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“Well …” The clerk hesitated unhappily.
For a moment there was no sound but the scratching of pens and someone shifting his feet.
“I don’t like to speak ill …” the clerk resumed.
“If there is a possibility Mr. Stonefield has been kidnapped, then you will do him little service if you remain silent!” Monk snapped.
The clerk colored. “Yes. I understand. I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Marchmont, of Marchmont and Squires, lost out to him rather badly last month, but they are large enough they will ride that out.” He thought hard. “Mr. Peabody, of Goodenough and Jones, took it very badly when we beat them to a very good price about six weeks ago. But the only person I know who really suffered was poor Mr. Niven. He is no longer in business, I am sorry to say. Took it like a gentleman, but very hard for him, it was, especially with him and Mr. Stonefield being acquaintances socially. Very sad.” He shook his head very slightly. “But having said that, sir, I cannot imagine Mr. Niven wishing Mr. Stonefield any harm. He’s not like that at all. Very decent sort of gentleman, just not as clever as Mr. Stonefield. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s … it’s really very hard to know what to do for the best.” He looked at Monk miserably, seeking some kind of indication.
“You have done quite the right thing,” Monk assured him. “Without information we cannot even make a judgment, let alone pursue the best course.” As he was speaking he was looking beyond the young man and around the offices. The place had every appearance of prosperity. Several clerks were busy with ledgers, accounts, business letters to other houses, possibly overseas as well. They were all smartly dressed with stiff white collars and tidy hair, and they looked diligent, and content enough in their work. Nothing was shabby or obviously mended. There was no air of discouragement; only anxiety, a discreet glance one to another.
He returned his attention to the immediate.
“When was the last occasion on which Mr. Stonefield came into the office?”
“Three days ago, sir. The morning of the last day in which”—he bit his lip—“on which he was seen.” He eased his neck in his rather tight collar. “But you will have to ask Mr. Arbuthnot what transpired, and he is not here at present. I really do not feel able to tell you anything further. It is … well, company business, sir.” He was apologetic and obviously uncomfortable, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Monk doubted it would have any relevance anyway, and was quite content to leave it for the time being. But before he took his leave, he obtained the address of Mr. Titus Niven, now no longer in business because of the skill of Angus Stonefield.
Monk left the offices and walked briskly back along the Waterloo Road in the sharp wind.
It still remained the strongest possibility that the answer to Angus Stonefield’s disappearance
lay in his personal life, therefore it was necessary for Monk to learn as much about it as he was able. However, he had no possible grounds to call upon neighbors, still less to question them as to Stonefield’s habits or his comings and goings. It would hardly be in the best interest of his client. Having her neighbors gossiping about the fact that her husband was missing, and she had called in a person to try to find him, was the very last thing she would wish.
But the fact that there was no crime—in fact, no acknowledged problem at all—was extremely restricting. The only course open to him in that direction would be to pursue servants’ chatter from nearby houses. Servants frequently knew a great deal more than their masters or mistresses supposed. They were most often regarded in much the same light as a favorite piece of furniture, without which one would be lost but in front of which discretion was not a consideration.
He was approaching the river. It shone pale under the winter sky, the mist rising in wreaths, softening the dark shingles’ edges and carrying the raw smell of sewage on the outgoing tide. Dark barges and ferries moved up and down. It was not the season for pleasure boats.
He wished he had John Evan with him, as he had had when he first returned to the police force after his accident, and before he had quarreled finally and irreparably with Runcorn, storming out the instant before Runcorn dismissed him. Evan, with his charm and gentleness of manner, was so much better at eliciting confidences from people. They forgot their natural reticence and shared their thoughts.
But Evan was still with the police, so Monk could not call upon him for help except when there was an investigation in which he too was involved and was prepared to disclose his information, at great risk to himself. Runcorn would never forgive such an act. He would see it as a personal and professional betrayal.
