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His intelligence told him it was a bereaved woman speaking with the hindsight of love, and his instinct told him it was the truth. This is how he had always looked in her eyes, and although she admired it wholeheartedly, it also exasperated or oppressed her at times.
“Now so many days have passed,” she said very quietly, “I fear it may be beyond anyone’s ability to prove what has happened to him.”
He felt guilty, which was unreasonable. Even if he had followed Angus on the very day he disappeared, he might still not have been able to prove murder against Caleb. There were enough ways of disposing of a body in Limehouse. The river was deep there, with its ebb tide to carry flotsam out and its cargo boats coming and going. At the moment there were also the common graves for the victims of typhoid, to name only a few.
He put half a dozen more coals on the fire.
“You do not always need a body to presume death,” he said carefully, watching her face. “Although it may be a good deal harder to prove murder—and Caleb’s guilt.”
“I don’t care about Caleb’s guilt.” Her eyes did not deviate from his face. “God will take care of him.”
“But not of you?” he asked. “I would have thought you a great deal more deserving … and more urgent.”
“I cannot wait for charity, Mr. Monk,” she answered with some asperity.
He smiled. “I apologize. Of course not. But I should like to deal with Caleb before waiting for God. I am doing all I can, and I am much closer than I was last time we spoke. I have found a witness who saw Angus in Limehouse, on the day of his disappearance, in a tavern where he might easily have met Caleb. I’ll find others. It takes time, but people will talk. It is just a matter of finding the right ones and persuading them to speak. I’ll get Caleb himself, in the end.”
“Will you …” She was on the edge of hope, but not allowing herself to grasp it. “I really don’t care if you cannot prove it was Caleb.” The shadow of a smile touched her mouth. “I don’t even know what Angus would want. Isn’t that absurd? For all that they were so utterly different, and Caleb hated him, he still loved Caleb. It seemed as if he would not forget the child he had been and the good times they had spent together before they quarreled. It hurt him every time he went to Limehouse after Caleb, yet he would not give up.”
She looked away. “Sometimes it would be weeks, especially after a particularly wretched visit, but then he would relent and go back again. On those times he’d be gone even longer, as if it were necessary to make up the difference. I suppose childhood bonds are very deep.”
“Did he tell you much of his visits to Caleb?” Monk asked. “Did he give you any indication of where they met, or where they might have been? If you can think of any description at all, it might help.”
“No,” she said with a slight frown, as though it puzzled her on recollection. “He never spoke of it at all. I think perhaps it was his silence which made me wonder if it was as much guilt as love which took him.”
“Guilt?”
There was a gentle pride in her face when she replied, a very slight, unconscious lift of her chin. “Angus had made a success of everything, his profession, his family and his place in society. Caleb had nothing. He was feared and hated where Angus was loved and respected. He lived from hand to mouth, never knowing where the next meal would come from. He had no home, no family, nothing in his whole life of which to be proud.”
It was a grim picture. Suddenly, with a jolt as if he had opened a door into a different, icy world, Monk perceived the loneliness of Caleb Stone, the failure that ate at his soul every time he saw his brother, the happy, smooth, successful mirror image of what he might have been. And Angus’s pity and his guilt would only make it worse.
And yet for Angus too, perhaps the memory of love and trust, the times when all things were equal for them and the divisions and griefs of the future still unknown, held a kind of sweetness that bound them together.
Why should it boil over into violence now? What had happened to change it? He looked at Genevieve. The strain was clearly marked in her face now. There were tiny lines in the skin around her mouth and eyes, visible even in the gaslight. Angus had been gone fifteen days. She was also using at least half her time nursing Enid Ravensbrook. No wonder she was tired and riven with fear.
“Have you someone in mind you can appoint to manage the business in Mr. Stonefield’s absence?” he asked. It was hardly relevant to him, and yet he found himself waiting for the answer, willing that she had not. It seemed so coldly practical for a woman not yet surely a widow.
“I thought Mr. Niven,” she answered frankly. “In spite of the error of judgment which brought him to his present state, he is of absolute honesty, and of unusual skill and knowledge in the business. I think he would not be so rash or so lenient in another’s
cause. Mr. Arbuthnot has always thought well of him, and might not be averse to continuing with us if it was in Mr. Niven’s service. Mr. Niven is also very agreeable, and I should not mind thinking of him in Angus’s place, since there needs must be someone. He has no family of his own, and would not be seeking to put me, or my sons, from their place.”
It should have made no difference whatever, and yet he found himself chilled by the readiness of her reply.
“I had not realized you knew him personally,” he said.
“Of course. He and Angus had a most cordial relationship. He has dined with us on many occasions. He is one of the few people we entertain in our home.” The shadow crossed her features again. “But naturally I cannot approach him yet. It would be quite improper until I have some proof of Angus’s fate that will satisfy the law.” She sat very straight and sighed, as if controlling herself with an effort.
He wondered exactly what emotion it was that lay so powerfully just beneath the surface of her composure. There was a strength in her at odds with her gentle, very womanly appearance, the aura of obedient wife and devoted mother, some depth to her far out of the ordinary. It troubled him, because he had liked what he had first believed of her; even her quiet strength was appealing. He did not want to think of it as ruthlessness.
“I will do all I can, Mrs. Stonefield,” he promised, his tone of voice unwittingly putting some distance between them. “As you suggest, I shall concentrate my efforts upon satisfying the authorities that your husband is dead, and leave the manner of his death for others to worry about. In the meantime, since it may not be an easy task, or a quick one, I advise you to consider Lord Ravensbrook’s offer of a home for yourself and your family, even if it is upon temporary terms.”
She sensed his thoughts and stood up gracefully, gathering her cape around her with a quick movement, but her face registered distaste and a hardening stubbornness of resistance.
“It will be a last resort, Mr. Monk, and I am not yet come to that pass. I think I shall call upon Mr. Niven, and test his feelings in the matter, before I return to Lady Ravensbrook. Good day to you.”
The next few hours passed with agonizing slowness for Hester. She sat by Enid’s bedside watching her haggard face, which was white, sweat-soaked, with two blotches of hectic color on the cheekbones. Her hair was tangled, her body tensed, turning and shivering with pain, too sore to touch. Hester could do little but keep patting her softly with cool cloths, but still her fever rose. She was delirious, seldom wholly aware of where she was.
Genevieve returned some time in the evening and looked in for a few moments. She was not due to take her tum until morning, when Hester would go to the dressing room for a few hours’ sleep.
