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“It seems inescapable.”
“I suppose it does.”
“What kind of a woman was your sister, Mrs. Kellard? Was she inquisitive, interested in other people’s problems? Was she observant? An astute judge of character?”
She smiled, a twisted gesture with half her face.
“Not more than most women, Mr. Monk. In fact I think rather less. If she did discover anything, it will have been by chance, not because she went seeking it. You ask what kind of woman she was. The kind who walks into events, whose emotions lead her and she follows without regard to the price. She was the kind of woman who lurches into disaster without having foreseen it or understanding it once she is there.”
Monk looked across at Basil and saw the intense concentration in his face, his eyes fixed on Araminta. There was no reflection in his expression of any other emotion, no grief, no curiosity.
Monk turned to Cyprian. In him was the terrible hurt of memory and the knowledge of loss. His face was hard etched with pain, the realization of all the words that could not now be said, the affections unexpressed.
“Thank you, Mrs. Kellard,” Monk said slowly. “If you think of anything else I should be obliged if you would tell me. How did you spend Monday?”
“At home in the morning,” she answered. “I went calling in the afternoon, and I dined at home with the family. I spoke to Octavia several times during the evening, but I did not attach any particular importance to anything we said. It seemed totally trivial at the time.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She rose to her feet, inclined her head very slightly, and walked out without looking behind her.
“Do you wish to see Mr. Kellard?” Basil asked with raised eyebrows, an air of contempt in his stance.
The very fact that Basil questioned it made Monk accept.
“If you please.”
Basil’s face tightened, but he did not argue. He summoned Phillips and dispatched him to fetch Myles Kellard.
“Octavia would not have confided in Myles,” Cyprian said to Monk.
“Why not?” Monk asked.
A look of distaste flickered across Basil’s face at the intrusive indelicacy of such a question, and he answered before Cyprian could. “Because they did not care for each other,” he replied tersely. “They were civil, of course.” His dark eyes regarded Monk quickly to make sure he understood that people of quality did not squabble like riffraff. “It seems most probable the poor girl spoke to no one about whatever she learned so disastrously, and we may never learn what it was.”
“And whoever killed her will go unpunished,” Cyprian challenged. “That is monstrous.”
“Of course not!” Basil was furious; his eyes blazed and the deep lines in his face altered to become harsh. “Do you imagine I am going to live the rest of my life in this house with someone who murdered my daughter? What is the matter with you? Good God, don’t you know me better than that?”
Cyprian looked as if he had been struck, and Monk felt a sharp, unexpected twinge of embarrassment. This was a scene he should not have witnessed, these were emotions that had nothing to do with Octavia Haslett’s death; a viciousness between father and son stemming from no sudden act but years of resentment and failure to understand.
“If Monk—” Basil jerked his head towards the policeman—“is incapable of finding him, whoever it is, I shall have the commissioner send someone else.” He moved restlessly from the ornate mantel back to the center of the floor. “Where the hell is Myles? This morning at least, he should make himself available when I send for him!”
At that moment the door opened, without a prefacing knock, and Myles Kellard answered his summons. He was tall and slender, but in every other respect the opposite of the Moidores. His hair was brown with streaks in it and waved in a sweep back from his forehead. His face was long and narrow with an aristocratic nose and a sensuous, moody mouth. It was at once the face of a dreamer and a libertine.
Monk hesitated from politeness, and before he could speak Basil asked Myles the questions that Monk would have, but without explanation as to their purpose or the need for them. He was correct in his assumption; Myles could tell them nothing of use. He had risen late and gone out in the morning for luncheon, where he did not say, and spent the afternoon at the merchant bank where he was a director. He too had dined at home, but had not seen Octavia, except at table in the company of everyone else. He had noticed nothing remarkable.
When he had left Monk asked if there was anyone else, apart from Lady Moidore, to whom he should speak.
“Aunt Fenella and Uncle Septimus.” Cyprian answered this time, cutting his father off. “We would be obliged if you could keep your questions to Mama as brief as possible. In fact it would be better if we could ask her and relay her answers to you, if they are of any relevance.”
Basil looked at his son coldly, but whether for the suggestion or simply because Cyprian stole his prerogative by making it first, Monk did not know: he guessed the latter. At this point it was an easy concession to make; there would be time enough later to see Lady Moidore, when he had something better than routine and very general questions to ask her.
“Certainly,” he allowed. “But perhaps your aunt and uncle? One sometimes confides in aunts especially, when no one else seems as appropriate.”
Basil let out his breath in a sharp round of contempt and turned away towards the window.
“Not Aunt Fenella.” Cyprian half sat on the back of one of the leather-upholstered chairs. “But she is very observant—and inquisitive. She may have noticed something the rest of us did not—if she hasn’t forgotten it.”
