by Anne Perry
It was late. He thanked the doctor, stayed one more night, and on the morning of Thursday the eleventh, caught the earliest train back to London. He was tired not by physical effort, but by disappointment and a crowding sense of guilt, because he had less than two weeks left before the trial, and he had wasted over two days pursuing a wild goose of his own. Now he still had no idea why Alexandra had killed the general, or what he could tell Oliver Rathbone to help him.
In the afternoon he used the permission Rathbone had obtained for him and went again to the prison to see Alexandra. Even as he was going in the vast gates and the gray walls towered over him, he had little idea what he could say to her beyond what he or Rathbone had already said, but he had to try at least one more time. It was June 11, and on June 22 the trial was to begin.
Was this history repeating itself—another fruitless attempt with time running out, scrambling for evidence to save a woman from her own acts?
He found her in the same attitude, sitting on the cot, shoulders hunched, staring at the wall but seeing something in her own mind. He wished he knew what it was.
“Mrs. Carlyon …”
The door slammed behind him and they were alone.
She looked up, a slight flicker of surprise over her face as she recognized him. If she had expected anyone, it must have been Rathbone. She was thinner than last time, wearing the same blouse, but the fabric of it pulled tighter, showing the bones of her shoulders. Her face was very pale. She did not speak.
“Mrs. Carlyon, we have only a short time left. It is too late to deal in pleasantries and evasions. Only the truth will serve now.”
“There is only one truth that matters, Mr. Monk,” she said wearily. “And that is that I killed my husband. There are no other truths they will care about. Please don’t pretend otherwise. It is absurd—and doesn’t help.”
He stood still in the middle of the small stone floor, staring down at her.
“They might care why you did it!” he said with a hard edge to his voice, “if you stopped lying about it. You are not mad. There was some reason behind it. Either you had a quarrel there at the top of the stairs, and you lunged at him and pushed him over backwards, and then when he fell you were still so possessed with rage you ran down the stairs after him and as he lay on the floor, tangled in the suit of armor in its pieces, you picked up the halberd and finished him off.” He watched her face and saw her eyes widen and her mouth wince, but she did not look away from him. “Or else you planned it beforehand and led him to the stairs deliberately, intending to push him over. Perhaps you hoped he would break his neck in the fall, and you went down after him to make sure he had. Then when you found he was relatively unhurt, you used the halberd to do what the fall had failed to.”
“You are wrong,” she said flatly. “I didn’t think of it until we were standing at the top of the stairs—oh, I wanted to find a way. I meant to kill him some time, I just hadn’t thought of the stairs until then. And when he stood there at the top, with his back to the banister and that drop behind him, and I knew he would never …” She stopped and the flicker of light which had been in her blue eyes died. She looked away from him.
“I pushed him,” she went on. “And when he went over and hit the armor I thought he was dead. I went down quite slowly. I thought it was the end, all finished. I expected people to come, because of the noise of the armor going over. I was going to say he fell—overbalanced.” Her face showed a momentary surprise. “But no one came. Not even any of the servants, so I suppose no one heard after all. When I looked at him, he was senseless, but he was still alive. His breathing was quite normal.” She sighed and the muscles of her jaw tightened. “So I picked up the halberd and ended it. I knew I would never have a better chance. But you are wrong if you think I planned it. I didn’t—not then or in that way.”
He believed her. He had no doubt that what she said was the truth.
“But why?” he said again. “It wasn’t over Louisa Furnival, or any other woman, was it?”
She stood up and turned her back to him, staring at the tiny single window, high in the wall and barred against the sky.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Have you ever seen anyone hanged, Mrs. Carlyon?” It was brutal, but if he could not reason her into telling him, then there was little left but fear. He hated doing it. He saw her body tighten and the hands by her sides clench. Had he done this before? It brought no memory. Everything in his mind was Alexandra, the present, the death of Thaddeus Carlyon and no one else, no other time or place. “It’s an ugly thing. They don’t always die immediately. They take you from the cell to the yard where the noose is …” He swallowed hard. Execution repelled him more than any other act he knew of, because it was sanctioned by law. People would contemplate it, commit it, watch it and feel justified. They would gather together in groups and congratulate each other on its completion and say that they upheld civilization.
