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“Why? I mean, for what specific reason?”
Kynaston stared at him. Several reactions flickered across his face. He had highly expressive features. They showed amazement, disdain, sadness, and something else not so easily read, a darker thing, a sense of tragedy, or perhaps evil.
“What exactly do you mean, Mr. Evan?”
“Was it the immorality of it?” Evan expanded. “The fear of disease, of scandal or disgrace, of losing the favor of some respectable young lady? Or the knowledge that it might lead him to physical danger or greater depravity?”
Kynaston hesitated so long Evan thought he was not going to answer. When finally he did speak, his voice was low, very careful, very precise, and he held his strong, bony hands in front of him, clutched tightly together.
“I should imagine all of those things, Mr. Evan. A man is uniquely responsible for the character of his son. There cannot be many experiences in human existence more harrowing than witnessing your own child, the bearer of your name and your heritage, your immortality, treading a downward path into weakness, corruption of the mind and of the body.” He looked at Evan’s surprise. His eyebrows rose. “Not that I am suggesting Rhys was depraved. There was a predisposition to weakness in him which required greater discipline than perhaps he received. That is all. It is common among the young, especially an only boy in a family. Leighton Duff was concerned. Tragically, it now appears that he had grave cause.”
“You believe Mr. Duff followed Rhys into St. Giles, and they were both attacked as a result of something that happened because they were there?”
“Don’t you? It seems a tragically apparent explanation.”
“You don’t believe Mr. Duff would have gone alone otherwise? You knew him well, I believe?”
“Very well,” Kynaston said decisively. “I am perfectly certain he would not. Why in heaven’s name should he? He had everything to lose and nothing of any conceivable value to gain.” He smiled very slightly, a fleeting, bitter humor, swallowed instantly in the reality of loss. “I hope you catch whoever is responsible, sir, but I have no sensible hope that you will. If Rhys had a liaison with some woman of the area, or something worse”—his mouth twisted very slightly in distaste—“then I doubt you will discover it now. Those involved will hardly come forward, and I imagine the denizens of that world will protect their own rather than ally with the forces of law.”
What he said was true. Evan had to admit it. He thanked him and rose to take his leave. He would speak to Dr. Corriden Wade, but he did not expect to learn much from him that would be of any value.
Wade was tired, at the end of a long and harrowing day, when he allowed Evan into his library. There were dark shadows under the doctor’s eyes and he walked across the room ahead of Evan as if his back and legs hurt him.
“Of course I will tell you what I can, Sergeant,” he said, turning and settling in one of the comfortable chairs by the embers of the fire and gesturing towards the other chair for Evan. “But I fear it will not be anything you do not already know. And I cannot permit you to question Rhys Duff. He is in a very poor state of health, and any distress, which you cannot help but cause him, could precipitate a crisis. I cannot tell what injuries may have been caused to his inner organs by the treatment he received.”
“I understand,” Evan replied quickly. The memory returned to him with sharp pity of Rhys lying in the alley, of his own horror when he had realized he was still alive, still capable of immeasurable pain. Nor could he ever rid his mind of the horror in Rhys’s eyes when he had regained his senses and first tried to speak, and found he could not. “I had no intention of asking to see him. I hoped you might tell me more about both Rhys and his father. It may help to learn what happened.”
Wade sighed. “Presumably they were attacked, robbed and beaten by thieves,” he said unhappily. Sadness and gravity were equal in his face. “Does it matter now why they went to St. Giles? Have you the least real hope of catching whoever it was or of proving anything? I have little experience of St. Giles in particular, but I spent several years in the navy. I have seen some roug
h areas, places where there is desperate poverty, where disease and death are commonplace and a child is fortunate to reach its sixth birthday—and more fortunate still to reach manhood. Few have an honest trade which earns them sufficient to live. Fewer still can read or write. This is, then, a way of life. Violence is easy, the first resort, not the last.”
He was looking at Evan intently, his dark eyes narrowed. “I would have thought you were familiar with such places also, but perhaps you are too young. Were you born in the city, Sergeant?”
“No, in the country …”
Wade smiled. He had excellent teeth. “Then perhaps you still have something to learn about the human battle for survival and how men turn upon each other when there is too little space, too little food, too little air, and no hope or strength of belief to change it. Despair breeds rage, Mr. Evan, and a desire to retaliate against a world in which there is no apparent justice. It is to be expected.”
“I do expect it, sir,” Evan replied. “And I would have imagined a man of Mr. Leighton Duff’s intelligence and experience of the world to have expected it also—indeed, to have foreseen it.”
Wade stared at him. He looked extremely tired. There was little color in his face and his body slumped as though he had no strength left and his muscles hurt him.
“I imagine he knew it as well as we do,” he said bleakly. “He must have gone in after Rhys. You have only seen Rhys as he is now, Mr. Evan, a victim of violence, a man confused and in pain, and extremely frightened.” He pushed out his lower lip. “He is not always so. Before this … incident … he was a young man of considerable bravado and appetite, and with much of youth’s belief in its own superiority, invincibility, and insensitivity to the feelings of others. He had the average capacity to be cruel and to enjoy a certain power.” His mouth tightened. “I make no judgments, and God knows, I would cure him of all of this if I could, but it is not impossible he was involved with a woman of that area and exercised certain desires without regard to their consequences upon others. She may have belonged to someone else. He may even have been rougher than was acceptable. Perhaps she had family who …” He did not bother to finish; it was unnecessary.
Evan frowned, searching his way through crowding possibilities.
“Dr. Wade, are you saying that you have observed a streak of cruelty or violence in Rhys Duff before this incident?”
Wade hesitated. “No, Sergeant, I am not,” he said finally. “I am saying that I knew Leighton Duff for close to twenty years, and I cannot conceive of any reason why he should go to an area like St. Giles, except to try to reason with his son and prevent him from committing some act of folly from which he could not extricate himself. In the light of what has happened, I can only believe that he was right.”
“Did he speak to you of such fears, Dr. Wade?”
“You must know, Sergeant, that I cannot answer you.” Wade’s voice was grave and heavy, but there was no anger in it. “I understand that it is your duty to ask. You must understand that it is my duty to refuse to answer.”
“Yes,” Evan agreed with a sigh. “Yes, of course I do. I do not think I need to trouble you further, at least not tonight. Thank you for your time.”
“You are welcome, Sergeant.”
Evan stood up and went to the door.
