A Dangerous Mourning Part 6

"I have no idea," Septimus replied with the grief replacing anger in his eyes. "I asked her, but she would not tell me, except that one day I would understand, better than anyone else. That was all she would say."

"Ask the coachman," Cyprian said immediately. "He'll know."

"She didn't go in our coaches." Septimus caught Basil's eye. "I mean your coaches," he corrected pointedly. "She walked in. I presume she either walked all the way or found a hansom."

Cyprian swore under his breath. Basil looked confused, and yet his shoulders eased under the black cloth of his jacket and he stared beyond them all out of the window. He spoke with his back to Monk.

"It seems, Inspector, as if the poor girl did hear something that day. It will be your task to discover what it was-and if you cannot do that, to deduce in some other way who it was who killed her. It is possible we may never discover why, and it hardly matters." He hesitated, for a moment more absorbed in his own thoughts. No one intruded.

"If there is any further help the family can give you, we shall of course do so," he continued. "Now it is past midday and I can think of no purpose in which we can a.s.sist you at present. Either you or your juniors are free to question the servants at any time you wish, without disturbing the family. I shall instruct Phillips to that effect. Thank you for your courtesy so far. I trust it will continue. You may report any progress you make to me, orifl am not present, to my son. I would prefer you did not distress Lady Moidore."

"Yes, Sir Basil." He turned to Cyprian. "Thank you for your a.s.sistance, Mr. Moidore." Monk excused himself, and was shown out, not by the butler this time but by a very striking footman with bold eyes and a race whose handsomeness was spoiled only by a small, clever mouth.

In the hallway he saw Lady Moidore and had every intention of pa.s.sing her with no more than a polite acknowledgment, but she came towards him, dismissing the footman with a wave of her hand, and he had no option but to stop and speak with her.

"Good day, Lady Moidore."

It was hard to tell how much the pallor of her face was natural, an accompaniment to her remarkable hair, but the wide eyes and the nervous movements were unmistakable.

"Good morning, Mr. Monk. My sister-in-law tells me you believe there was no intruder in the house. Is that so?"

He could save her nothing by lying. The news would be no easier coming from someone else, and the mere fact that he had lied would make it impossible for her to believe him in future. It would add another confusion to those already inevitable.

"Yes ma'am. I am sorry."

She stood motionless. He could not even see the slight motion of her breathing.

"Then it was one of us who killed Tavie," she said. She surprised him by not flinching from it or dressing it in evasive words. She was the only one in the family to make no pretense that it must have been one of the servants, and he admired her intensely for the courage that must have cost.

"Did you see Mrs. Haslett after she came in that afternoon, ma'am?" he asked more gently.

"Yes. Why?"

"It seems she learned something while she was out which distressed her, and according to Mr. Thirsk, she intended to pursue it and discover a final proof of the matter. Did she confide anything of it to you?"

"No." Her eyes were so wide she seemed to stare at something so close to her she could not blink. "No. She was very quiet during dinner, and there was some slight unpleasantness with-" She frowned. "With both Cyprian and her father. But I a.s.sumed she had one of her headaches again. People are occasionally unpleasant with each other, especially when they live in the same house day in and day out. She did come and say good-night to me immediately before she went to bed. Her dressing robe was torn. I offered to mend it for her-she was never very good with a needle-" Her voice broke for just a moment. Memory must have been unbearably sharp, and so very close. Her child was dead. The loss was not yet wholly grasped. Life had only just slipped into the past.

He hated having to press her, but he had to know.

"What did she say to you, ma'am? Even a word may help."

"Nothing but 'good night,' " she said quietly. "She was very gentle, I remember that, very gentle indeed, and she kissed me. It was almost as if she knew we should not meet again." She put her hands up to her face, pushing the long, slender fingers till they held the skin tight across her cheekbones. He had the powerful impression it was not grief which shook her most but the realization that it was someone in her own family who had committed murder.

She was a remarkable woman, possessed of an honesty which he greatly respected. It cut his emotion, and his pride, that he was socially so inferior he could offer her no comfort at all, only a stiff courtesy that was devoid of any individual expression.

"You have my deep sympathy, ma'am," he said awkwardly. "I wish it were not necessary to pursue it-" He did not add the rest. She understood without tedious explanation.

