by Anne Perry
“Yes …” he said slowly, thinking that he too was on occasion treated with that kind of blind faith. It was a remarkable compliment, but it was also a burden when one realized the possibilities of failure.
She was still lost in her thoughts. “My husband is the final judge in so many issues,” she went on, not looking at Evan but at some inner memories of her own. “The decisions upon a boy’s academic education—and, perhaps even more, his moral education—can affect the rest of his life. In fact, I suppose when you speak of the boys who will one day lead our nation, the politicians, inventors, writers, and artists of the future, then it may affect us all. No wonder these decisions have to be made with care, and with much searching of conscience, and with absolute selflessness. There can be no evasions into simplicity. The cost of error may never be recovered.”
“Did he have a sense of humor?” The words were out before Evan realized how inappropriate they were.
“I beg your pardon?”
It was too late to withdraw. “Did Mr. Duff have a sense of humor?” He felt the blush creep up his face.
“No …” She stared back at him in what seemed like a moment’s complete understanding, too fragile for words. Then it was gone. “Not that I saw. But he loved music. He played the pianoforte very well, you know? He liked good music, especially Beethoven and occasionally Bach.”
Evan was forming no picture of him, certainly nothing to explain what he had been doing in St. Giles, except following a wayward and disappointing son whose taste in pleasures he did not understand, and perhaps whose appetites frightened him, knowing the danger to which they could lead—disease being not the least of them. Evan would not ask this woman the questions whose answers he needed, but he would ask Joel Kynaston: he must.
It was another half hour of largely meaningless but pleasant conversation before the butler came back to say that Mr. Kynaston had returned and would see Evan in his study. Evan thanked Fidelis and followed where he was directed.
The study was obviously a room for use. The fire blazed in a large hearth, glinting on wrought brass shovel and tongs and gleaming on the fender. Evan was shivering with cold, and the warmth enveloped him like a welcome blanket. The walls were decorated with glass-fronted bookcases and pictures of country domestic scenes. The oak desk was massive and there were three piles of books and papers on it.
Joel Kynaston sat behind the desk looking at Evan curiously. It was impossible to tell his height, but he gave the impression of being slight. His face was keen, nose a trifle pinched, mouth highly individual. It was not a countenance one would forget, nor easily overlook. His intelligence was inescapable, as was his consciousness of authority.
“Come in, Mr. Evan,” he said with a slight nod. He did not rise, immediately establishing their relative status. “How may I be of service to you? If I had known anything about poor Leighton Duff’s death I should already have told you, naturally. Although I have been ill with a fever and spent the last few days in my bed. However, today I am better, and I cannot lie at home any longer.”
“I’m sorry for your illness, sir,” Evan responded.
“Thank you.” Kynaston waved to the chair opposite. “Do sit down. Now, tell me what you think I can do to be of assistance.”
Evan accepted, finding the chair less comfortable than it looked, although he would have sat on boards to stay near the warmth. He was obliged to sit upright rather than relax.
“I believe you have known Rhys Duff since he was a boy, sir,” he began, making a statement rather than a question.
Kynaston frowned very slightly, drawing his brows together. “Yes?”
“Does it surprise you that he should be in an area like St. Giles?”
Kynaston drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No. I regret to say that it does not. He was always wayward, and lately his choice of company caused his father some concern.”
“Why? I mean, for what specific reason?”
Kynaston stared at him. Several reactions flickered across his face. He had highly expressive features. They showed amazement, disdain, sadness, and something else not so easily read, a darker thing, a sense of tragedy, or perhaps evil.
“What exactly do you mean, Mr. Evan?”
“Was it the immorality of it?” Evan expanded. “The fear of disease, of scandal or disgrace, of losing the favor of some respectable young lady? Or the knowledge that it might lead him to physical danger or greater depravity?”
Kynaston hesitated so long Evan thought he was not going to answer. When finally he did speak, his voice was low, very careful, very precise, and he held his strong, bony hands in front of him, clutched tightly together.
