Part 25 (1/2)
Evan frowned. ”Do you think that's what it was-in Queen Anne Street? Everyone afraid, and just wanted to put it onto someone, anyone, to get us out of the house, and to stop thinking about each other and learning more than they wanted to know?”
Monk leaned forward, pus.h.i.+ng the plates away, and rested his elbows on the table wearily.
”Perhaps.” He sighed. ”G.o.d-I've made a mess of it! The worst thing is that Percival will hang. He's an arrogant and selfish sod, but he doesn't deserve to die for that. But nearly as bad is that whoever did kill him is still in that house, and is going to get away with it. And try as they might to ignore things, forget things, at least one of them has a fair idea who it is.” He looked up. ”Can you imagine it, Evan? Living the rest of your life with someone you know committed murder and let another man swing for it? Pa.s.sing them on the stairs, sitting opposite them at the dinner table, watching them smile and tell jokes as if it had never happened?''
”What are you going to do?” Evan was watching him with intelligent, troubled eyes.
”What in h.e.l.l's name can I do?” Monk exploded. ”Run-corn's arrested Percival and will send him to trial. I haven't any evidence I've not already given him, and I'm not only off the case, I'm off the force. I don't even know how I'm going to keep a roof over my head, d.a.m.n it. I'm the last person to help Percival-I can't even help myself.”
”You're the only one who can help him,'' Evan said quietly. There was friends.h.i.+p in his face and understanding, but no moderation of the truth. ”Except perhaps Miss Latterly,” he added. ”Anyway, apart from us, there's no one else who's going to try.” He stood up from the chair, uncoiling his legs. ”I'll go and tell her what happened. She'll know about Percival, of course, and the fact that it was Tarrant and not you will have told her something was wrong, but she won't know whether it's illness, another case, or what.” He smiled with a wry twist of his lips. ”Unless of course she knows you well enough to have guessed you lost your temper with Runcorn? ”
Monk was about to deny that as ridiculous, then he remembered Hester and the doctor in the infirmary, and had a sudden blossoming of fellow-feeling, a warmth inside evaporating a little of the chill in him.
”She might,” he conceded.
”I'll go to Queen Anne Street and tell her.” Evan straightened his jacket, unconsciously elegant even now.”Before I 'm thrown off the case too and I've no excuse to go back there.”
Monk looked up at him. ”Thank you-”
Evan made a little salute, with more courage in it than hope, and went out, leaving Monk alone with the remnants of his breakfast.
He stared at the table for several minutes longer, his mind half searching for something further, then suddenly a shaft of memory returned so vividly it stunned him. At some other time he had sat at a polished dining table in a room filled with gracious furniture and mirrors framed in gilt and a bowl of flowers. He had felt the same grief, and the overwhelming burden of guilt because he could not help.
It was the home of the mentor of whom he had been reminded so sharply on the pavement in Piccadilly outside Cyprian's club. There had been a financial disaster, a scandal in which he had been ruined. The woman in the funeral carriage whose ugly, grieving face had struck him so powerfully-it was his mentor's wife he had seen in her place, she whose beautiful hands he recalled; it was her distress he had ached to relieve, and been helpless. The whole tragedy had played itself out relentlessly, leaving the victims in its wake.
He remembered the pa.s.sion and the impotence seething inside him as he had sat on that other table, and the resolve then to learn some skill that would give him weapons to fight injustice, uncover the dark frauds that seemed so inaccessible. That was when he had changed his mind from commerce and its rewards and chosen the police.
Police. He had been arrogant, dedicated, brilliant-and earned himself promotion-and dislike; and now he had nothing left, not even memory of his original skills.
”He what?” Hester demanded as she faced Evan in Mrs. Willis's sitting room. Its dark, Spartan furnis.h.i.+ngs and religious texts on the walls were sharply familiar to her now, but this news was a blow she could barely comprehend. ”What did you say?”
”He refused to arrest Percival, and told Runcorn what he thought of him,'' Evan elaborated. ”With the result, of course, that Runcorn threw him off the force.''
”What is he going to do?” She was appalled. The sense of fear and helplessness was too close in her own memory to need imagination, and her position at Queen Anne Street was only temporary. Beatrice was not ill, and now that Percival had been arrested she would in all probability recover in a matter of days, as long as she believed he was guilty. Hester looked at Evan. ”Where will he find employment? Has he any family?”
