by Anne Perry
“That doesn’t make you right about this,” he added.
In spite of herself, in spite of the twisting sense of fear inside her, she laughed. “I know.”
He stood up. “I’m going back to the local police station nearest Taft’s house. It’s time I stopped asking nicely for favors and started demanding them.”
“I’m coming too.” She rose to her feet also. “I’ll wait outside while you talk to them.”
It took some considerable argument, and Monk did not tell Hester what threat or favor he had used, but after a heated forty-five minutes he emerged from the police station and found Hester on a bench in the sun, where she had been sitting waiting for him. He had been told not to touch anything. The police had already thoroughly searched the whole house at the time the deaths were discovered and found nothing of interest.
Monk and Hester quickly walked the short distance to Taft’s house.
“What are we looking for?” Hester asked as they lengthened their stride for the slight gradient in the road.
“I don’t know,” Monk admitted. “The only thing that gives me hope is that I’m told Drew still wants to get in-so he hasn’t found what he wants.” He was walking a little faster than she was, and she had to hurry to keep up with him. She was a little breathless and really had no useful reply to offer, so she said nothing.
The house was attractive, solidly built of brick, and in its own very well-tended garden. They walked up the driveway and Monk produced the key to the front door.
Hester was surprised almost as soon as they entered the hallway. Just inside the door was a vestibule with exactly the sort of things she would have expected: an umbrella stand; pegs for outdoor clothes of the heavier, winter sort and for casual hats; a long mirror, possibly to make last-minute adjustments as one was leaving. But farther inside, the room opened out into a wood-paneled hall of some size. From it rose a very gracious staircase with a large, heavily ornamental newel post and then a curved stair, which was wide at the bottom and swung around against the wall, up to a gallery with passages running off in both directions.
“My goodness!” she said in surprise. “Looks as if this is where at least some of the money went. Unless Mrs. Taft was an heiress?” She looked at Monk questioningly.
He was standing still on the polished parquet floor looking at the red-carpeted steps and then up to the various paintings on the wall, hung at different levels to complement both the upward climb and the different levels of the paneling.
She watched him with growing interest as he regarded the pictures more and more closely. They were all landscapes. One was of sloping parkland billowing with trees, another of a churchyard with soaring skies behind it, a third of a headland with a pale beach and open sea.
She waited for him to speak.
“If they are originals, not copies, then there’s a very great deal of money here,” he said at last. “Not to mention some excellent taste in art. If he sold this lot, he’d have enough to buy a new house. I wonder if there are more in the other rooms.”
“Are you sure?” she asked with surprise and a new eagerness. She moved forward to take a better look herself.
“If they’re not copies, yes,” he answered, standing in front of one of them. He stared at it for so long she grew impatient.
“What is it?” she asked. “Is it real or not?”
“I don’t know,” he answered thoughtfully. “It took me a moment or two to realize what’s wrong with it. It’s the proportion. The bottom three quarters of an inch or so has been cut off by the frame.
“So?” she said, puzzled as to why he was bothering with so minute an issue. “Maybe they are only copies, and not as good as you thought. I never understood why, if a thing is beautiful-and I think that is-it should matter so much who painted it.”
Monk shook his head. “I don’t understand why, if he is clever enough to paint something so lovely, he would cut it short like this. But more to the point, why he didn’t sign it.”
Then she understood. “You mean he did, and the framer has deliberately excluded it?”
He turned to her and smiled. “Exactly. Maybe Taft wanted the pleasure of looking at it, even showing it off a bit, without letting anyone know exactly how valuable it is. He probably told people it was a good copy, to explain his having it. No signature, so it’s not pretending to be real.”
“Couldn’t that be the actual explanation, though?”
“Of course it could. But I’ll wager it isn’t!” He stepped back. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
They separated, to save time. It was a large house and to search thoroughly enough to see anything the police had missed they would have to look very closely. Monk went upstairs, leaving the downstairs for Hester.
She started in the kitchen, not expecting it to be different from the one in the house where she had grown up. She found it was well appointed. The pots and pans were copper and had been carefully polished.
She searched the kitchen, scullery, pantry, and the larder cupboards and found nothing. All the food had been removed; only the various pieces of equipment remained. It was interesting only in that everything was of such high quality. The laundry was the same.
Next she moved to the dining room and again found excellent silverware and porcelain, crystal glasses, fine linen, most of it embroidered. She wondered what would happen to it, with no one left in the family. Had there been siblings who would inherit? It seemed no one was in a hurry to move all these beautiful things. Had grief frozen everyone? Or were there inheritances to debate and perhaps argue over?
The withdrawing room also was filled with beautiful carpets and furniture as well as ornaments, which Hester was not experienced enough to place a value on, though she suspected that some, at least, were collectors’ items and could be sold for very good sums.
She studied the pictures at greater length. One in particular was quite breathtaking: a wild seascape, with the waves so well depicted she felt as if she could have put out her finger to touch it, and it would come away wet. She imagined doing it and could almost taste the salt. She hoped that when it came to be sold-or inherited, if there were anyone to claim it-that it would end up in the hands of someone who loved it.