“I should imagine all of those things, Mr. Evan. A man is uniquely responsible for the character of his son. There cannot be many experiences in human existence more harrowing than witnessing your own child, the bearer of your name and your heritage, your immortality, treading a downward path into weakness, corruption of the mind and of the body.” He looked at Evan’s surprise. His eyebrows rose. “Not that I am suggesting Rhys was depraved. There was a predisposition to weakness in him which required greater discipline than perhaps he received. That is all. It is common among the young, especially an only boy in a family. Leighton Duff was concerned. Tragically, it now appears that he had grave cause.”
“You believe Mr. Duff followed Rhys into St. Giles, and they were both attacked as a result of something that happened because they were there?”
“Don’t you? It seems a tragically apparent explanation.”
“You don’t believe Mr. Duff would have gone alone otherwise? You knew him well, I believe?”
“Very well,” Kynaston said decisively. “I am perfectly certain he would not. Why in heaven’s name should he? He had everything to lose and nothing of any conceivable value to gain.” He smiled very slightly, a fleeting, bitter humor, swallowed instantly in the reality of loss. “I hope you catch whoever is responsible, sir, but I have no sensible hope that you will. If Rhys had a liaison with some woman of the area, or something worse”—his mouth twisted very slightly in distaste—“then I doubt you will discover it now. Those involved will hardly come forward, and I imagine the denizens of that world will protect their own rather than ally with the forces of law.”
What he said was true. Evan had to admit it. He thanked him and rose to take his leave. He would speak to Dr. Corriden Wade, but he did not expect to learn much from him that would be of any value.
Wade was tired, at the end of a long and harrowing day, when he allowed Evan into his library. There were dark shadows under the doctor’s eyes and he walked across the room ahead of Evan as if his back and legs hurt him.
“Of course I will tell you what I can, Sergeant,” he said, turning and settling in one of the comfortable chairs by the embers of the fire and gesturing towards the other chair for Evan. “But I fear it will not be anything you do not already know. And I cannot permit you to question Rhys Duff. He is in a very poor state of health, and any distress, which you cannot help but cause him, could precipitate a crisis. I cannot tell what injuries may have been caused to his inner organs by the treatment he received.”
“I understand,” Evan replied quickly. The memory returned to him with sharp pity of Rhys lying in the alley, of his own horror when he had realized he was still alive, still capable of immeasurable pain. Nor could he ever rid his mind of the horror in Rhys’s eyes when he had regained his senses and first tried to speak, and found he could not. “I had no intention of asking to see him. I hoped you might tell me more about both Rhys and his father. It may help to learn what happened.”
Wade sighed. “Presumably they were attacked, robbed and beaten by thieves,” he said unhappily. Sadness and gravity were equal in his face. “Does it matter now why they went to St. Giles? Have you the least real hope of catching whoever it was or of proving anything? I have little experience of St. Giles in particular, but I spent several years in the navy. I have seen some roug
h areas, places where there is desperate poverty, where disease and death are commonplace and a child is fortunate to reach its sixth birthday—and more fortunate still to reach manhood. Few have an honest trade which earns them sufficient to live. Fewer still can read or write. This is, then, a way of life. Violence is easy, the first resort, not the last.”
He was looking at Evan intently, his dark eyes narrowed. “I would have thought you were familiar with such places also, but perhaps you are too young. Were you born in the city, Sergeant?”
“No, in the country …”
Wade smiled. He had excellent teeth. “Then perhaps you still have something to learn about the human battle for survival and how men turn upon each other when there is too little space, too little food, too little air, and no hope or strength of belief to change it. Despair breeds rage, Mr. Evan, and a desire to retaliate against a world in which there is no apparent justice. It is to be expected.”
“I do expect it, sir,” Evan replied. “And I would have imagined a man of Mr. Leighton Duff’s intelligence and experience of the world to have expected it also—indeed, to have foreseen it.”