Evan looked at the floor, then up at her again.
”Not here in London, and I don't think he would go to them anyway. I don't know what he'll do,” he said unhappily. ”It's all he knows, and I think all he cares about. It's his natural skill.”
”Does anybody employ detectives, apart from the police?” she asked.
He smiled, and there was a flash of hope in his eyes, then it faded. ”But if he hired out his skills privately, he would need means to live until he developed a reputation-it would be too difficult.”
”Perhaps,” she said reluctantly, not yet prepared to consider the idea. ”In the meantime, what can we do about Per-cival?”
”Can you meet Monk somewhere to discuss it? He can't come here now. Will Lady Moidore give you half an afternoon free?”
”I haven't had any time since I came here. I shall ask. If she permits me, where will he be?”
”It's cold outside.” He glanced beyond her to the single, narrow window facing onto a small square of gra.s.s and two laurel bushes. ”How about the chocolate house in Regent Street?”
”Excellent. I will go and ask Lady Moidore now.”
”What will you say?” he asked quickly.
”I shall lie,” she answered without hesitation. ”I shall say a family emergency has arisen and I need to speak with them.'' She pulled a harsh, humorous face. ”She should understand a family emergency, if anyone does!”
”A family emergency.” Beatrice turned from staring out of the window at the sky and looked at Hester with consternation. ”I'm sorry. Is it illness? I can recommend a doctor, if you do not already have one, but I imagine you do-you must have several.”
”Thank you, that is most thoughtful.” Hester felt distinctly guilty. ”But as far as I know there is no ill health; it is a matter of losing a position, which may cause a considerable amount of hards.h.i.+p.”
Beatrice was fully dressed for the first time in several days, but she had not yet ventured into the main rooms of the house, nor had she joined in the life of the household, except to spend a little time with her grandchildren, Julia and Arthur. She looked very pale and her features were drawn. If she felt any relief at Percival's arrest it did not show in her expression. Her body was tense and she stood awkwardly, ill at ease. She forced a smile, bright and unnatural.
”I am so sorry. I hope you will be able to help, even if it is only with comfort and good advice. Sometimes that is all we have for each other-don't you think?'' She swung around and stared at Hester as if the answer were of intense importance to her. Then before Hester could reply she walked away and started fis.h.i.+ng in one of her dressing table drawers searching for something.
”Of course you know the police arrested Percival and took him away last night. Mary said it wasn't Mr. Monk. I wonder why. Do you know, Hester?”
There was no possible way Hester could have known the truth except by being privy to police affairs that she could not share.
”I have no idea, your ladys.h.i.+p. Perhaps he has become involved in another matter, and someone else was delegated to do this. After all, the detection has been completed-I suppose.”
Beatrice's fingers froze and she stood perfectly still.
”You suppose? You mean it might not? What else could they want? Percival is guilty, isn't he?”
”I don't know.” Hester kept her voice quite light. ”I a.s.sume they must believe so, or they would not have arrested him; though we cannot say beyond any possible doubt until he has been tried.”
Beatrice drew more tightly into herself. ”They'll hang him, won't they?”
Hester felt a trifle sick. ”Yes,” she agreed very quietly. Then she felt compelled to persist. ”Does that distress you?”
”It shouldn't-should it?” Beatrice sounded surprised at herself. ”He murdered my daughter.”
”But it does?” Hester allowed nothing to slip by. ”It is very final, isn't it? I mean-it allows for no mistakes, no time for second thoughts on anything.”
Still Beatrice stood motionless on the spot, her hands plunged in the silks, chiffons and laces in the drawer.
”Second thoughts? What do you mean?”
Now Hester retreated. ”I'mnotsure. I suppose another way of looking at the evidence-perhaps if someone were lying- or remembered inaccurately-”
”You are saying that the murderer is still here-among us, Hester.” There was no panic in Beatrice's voice, just cold pain. ”And whoever it is, is calmly watching Percival go to his death on-on false evidence.”
Hester swallowed hard and found her voice difficult to force into her throat.
”I suppose whoever it is must be very frightened. Perhaps it was an accident at first-I mean it was a struggle that was not meant to end in death. Don't you think?”