She withdrew her hands.

"Of course," she said almost under her breath.

"Good day, ma'am."

"Good day, Mr. Monk. Percival, please see Mr. Monk to the door."

The footman reappeared, and to Monk's surprise he was shown out of the front door and down the steps into Queen Anne Street, feeling a mixture of pity, intellectual stimulation, and growing involvement which was familiar, and yet he could remember no individual occasion. He must have done this a hundred times before, begun with a crime, then learned experience by experience to know the people and their lives, their tragedies.

How many of them had marked him, touched him deeply enough to change anything inside him? Whom had he loved- or pitied? What had made him angry?

He had been shown out of the front door, so it was necessary to go around to the back areaway to find Evan, whom he had detailed to speak to the servants and to make at least some search for the knife. Since the murderer was still in the house, and had not left it that night, the weapon must be there too, unless he had disposed of it since. But there would be many knives in any ordinary kitchen of such a size, and several of them used for cutting meat. It would be a simple thing to have wiped it and replaced it. Even blood found in the joint of the handle would mean little.

He saw Evan coming up the steps. Perhaps word had reached him of Monk's departure, and he had left at the same time intentionally. Monk looked at Evan's face as he ran up, feet light, head high.

"Well?"

"I had P.C. Lawley help me. We went right through the house, especially servants' quarters, but didn't find the missing jewelry. Not that I really expected to."

Monk had not expected it either. He had never thought robbery the motive. The jewelry was probably flushed down the drain, and the silver vase merely mislaid. "What about the knife?"

"Kitchen full of knives," Evan said, falling into step beside him. "Wicked-looking things. Cook says there's nothing missing. If it was one of them, it was replaced. Couldn't find anything else. Do you think it was one of the servants? Why?'' He screwed up his face doubtfully. "A jealous ladies' maid? A footman with amorous notions?"

Monk snorted. "More likely a secret of some sort that she discovered." And he told Evan what he had learned so far.

Monk was at the Old Bailey by half past three, and it took him another half hour and the exertion of considerable bribery and veiled threats to get inside the courtroom where the trial of Menard Grey was winding to its conclusion. Rathbone was making his final speech. It was not an impa.s.sioned oration as Monk had expected-after all he could see that the man was an exhibitionist, vain, pedantic and above all an actor. Instead Rathbone spoke quite quietly, his words precise, his logic exact. He made no attempt to dazzle the jurors or to appeal to their emotions. Either he had given up or he had at last realized that there could be only one verdict and it was the judge to whom he must look for any compa.s.sion.

The victim had been a gentleman of high breeding and n.o.ble heritage. But so was Menard Grey. He had struggled long with his burden of knowledge and terrible, continuing injustice which would afflict more and more innocent people if he did not act.

Monk saw the jury's faces and knew they would ask for clemency. But would that be enough?

Without realizing it he was searching the crowd for Hester Latterly. She had said she would be there. He could never think of the Grey case, or any part of it, without remembering her. She should be here now to see its close.

Callandra Daviot was here, sitting in the first row behind the lawyers, next to her sister-in-law, Fabia Grey, the dowager Lady Shelb.u.me. Lovel Grey was beside his mother at the farther end, pale, composed, not afraid to look at his brother in the dock. The tragedy seemed to have added a stature to him, a certainty of his own convictions he had lacked before. He was not more than a yard away from his mother, and yet the distance between them was a gulf which he never once looked at her to cross.

Fabia sat like stone, white, cold and relentless. The wound of disillusion had destroyed her. There was nothing left now but hatred. The delicate face which had once been beautiful was sharpened by the violence of her emotions, and the lines around her mouth were ugly, her chin pointed, her neck thin and ropey. If she had not destroyed so many others with her dreams, Monk would have pitied her, but as it was all he could feel was a chill of fear. She had lost the son she idolized to a shocking death. With him had gone all the excitement and glamour from her life. It was Joscelin who had made her laugh, flattered her, told her she was lovely and charming and gay. It was hard enough that he should have had to go to war in the Crimea and return wounded, but when he had been battered to death in his flat in Mecklenburg Square it was more than she could bear. Neither Lovel nor Menard could take his place, and she would not let them try-or accept from them such love or warmth as they would have given.

