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“Hester?” He frowned at her.
Hester stared straight ahead and began walking again.
“She might have been,” she replied briskly. “Perhaps she valued people for their worth—their humor, or courage, integrity, their intelligence, compassion, good companionship, imagination, honor, any of a dozen things that don’t suddenly cease the day you turn thirty.”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t be so idiotic,” he said in amazement, striding along beside her. “We’re not talking about worth. We’re talking about Nanette Cuthbertson being in love and wanting to marry Geoffrey Taunton and have a family. That’s got nothing to do with intelligence or courage or humor. What’s the matter with you? Stop walking so fast or you’ll fall over something! She wants children—not a halo. She’s a perfectly ordinary woman. I would have thought Prudence would have had sufficient wit to see that. But talking to you—perhaps she wouldn’t. You don’t seem to have.”
Hester opened her mouth to argue, but there was no logical answer, and she found herself at a loss for words.
He strode on in silence, still swiping occasionally at the odd stone on the path.
“Is that all you’ve done?” she said finally.
“What?”
“Discover that Nanette had a good motive, but no means, so far as you can find out.”
“No of course it isn’t.” He hit another stone. “I’ve looked into Prudence’s past, her nursing skills, her war record, anything I can think of. It’s all very interesting, very admirable, but none of it suggests a specific motive for murdering her—or anyone who might have wished to. I am somewhat hampered by not having any authority.”
“Well whose fault is that?” she said sharply, then immediately wished she had not, but was damned if she was going to apologize.
They walked for a further hundred yards in silence until they were back at Doughty Street, where she excused herself, pointing out that she’d had very little sleep and would be required to sit up all night with Mr. Prendergast again. They parted coolly, she back to the hospital, he she knew not where.
7
EVERYTHING THAT MONK had learned about Prudence Barrymore showed a passionate, intelligent, single-minded woman bent on caring for the sick to the exclusion of all else. While exciting his admiration, she had almost certainly not been an easy woman to know, either as a friend or as a member of one’s family. No one had mentioned whether or not she had the least sense of humor. Humor was at times Hester’s saving grace. No, that was not entirely true: he would never forget her courage, her will to fight for him, even when it seemed the battle was pointless and he not worth anyone’s effort. But she could still be insufferable to spend time with.
He was walking along the street under a leaden, gray sky. Any moment there would be a summer downpour. It would drench the pedestrians, bounce off the busy thoroughfare, washing horse droppings into the gutter and sending the water swirling in huge puddles across the street. Even the wind smelled heavy and wet.
He was in the Gray’s Inn Road going toward the hospital with the intention of seeing Evan again to ask him more about Prudence Barrymore’s character, if he were willing to share any information. And in conscience, he might not be. Monk disliked having to ask him. In Jeavis’s place he would not have told anyone else, and would verbally have flayed a junior who did.
And yet he did not think Jeavis’s ability equal to this case, which was an opinion for which he had no grounds. He knew his own successes since the accident, and some of them were precarious enough and owed much to the help of others, especially Hester. As to cases before the accident, he had only written records on which to rely. They all pointed to his brilliance, anger at injustice, impatience with hesitation or timidity, and gave little credit to anyone else. But since they were largely in his own handwriting, how accurate were they?
What was the memory that had teased at the edge of his mind during the train journey back from Little Ealing? He and Runcorn had been on a case together a long time ago, when Monk was new to the force. He had struggled to recapture something more, any clue as to what the case had been, but nothing came, only a sense of anger, a deep, white-hot rage that was like a shield against—against what?
It was beginning to rain, huge warm drops falling faster and faster. Somewhere far away, audible even above the clatter of wheels, came the rumble of thunder. A man hurried past him, fumbling to open up his black umbrella. A newsboy stuffed his papers hastily into a canvas satchel without ceasing his cries. Monk turned up his coat collar and hunched forward.
That was it. The press! His rage had protected him from any vulnerability to the clamor for an arrest, and the pressure from superiors. He had not cared what anyone else thought or felt, all that mattered to him was his own overpowering emotion over the crime itself, the fury of it consumed him. But what was the crime? Nothing in his memory gave any clue to follow. Search as he could, it was a blank.
It was intensely frustrating. And that feeling was familiar. He had been frustrated then. The helplessness underlying the anger all the time. There had been one blind alley after another. He knew the upsurge of hope, the anticipation, and then the disappointment, the hollowness of failure. His fury had been at least partially directed at Runcorn because he was too timid, too careful of the sensibilities of witnesses. Monk had wished to press them regardless, not for cruelty’s sake but because they were guarding their own petty little secrets when a far greater tragedy loomed over them with its brooding evil.
But what evil? All he could recall was a sense of darkness and a weight oppressing him, and always the rage.
The rain was heavy now, soaking through his trousers, making his ankles cold, and running down the back of his neck. He shivered violently, and quickened his pace. The water was rising in the gutter and swirling down the drains.
He needed to know. He needed to understand himself, the man he had been in those years, whether his anger was justified or merely the violence in his own nature finding an excuse—emotionally and intellectually dishonest. That was something he despised utterly.
And there was no excuse for self-indulgence at the expense of his task for Callandra. He had no idea who had murdered Prudence Barrymore, or why. There were too many possibilities. It could have been anything from a long hatred, frustration, or rejection such as that which must be felt by Geoffrey Taunton, or a mixture of the panic and jealousy which must have affected Nanette Cuthbertson as time passed by and still Geoffrey waited for Prudence and she kept him at bay, neither accepting him nor letting him go.
Or it could have been another lover, a doctor or hospital governor, a quarrel or an explosion of jealousy; or the blackmail that, according to Evan, Jeavis suspected of Kristian Beck.
Or if Prudence Barrymore were as opinionated, officious, and authoritarian as had been suggested, then it might as easily have been merely some nurse driven beyond the bounds of self-control by the constant abrasion to her temper and esteem. Perhaps one gibe, one criticism, had been the final straw, and someone had at last lashed out?
He was almost at the hospital entrance.
He ran the final few yards and climbed the steps two at a time to be in the shelter at last, then stood in the entrance hall dripping pools of water onto the floor. He turned down his collar and smoothed his lapels and pushed his fingers through his hair in unconscious vanity. He wanted to see Evan alone, but he could not wait for an opportunity to present itself. He would have to look for him and hope he found him without Jeavis. He set out, still trailing water.
As it happened he was unfortunate. He had planned using the excuse that he was seeking Callandra, if anyone asked him his business. But he almost bumped into Jeavis and Evan as he was going along the corridor and they were standing near the laundry chute.
