned out to be thieves as well," Monk said immediately. "The law doesn't see any difference."

  "I hire people to do my collecting, of-course," Wigtight agreed. "Can't go out into the streets after everybody myself."

  "How many do you call on with forged police papers, two months after you've murdered them?"

  Every vestige of color drained out of Wigtight's face, leaving it gray, like a cold fish skin. Monk thought for a moment he was having some kind of a fit, and he felt no concern at all.

  It was long seconds before Wigtight could speak, and Monk merely waited.

  "Murdered!" The word when it came was hollow. "I swear on my mother's grave, I never had anything to do with that. Why should I? Why should I do that? It's insane. You're crazed."

  "Because you're a usurer," Monk said bitterly, a well of anger and scalding contempt opening up inside him.

  "And usurers don't allow people not to pay their debts, with all the interest when they're due.'' He leaned forward toward the man, threatening by his movement when Wig-tight was motionless in the chair. "Bad for business if you let them get away with it," he said almost between his teeth. "Encourages other people to do the same. Where would you be if everyone refused to pay you back? Bleed themselves white to satisfy your interest. Better one goose dead than the whole wretched flock running around free and fat, eh?"

  "I never killed him!" Wigtight was frightened, not only by the facts, but by Monk's hatred. He knew unreason when he saw it; and Monk enjoyed his fear.

  "But you sent someone—it comes to the same thing," Monk pursued.

  "No! It wouldn't make sense!" Wigtight's voice was growing higher, a new, sharp note on it. The panic was sweet to Monk's ear. "All right." Wigtight raised his hands, soft and fat. "I sent them to see if Grey had kept any record of borrowing from me. I knew he'd been murdered and I thought he might have kept the cancelled IOU. I didn't want to have anything to do with him. That's all, I swear!" There was sweat on his face now, glistening in the gaslight. "He paid me back. Mother of God, it was only fifty pounds anyway! Do you think I'd send out men to murder a debtor for fifty pounds? It would be mad, insane. They'd have a hold over me for the rest of my life. They'd bleed me dry—or see me to the gibbet."

  Monk stared at him. Painfully the truth of it conquered him. Wigtight was a parasite, but he was not a fool. He would not have hired such clumsy chance help to murder a man for a debt, of whatever size. If he had intended murder he would have been cleverer, more discreet about it. A little violence might well have been fruitful, but not this, and not in Grey's own house.

  But he might well have wanted to be sure there was no trace of the association left, purely to avoid inconvenience.

  "Why did you leave it so long?" Monk asked, his voice

  flat again, without the hunting edge. "Why didn't you go and look for the IOU straightaway?"

  Wigtight knew he had won. It was there gleaming in his pallid, globular face, like pond slime on a frog.

  "At first there were too many real police about," he answered. "Always going in and out." He spread his hands in reasonableness. Monk would have liked to call him a liar, but he could not, not yet. "Couldn't get anyone prepared to take the risk," Wigtight went on. "Pay a man too much for a job, and immediately he begins to wonder if there's more to it than you've told him. Might start thinking I had something to be afraid of. Your lot was looking for thieves, in the beginning. Now it's different; you're asking about business, money—"

  "How do you know?" Monk believed him, he was forced to, but he wanted every last ounce of discomfort he could drag out.

  "Word gets about; you asked his tailor, his wine merchant, looking into the paying of his bills—"

  Monk remembered he had sent Evan to do these things. It would seem the usurer had eyes and ears everywhere. He realized now it was to be expected: that was how he found his customers, he learned weaknesses, sought out vulnerability. God, how he loathed this man and his kind.

  "Oh." In spite of himself his face betrayed his defeat. "I shall have to be more discreet with my inquiries."

  Wigtight smiled coldly.

  "I shouldn't trouble yourself. It will make no difference." He knew his success; it was a taste he was used to, like a ripe Stilton cheese and port after dinner.

  There was nothing more to say, and Monk could not stomach more of Wigtight's satisfaction. He left, going out past the oily clerk in the front office; but he was determined to take the first opportunity to charge Josiah Wigtight with something, preferably something earning a good long spell on the prison treadmill. Perhaps it was hate of usury and all its cancerous agonies eating away the hearts of people, or hate for Wigtight particularly, for his fat belly and cold eyes; but more probably it was the bitterness of disappointment because he knew it was not the moneylender who had killed Joscelin Grey.

  All of which brought him back again to facing the only other avenue of investigation. Joscelin Grey's friends, the people whose secrets he might have known. He was back to Shelburne again—and Runcorn's triumph.

  But before he began on that course to one of its inevitable conclusions—either the arrest of Shelburne, and his own ruin after it; or else the admission that he could not prove his case and must accept failure; and Runcorn could not lose—Monk would follow all the other leads, however faint, beginning with Charles Latterly.

