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She finished the letter, signed it, blotted it carefully and handed it to him, looking up at him anxiously while he read it.
“It is excellent, thank you.” He folded it, reached for an envelope and placed it inside, to keep it from becoming soiled, then put it in his pocket.
She rose to her feet again. ?
?When shall you begin?”
“Immediately,” he replied. “There is no time to be lost. Mr. Stonefield may be in some danger or difficulty but still able to be rescued from it.”
“Do you think so?” For a moment hope flared in her eyes, then reality returned, and with it renewed pain. She turned away to hide her emotion from him, to save them both embarrassment. “Thank you, Mr. Monk. I know you mean to offer me comfort.” She went to the door, and he only just reached it in time to open it for her. “I shall await news.” She went out and down the step into the street, then walked away, northwards, without looking back.
Monk closed the door and returned to his room. He put more coal on the fire, then sat down in his armchair and began to consider the problem and what he knew of it.
It was common enough for a man to desert his wife and children. The possibilities were endless, without even considering his having come to harm—let alone anything so bizarre and tragic as having been murdered by his own brother. Mrs. Stonefield had clearly wanted to believe that. Monk observed to himself that it was the solution least harmful to her. Without entirely dismissing it out of hand, he was inclined to relegate it to the bottom of the list of possibilities. The most obvious answers were that he had simply found his responsibilities overweighing him and run off, or that he had fallen in love with another woman and decided to live with her. The next most probable was some financial disaster, either already occurred or pending in the near future. He might have gambled and finally lost more than he could meet, or borrowed from a usurer and been unable to repay the interest, which would grow day by day. Monk had seen more than a few victims of such practice and he hated moneylenders with a cold and unremitting passion.
Stonefield might have made some enemy he had good reason to fear, or be the victim of blackmail for an indiscretion or even a crime. He might be fleeing the law for some misappropriation not yet uncovered, or any other offense, an accident or a sudden violence not so far traced to him.
He might have suffered an accident and be lying in hospital or in a workhouse somewhere, too ill to have sent his family word.
It was even conceivable that, like Monk himself, he had been struck on the head with a blow which had obliterated his memory. He broke out in a prickle of sweat which a moment after was cold on his skin as he remembered waking up two years before in what he had taken to be a workhouse without the slightest idea who or where he was. His past had been an utter blank to him. Even his face in the glass had been unrecognizable.
Slowly he had pieced together fragments here and there, scenes of his youth, his journey south from Northumberland to London, probably when he was nineteen or twenty—roughly about the time of the accession of Queen Victoria, although he could not remember it. The coronation he knew only from pictures and other people’s descriptions.
Even this much was deduced, because he supposed himself to be now in his early forties, and it was January 1859.
Of course, it was absurd to suppose Angus Stonefield was in a similar situation. Such things must happen exceedingly rarely. But then murder was fortunately not so common either. It was far more probably some sad but ordinary domestic circumstance or a financial disaster.
He always disliked having to tell a woman such a thing. In this case it would be harder than usual because already he had formed a certain respect for her. There was a femininity to her which was charming, and yet a defiant courage, and in all she had told him, in spite of her grief and thinly concealed desperation, there was no self-pity. She had asked for his professional services, not begged his compassion. If Angus Stonefield had left her for another woman, he was a man whose taste Monk did not understand, or share.
Still turning the matter over in his mind, he rose, stoked the fire and set up the guard, then put on his coat and hat and took a hansom cab south from his rooms in Fitzroy Street, down Tottenham Court Road, Charing Cross Road, then the Strand, right at Wellington Street and across Waterloo Bridge to the business address on the card Mrs. Stonefield had given him. He alighted, paid the driver and dismissed him. He turned to look at the building. The outside appeared prosperous, in a discreet fashion, either from old money so well known it had no need to advertise or money newly earned but with the tact to remain unostentatious.
He pushed the front door, which was open to the public, and was greeted in the room inside by a smart young clerk dressed in stiff wing collar, cutaway jacket and shining boots.
“Yes sir?” he inquired, summing up Monk’s sartorial elegance and concluding he was a gentleman. “May I be of service?”
Monk was too proud to introduce himself as an agent of inquiry. It equated him with the policeman he had been until his irreparable quarrel with his superior, only now he had not the authority.
“Good morning,” he replied. “Mrs. Stonefield has requested me to be of what assistance I may in contacting her husband since he left last Tuesday morning.” He allowed the ghost of a smile to cross his face. “I hope she is mistaken, but she fears some harm may have come to him.” As he spoke he produced the letter of authority.
The clerk accepted it, read it at a glance, and returned it to him. The anxiety which he had been holding in check now flooded his face and he looked at Monk almost pleadingly. “I wish we could help you, sir. Indeed, I wish with all my heart we knew where he was. We require him for the business. His presence is essential.” His voice was rising in earnestness. “There are decisions to be made for which Mr. Arbuthnot and myself have neither the legal power nor the professional knowledge.” He glanced around to make sure none of the three young ledger clerks were within earshot, and moved a step closer. “We are at our wits’ end to know what to do next, or how to put people off any longer without their guessing that something is most seriously amiss. Business is most competitive, sir. Others will seize the chance to profit from our indecision.” His face grew pinker and he bit his lip. “Do you think that he could have been kidnapped, sir?”
It was not among the possibilities that had occurred to Monk.
“It would be a most extreme step,” he replied, watching the young man’s face. He saw nothing in it but fear and sympathy. If he knew anything more, he was an actor to rival Henry Irving and had missed a career on the stage.
“Then he must have been taken ill,” the clerk said with concern. “And is even now lying in some hospital, unable to contact us. He would never wittingly leave us in this way.” He grew even pinker. “Nor his family either, of course! That I need hardly say.” His expression indicated he knew he should have said it to begin with.
“Does he have business rivals who might think to profit if he were out of the way?” Monk asked, casting his eye discreetly around the tidy, well-furnished room with its desks and shelves of books and files of ledgers. The winter sun came in through high, narrow windows. He still thought a domestic answer more likely.
“Oh yes, sir,” the clerk replied with assurance. “Mr. Stonefield is most successful, sir. A rare gift he has for knowing what will sell, and for precisely how much. Made a profit where quite a few others would have burned their fingers … and did!” There was a lift of pride in his voice, then as he looked at Monk, a sudden anxiety. “But always strictly honest!” he added, regarding Monk gravely to make sure he understood that. “There’s never been a whisper against him anywhere! Not in the City, not on the Exchange.”
“The Stock Exchange?” Monk asked.
“Oh no, sir, the Corn Exchange.”
He should have asked before he spoke.
“These rivals of Mr. Stonefield’s,” he said quickly, his voice harder. “Whose business in particular has he taken lately, or whose does he threaten?”
