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He did not allow her to complete the words. "No, you won’t!" He did not even know why he said it, except that he did not want Robb to think he had interfered, implying that he was not looking after the old man adequately. For someone else to go in unasked would be an intrusion.
Hester stiffened, the whole angle of her body changed.
"I beg your pardon?" Her voice was cool.
Now was the time to make sure she understood him and it was plain between them where the bounds of authority lay.
"You are not to interfere," he stated clearly. He did not explain why. His reasons were good, but that was not the point. If he explained now, she would require an explanation every time. "It would be inappropriate."
"Why?" she asked, her eyes bright and challenging.
He had not intended to allow an argument. In fact, this was precisely what he had meant to avoid.
"I am not going to discuss it," he replied. "I’ve told you, that is sufficient." He rose to his feet to signal the end of the matter. Robb would be offended. He might very easily feel Monk believed his care of his grandfather was not good enough. Or worse, he might feel some implied pressure because he was using police time to go home and attend to the old man.
Hester rose also. Her voice was low and very precise, each word spoken carefully. "Are you telling me whether I may or may not do what I believe to be right, William?"
"You may do anything that is right," he said with a tiny smile of relief, because she had offered him a route of escape. "Always. This is not right."
"You mean I may do what you believe to be right?" she challenged.
"You may," he agreed. "You do not have to. The choice is yours." And with that he went out into the office, leaving her in the middle of the floor, furious. It was not what he wanted at all, but it was a victory that mattered. There were any number of reasons why he must be master in his own home, for the happiness of both of them. When her temper cooled, she would appreciate that.
He sat in the room alone for over an hour, but she did not join him. At first he missed her, then he became irritated. She was childish. She could not expect to have her own way in everything.
But she always had! He remembered with considerable disquiet how she had governed her own life in the past, how willful she had been. Even the hospital authorities could not tolerate her—and did not. She was opinionated in everything, and not loath to express these opinions even at the least-opportune moments—and with a wit which made them even more offensive to some. He had laughed when he had not been on the receiving end. It was less funny when he was.
Not that his own tongue was not equally sharp and every bit as well informed. That was one of the reasons she could accept marriage to him, because he was more than her equal— well, occasionally.
But she must not be allowed to sulk. That was unacceptable. He stood up and went to find her. This could not continue.
She was sitting at the table writing. She looked up when he came in.
"Ah, good," she said with a smile. "You’ve come to tell me more about it. I thought you would. The kettle is on. Would you like a cup of tea? And there is cake as well."
He thought of the night to come, and lying beside her warm, slender body, either rigid and turned away from him or gentle and willing in his arms. More than that, deeper in his soul, he thought of all that they had shared that mattered above any petty battle of wills or convention of behavior. The issue could wait until another time. There would certainly be other battles, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds.
"Yes," he agreed, sitting down on the other chair. "Tea would be nice, thank you. And cake."
Obediently, with a little smile, she rose to make it.
4
IN THE MORNING, Monk left home to continue his search for Miriam Gardiner, only now there was the added difficulty that he must do so without at the same time leading Robb to her. He did not underestimate Robb’s intelligence. He had already had the chastening experience of being out-thought in conversation, and the memory still stung.
Horses were intelligent animals, and very much creatures of habit. If Treadwell had driven them to Hampstead before then, they were likely to have returned to the same place.
Accordingly, the still, summer morning at seven o’clock found Monk standing in the sun on Lyndhurst Road, studying its tidy house fronts with their neat gardens and whitened steps.
He knew Miriam’s address from Lucius Stourbridge. Naturally, it was the first place he had enquired, but all his questions had elicited only blank ignorance and then growing alarm. That might still be where Robb would begin.
Monk stood with the lazy sun warming his shoulders and the early-morning sounds of kitchen doors opening and closing, the occasional whack of a broom handle beating a carpet. Errand boys’ feet were loud on the cobbles, as was the uneven step of one of them who was carrying a heavy bucket of coal. The only thought crowding his mind was where had Miriam been when James Treadwell was murdered. Had she been present? If she had, had anyone else, or had she killed him herself? The surgeon had said it seemed a single, extremely heavy blow, but not impossible to have been inflicted by a woman, given that she had used the right weapon. And Treadwell had not died straightaway but crawled from wherever it had happened, presumably looking for help. Neither Robb nor the police surgeon had offered any suggestion as to where the crime had taken place, but it could not have been far away.
Had Miriam struck him once and then fled? Had she taken the coach, driving it herself? If so, why had she abandoned it in the street so close by?
Perhaps she had panicked and simply run, as the blind, instinctive thing to do. Possibly she was unused to horses and did not know how to drive.
Or had there been a third person there? Had Miriam witnessed the murder and fled, perhaps for her own survival? Or had she not been there at all?