  He called in the late afternoon, when he felt it most likely Imogen would be at home, and he could reasonably ask to see Charles.

  He was greeted civilly, but no more than that. The parlor maid was too well trained to show surprise. He was kept waiting only a few minutes before being shown into the withdrawing room and its discreet comfort washed over him again.

  Charles was standing next to a small table in the window bay.

  "Good afternoon, Mr.—er—Monk," he said with distinct chill. "To what do we owe this further attention?"

  Monk felt his stomach sink. It was as if the smell of the rookeries still clung to him. Pe
rhaps it was obvious what manner of man he was, where he worked, what he dealt with; and it had been all the time. He had been too busy with his own feelings to be aware of theirs.

  "I am still inquiring into the murder of Joscelin Grey," he replied a little stiltedly. He knew both Imogen and Hester were in the room but he refused to look at them. He bowed very slightly, without raising his eyes. He made a similar acknowledgment in their direction.

  "Then it's about time you reached some conclusion, isn't it?" Charles raised his eyebrows. "We are very sorry,

  naturally, since we knew him; bat we do not require a day-by-day account of your progress, or lack of it."

  "It's as well," Monk answered, stirred to tartness m his hurt, and the consciousness that he did not, and would never, belong in this faded and gracious room with its padded furniture and gleaming walnut. "Because I could not afford it. It is because you knew Major Grey that I wish to speak to you again." He swallowed. "We naturally first considered the possibility of his having been attacked by some chance thief, then of its being over a matter of debt, perhaps gambling, or borrowing. We have exhausted these avenues now, and are driven back to what has always, regrettably, seemed the most probable—"

  "I thought I had explained it to you, Mr. Monk." Charles's voice was sharper. "We do not wish to know! And quite frankly, I will not have my wife or my sister distressed by hearing of it. Perhaps the women of your—" He searched for the least offensive word. "Your background—are less sensitive to such things: unfortunately they may be more used to violence and the sordid aspects of life. But my sister and my wife are gentlewomen, and do not even know of such things. I must ask you to respect their feelings."

  Monk could sense the color burning up his face. He ached to be equally rude in return, but his awareness of Imogen, only a few feet from him, was overwhelming. He did not care in the slightest what Hester thought; in fact it would be a positive pleasure to quarrel with her, like the sting in the face of clean, icy water—invigorating.

  "I had no intention of distressing anyone unnecessarily, sir." He forced the words out, muffled between his teeth. "And I have not come for your information, but to ask you some further questions. I was merely trying to give you the reason for them, that you might feel freer to answer."

  Charles blinked at him. He was half leaning against the mantel shelf, and he stiffened.

  "I know nothing whatsoever about the affair, and naturally neither do my family."

  "I am sure we should have helped you if we could," Imogen added. For an instant Monk thought she looked abashed by Charles's so open condescension.

  Hester stood up and walked across the room opposite Monk.

  "We have not been asked any questions yet," she pointed out to Charles reasonably. "How do we know whether we could answer them or not? And I cannot speak for Imogen, of course, but I am not in the least offended by being asked; indeed if you are capable of considering the murder, then so am I. We surely have a duty."

  "My dear Hester, you don't know what you are speaking of." Charles's face was sharp and he put his hand out towards her, but she avoided it. "What unpleasant things may be involved, quite beyond your experience!"

  "Balderdash!" she said instantly. "My experience has included a multitude of things you wouldn't have in your nightmares. I've seen men hacked to death by sabers, shot by cannon, frozen, starved, wasted by disease—"

  "Hester!" Charles exploded. "For the love of heaven!"

  "So don't tell me I cannot survive the drawing room discussion of one wretched murder," she finished.

  Charles's face was very pink and he ignored Monk. "Has it not crossed your very unfeminine mind that Imogen has feelings, and has led a considerably more decorous life than you have chosen for yourself?" he demanded. "Really, sometimes you are beyond enduring!''

  "Imogen is not nearly as helpless as you seem to imagine," Hester retorted, but there was a faint blush to her cheeks. "Nor, I think, does she wish to conceal truth because it may be unpleasant to discuss. You do her courage little credit."

  Monk looked at Charles and was perfectly sure that had they been alone he would have disciplined his sister in whatever manner was open to him—which was probably

  not a great deal. Personally Monk was very glad it was not his problem.

  Imogen took the matter into her own hands. She turned towards Monk.

  "You were saying that you were driven to an inevitable conclusion, Mr. Monk. Pray tell us what it is." She stared at him and her eyes were angry, almost defensive. She seemed more inwardly alive and sensitive to hurt than anyone else he had ever seen. For seconds he could not think of words to answer her. The moments hung in the air. Her chin came a little higher, but she did not look away.