Monk's bitter solution of the case had crushed her totally, and it was something she would never forgive.

Rosamond, Lovel's wife, sat to her mother-in-law's left, composed and solitary.

The judge spoke his brief summation and the jury retired. The crowd remained in its seats, fearful lest they lose their places and miss the climax of the drama.

Monk wondered how often before he had attended the trial of someone he had arrested. The case notes he had searched so painstakingly to discover himself had stopped short with the unmasking of the criminal. They had shown him a careful man who left no detail to chance, an intuitive man who could leap from bare evidence to complicated structures of motive and opportunity, sometimes brilliantly, leaving others plodding behind, mystified. It also showed relentless ambition, a career built step by step, both by dedicated work and hard hours and by maneuvering others so he was in the place, at the time, when he could seize the advantage over less able colleagues. He made very few mistakes and forgave none in others. He had many admirers, but no one apart from Evan seemed to like him. And looking at the man who emerged from the pages he was not surprised. He did not like him himself.

Evan had met him only after the accident. The Grey case had been their first together.

He stood waiting for another fifteen minutes, thinking about the shreds he knew of himself, trying to picture the rest, and unsure whether he would find it familiar, easy to understand, therefore to forgive-or a nature he neither liked nor respected. Of the man before, or apart from his work, there was nothing, not a letter or memento that had meaning.

The jury was returning, their faces tense, eyes anxious. The buzz of voices ceased, there was no sound but the rustle of fabric and squeak of boots.

The judge asked if they had reached a verdict, and if it had been the verdict of them all.

They answered that they had. He asked the foreman what it was, and he replied: "Guilty-but we plead for clemency, my lord. Most sincerely, we ask that you give all the mercy allowed you, within the law-sir."

Monk found himself standing to attention, breathing very slowly as if the very sound of it in his ears might lose him some fraction of what was said. Beside him someone coughed, and he could have hit the man for his intrusion.

Was Hester here? Was she waiting as he was?

He looked at Menard Grey, who had risen to his feet and appeared, for all the crowd around him, as alone as a man could be. Every person in this entire paneled and vaulted hall was here to see judgment upon him, his life, or death. Beside him Rathbone, slimmer, and at least three inches shorter, put out a hand to steady him, or perhaps simply to let him feel a touch and know someone else was at least aware.

"Menard Grey," the judge said very slowly, his face creased with sadness and something that looked like both pity and frustration. "You have been found guilty of murder by this court. Indeed, you have wisely not pleaded otherwise. That is to your credit. Your counsel has made much of the provocation offered you, and the emotional distress you suffered at the hands of the victim. The court cannot regard that as an excuse. If every man who felt himself ill used were to resort to violence our civilization would end.''

There was a ripple of anger around the room, a letting out of breath in a soft hiss.

"However," the judge said sharply, "the fact that great wrongs were done, and you sought ways to prevent them, and could not find them within the law, and therefore committed this crime to prevent the continuation of these wrongs to other innocent persons, has been taken into account when considering sentence. You are a misguided man, but it is my judgment that you are not a wicked one. I sentence you to be transported to the land of Australia, where you will remain for a period of twenty-five years in Her Majesty's colony of Western Australia." He picked up his gavel to signal the end of the matter, but the sound of it was drowned in the cheering and stamping of feet and the scramble as the press charged to report the decision.

Monk did not find a chance to speak to Hester, but he did see her once, over the heads of a score of people. Her eyes were shining, and the tiredness suggested by her severe hairstyle, and the plain stuff of her dress, was wiped away by the glow of triumph-and utter relief. In that instant she was almost beautiful. Their eyes met and the moment was shared. Then she was carried along and he lost sight of her.

He also saw Fabia Grey as she was leaving, her body stiff, her face bleak and white with hatred. She walked alone, refusing to allow her daughter-in-law to help her, and her eldest and only remaining son chose to walk behind, head erect, a faint, tiny smile touching his mouth. Callandra Daviot would be with Rathbone. It was she, not Menard's own family, who had employed him, and she who would settle the account.

He did not see Rathbone, but he could imagine his triumph, and although it was what Monk also wanted most and had worked for, he found himself resenting Rathbone's success, the smugness he could so clearly envision in the lawyer's face and the gleam of another victory in his eyes.