Wade stared at him. He looked extremely tired. There was little color in his face and his body slumped as though he had no strength left and his muscles hurt him.
“I imagine he knew it as well as we do,” he said bleakly. “He must have gone in after Rhys. You have only seen Rhys as he is now, Mr. Evan, a victim of violence, a man confused and in pain, and extremely frightened.” He pushed out his lower lip. “He is not always so. Before this … incident … he was a young man of considerable bravado and appetite, and with much of youth’s belief in its own superiority, invincibility, and insensitivity to the feelings of others. He had the average capacity to be cruel and to enjoy a certain power.” His mouth tightened. “I make no judgments, and God knows, I would cure him of all of this if I could, but it is not impossible he was involved with a woman of that area and exercised certain desires without regard to their consequences upon others. She may have belonged to someone else. He may even have been rougher than was acceptable. Perhaps she had family who …” He did not bother to finish; it was unnecessary.
Evan frowned, searching his way through crowding possibilities.
“Dr. Wade, are you saying that you have observed a streak of cruelty or violence in Rhys Duff before this incident?”
Wade hesitated. “No, Sergeant, I am not,” he said finally. “I am saying that I knew Leighton Duff for close to twenty years, and I cannot conceive of any reason why he should go to an area like St. Giles, except to try to reason with his son and prevent him from committing some act of folly from which he could not extricate himself. In the light of what has happened, I can only believe that he was right.”
“Did he speak to you of such fears, Dr. Wade?”
“You must know, Sergeant, that I cannot answer you.” Wade’s voice was grave and heavy, but there was no anger in it. “I understand that it is your duty to ask. You must understand that it is my duty to refuse to answer.”
“Yes,” Evan agreed with a sigh. “Yes, of course I do. I do not think I need to trouble you further, at least not tonight. Thank you for your time.”
“You are welcome, Sergeant.”
Evan stood up and went to the door.
“Sergeant.”
He turned. “Yes sir?”
“I think your case may be insoluble. Please try to consider Mrs. Duff’s feelings as much as you can. Do not pursue tragic and sordid details of her son’s life which cannot help you and which she will have to live with, as well as with her grief. I cannot promise you that Rhys will recover. He may not.”
“Do you mean his speech or his life?”
“Both.”
“I see. Thank you for your kindness. Good night, Dr. Wade.”
“Good night, Sergeant.”
Evan left with a deep grief inside him. He went out into the dark street. The fog had descended since he had gone inside and now he could barely see four or five yards in front of him. The gas lamps were no more than blurs in the gloom in front of and behind him. Beyond that the fog was a dense wall. The sound of traffic was muffled, wheels almost silent, hooves a dull sound on stone, eaten by the fog as soon as they touched. Carriage lamps lurched towards him, passed and disappeared.
He walked with his collar up and his hat pulled forward over his brow. The air was wet and clung to his skin, smelling of soot. He thought of the people of St. Giles on a night like this, the ones huddled together, a dozen to a room, cold and hungry. And he thought of those outside in doorways, without even shelter.
What had happened to Rhys Duff? Why had he thrown away everything he had—warmth, home, love, opportunity of achievement, respect of his father—to chase after some appetite which would end in destroying him?
Evan thought of his own youth, of his mother’s kitchen full of herbs and vegetables and the smell of baking. There was always soup on the stove all winter long. His sisters were noisy, laughing, quarreling, gossiping. Their pretty clothes were all over the place, their dolls, and later their books and letters, paintbrushes and embroidery.
He had sat for hours in his father’s study talking about all manner of things with him, mostly ideas, values, old stories of love and adventure, courage, sacrifice and reward. How would his father have explained this? What meaning and hope could he have found in it? How could he equate it with the God he preached of every Sunday in the church amid its great trees and humble gravestones where the village had buried its dead for seven hundred years and laid flowers on quiet graves?
Evan felt no anger, no bitterness, only confusion.