  "I—" he began, and failed. He tried again. "That— that it was someone he knew who killed him." Then his voice came mechanically. "Someone well known to him, of his own position and social circle."

  "Nonsense!" Charles interrupted him sharply, coming into the center of the room as if to confront him physically. "People of Joscelin Grey's circle do not go around murdering people. If that's the best you can do, then you had better give up the case and hand it over to someone more skilled."

  "You are being unnecessarily rude, Charles." Imogen's eyes were bright and there was a touch of color in her face. "We have no reason to suppose that Mr. Monk is not skilled at his job, and quite certainly no call to suggest it."

  Charles's whole body tightened; the impertinence was intolerable.

  "Imogen," he began icily; then remembering the feminine frailty he had asserted, altered his tone. "The matter is naturally upsetting to you; I understand that. Perhaps it would be better if you were to leave us. Retire to your room and rest for a little while. Return when you have composed yourself. Perhaps a tisane?"

  "I am not tired, and I do not wish for a tisane. I am perfectly composed, and the police wish to question me." She swung around. "Don't you, Mr. Monk?"

  He wished he could remember what he knew of them,

  but although he strained till his brain ached, he could recall nothing. All his memories were blurred and colored by the overwhelming emotion she aroused in him, the hunger for something always just out of reach, like a great music that haunts the senses but cannot quite be caught, disturbingly and unforgettably sweet, evocative of a whole life on the brink of remembrance.

  But he was behaving like a fool. Her gentleness, something in her face had woken in him the memory of a time when he had loved, of the softer side of himself which he had lost when the carriage had crashed and obliterated the past. There was more in him than the detective, brilliant, ambitious, sharp tongued, solitary. There had been those who loved him, as well as the rivals who hated, the subordinates who feared or admired, the villains who knew his skill, the poor who looked for justice—or vengeance. Imogen reminded him that he had a humanity as well, and it was too precious for him to drown in reason. He had lost his balance, and if he were to survive this nightmare— Runcorn, the murder, his career—he must regain it.

  "Since you knew Major Grey," he tried again, "it is possible he may have confided in you any anxieties he may have had for his safety—anyone who disliked him or was harassing him for any reason." He was not being as articulate as he wished, and he cursed himself for it.

  “Did he mention any envies or rivalries to you?''

  "None at all. Why would anyone he knew kill him?" she asked. "He was very charming; I never knew of him picking a quarrel more serious than a few sharp words. Perhaps his humor was a little unkind, but hardly enough to provoke more than a passing irritation."

  "My dear Imogen, they wouldn't!" Charles snapped. "It was robbery; it must have been."

  Imogen breathed in and out deeply and ignored her husband, still regarding Monk with solemn eyes, waiting for his reply.

  "I believe blackmail," Monk replied. "Or perhaps jealousy over a woman."

  "Blackmail!" Charles was horrified and his voice was thick with disbelief. "Y
ou mean Grey was blackmailing someone? Over what, may I ask?"

  "If we knew that, sir, we should almost certainly know who it was," Monk answered. "And it would solve the case."

  "Then you know nothing." There was derision back again in Charles's voice.

  "On the contrary, we know a great deal. We have a suspect, but before we charge him we must have eliminated all the other possibilities." That was overstating the case dangerously, but Charles's smug face, his patronizing manner roused Monk's temper beyond the point where he had complete control. He wanted to shake him, to force him but of his complacency and his infuriating superiority.

  "Then you are making a mistake." Charles looked at him through narrow eyes. "At least it seems most likely you are."

  Monk smiled dryly. "I am trying to avoid that, sir, by exploring every alternative first, and by gaining all the information anyone can give. I'm sure you appreciate that!"

  From the periphery of his vision Monk could see Hester smile and was distinctly pleased.

  Charles grunted.

  "We do really wish to help you," Imogen said in the silence. "My husband is only trying to protect us from unpleasantness, which is most delicate of him. But we were exceedingly fond of Joscelin, and we are quite strong enough to tell you anything we can."

  " 'Exceedingly fond' is overstating it, my dear," Charles said uncomfortably. "We liked him, and of course we felt an extra affection for him for George's sake."

  "George?" Monk frowned, he had not heard George mentioned before.

  "My younger brother," Charles supplied.

  "He knew Major Grey?" Monk asked keenly. "Then may I speak with him also?"

  "I am afraid not. But yes, he knew Grey quite well. I believe they were very close, for a while."

  "For a while? Did they have some disagreement?"

  "No, George is dead."

  "Oh." Monk hesitated, abashed. "I am sorry."

  "Thank you." Charles coughed and cleared his throat. "We were fond of Grey, but to say we were extremely so is too much. My wife is, I think, quite naturally transferring some of our affection for George to George's friend."