He went straight from the Old Bailey back to the police station and up to Runcorn's office to report his progress to date in the Queen Anne Street case.

Runcorn looked at Monk's extremely smart jacket and his eyes narrowed and a flick of temper twitched in his high, narrow cheeks.

"I've been waiting for you for two days," he said as soon as Monk was through the door. "I a.s.sume you are working hard, but I require to be informed of precisely what you have learned-if anything! Have you seen the newspapers? Sir Basil Moidore is an extremely influential man. You don't seem to realize who we are dealing with, and he has friends in very high circles-cabinet ministers, foreign amba.s.sadors, even princes."

"He also has enemies within his own house,'' Monk replied with more flippancy than was wise, but he knew the case was going to become uglier and far more difficult than it was already. Runcorn would hate it. He was terrified of offending authority, or people he thought of as socially important, and the Home Office would press for a quick solution because the public was outraged. At the same time he would be sick with fear lest he offend Moidore. Monk would be caught in the middle, and Runcorn would be only too delighted, if the results at last gave him the opportunity, to crush Monk's pretensions and make his failure public.

Monk could see it all ahead, and it infuriated him that even foreknowledge could not help him escape.

"I am not amused by riddles," Runcorn snapped. "If you have discovered nothing and the case is too difficult for you, say so, and I shall put someone else on it."

Monk smiled, showing his teeth. "An excellent idea-sir," he answered. "Thank you."

"Don't be impertinent!" Runcorn was thoroughly out of countenance. It was the last response he had expected. "If you are giving me your resignation, do it properly, man, not with a casual word like this. Are you resigning?" For a brief moment hope gleamed in his round eyes.

"No sir." Monk could not keep the lift in his voice. The victory was only a single thrust; the whole battle was already lost. "I thought you were offering to replace me on the Moi-dorecase."

"No I am not. Why?" Runcorn's short, straight eyebrows rose. "Is it too much for your skills? You used to be the best detective on the force-at least that was what you told everyone!" His voice grated with sour satisfaction. "But you've certainly lost your sharpness since your accident. You didn't do badly with the Grey case, but it took you long enough. I expect they'll hang Grey." He looked at Monk with satisfaction. He was sharp enough to have read Monk's feelings correctly, his sympathy for Menard.

"No they won't," Monk retorted. "They brought in the verdict this afternoon. Deportation for twenty-five years." He smiled, letting his triumph show. "He could make quite a decent life for himself in Australia.''

"If he doesn't die of fever," Runcorn said spitefully. "Or get killed in a riot, or starve."

"That could happen in London." Monk kept his face expressionless.

"Well, don't stand there like a fool." Runcorn sat down behind his desk. "Why are you afraid of the Moidore case? You think it is beyond your ability?"

"It was someone in the house," Monk answered.

"Of course it was someone in the house." Runcorn glared at him. "What's the matter with you, Monk? Have you lost your wits? She was killed in the bedroom-someone broke in. No one suggested she was dragged out into the street."

Monk took malicious pleasure in disabusing him.

"They were suggesting a burglar broke in," he said, framing each word carefully and precisely, as if to someone slow of understanding. He leaned a little forward."I am saying that no one broke in and whoever murdered Sir Basil's daughter, he-or she-was in the house already-and is still in the house. Social tact supposes one of the servants; common sense says it is far more probably one of the family.''

Runcorn stared at him aghast, the blood draining from his long face as the full implication came home to him. He saw the satisfaction in Monk's eyes.

"Preposterous," he said with a dry throat, the sound robbed of its force by his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. "What's the matter with you, Monk? Do you have some personal hatred against the aristocracy that you keep on accusing them of such monstrosity? Wasn't the Grey case enough for you? Have you finally taken leave of your senses?"

"The evidence is incontrovertible." Monk's pleasure was only in seeing the horror in Runcorn. The inspector would immeasurably rather have looked for an intruder turned violent, acutely difficult as it would be to trace such a one in the labyrinths of petty crime and poverty in the rookeries, as the worst slum tenements were known, whole areas where the police dared not intrude, still less maintain any rule of law. Even so it would be less fraught with personal danger than accusing, even by implication, a member of a family like the Moidores.

