by Anne Perry
“I see. I suppose it was foolish of me not to have understood.” She looked away from him. The room was comfortable, beautifully proportioned. There was no sound but the crackle of flames in the fireplace and the soft, rhythmic ticking of the clock on the mantel. Everything about the room was gracious, serene, different in every conceivable way from the alley in which its owner had perished. Quite probably St. Giles was beyond the knowledge or even the imagination of his widow.
She turned towards him slowly. “I suppose you want to know how my son was dressed also?”
“Yes, please.”
“I cannot remember. In something very ordinary, gray or navy, I think. No … a black coat and gray trousers.”
It was what he had been wearing when he was found. Evan said nothing.
“He said he was going out to enjoy himself,” she said, her voice suddenly dropping and catching with emotion. “He was … angry.”
“With whom?” He tried to picture the scene. Rhys Duff was probably no more than eighteen or nineteen, still immature, rebellious.
She lifted her shoulders very slightly. It was a gesture of denial, as if the question were not answerable.
“Was there a quarrel, ma’am, a difference of opinion?”
She sat silent for so long he was afraid she was not going to reply. Of course it was bitterly painful. It was their last meeting. Father and son could never now be reconciled. The fact that she did not deny it instantly was answer enough.
“It was trivial,” she said at last. “It doesn’t matter now. My husband was dubious about some of the company Rhys chose to keep. Oh … not anyone who would hurt him, Sergeant. I am speaking of female company. My husband wished Rhys to make the acquaintance of reputable young ladies. He was in a position to make a settlement upon him if he chose to marry, not a good fortune many young men can count upon.”
“Indeed not,” Evan agreed with feeling. He knew dozens of young men, and indeed older ones, who would dearly like to marry but could not afford it. To keep an establishment suitable for a wife cost more than three or four times the amount necessary to live a single life. And then the almost inevitable children added to that greatly. Rhys Duff was an unusually fortunate young man. Why had he not been grateful for that?
As if answering his thought she spoke very softly.
“Perhaps he was … too young. He might have done it willingly if … if it had not been his father’s wish for him. The young can be so … so … willful … even against their own interests.” She seemed barely able to control the grief which welled up inside her. Evan hated having to press any questions at all, but he knew that she was more likely to tell him an unguarded truth at present. The next day she could be more careful, more watchful to conceal anything which damaged—or revealed.
He struggled for anything to say which could be of comfort, and there was nothing. In his mind he saw so clearly the pale, bruised face of the young man lying first in the alley, crumpled and bleeding, and then in St. Thomas’s, his eyes filled with horror which was quite literally unspeakable. He saw again Rhys’s mouth open as he struggled, and failed to utter even a word. What could anyone say to comfort his mother?
Evan made a resolve that however long it took him, however hard it was, he would find out what had happened in that alley and make whoever was responsible answer for it.
“He said nothing of where he might go?” he resumed. “Had he any usual haunts?”
“He left in some … heat,” she replied. She seemed to have steadied herself again. “I believe his father had an idea as to where he frequented. Perhaps it is known to men in general? There are … places. It was only an impression. I cannot help you, Sergeant.”
“But both men were in some temper when they left?”
“Yes.”
“How long apart in time was that?”
“I am not sure, because Rhys left the room, and it was not until about half an hour after that when we realized he had also left the house. My husband then went out immediately.”
“I see.”
“They were found together?” Again her voice wavered and she had to make a visible effort to control herself.
“Yes. It looks as if perhaps your husband caught up with your son, and some time after that they were set upon.”
“Maybe they were lost?” She looked at him anxiously.
“Quite possibly,” he agreed, hoping it was true. Of all the explanations it would be the kindest, the easiest for her to bear. “It would not be hard to become lost in such a warren of alleys and passages. Merely a few yards in the wrong direction …” He left the rest unsaid. He wanted to believe it almost as much as she did, because he knew so much more of the alternatives.
There was a knock on the door, an unusual thing for a servant to do. It was normal for a butler simply to come in and then await a convenient moment either to serve whatever was required or to deliver a message.
“Come in?” Sylvestra said with a lift of surprise.
The man who entered was lean and dark with a handsome face, deep-set eyes and a nose perhaps a trifle small. Now his expression was one of acute concern and distress. He all but ignored Evan and went immediately to Sylvestra, but his manner was professional as well as personal. Presumably he was the doctor Wharmby had sent for.
“My dear, I cannot begin to express my sorrow. Naturally, anything I can do, you have but to name. I shall remain with you as long as you wish. Certainly I shall prescribe something to help you sleep and to calm and assist you through these first dreadful days. Eglantyne says if you wish to leave here and stay with us, we shall see that you have all the peace and privacy you could wish. Our house will be yours.”
“Thank you … you are very kind. I …” She gave a little shiver. “I don’t even know what I want yet … what there is to be done.” She rose to her feet, swayed a moment and grasped for his arm, which he gave instantly. “First I must go to St. Thomas’s Hospital and see Rhys.”
“Do you think that is wise?” the doctor cautioned. “You are in a state of extreme shock, my dear. Allow me to go for you. I can at least see that he is given the very best professional help and care. I will see that he is brought home as soon as it is medically advisable. In the meantime I shall care for him myself, I promise you.”