Had it been loved here? Or was it simply an investment? She had met Mrs. Taft, and yet she struggled to recall anything of her beyond the smooth face and fashionable clothes. What kind of a woman had she been? Had she loved her husband, or was it a marriage of suitability? They had daughters of sixteen or seventeen, so presumably they had been married close to twenty years. How much had they changed in that time? Had their feelings deepened, or faded?
She thought about herself and Monk. When they had first met they had irritated each other enormously. She had thought him cold and arrogant. He had thought her abrasive, unfeminine, and far too opinionated. They had both been right, to a degree. They had certainly brought out the least attractive qualities in each other. With a smile she remembered how angry he had made her back then. Was that because she had realized, deep down, he was a match for her, and the thought had frightened her?
Why was she questioning that now? Of course she had been afraid; she had known that he could hurt her, that it was all too likely she would care for him far more than he could possibly care for her.
Was that why he had been so sharp with her in return? Fear as well? She smiled even more. She knew the answer to that also. He was so very much more vulnerable than he was willing to admit. She could not have loved him were he not.
Did she love him more now than then? Yes, of course. Shared time and experiences, and the way he responded to them, had deepened everything: not only love but understanding, her own patience, the things they found beautiful or funny or sad. She was a far wiser, gentler woman because of him. He had gone from bringing out the worst in her to magnifying the best-and she would like to think she had done the same for him. Is that not what love is-an enlargement of the best and a healing over of the worst?
Had Felicia Taft loved her husband? If so, was she then completely unaware of his abuse of the parishioners who trusted him? Surely the realization of that would have wounded her almost beyond bearing.
She was still in the withdrawing room looking at the bookcase when she heard Monk’s footsteps in the hall and his voice, sharp and excited, calling out to her.
She closed the glass-paned door of the bookcase and went out immediately.
“I’ve found something!” he said urgently. “One of the bedrooms upstairs has been turned into a study, and I’ve found a safe behind a large painting. Come and see.” Without waiting for her acknowledgment he turned and led the way, going up the wide, curved stairs two at a time.
She picked up her skirts to avoid tripping and ran after him. He strode across the landing and in through the door of a middle bedroom, now turned into a workroom, which contained two tables covered with papers and pamphlets, at a glance all apparently of a religious nature.
Monk stopped in front of a full-length portrait of a middle-aged clergyman, the portrait being little short of life-sized. He pressed his hand on the right side of the ornate frame, which seemed to release a catch, and then pulled the same edge of the frame forward. The whole picture swung outward on a hinge, revealing a flat wooden board. Very gently Monk leaned his back against it, balancing his weight one way, then another. At last he found exactly the right adjustment of pressure, and the whole panel moved inward. The cavity beyond it was about three feet deep and four feet wide. There was nothing in it whatever.
Hester felt a rush of disappointment.
Monk stopped also. He too had clearly been expecting much more. He looked to one side, then the other. Then he glanced upward inside the cupboard and drew in his breath sharply.
“What is it?” Hester stepped forward to stand almost at his shoulder. “What’s there?” she said more urgently.
“A ladder,” he replied, his voice husky. “It goes up into …” He stopped and raised his arm to grasp the bottom rung and pull it down. It came easily, all the way to the floor.
“We’ll need a light,” Hester said frantically. “I’ve seen an oil lamp somewhere. I’ll go and fetch it. There must be matches still. Wait for me!” She turned back to him as she said the last, to be certain he would not go without her. “William!”
“I’ll wait,” he promised. “Not much point if I can’t see, although it doesn’t look pitch-dark up there.”
“Wait for me!” she said fiercely, then turned on her heel and hurried to look for a lamp.
When she returned more than five minutes later, carrying a lit oil lamp, he was still at the bottom of the ladder. She gave him a dazzling smile, then passed him the lamp.
He took it and began to climb very carefully, testing each rung before he put his weight on it and carrying the lamp in his left hand. When he got to the top he set the lamp down and reached out his hand to help her.
She went up rather more cautiously. Not for the first time in her life she found her skirts awkward: the fuller they were, the more they got in the way. No wonder men did not encumber themselves thusly.
She kept hold of Monk’s hand until she straightened up at the top and stepped away from the ladder. They were in a large attic that stretched at least twenty feet in length to a doorway at the far end; the roof sloped down on two sides. Various boxes were piled up along the edges of the room, presumably from when the Tafts had first moved into the house. Near the hatch and the ladder down were a couple of very old cabin trunks, which, to judge from the dust on them, had not been used in a decade or more. There seemed to be nothing of interest, let alone of relevance to Taft’s death or the murder of his family.
With a slight shrug, Monk carried the lantern to the far end and tried the door. It swung open easily, shedding a little light, as if the new room had led toward daylight.
Hester went after him. There was nothing on the floor to trip over.
Monk stood in the middle of the room, the lantern untended on the floor. He was motionless, as if transfixed by what he saw.
