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"Answer Mr. Monk’s questions, Billy," Campbell instructed. "He’s come to help Major Stourbridge find Treadwell and the missing carriage."
"Yer in’t never goin’ ter see them again, I reckon," Billy replied, pulling his mouth into a grimace of disgust. "Carriage like that’s worth a fair bit."
"You think he sold it and went off?" Monk asked.
Billy regarded him with contempt. " ’Course I do. Wot else? ’E lit outta ’ere like ’e were on fire! Nobody never told ’im ter. ’E never came back. If ’e din’t flog it, w’y in’t ’e ’ere?"
"Perhaps he met with an accident?" Monk suggested.
"That don’t answer w’y ’e went in the first place." Billy stared at him defiantly. "Less ’e’s dead, ’e should ’a told us wot ’appened, shouldn’t ’e?"
"Unless he’s too badly hurt," Monk continued the argument.
Billy’s eyes narrowed. "You a friend of ’is, then?"
"I’ve never met him. I wanted your opinion, which obviously was not very high."
Billy hesitated. "Well—can’t say as I like ’im," he hedged. "On the other ’and, can’t say as I know anythink bad abaht ’im, neither. Just that he’s gorn, like—which is bad enough."
"And Mrs. Gardiner?" Monk asked.
Billy let his breath out in a sigh. "She were a real nice lady, she were. If ’e done anythink to ’er, I ’ope as ’e’s dead—an’ ’orrible dead at that."
"Do you not think she went with him willingly?"
Billy glanced at Campbell, then at Monk, his face registering his incredulity. "Wot’d a lady like ’er be wantin’ with a shifty article like ’im? ’Ceptin’ to drive ’er abaht now an’ then, as wot is ’is job!"
"Did she think he was a shifty article?"
Billy thought for a moment. "Well, p’haps she din’t. A bit too nice for ’er own good, she were. Innocent, like, if yer know wot I mean?"
"Mrs. Gardiner was a trifle too familiar with the servants, Mr. Monk," Campbell clarified. "She may well have been unable to judge his character. I daresay no one told her Treadwell was employed largely because he was a relative to the cook, who is highly regarded." He smiled, biting his lip. "Good cooks are a blessing no household discards lightly, and she has been loyal to the family since before my sister’s time." He looked around the stable towards the empty space where the carriage should have been. "The fact remains, Treadwell is gone, and so is a very valuable coach and pair, and all the harness."
"Has it been reported to the police?" Monk asked.
Campbell pushed his hands into his pockets, swaying a little onto his heels. "Not yet. Frankly, Mr. Monk, I think it unlikely my brother-in-law will do that. He makes a great show, for Lucius’s sake, of believing that Mrs. Gardiner had not met some accident, or crisis, and all will be explained satisfactorily. I am afraid I gravely doubt it. I can think of no such circumstance which would satisfy the facts as we know them." He started to walk away from the stable across the yard and towards the garden, out of earshot of Billy and whoever else might be in the vicinity. Monk followed, and they were on the gravel path surrounding the lawn before Campbell continued.
"I very much fear that the answer may prove to be simply that Mrs. Gardiner, who was very charming and attractive in her manner, but nonetheless not of Lucius background, realized that after the first flame of romance wore off she would never make him happy, or fit into his life. Rather than face explanations which would be distressing, and knowing that both Lucius and Major Stourbridge, as a matter of honor, would try to change her mind, she took the matter out of their hands, and simply fled."
He looked sideways at Monk, a slightly rueful sadness in his face. "It is an action not entirely without honor. In her own way, she has behaved the best. There is no doubt she is in love with Lucius. It was plain for anyone to see that they doted upon each other. They seemed to have an unusual communion of thought and taste, even of humor. But she is older than he, already a widow, and from a very... ordinary ... background. This way it remains a grand romance. The memory of it will never be soured by its fading into the mundane realities. Think very carefully, Mr. Monk, before you precipitate a tragedy."
Monk stood in the late-morning sun in this peaceful garden full of birdsong, where perhaps such a selfless decision had been made. It seemed the most likely answer. A decision like that might be hysterical, perhaps, but then Miriam Gardiner was a woman giving up her most precious dream.
"I have already told Major Stourbridge that if I find Mrs. Gardiner I would not attempt to persuade her to return against her will," Monk answered. "Or report back to him anything beyond what she wished me to. That would not necessarily include her whereabouts."
Campbell did not reply for several minutes. Eventually, he looked up, regarding Monk carefully, as if making some judgment which mattered to him deeply.
"I trust you will behave with discretion and keep in mind that you are dealing with the deepest emotions, and men of a very high sense of honor."
"I will," Monk replied, wishing again Lucius Stourbridge had chosen some other person of whom to ask assistance, or that he had had the sense to follow his judgment, not his sentimentality, in accepting. Marriage seemed already to have robbed him of his wits!
"I imagine they will be serving luncheon," Campbell said, looking towards the house. "I assume you are staying?"
"I still have to speak to the servants," Monk answered grimly, walking across the gravel. "Even if I learn nothing."
2
HESTER SHIFTED from foot to foot impatiently as she stood in the waiting room in the North London Hospital. The sun was hot and the closed air claustrophobic. She thought with longing of the green expanse of Hampstead Heath, only a few hundred yards away. But she was here with a purpose. There was a massive amount to do, and as always, too little time. Too many people were ill, confused by the medical system, if you could call it by so flattering a word, and frightened of authority.