She hesitated, torn between love and good sense.
“Let me at least see him!” she pleaded. “Take me. I promise I shall not be a burden. I am in command of myself!”
He hesitated only a moment. “Of course. Take a little brandy, just to revive yourself, then I shall accompany you.” He glanced at Evan. “I am sure you are finished here, Sergeant. Anything else you need to know can wait until a more opportune time.”
It was dismissal, and Evan accepted it with a kind of relief. There was little more he could learn there. Perhaps later he would speak to the valet and other servants. The coachman might know where his master was in the habit of going. In the meantime there were people he knew in St. Giles, informers, men and women upon whom pressure could be placed, judicious questions asked, and a great deal might be learned.
“Of course,” he conceded, rising to his feet. “I shall try to bother you as little as possible, ma’am.” He took his leave as the doctor was taking the decanter of brandy from the butler and pouring a little into a glass.
Outside in the street, where it was beginning to snow, Evan turned up his coat collar and walked briskly. He wondered what Monk would have done. Would he have thought of some brilliant and probing questions whose answers would have revealed a new line of truth to follow and unravel? Would he have felt any less crippled by pity and horror than Evan did? Had there been something obvious which his emotion had prevented him from seeing?
Surely the obvious thing was that father and son had gone whoring in St. Giles and been careless, perhaps paid less than the asking price, perhaps been too high-handed or arrogant showing off their money and their gold watches, and some ruffians, afire with drink, had attacked them a
nd then, like dogs at the smell of blood, run amok?
Either way, what could the widow know of it? He was right not to harry her now.
He put his head down against the east wind and increased his pace.
2
Rhys Duff was kept in the hospital for a further two days, and on Monday, the fifth day after the attack, he was brought home, in great pain and still without having spoken a word. Dr. Corriden Wade was to call every day or, as Rhys progressed, every second day, but of course it would be necessary to have him professionally nursed. At the recommendation of the young policeman on the case, and having made appropriate enquiries as to her abilities, Wade agreed to the employment of one of the women who had gone out to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, a Miss Hester Latterly. She was of necessity used to caring for young men who had suffered near-mortal injuries in combat. She was considered an excellent choice.
To Hester herself it was an agreeable change after having nursed an elderly and extremely trying lady whose problems were largely matters of temper and boredom, only slightly exacerbated by two broken toes. She could probably have managed just as well with a competent lady’s maid, but she felt more dramatic with a nurse and impressed her friends endlessly by likening her plight to that of the war heroes Hester had nursed before her.
Hester kept a civil tongue with difficulty, and only because she required the employment in order to survive. Her father’s financial ruin had meant she had no inheritance. Her elder brother, Charles, would always have provided for her, as men were expected to provide and care for their unmarried female relations, but such dependence would be suffocating to a woman like Hester, who had tasted an extraordinary freedom in the Crimea and a responsibility at once both exhilarating and terrifying. She was certainly not going to spend the rest of her days in quiet domesticity being obedient and grateful to a rather unimaginative if kindly brother.
It was infinitely preferable to bite one’s tongue and refrain from telling Miss Golightly she was a fool … for the space of a few weeks.
Hester thought, as she settled herself in the hansom that was to take her to this new position, that there were other very considerable advantages to her independent situation. She could make friends where and with whom she chose. Charles would not have had any objection to Lady Callandra Daviot; well, not any severe objection. Callandra was well-bred and had been highly respectable while her army surgeon husband was alive. Now, as a fairly wealthy widow, she was becoming rather less so. Indeed, some might have considered her a trifle eccentric. She had made a pact with Monk when he became a private agent of enquiry that she would support him financially during his lean times as long as he shared with her his more interesting cases. That was not in any sense respectable, but it was enormously diverting, at times tragic and always absorbing. Frequently it accomplished, if not happiness, at least a resolution and some kind of justice.
The hansom was moving at a brisk pace through the traffic. Hester shivered in the cold.
And there was the agent of enquiry himself. Charles would never have approved of William Monk. How could society possibly accept a man without a memory? He could be anyone! He could have done anything! The possibilities were endless, and almost all of them unpleasant. Had he been a hero, an aristocrat, or a gentleman, someone would have recognized him and owned him.
Since the one thing he knew about himself for certain was that he was a policeman, that automatically placed him in a social category somewhere beneath even the most regrettable trade. And of course trade was beneath any of the professions. Younger sons of the gentry went into the army or the church or the law—those who did not marry wealth and relieve themselves of the necessity of having to do anything. Elder sons, naturally, inherited land and money, and lived accordingly.
Not that Hester’s friendship with Monk could easily be categorized. Pressing through the traffic in the rain, she thought of it with a mixture of emotions, all of them disturbingly powerful. It had lurched from an initial mutual contempt to a kind of trust which was unique in her life, and she believed in his also. And then, as if suddenly afraid of such vulnerability, they had been quick to quarrel, to find fault and keep little rein on temper.
But in times of need, and the mutual caring for some cause, they had worked together in an understanding that ran deeper than words, or the need or time for explanations.