She stood without moving, thin and slight, her body painfully rigid.
“They lay the rope ’round your neck, after they have put a hood over your head, so you can’t see it—that’s what they say it is for. Actually I think it is so they cannot see you. Perhaps if they could look at your face, your eyes, they couldn’t do it themselves.”
“Stop it!” she said between her teeth. “I know I will hang. Do you have to tell me every step to the gallows rope so I do it more than once in my mind?”
He wanted to shake her, to reach out and take her by the arms, force her to turn around and face him, look at him. But it would only be an assault, pointless and stupid, perhaps closing the last door through which he might yet find something to help her.
“Did you try to stab him once before?” he asked suddenly.
She looked startled. “No! Whatever makes you think that?”
“The knife wound in his thigh.”
“Oh that. No—he did that himself, showing off for Valentine Furnival.”
“I see.”
She said nothing.
“Is it blackmail?” he said quietly, “Is there someone who holds some threat over you?”
“No.”
“Tell me! Perhaps we can stop them. At least let me try.”
“There is no one. What more could anyone do to me than the law will already do?”
“Nothing to you—but to someone you love? Sabella?”
“No.” There was a lift in her voice, almost like a bitter laugh, had she the strength left for it.
He did not believe her. Was this it at last? She was prepared to die to protect Sabella, in some way they had not yet imagined.
He looked at her stiff back and knew she would not tell him. He would still have to find out, if he could. There were twelve days left before the trial.
“I won’t stop trying,” he said gently. “You’ll not hang if I can prevent it—whether you wish me to or not. Good day, Mrs. Carlyon.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Monk.”
That evening Monk dined with Evan again and told him of his abortive trip to Suffolk, and Evan gave him notes of one more case which might have been the woman he had tried so hard to save. But tonight his mind was still on Alexandra, and the incomprehensible puzzle she presented.
The following day he went to Vere Street and told Oliver Rathbone of his interview in the prison, and his new thoughts. Rathbone was surprised, and then after a moment’s hesitation, more hopeful than he had been for some time. It was at least an idea which made some sense.
That evening he opened the second set of notes Evan had given him and looked at them. This was the case about Phyllis Dexter, of Shrewsbury, who had knifed her husband to death. The Shrewsbury police had had no trouble establishing the facts. Adam Dexter was a large man, a heavy drinker and known to get into the occasional brawl, but no one had heard that he had beaten his wife, or in any other way treated her more roughly than most men. Indeed, he seemed in his own way quite fond of her.
On his death the local police had been p
uzzled as to how they might prove, one way or the other, whether Phyllis was speaking the truth. All their efforts, expended over the first week, had left them no wiser than at the beginning. They had sent for Scotland Yard, and Runcorn had dispatched Monk.
The notes were plain that Monk had interviewed Phyllis herself, immediate neighbors who might have heard a quarrel or threat, the doctor who had examined the body, and of course the local police.
Apparently he had remained in Shrewsbury for three weeks, going relentlessly over and over the same ground until he found a weakness here, a change of emphasis there, the possibility of a different interpretation or a shred of new evidence. Runcorn had sent for him to come back; everything they had indicated guilt, and justice should be allowed to take its course, but Monk had defied him and remained.
Eventually he had pieced together a story, with the most delicate of proof, that Phyllis Dexter had had three miscarriages and two stillbirths, and had eventually refused her husband’s attentions because she could no longer bear the pain it caused her. In a drunken fury at her rejection, as if it were of him, not of her pain, he had attempted to force her. On this occasion his sense of outrage had driven him to assault her with the broken end of a bottle, and she had defended herself with the carving knife. In his clumsiness he had got the worst of the brief battle, and within moments of his first charge, he lay dead on the floor, the knife in his chest and the broken bottle shattered—a scatter of shards over the floor.
