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"Of course," he agreed. "But don’t expect too much."
She smiled. "No ... just to try."
Hester woke in the dark, feeling the movement as Monk got out of bed. Downstairs, there was a banging on the front door, not loud, just sharp and insistent, as of someone who would not give up.
Monk pulled his jacket on over his nightshirt, and Hester sat up, watching him go out of the bedroom in bare feet. She heard the door open and a moment later close again.
She saw the reflection of the hall light on the landing ceiling as the gas was lit.
She could bear it no longer. She slipped out of bed and put on a robe. She met Monk coming up the stairs, a piece of pape
r in his hand. His face was bleak with shock, his eyes dark.
"What is it?" she said with a catch in her breath.
"Verona Stourbridge." His voice shook a little. "She’s been murdered! Just the same way as Treadwell. A single, powerful blow to the head ... with a croquet mallet." His fist closed over the white paper. "Robb asked me to go."
8
IT TOOK MONK nearly a quarter of an hour to find a hansom, first striding down Fitzroy Street to the Tottenham Court Road, then walking south towards Oxford Street.
He had left Hester furious at being excluded, but it would be in every way inappropriate for him to have taken her. She could serve no purpose except to satisfy her own curiosity, and she would quite obviously be intrusive. She had not argued, just seethed inside because she felt helpless and as confused as he was.
It was a fine night. A thin film of cloud scudded over a bright moon. The air was warm, the pavements still holding the heat of the day. His footsteps were loud in the near silence. A carriage rumbled by out of Percy Street and crossed towards Bedford Square, the moonlight shining for a moment on gleaming doors and the horses’ polished flanks. Whoever had murdered Verona Stourbridge, it had not been Cleo Anderson. She was safely locked up in the Hampstead police station.
What could this new and terrible event have to do with the death of James Treadwell?
He could see pedestrians on the footpath at the corner of Oxford Street, two men and a woman, laughing.
He tried to picture Mrs. Stourbridge on the one occasion he had met her. He could not bring back her features, or even the color of her eyes, only the overriding impression he had had of a kind of vulnerability. Underneath the poised manner and the lovely clothes was a woman who was acquainted with fear. Or perhaps that was only hindsight, now that she was dead... murdered.
It had to be one of her own family, or a servant—or Miriam. But why would Miriam kill her, unless she truly was insane?
He turned the corner and walked along the edge of the footpath on Oxford Street, watching the road all the time for sight of a cab. He could recall Miriam only too easily, the wide eyes, the sweep of her hair, the strength in her mouth. She had behaved without any apparent reason, but he had never met anyone who had given him more of a sense of inner sanity, of a wholeness no outside force could destroy.
Maybe that was what madness was ... something inside you which the reality of the world did not touch?
A hansom slowed down and he hailed it, giving the Stourbridge address in Cleveland Square. The driver grumbled about going so far, and Monk ignored him, climbing inside and sitting down, engulfed in silence and thought again.
He reached the Stourbridge house, paid the driver and went up the steps. It was after one o’clock in the morning. All the surrounding houses were in darkness, but here the hall and at least four other rooms blazed with light between the edges of imperfectly drawn curtains. There was another carriage outside, waiting. Presumably, it was the doctor’s.
The butler answered the door the moment after Monk knocked, and invited him in with a voice rasping with tension. The man was white-faced, and his body beneath his black suit was rigid and very slightly shaking. He must have been told to expect Monk, because without seeking any instruction he showed him into the withdrawing room.
Three minutes later Robb came in, closing the door behind him. He looked almost as if he had been bereaved himself. The sight of Monk seemed to cheer him a little.
"Thank you," he said simply. "It’s... it’s the last thing I expected. Why should anybody attack Mrs. Stourbridge?" His voice rose with desperate incomprehension. He looked exhausted, and there was a stiffness about him that Monk recognized as fear. This was not the sort of crime he understood or the kind of people he had ever dealt with before. He knew he was out of his depth.
"Begin with the facts," Monk said calmly, more confidence in his manner than he felt. "Tell me exactly what you know. Who called you? What time? What did they say?"
Robb looked slightly startled, as if he had expected to begin with the body and accounts of where everyone was.
"A little before midnight," he began, steadying himself but still standing. "Maybe quarter to. A constable banged on my door to say there’d been a murder in Bayswater that was part of my case and the local police said I should come straightaway. They had a cab waiting. I was on my way in not more than five minutes." He started moving about restlessly, looking at Monk, then away again. "He told me it was Mrs. Stourbridge, and as soon as I knew that, I sent the beat constable around to get you." He shook his head. "I don’t understand it. It can’t be Cleo Anderson this time." He faced Monk. "Was I wrong about Mrs. Gardiner, and she’s done this, too? Why? It makes no sense."
"If the local police were called," Monk said thoughtfully, "and they sent for you, then the body must have been found about eleven o’clock. That’s over two hours ago. Who found her and where was she?"
"Major Stourbridge found her," Robb answered. "She was in her bedroom. It was only chance that he went in to say something to her after he’d said good-night and all the family had retired. He said he’d forgotten to mention something about a cousin coming to visit and just wanted to remind her. Poor man went into the bedroom and saw her crumpled on the floor and blood on the carpet."
"Did he move her?" Monk asked. It would have been a natural enough thing to do.
