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It had been an extraordinary contrast after the desperate years in the Crimea with the unspeakable suffering she had seen, the agony of wounds, bodies torn by shot and sword; and to her even more harrowing, those wasted by disease, the racking pain and nausea of cholera, typhus and dysentery, the cold and the starvation; and driving her almost beyond herself with fury, the staggering incompetence.
She, like the other handful of women, had worked herself close to exhaustion, cleaning up human waste where there were no sanitary facilities, excrement from the helpless running on the floor and dripping through to the packed and wretched huddled in the cellars below. She had nursed men delirious with fever, gangrenous from amputations of limbs lost to everything from musket shot, cannon shot, sword thrust, even frostbite on the exposed and fearful bivouacs of the winter encampments where men and horses had perished by the thousands. She had delivered babies of the hungry and neglected army wives, buried many of them, then comforted the bereaved.
And when she could bear the pity no longer she had expended her last energy in fury, fighting the endless, idiotic inadequacy of the command, who seemed to her not to have the faintest grasp of ordinary sense, let alone management ability.
She had lost a brother, and many friends, chief among them Alan Russell, a brilliant war correspondent who had written home to the newspapers some of the unpalatable truths about one of the bravest and foolhardiest campaigns ever fought. He had shared many of them with her, allowing «her to read them before they were posted.
Indeed in the weakness of fever he had dictated his last letter to her and she had sent it. When he died in the hospital at Scutari she had in a rash moment of deep emotion written a dispatch herself, and signed his name to it as if he were still alive.
It had been accepted and printed. From knowledge gleaned from other injured and feverish men she had learned their accounts of battle, siege and trench warfare, crazy charges and long weeks of boredom, and other dispatches had followed, all with Alan's name on them. In the general confusion no one realized.
Now she was home in the orderly, dignified, very sober grief of her brother's household mourning both her parents, wearing black as if this were the only loss and there were nothing else to do but conduct a gentle life of embroidery, letter writing and discreet good works with local charities. And of course obey Charles's continuous and rather pompous orders as to what must be done, and how, and when. It was almost beyond bearing. It was as if she were in suspended animation. She had grown used to having authority, making decisions and being in the heart of emotion, even if overtired, bitterly frustrated, full of anger and pity, desperately needed.
Now Charles was driven frantic because he could not understand her or comprehend the change in her from the brooding, intellectual girl he knew before, nor could he foresee any respectable man offering for her in marriage. He found the thought of having her living under his roof for the rest of her life well nigh insufferable.
The prospect did not please Hester either, but then she had no intention of allowing it to come to pass. As long as Imogen needed her she would remain, then she would consider her future and its possibilities.
However, as she sat in the carriage beside Imogen while they rattled through the dusk streets she had a powerful conviction that there was much troubling her sister-in-law and it was something that, for whatever reasons, Imogen was keeping secret, telling neither Charles nor Hester, and bearing the weight of it alone. It was more than grief, it was something that lay not only in the past but in the future also.
5
Monk and Evan saw Grimwade only briefly, then went straight up to visit Yeats. It was a little after eight in the morning and they hoped to catch him at breakfast, or possibly even before.
Yeats opened the door himself; he was a small man of about forty, a trifle plump, with a mild face and thinning hair which fell forward over his brow. He was startled and there was still a piece of toast and orange preserve in his hand. He stared at Monk with some alarm.
"Good morning, Mr. Yeats," Monk said firmly. "We are from the police; we would like to speak to you about the murder of Major Joscelin Grey. May we come in please?" He did not step forward, but his height seemed to press over Yeats and vaguely threaten him, and he used it deliberately.
"Y-yes, y-yes of course," Yeats stuttered, backing away, still clutching the toast. "But I assure you I d-don't know anything I haven't already t-told you. Not you—at least—a Mr. Lamb who was—a—"
"Yes I know." Monk followed him in. He knew he was being oppressive, but he could not afford to be gentle.
Yeats must have seen the murderer face-to-face, possibly even been in collusion with him, willingly or unwillingly.
"But we have learned quite a few new facts," he went on, "since Mr. Lamb was taken ill and I have been put on the case."
"Oh?" Yeats dropped the toast and bent to pick it up, ignoring the preserve on the carpet. It was a smaller room than Joscelin Grey's and overpoweringly furnished in heavy oak covered in photographs and embroidered linen. There were antimacassars on both the chairs.
"Have you—" Yeats said nervously. "Have you? I still don't think I can—er—could—"
"Perhaps if you were to allow a few questions, Mr. Yeats." Monk did not want him so frightened as to be incapable of thought or memory.
"Well—if you think so. Yes—yes, if . . ." He backed away and sat down sharp
ly on the chair closest to the table.
Monk sat also and was conscious of Evan behind him doing the same on a ladder-back chair by the wall. He wondered fleetingly what Evan was thinking, if he found him harsh, overconscious of his own ambition, his need to succeed. Yeats could so easily be no more than he seemed, a frightened little man whom mischance had placed at the pivot of a murder.
Monk began quietly, thinking with an instant's self-mockery that he might be moderating his tone not to reassure Yeats but to earn Evan's approval. What had led him to such isolation that Evan's opinion mattered so much to him? Had he been too absorbed in learning, climbing, polishing himself, to afford friendship, much less love? Indeed, had anything at all engaged his higher emotions?
Yeats was watching him like a rabbit seeing a stoat, and too horrified to move.
"You yourself had a visitor that night," Monk told him quite gently. "Who was he?"
"I don't know!" Yeats's voice was high, almost a squeak. "I don't know who he was! I told Mr. Lamb that! He came here by mistake; he didn't even really want me!"
Monk found himself holding up his hand, trying to calm him as one would with an overexcited child, or an animal.
"But you saw him, Mr. Yeats." He kept his voice low. "No doubt you have some memory of his appearance, perhaps his voice? He must have spoken to you?" Whether Yeats was lying or not, he would achieve nothing by attacking his statement now; Yeats would only entrench himself more and more deeply into his ignorance.