There was no note as to the outcome of the case. Whether the Shrewsbury police had accepted Monk’s deduction or not was not noted. Nor was there any record as to a trial.
There was nothing for Monk to do but purchase a ticket and take the train to Shrewsbury. The people there at least would remember such a case, even if few others did.
On the late afternoon of the thirteenth, in golden sunlight, Monk alighted at Shrewsbury station and made his way through the ancient town with its narrow streets and magnificent Elizabethan half-timbered houses to the police station.
The desk sergeant’s look of polite enquiry turned to one of wary self-defense, and Monk knew he had been recognized, and not with pleasure. He felt himself harden inside, but he could not justify himself because he had no memory of what he had done. It was a stranger with his face who had been here four years before.
“Well, Mr. Monk, I’m sure I don’t know,” the desk sergeant said to his enquiry. “That case is all over and done with. We thought as she was guilty, but you proved as she weren’t! It’s not for us to say, but it don’t do for a woman to go murderin’ ’er ’usband because she takes it into ’er ’ead as to refuse ’im what’s ’is by right. Puts ideas of all sorts in women’s ’eads. We’ll have them murderin’ their ’usbands all over the place!”
“You’re quite right,” Monk said tartly.
The desk sergeant looked surprised, and pleased.
“It’s not for you to say,” Monk finished.
The sergeant’s face tightened and his skin flushed red.
“Well I don’t know what you’ll be wanting from us. If you’d be so good as to tell me, I’ll mebbe see what I can do for you.”
“Do you know where Phyllis Dexter is now?” Monk asked.
The sergeant’s eyes lit with satisfaction.
“Yes I do. She left these parts right after the trial. Acquitted, she was; walked out o’ the courtroom and packed ’er things that night.”
“Do you know where she went?” Monk kept his temper with difficulty. He would like to wipe the smug smile off the man’s face.
The man’s satisfaction wavered. He met Monk’s eyes and his courage drained away.
“Yes sir. I heard as it were somewhere in France. I don’t rightly know where, but there’s them in the town as can tell you, I expect. At least where she went to from ’ere. As to where she is now, I expect being the detective you are, you’ll be able to learn that when you get there.”
There was nothing more to be learned here, so Monk duly thanked him and took his leave.
He spent the evening at the Bull Inn and in the morning went to find the doctor who had been concerned in the case. He went with some trepidation. Apparently he had made himself unpopular here; the desk sergeant’s aggression had been born of those weeks of fear and probably some humiliation as well. Monk knew his own behavior at his station in London under Runcorn, his sarcastic tongue, his impatience with men of less ability than himself. He was not proud of it.
He walked down the street where the doctor’s house was and found with a sharp sense of satisfaction that he knew it. The particular pattern of beams and plastering was familiar. There was no need to look for the name or a number; he could remember being here before.
With excitement catching in his throat he knocked on the door. It seemed an age before it was answered by an aged man with a game leg. Monk could hear it dragging on the floor. His white hair was thinly plastered across his skull and his teeth were broken, but his face lit with pleasure as soon as his eyes focused on Monk.
“My, if it in’t Mr. Monk back again!” he said in a cracked falsetto voice. “Well bless my soul! What brings you back to these parts? We in’t ’ad no more murders! Least, not that I knows of. ’Ave we?”
“No Mr. Wraggs, I don’t think so.” Monk was elated to an absurd degree that the old man was so pleased to see him, and that he in turn could recall his name. “I’m here on a private matter, to see the doctor, if I may?”
“Ah no, sir.” Wraggs’s face fell. “You’re never poorly, are you, sir? Come in and set yourself down, then. I’ll get you a drop o’ summink!”
“No, no, Mr. Wraggs, I’m very well, thank you,” Monk said hastily. “I just want to see him as a friend, not professionally.”