Runcom opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"Yes sir?" Monk prompted, his eyes wide.

A succession of emotions chased each other over Runcorn's face: terror of the political repercussions if Monk offended people, behaved clumsily, could not back up with proof every single allegation he made; and then the double-edged hope that Monk might precipitate some disaster great enough to ruin him, and rid Runcorn of his footsteps forever at his heels.

"Get out," Runcorn said between his teeth. "And G.o.d help you if you make a mistake in this. You can be certain I shan't!"

"I never imagined you would-sir." And Monk stood at attention for a second-in mockery, not respect-then turned for the door.

He despaired Runcorn, and it was not until he was almost back to his rooms in Grafton Street that it occurred to him to wonder what Runcorn had been like when they first met, before Monk had threatened him with his ambition, his greater agility of mind, his quick, cruel wit. It was an unpleasant thought, and it took the warmth out of his feeling of superiority. He had almost certainly contributed to what the man had become. That Runcorn had always been weak, vain, less able, was a thin excuse, and any honesty at all evaporated it. The more flawed a man was, the shoddier it was to take advantage of his inadequacies to destroy him. If the strong were irresponsible and self-serving, what could the weak hope for?

Monk went to bed early and lay awake staring at the ceiling, disgusted with himself.

The funeral of Octavia Haslett was attended by half the aristocracy in London. The carriages stretched up and down Langham Place, stopping the normal traffic, black horses whenever possible, black plumes tossing, coachmen and footmen in livery, black crepe fluttering, harnesses polished like mirrors, but not a single piece that jingled or made a sound. An ambitious person might have recognized the crests of many n.o.ble families, not only of Britain but of France and the states of Germany as well. The mourners wore black, immaculate, devastatingly fashionable, enormous skirts hooped and petti-coated, ribboned bonnets, gleaming top hats and polished boots.

Everything was done in silence, m.u.f.fled hooves, well-oiled heels, whispering voices. The few pa.s.sersby slowed down and bowed their heads in respect.

From his position like a waiting servant on the steps of All Saints Church, Monk saw the family arrive, first Sir Basil Moidore with his remaining daughter, Araminta, not even a black veil able to hide the blazing color of her hair or the whiteness of her face. They climbed the steps together, she holding his arm, although she seemed to support him as much as he her.

Next came Beatrice Moidore, very definitely upheld by Cyprian. She walked uprightly, but was so heavily veiled no expression was visible, but her back and shoulders were stiff and twice she stumbled and he helped her gently, speaking with his head close to hers.

Some distance behind, having come in a separate carriage, Myles Kellard and Romola Moidore came side by side, but not seeming to offer each other anything more than a formal accompaniment. Romola moved as if she was tired; her step was heavy and her shoulders a little bowed. She too wore a veil so her face was invisible. A few feet to her right Myles Kellard looked bleak, or perhaps it was boredom. He climbed the steps slowly, almost absently, and only when they reached the top did he offer her a hand at her elbow, more as a courtesy than a support.

Lastly came Fenella Sandeman in overdramatic black, a hat with too much decoration on it for a funeral, but undoubtedly handsome. Her waist was nipped in so she looked fragile, at a few yards' distance giving an impression of girlishness, then as she came closer one saw the too-dark hair and the faint withering of the skin. Monk did not know whether to pity her ridiculousness or admire her bravado.

Close behind her, and murmuring to her every now and again, was Septimus Thirsk. The hard gray daylight showed the weariness in his face and his sense of having been beaten, finding his moments of happiness in very small victories, the great ones having long ago been abandoned.

Monk did not go inside the church yet, but waited while the reverent, the grieving and the envious made their way past him. He overheard s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation, expressions of pity, but far more of outrage. What was the world coming to? Where was the much vaunted new Metropolitan Police Force while all this was going on? What was the purpose in paying to have them if people like the Moidores could be murdered in their own beds? One must speak to the Home Secretary and demand something be done!

Monk could imagine die outrage, the fear and the excuses that would take place over the next days or weeks. Whitehall would be spurred by complaints. Explanations would be offered, polite refusals given, and then when their lordships had left, Runcorn would be sent for and reports requested with icy disfavor hiding a hot panic.