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“Yes ma’am?”
“It occurs to me that some people—some men—have strange ideas about women who are widowed—” She was obviously most uncomfortable about what it was she was attempting to say.
“Indeed,” he said encouragingly.
The wind caught at her bonnet, pulling it a little sideways, but she disregarded it. He wondered if she was trying to find a way to say what Sir Basil had prompted, and if the words would be his or her own.
Two little girls in frilled dresses passed by with their governess, walking very stiffly, eyes ahead as if unaware of the soldier coming the other way.
“It is not impossible that one of the servants, one of the men, entertained such—such ludicrous ideas—and became overfamiliar.”
They had almost stopped. Romola poked at the ground with the ferrule of her umbrella.
“If—if that happened, and she rebuffed him soundly—possibly he became angry—incensed—I mean …” She tailed off miserably, still avoiding looking at him.
“In the middle of the night?” he said dubiously. “He was certainly extremely bold to go to her bedroom and try such a thing.”
The color burned up her cheeks.
“Someone did,” she pointed out with a catch in her voice, still staring at the ground. “I know it seems preposterous. Were she not dead, I should laugh at it myself.”
“You are right,” he said reluctantly. “Or it may be that she discovered some secret that could have ruined a servant had she told it, and they killed her to prevent that.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Oh—yes, I suppose that sounds … possible. What kind of a secret? You mean dishonesty—immorality? But how would Tavie have learned of it?”
“I don’t know. Have you no idea where she went that afternoon?” He began to walk again, and she accompanied him.
“No, none at all. She barely spoke to us that evening, except a silly argument over dinner, but nothing new was said.”
“What was the argument about?”
“Nothing in particular—just frayed tempers.” She looked straight ahead of her. “It was certainly nothing about where she went that afternoon, and nothing about any secret.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Moidore. You have been very courteous.” He stopped and she stopped also, relaxing a little as she sensed he was leaving.
“I wish I could help, Mr. Monk,” she said with her face suddenly pinched and sad. For a moment grief overtook anxiety for herself and fear for the future. “If I recall anything—”
“Tell me—or Mr. Evan. Good day, ma’am.”
“Good day.” And she turned and walked away, but when she had gone ten or fifteen yards she looked back again, not to say anything, simply to watch him leave the path and go back towards Piccadilly.
Monk knew that Cyprian Moidore was at his club, but he did not wish to ask for entry and interview him there because he felt it highly likely that he would be refused, and the humiliation would burn. Instead he waited outside on the pavement, kicking his heels, turning over in his mind what he would ask Cyprian when he finally came out.
Monk had been waiting about a quarter of an hour when two men passed him walking up towards Half Moon Street. There was something in the gait of one of them that struck a sharp chord in his memory, so vivid that he started forward to accost him. He had actually gone half a dozen steps before he realized that he had no idea who the man was, simply that for a moment he had seemed intimately familiar, and that there was both hope and sadness in him in that instant—and a terrible foreboding of pain to come.
He stood for another thirty minutes in the wind and fitful sun trying to bring back the face that had flashed on his recollection so briefly: a handsome, aristocratic face of a man at least sixty. And he knew the voice was light, very civilized, even a little affected—and knew it had been a major force in his life and the realization of ambition. He had copied him, his dress, his manner, even his inflection, in trying to lose his own unsophisticated Northumberland accent.
But all he recaptured were fragments, gone as soon as they were there, a feeling of success which was empty of flavor, a recurring pain as of some loss and some responsibility unfulfilled.
He was still standing undecided when Cyprian Moidore came down the steps of his club and along the street, only noticing Monk when he all but bumped into him.
“Oh—Monk.” He stopped short. “Are you looking for me?”
Monk recalled himself to the present with a jolt.
“Yes—if you please, sir.”
Cyprian looked anxious. “Have you—have you learned something?”