The following morning he met Shotts back in the alley in St. Giles and started over again in the search for witnesses, evidence, anything which would lead to the truth. He could not disown the possibility that Sylvestra Duff had had some part in her husband’s death. It was an ugly thought, but now that it had entered his mind, he saw more that upheld it, at least sufficiently to warrant its investigation.
Was it that knowledge which had horrified Rhys so much he could not speak? Was it at the core of his apparent chill now towards his mother? Was that burden the one which tormented him and kept him silent?
Who was the man? Was he implicated or merely the unknowing motive? Was it Corriden Wade, and did Rhys know that?
Or was it as the doctor had implied: Rhys’s own weakness had taken him to St. Giles, and his father, in desperation for him, had followed, interrupted him, and been killed for his trouble?
Which led to the other dreadful question: What hand had Rhys in his father’s death? A witness … or more?
“Have you got those pictures?” he asked Shotts.
“What? Oh, yeah.” Shotts took out of his pocket two drawings, one of Rhys, as close as the artist could estimate, removing the present bruises; the other of Leighton Duff, necessarily poorer, less accurate, made from a portrait in the Duffs’ hall. But they were sufficient to give a very lively impression of how each man must have appeared in life.
“Have you found nothing more?” Evan pressed. “Peddlers, street traders or cabbies? Someone must have seen them.”
Shotts bit his lip. “Nobody wants ter ’ave seen ’em,” he said candidly.
“What about women?” Evan went on. “If they were here for women, someone must know them.”
“Not for sure,” Shotts argued. “Quick fumble in an alley or a doorway. ’Oo cares about faces?”
Evan shivered. It was bitterly cold, and he felt the chill eating inside him as well as numbing his face, his hands and his feet. It was beginning to rain again, and the broken eaves were dripping steadily. The gutters overflowed.
“Would have thought women would be careful about familiarity in the street these days. I hear there have been several bad rapes of dolly mops and amateur prostitutes lately,” Evan remarked.
“Yeah,” Shotts said with a frown. “I ’eard that too. But it’s over Seven Dials way, not ’ere.”
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“Who did you hear it from?” Evan asked.
There was a moment’s silence.
“What?”
“Who did you hear it from?” Evan repeated.
“Oh … runnin’ patterer,” Shotts said casually. “One of ’is stories. I know some o’ them tales is ’alf nonsense, but I reckoned as there was a grain o’ truth in it.”
“Yes …” Evan agreed. “Unfortunately, there is. Is that all you found?”
“Yeah. Least about the father. Got a few likely visits o’ the son, women ’oo think they ’ad ’im. But none’s fer sure. They don’t take no notice o’ faces, even if they see ’em. ’Ow many young men d’yer suppose there are ’oo are tall, a bit on the thin side, an’ wi’ dark ’air?”
“Not so many who come from Ebury Street to take their pleasures in St. Giles,” Evan answered dryly.
Shotts did not say anything further. Together they trudged from one wretched bawdy house to another with the pictures, asking questions, pressing, wheedling, sometimes threatening. Evan learned a considerable respect for Shotts’s skills. He seemed to know instinctively how to treat each person in order to obtain the most cooperation. And he knew surprisingly many people, some with what looked like a quite genuine camaraderie. A few jokes were exchanged. He asked after children by name and was answered as if his concern were believed.
“I hadn’t realized you knew the area so well,” Evan mentioned as they stopped and bought pies from a peddler on the corner of a main thoroughfare. The pies were hot and pungent with onions. As long as he did not think too hard as to what the other contents might be, they were most enjoyable. They provided a little highly welcome warmth inside as the day became even colder and the fine rain turned to sleet.
“Me job,” Shotts replied, biting into the pasty and not looking at Evan. “Couldn’t do it proper if I din’ know the streets an’ the people.”
He seemed reluctant to talk about it; possibly he was unused to praise and his modesty made him uncomfortable. Evan did not pursue it.