“Ah, well.” The old man breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s all right then! Still, come on in just the same. Doctor’s out on a call right now, but ’e’ll be back by an’ by. Now what can I get you, Mr. Monk? You just name it, and if we got it, it’s yours.”
It would have been churlish to refuse so generous an offer. “Well, I’ll have a glass of cider, and a slice of bread and cheese, if you’ve got it,” he accepted.
“ ’Course we got it!” Wraggs said delightedly, and led the way in, hobbling lopsidedly ahead of Monk into the parlor.
Monk wondered with a silent blessing what kindness he had shown this old man that he was so welcome here, but he could not ask. He hoped profoundly it was not simply the old man’s nature that was so blithely giving, and he was glad he could not put it to the test. Instead he accepted the hospitality and sat talking with him for well over an hour until the doctor returned. Actually in that space he learned from him almost all he wished to know. Phyllis Dexter had been a very pretty woman with soft honey-brown hair and golden brown eyes, a gentle manner and a nice wit. Opinion in the town had been violently divided about her innocence or guilt. The police had felt her guilty, as had the mayor and many of the gentry. The doctor and the parson had taken her side, so had the innkeeper, who had had more than enough of Adam Dexter’s temper and sullen complaints. Wraggs was emphatic that Monk himself had pursued his enquiries night and day, bullying, exhorting, pleading with witnesses, driving himself to exhaustion, sitting up into the small hours of the morning poring over the statements and the evidence till his eyes were red.
“She owes ’er life to you, Mr. Monk, and no mistake,” Wraggs said with wide eyes. “A rare fighter you were. No woman, nor man neither, ever had a better champion in their cause, I’ll swear to that on my Bible oath, I will.”
“Where did she go to, Mr. Wraggs, when she left here?”
“Ah, that she didn’t tell no one, poor soul!” Wraggs shook his head. “An’ who can blame ’er, I ask you, after what some folk said.”
Monk’s heart sank. After the hope, the warmth of Wraggs’s welcome and the sudden sight of some better part of himself, it had all slipped away again.
“You’ve no idea?” He was horrified to hear a ca
tch in his voice.
“No sir, none at all.” Wraggs peered at him with anxiety and sorrow in his old eyes. “Thanked you with tears, she did, an’ then just packed ’er things and went. Funny, you know, but I thought as you knew where she’d gone, ’cause I ’ad a feeling as you ’elped her go! But there, I suppose I must a’ bin wrong.”
“France—the desk sergeant in the police station said he thought it was France.”
“Well I shouldn’t wonder.” Wraggs nodded his head. “Poor lady would want to be out o’ England, now wouldn’t she, after all what folks said about ’er!”
“If she went south, who would know where she was?” Monk said reasonably. “She would take a new name and be lost in the crowd.”
“Ah no sir, not hardly. Not with the pictures of her in the newspapers! An’ ’andsome as she was, people’d soon see the likeness. No, better she go abroad. And I for one hopes she’s found a place for ’erself.”
“Pictures?”
“Yes sir—all in the illustrated news they was. Here, don’t you remember? I’ll get it for you. We kept them all.” And without waiting for Monk he scrambled to his feet and went over to the desk in the corner. He rummaged around for several minutes, then came back proudly holding a piece of paper which he put in front of Monk.
It was a clear picture of a remarkably pretty woman of perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, with wide eyes and a long, delicate face. Seeing it he remembered her quite clearly. Emotion came back: pity, some admiration, anger at the pain she had endured and at people’s ignorance and refusal to understand it, determination that he would see her acquitted, intense relief when he had succeeded, and a quiet happiness. But nothing more; no love, no despair—no haunting, persistent memory.
8
By June 15 there was a bare week to go before the trial commenced and the newspapers had again taken up the subject. There was much speculation as to what would be revealed, surprise witnesses for the defense, for the prosecution, revelations about character. Thaddeus Carlyon had been a hero, and his murder in such circumstances shocked people profoundly. There must be some explanation which would provide an answer and restore the balance of their beliefs.