It had often crossed Monk’s mind that he would like to offer Evan a position as his assistant in some future day when he earned sufficient to support a second person. But that was only a dream, and perhaps a foolish one. At present he did not always make enough even for himself. There were weeks when he was profoundly grateful for his patroness, Lady Callandra Daviot, who made up the difference in his income. All she asked in return was that he share with her all those cases which had elements of interest for her … and they were considerable. She was a woman of high intelligence and curiosity, decisive opinions, and a consuming and generally tolerant interest in human nature in all its manifestations. In the past, Monk had inquired into matters solely at her behest, when she felt that an injustice was threatened or had been done.
To begin with, he caught a cab to see Mrs. Stonefield in her own home, as he had said he would. It would give him a clearer impression of her, of the family’s well-being, both financial and social, and—if he were perceptive enough—also of the relationships beneath the surface of what she had told him.
The house was on Upper George Street, on the corner of Seymour Place just east of the Edgware Road. It took him more than an hour in heavy traffic and a hard, soaking rain, from the far side of the river to arrive at the other side of Mayfair, alight, and pay the driver. It was nearly four o’clock, and the lamplighters were already out in the thickening dusk.
He turned his coat collar up and crossed the footpath to knock on the front door. At this hour any formal callers would have been and gone, if indeed she were receiving callers.
He shivered and turned to look back at the street. It was quiet and eminently respectable. Rows of similar windows looked out onto neat front gardens. Areaways were swept clean. Behind closed back gates would be cellar chutes for coal, dustbins, scrubbed scullery steps and back door entrances for tradesmen and deliveries.
Was this what Angus Stonefield wanted? Or had he become suffocated by its predictability and discretion? Had his soul yearned for something wilder, more exhilarating, something that challenged the mind and disturbed the heart? And had he been prepared to sacrifice safety, the warmth of family, as its price? Had he grown to loathe being known by his neighbors, relied upon by his dependents; every day, every year mapped out before him to a decent and uneventful old age?
Monk felt a sharp sadness that it was such a vivid possibility. Stonefield would not be the first man to have run away from the reality of love and its responsibilities, to grasp instead the illusion and excitement of lust and what might seem like freedom, only later to realize it was loneliness.
Another gust of rain soaked him just as he turned back to the door and it opened. The fair-haired parlormaid looked at him inquiringly.
“William Monk, to call upon Mrs. Stonefield,” he announced, dropping his card on the tray she held. “I believe she is expecting me.”
“Yes sir. If you care to wait in the morning room, I shall see if Mrs. Stonefield is at home,” she replied, stepping back for him to enter.
Monk walked through the pleasant hall behind her to wait in the room which he was shown. It gave him an opportunity to glance around and make some estimate of Stonefield’s character and circumstances—although if he were in difficulties, the front rooms where guests were received would be the last to show it. Monk had known families to live without heat, and eat little more than bread and gruel, and yet keep up the facade of prosperity the moment visitors called. Generosity, even extravagance, was displayed to foster the pretense. Sometimes it aroused his contempt for the ridiculousness of it. At others he was moved to a strange, hurting pity that they found it necessary, that they believed their worth to their friends lay in such things.
He stood in the small, tidy room in which the maid had left him, and looked around it. To the outward eye it presented every sign of comfort and good taste. It was a little overcrowded, but that was the fashion, and there was no fire lit, in spite of the weather.
The furniture was solid and the upholstery of good quality and, as far as he could see, not overly worn. He looked more closely at the antimacassars on the backs of the chairs, but they were clean and unfaded or rubbed. The gas mantles on the walls were immaculate, the curtains unfaded in the folds. The red-and-cream Turkey carpet was only slightly worn in a passage from doorway to hearth. There were no darker patches on the wallpaper to indicate a picture missing. The fine china and glass ornaments were unchipped. He could see no hairline cracks carefully glued together. Everything was of good quality and individual taste. It reaffirmed the impression of Genevieve Stonefield he had already formed.
