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“After all,” he added, “if it were so, it might provide an excellent motive for murder. I imagine Mrs. Farraline would not have permitted such a crime to pass unpunished, even if privately rather than publicly?”
Baird hesitated, but the expression on his face was as much anger and grief as any overt fear. He was a more complex man than Monk had at first assumed—his rather contemptuous assessment of a man who would prefer Eilish to Oonagh.
“No,” Baird conceded. “She would deal with embezzlement one way or another. I imagine, if it were a member of the family, she would do it herself. In fact, even if it were not, she would still choose not to make it public. Such things are not good for a company’s reputation.”
“Quite. But it would not be pleasant for the culprit.”
“I imagine not. But what makes you think there is anything wrong with the books? Has Kenneth said something? Oh … is it Kenneth you suspect?”
“I don’t suspect anyone in particular.” Monk said it in such a way as to leave it open whether he was speaking the truth or deliberately being evasive. Fear was a most effective catalyst from which might come all manner of other revelations.
Baird considered for several minutes before continuing. Monk tried to judge whether it was guilt or the desire not to be unjust to someone else which held him. On balance he thought guilt; there was still that beading of sweat on his face, and his eyes, for all their straight, steady gaze, had an evasiveness about them.
“Well, I know of no way in which I can help you,” Baird said at last. “I have little to do with the financial side of the business. I work with the paper and the binding. Quinlan works with the print itself. Kenneth does the accounting. When Alastair is here, he makes the major decisions: which clients to accept, new business, that sort of thing.”
“And Mrs. McIvor? I understand she is also concerned in the management. I have heard she is most gifted.”
“Yes.” His expression was beyond Monk’s ability to read; it could have been pride, or resentment, or even humor. A dozen thoughts flashed across Baird’s face, and were equally quickly gone. “Yes,” he repeated. “She has a remarkable acumen. Alastair very often takes her advice, both in business decisions and technical ones. Or to be more accurate, it is Quinlan who takes her advice on matters of print style, typeface and so on.”
“So Mr. Fyffe has nothing to do with the accounting?”
“Quinlan? No, nothing at all.” He said it with regret, and then savage self-mockery the instant after.
Monk found himself more deeply confused about him. How could a man of such emotion, self-perception and sense of irony be in love with Eilish, who seemed to have nothing to offer except physical beauty? It was so shallow, so short-lived. Even the loveliest thing on earth grows tedious if there is no art of companionship, no laughter, wit, imagination, power to love in return, even at times to provoke, to criticize, to lift by struggle, quarrel and change.
The thought brought Hester back to his mind with sharpness like a shooting pain.
“Then I had better look into it,” he said with a curtness totally unwarranted by the conversation.
Baird looked reluctant.
“That would be better than sending in auditors,” Monk went on.
It was a threat, and Baird recognized it as such.
“Oh certainly,” he said too quickly. “By all means. That would be expensive, and make people anxious that we have cause to think there is something wrong. Yes, you look into it by all means, Mr. Monk.”
Monk smiled, or perhaps it was more of a grimace. So Baird was quite happy that Monk could find nothing wrong in the books, or if he did, it was not Baird who had put it there. And yet he was afraid. For what?
“Thank you,” he accepted, and turned to go back out into the corridor again as Baird rose from his desk.
He spent all the rest of the day at the Farraline printing company, and found nothing whatever that furthered his cause. If the books had been tampered with, he had not the requisite skill to find the evidence of it. Tired, his head aching and his temper extremely short, he left at half past five and went back to his lodgings in the Grassmarket, to find a letter from Rathbone awaiting him. It was devoid of good news, simply informing him of his own progress, which was woefully little.
Monk spent over three hours of that evening standing in Ainslie Place, growing colder and more wretched, hoping Eilish would make another sortie to wherever it was she visited, somewhere beyond Kings Stables Road. But midnight came and went, and no one stirred from number seventeen.
The following night he took up the same position, by now sunk into an icy gloom. And at a little after midnight he was rewarded by seeing a shadowy figure emerge, cross the open area of the center, pass within ten feet of where he stood motionless, his body trembling with cold and excitement, and once again walk rapidly along Glenfinlas Street, past Charlotte Square towards the crossroads.
He moved after her, keeping thirty yards’ distance between them except close to junctions where she might turn and he lose sight of her. And this time he also looked back over his shoulder at regular intervals. He had no intention of being struck from behind again, and ending up senseless on the ground, with Eilish vanished into who knew where?
The night was colder than last time, a rime of frost forming on the stones of the pavement and making the air tingle on his lips and in his lungs. He was glad enough to move quickly, although the speed and ease of her pace surprised him. He had not expected so languid and lazy a woman to have the stamina.
As before, she went past the Princes Street Gardens along Lothian Road and turned left along the Kings Stables Road, passing almost under the shadow of the castle, tonight its massive, rugged outline only a denser black against the cloudy, starless sky.
She crossed Spittal Street, making towards the Grassmarket. Surely she could not have a tryst with anyone who lived in such an area? It was full of tradesmen, innkeepers and transients like himself. And what about Baird McIvor? If the emotion he had thought between them was in fact only one-sided, then he had been more profoundly misled than ever before.
No, that was not true. His ability to be misled by women, beautiful women, was almost boundless. He remembered with chagrin Hermione, and how he had believed her softness of word and deed to be compassion, and it had proved to be merely a profound desire to avoid anything that might cause her pain. She chose the easier path, in anything, because she had no hunger in her soul that would drive her beyond hurt in order to win what she wished for. There was no passion in her at all, no need either to give or to receive. She was afraid of life. How more grossly mistaken could he have been in anyone?
So was Eilish deceiving the gullible Baird every bit as much as her sharper, more critical husband? And Oonagh? Had she any idea what her beloved little sister was doing?