Hester reached him and understood. The room was entirely empty except for a small table on which rested an extraordinary contraption. And yet as soon as she saw it she understood exactly what it was. A gun was wedged between two weights on the table, and above it, joined by a wire around the trigger, was a tin can with a hole in the bottom. Underneath the can was a container, now dry, but with a very slight rime around the edges, as if the hard, local water had left its imprint.
Her eye followed the path a bullet would have taken, but she saw no mark on the wall.
Monk looked toward the window. It was open several inches.
She turned to meet his eyes, waiting, puzzled.
“For the noise,” he said quietly. “It was rigged up to go off at about five in the morning. With the silence of the night and that window open, the sound would carry so the neighbors would be bound to hear it. It fixes the time of death. The bodies downstairs would still be warm, even if they died a bit earlier. When the police came, they found a triple murder and a suicide-a woman, her children, and her husband. They wouldn’t be looking for hidden doors into attics. Why would they?”
“They wouldn’t,” she agreed. She looked toward the gun and its extraordinary mechanism. “It would have taken quite a lot of trouble to rig this up, and whoever did it hasn’t been able to come back to get rid of it. That must mean it’s Drew, mustn’t it? This is what he wanted to come for-to get rid of it before anyone found it.”
“Yes,” he said. “But we can’t prove it. He could affect to be just as surprised as we are. All he has to do is say that he wanted the rest of the church papers, in order to pay the bills outstanding, and carry on. And he can,” he added bitterly.
“No. All London must know about the embezzlement now,” Hester argued. “And if they didn’t with Taft’s trial and then his death, they will with Oliver’s.”
“Then Drew can go to Manchester, or Liverpool, or Newcastle,” he pointed out. “There are plenty of other cities.” He bent to look at the contraption again. “So simple,” he said, tightening his lips into a thin line. “I wonder why no one heard the real shot. Pillow, I suppose. It explains why the daughters and the wife were killed as well. They must have known who else was in the house. He couldn’t afford to leave them alive.”
Hester shuddered. She tried to block out of her imagination the scene as it must have been, the fear and the tragedy. Had Drew shot Taft first, and then gotten rid of the witnesses? Or had he killed them first, separately, keeping them all silent? How loud would you have to scream in the silence of the night to be heard by the neighbors? Someone tired and sound asleep might not hear even a stranger in the room, let alone a woman fighting for her life in the house next door, across fifty feet of garden with trees and bushes. The thought of it chilled her through.
Monk had finished searching. He had found the bullet, lower down in the wall than he had expected. The recoil must have jerked the gun out of alignment. He left it where it was. It would be evidence. He was standing back at the trapdoor again, waiting for her.
She pulled her attention back to the present, glad to be taken away from her imaginings. She walked over to him. “What are we going to do now?” she asked.
“See what else we can find,” he replied, holding her hand while she moved across to grasp the rungs and climb down.
They searched the rest of the house for anything else of significance and found nothing beyond a few goose feathers under one of the chairs in the morning room, which was where Taft had been found. It might indicate that a pillow had been used to muffle the sound of the shot, but it certainly did not prove it.
“I wonder what time Taft was actually shot,” Monk said, chewing his lip a little. “It can’t have been all that long before he was found, or the body would have been too cold.”
“About three,” Hester suggested. “Drew was back home at five, we know, because he woke his valet. But h
e could well have been here at three.”
“It doesn’t have to have been Drew,” Monk argued.
She looked at him witheringly. “Who else? It wasn’t a burglar. This was prepared very carefully by someone who was here often enough to know about the ladder into the attic and who could set up that contraption feeling confident that he would be able to come back here, without raising suspicion, to take it down again.”
Monk went on playing devil’s advocate. She understood what he was doing.
“Why?” he asked. “Murdering four people is pretty extreme.”
“Maybe in his mind it was only one,” she reasoned. “Just Taft himself, because he knew how deeply Drew was implicated. He couldn’t be trusted, especially once the case turned against him. Mrs. Taft and the daughters were just necessary tidying up.”
He thought for a moment. “But wasn’t there always the risk that Taft would turn against him to free himself?”
“It seemed that he trusted not,” she replied. “But then he was exposed in the photograph and was forced to change his evidence entirely. So if Taft really didn’t know about Drew’s perversions, that might well have been the end of any loyalty Taft felt toward Drew, and certainly the end of any belief that Drew could, or would, help him stay out of prison.” She knew she was right even before his face broke into a smile and he straightened up.
“Right, I believe you,” he said with conviction in his voice. “Now let’s find out how he got in. He wouldn’t have had a key, and he certainly wouldn’t have rung the doorbell at three in the morning.”
“How do you know he wouldn’t have a key?” she said, then saw the look in his eyes. “Oh-of course. If he had a key he wouldn’t be asking the police for permission to get in. He’d have been back ages ago to dismantle that contraption. In that case, why hasn’t he just broken in?”
“He’d be seen in the daytime,” Monk answered. “This place has some very curious neighbors now, whatever they were before. I saw one of them watching us when we came in. If we’d picked the lock instead of having a key, I’ll wager either they’d have been around here finding out who we were or they’d have sent for the police. At this time of the day it wouldn’t have taken them long to get here.”