In one fearful hour in Edinburgh, when they had believed they faced death, it had seemed to be that kind of love which touches only a few lives, a depth of unity which is of the heart and mind and soul, and for one aching moment of the body also.
In the lurching of the cab and the hiss of wheels in the rain she could remember Edinburgh as if it had been yesterday.
But the experience had been too dangerous to the emotions, too demanding for either of them to dare again.
Or had it only been he who would not dare?
That was a question she did not want to ask herself; she had not meant to allow the thought into her mind … and there it was, hard and painful. Now she refused to express it. She did not know. She did not want to. Anyway, it was all irrelevant. There were parts of Monk she admired greatly: his courage; his strength of will; his intelligence; his loyalty to his beliefs; his passion for justice; his ability to face almost any kind of truth, no matter how dreadful; and the fact that he was never, ever, a hypocrite.
But she hated the streak of cruelty she knew in him, the arrogance, the frequent insensitivity. And he was a fool where judgment of character was concerned. He could no more read a woman’s wiles than a dog could read Spanish! He was consistently attracted to the very last sort of woman who could ever make him happy.
Unconsciously, she was clenching her hands as she sat in the cold.
He was bewitched, taken in again and again by pretty, softly spoken, outwardly helpless women who were shallow of nature, manipulative and essentially searching for comfortable lives far from turmoil of any kind. He would have been bored silly by any one of them within months. But their femininity flattered him, their agreement to his wildest assertions seemed like good nature and good sense, and their charming manners pleased his notion of feminine decorum. He fancied himself comfortable with them, whereas in truth he was only soothed, unchallenged, and in the end bored, imprisoned, and contemptuous.
They were pressed in on all sides by hansoms, drays, carriages. Drivers were shouting. A horse squealed.
Most recently Monk had fallen under the spell of the deliciously pretty and extremely shallow Countess Evelyn von Seidlitz. Monk had seen through the countess eventually, of course, but it had required unarguable evidence to convince him. And then he was angry—above all, it seemed, with Hester! She did not know why. She recalled their last meeting with twinges of pain which took her unexpectedly. It had been highly acrimonious, but then so had a great many of their meetings. Normally it caused her irritation that she had not managed to think of a suitable retaliation at the right moment, or satisfaction that she had. She was frequently furious with him, and he with her. It was not unpleasant; in fact, at times it was exhilarating. There was a kind of honesty in it, and it was without real hurt. She would never have struck at any part of him she felt might be genuinely vulnerable.
So why had their last encounter left her this ache, this feeling of being bruised inside? She tried to recall exactly what he had said. She could not now even remember what the quarrel had been about: something to do with her arbitrariness, a favorite subject with him. He had said she was autocratic, that she judged people too harshly and only according to her own standards, which were devoid of laughter or humanity.
The hansom lurched forward again.
He had said she knew how to nurse the sick and reform the dilatory, the incompetent or the feckless, but she had no idea how to live like an ordinary woman, how to laugh or cry and experience the feelings of anything but a hospital matron, endlessly picking up the disasters of other people’s lives but never having a life of her own. Her ceaseless min
ding of other people’s business, the fact that she thought she always knew better, made her a bore.
The sum of it had been that while her qualities were admirable, and socially very necessary, they were also personally unattractive; he could do very well without her.
That was what had hurt. Criticism was fair, it was expected, and she could certainly give him back as much in quality and quantity as she received. But rejection was another thing altogether.
And it was completely unfair. For once she had done nothing to warrant it. She had remained in London nursing a young man desperately damaged by paralysis. Apart from that, she had been occupied trying to save Oliver Rathbone from himself, in that he had undertaken the defense in a scandalous slander case and very nearly damaged his own career beyond repair. As it was, it had cost him his reputation in certain circles. Had he not been granted a knighthood shortly before the affair, he could certainly abandon all hope of one now! He had shed too ugly a light on royalty in general to find such favor anymore. He was no longer considered as “sound” as he had been all his life until then. He was suddenly “questionable.”
But she found herself smiling at the thought of him. Their last meeting had been anything but acrimonious. Theirs was not really a social acquaintance, rather more a professional friendship. He had surprised her by inviting her to accompany him to dinner and then to the theater. She had accepted, and had enjoyed the evening so much she recalled it now with a little shiver of pleasure.
At first she had felt rather awkward at the sudden shift in their relationship. What should she talk about? For once there was no cause in which they had a common interest. It was years since she had dined alone with a man for other than professional reasons.
But she had forgotten how sophisticated he was. She had seen the vulnerable side of him in the slander case. At dinner and at the theater he was utterly different. There he was in command. As always, he was immaculately dressed in the understated way of a man who knows he does not need to impress, his position is already assured. He had talked easily of all manner of things—art, politics, travel, a little philosophy and a touch of trivial scandal. He had made her laugh. She could picture him now, sitting back in his chair, his eyes looking at her very directly. He had unusual eyes, very dark in his lean, narrow face with its fairish hair, long nose and fastidious mouth. She had never known him so relaxed before, as if for a space of time duty and the law had ceased to matter.
