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Monk was not interested. Hamish Farraline had been dead over eight years. There could be no connection with Mary’s death, and that was all that mattered now. Impatience was gnawing inside him. He moved away.
“Watch for McIvor,” Hector called after him.
Monk turned back.
“Why?”
“She liked him,” Hector said simply, his eyes wide. “You could always tell when Mary liked someone.”
“Indeed.”
He could not be bothered to wait for McTeer. The old fool was probably asleep in his pantry. He took his own coat off the hall stand and made for the front door just as Alastair came out of the withdrawing room, apologizing for McTeer’s absence.
Monk said good-night again, nodded towards Hector on the stairs, and went out of the front door. He had refused the offer of assistance to call a cab, and had set out to walk southwards when he saw an unmistakable figure pass beneath the lamplight so rapidly he almost missed her. But no one else could have quite that ethereal grace, or that flame of hair. Most of her head was covered by the hood of her cape, but as she turned towards the light her brow was pale and the copper red clear above it.
Where on earth was Eilish Fyffe going alone, and on foot, at eleven o’clock at night?
He waited until she was well past him, across the grass of the circl
e to the far side of Ainslie Place, where she was about to disappear either east into St. Combe Street or south into Glenfinlas Street. Then he ran quickly and soundlessly after her, arriving at the corner just in time to see her pass under the lamp at the beginning of Charlotte Square.
Had she an assignation? It seemed not only the obvious conclusion but the only one. Why else would she be out alone, and obviously wishing not to be seen?
She was moving rapidly past the square. It was only two very short blocks before it ended in a big junction with Princes Street and Lothian Road, Shandwick Place and Queensferry Street. Where on earth was she going? He had never cared much for her, but now his opinion took a rapid and decisive turn for the worse.
She crossed the junction without a glance either way, still less behind her, and continued at a fast walk along Lothian Road. To their left were the Princes Street Gardens, and looming over them, brooding and medieval, the huge mass of the mound with the castle clinging to its top.
Monk kept an even hundred yards behind her, and was almost taken by surprise when she turned left and disappeared into Kings Stables Road. He was familiar with the way. It was his own route home, were he to walk. Not long and it would lead into the Grassmarket, and then Cowgate. Surely she could not be going that way? What would these dark, crowded buildings and narrow alleys possibly hold for a lady like Eilish?
His mind was still turning over the contradictions and impossibilities of it when suddenly he was engulfed in sharp, numbing pain and a black hole opened up in front of him.
He regained his senses, still on the pavement, propped up against the wall, his head aching abominably, his body cold and his temper volcanic. Eilish was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
The following day he returned to Ainslie Place in a vicious and desperate frame of mind, and set up vigil as soon as it was dark.
However it was not Eilish he saw, but a scruffy-looking man in soiled and very worn clothes approaching number seventeen nervously, looking from right to left as if he feared observation.
Monk moved farther back into the shadows, then remained absolutely motionless.
The man passed under a streetlamp and for a moment his face was visible. It was the same man Monk had seen several days before, not with Eilish, but with Deirdra. The man fished out a watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and put it back.
Curious. He did not look like a man who would be able to read a watch, far less own one.
Several minutes passed by. The man fidgeted in acute discomfort. Monk stood without moving even the angle of his head. Along the footpath the lamps made little pools of light. Between was a no-man’s-land of gathering mist and shadows. It was growing colder. Monk was beginning to feel it in his motionless state. It ate into his bones and crept up through the soles of his feet.
Then suddenly she was there. She must have come around through the areaway gate, into the street from the side—not Eilish, but the small, urgent figure of Deirdra. She did not even glance down the street or to the grass center of the Place, but went straight to the man. They stood close together for several minutes, heads bent, talking in voices so low that from where he stood Monk could not even hear a murmur.
Then suddenly Deirdra shook her head vigorously, the man touched her arm in a gentle reassuring gesture, and she turned and went back inside the house. He departed the way he had come.
Monk waited until long after midnight, growing colder and colder, but no one else came or went in the Farraline house. He could have kicked himself for not having followed the man.
Two more cold and increasingly desperate days followed in which Monk learned nothing useful, indeed nothing that common sense could not have deduced for him. He wrote at some length to Rathbone, detailing everything he had learned so far, and when he returned to his lodgings about noon on the third day there were two letters for him, one from Rathbone outlining the general provisions of Mary Farraline’s will. She had left her very considerable property, both real and personal, more or less equally among the children. Alastair had already inherited the house and most of the business on the death of his father. The second letter was from Oonagh, inviting him to attend a large civic dinner that evening and apologizing for the invitation’s being so extremely late.
Monk accepted. He had nothing left to lose. Time was treading hard on his heels, and fruitless nights spent watching the Farraline house had yielded nothing. Neither Deirdra nor Eilish had appeared again.
He dressed very carefully, but his mind was too absorbed in rehearsing every piece of information he had to be nervous as to his elegance or social acceptability. How could Hester have been idiotic enough to get herself into this appalling situation? The few impressions she had given him were useless. What if Deirdra and Eilish were both conducting clandestine affairs with men from the heart of the slums? What if Mary knew? It made no sense to murder her because of it. If she had not made it public already, then she was not going to. A family quarrel, no matter how fierce, was not cause for murder by anyone but a lunatic.
