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“You’re the only one who can help him,” Evan said quietly. There was friendship 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 passion 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 furnishings 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 Percival?”
“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 grass 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 nee
d 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 hardship.”
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 fishing 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?”
