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“But what? But nothing. He knows. He’s lying. Let’s take the omnibus back.”
They did, and Monk was glad of it; it made conversation impossible, and he was able to concentrate on his own thoughts. He would have defended Kristian to Runcorn, out of loyalty to Callandra, but he also was convinced that Kristian was lying. Without saying as much, he had affected to know almost nothing of Elissa’s daily life. Certainly he was dedicated to medicine, but he was also a warm and emotional man. He was deeply moved by his wife’s death, and when he had spoken of their days in Vienna the passion of it was still there in him, taking him back to it whether he wished or not.
What had happened since then? It was thirteen years. How much did people change in that time? What did they learn of each other that became unbearable? Infatuation died, but did love? What was the difference? Did one learn that too late? Was it Elissa that Kristian still so obviously cared for, or the memory of the time when they had fought for liberty and high idealism on the barricades of Vienna?
Did Callandra know anything of this? Had she ever even met Elissa? Or, like Monk, had she imagined some tedious woman with whom Kristian was imprisoned in an honorable but intolerably lonely marriage of convenience? He had a cold, gripping fear that it was the latter.
What if she had then discovered this woman Argo Allardyce had seen, the woman whose beauty haunted him and stared out of the canvas to capture the imagination of the onlooker?
What did one love in a woman? Love was surely for honor and gentleness, courage, laughter and wisdom, and a hundred thoughts shared. But infatuation was for what the heart thought it saw, for what the vision believed. A woman with a face like Elissa Beck’s could have provoked anything!
Hester went to the hospital early, in part to see how Mary Ellsworth was progressing. She found her weak and a little nauseous, but with no fever, and no swelling or suppuration around the wound. However, even if the operation were entirely successful, she knew even better than Kristian did that that was only the beginning of healing. Mary’s real illness lay in her mind, the fears and anxieties, the introspection and the numbing boredom that crippled her days.
Hester spoke with her for a little while, trying to encourage her, then went to find Callandra. She looked in the patients’ waiting rooms and was told by a young nurse that she had seen Callandra in the front hall, but when Hester got there she met only Fermin Thorpe, looking angry and important. He seemed about to speak to Hester, then with a curt gesture of irritation he turned on his heel and went the other way. Callandra came from one of the wards, her hair flying up in a gray-brown streamer, the main coil of it askew.
“That man is an interfering nincompoop!” she said furiously, her face flushed, her eyes bright. “He wants to reduce the allowance of porter every day for nurses. I don’t approve of drunkenness any more than he does, but he’d get far better work out of them if he increased their food ration! It’s drink on an empty stomach that does it.” She blinked. “Talking about stomachs, how is Mary Ellsworth?”
Hester smiled a little bleakly. “Miserable, but there’s no infection in the wound.”
“And no heart in her,” Callandra said for her. All the time she was speaking her eyes were seeking Hester’s, looking desperately for some reassurance, some inner comfort that this nightmare would be brief and any moment they would all waken and find it was explained, proved sad, but some kind of release.
Hester longed to be able to tell her so, but she could not bring herself to, even for a day or two’s ease. “No, no heart,” she agreed. “But perhaps when it doesn’t hurt quite so much she’ll be better.”
“No more laudanum?” Callandra asked, pity softening her face.
“No. It’s too easy to depend on it. And it can be caustic, which is the last thing she needs with that wound in her stomach. Believe me, she’d sooner have the pain of the moment!”
Callandra hesitated, as if she were reading double and triple meanings into the words, then she smiled at her own foolishness and poked her flying hair back into the knot on the back of her head and went purposefully towards the apothecary’s room, leaving Hester to take a quick cup of tea with one of the nurses and then catch the omnibus back to Grafton Street.
In the afternoon Hester busied herself with housework, a large part of which was quite unnecessary. Her housekeeper came in three days a week and did most of the laundry, ironing and scrubbing. Everything that mattered had already been done, but she was too restless to sit still, so she began to clean out the kitchen cupboards, setting everything from them onto the table. Surely it must have been the artists’ model who was killed, and Kristian’s wife the unfortunate witness? It was the only answer that made sense.
Except that of course it wasn’t obvious at all.
She had every cupboard empty and a bowl full of soapy water on the bench, ready to begin scrubbing, when the doorbell rang and she was obliged to go and answer it.
Charles was on the step, looking even more haggard than three days ago, with hollows around his eyes like bruises, and a cut on his jaw, but this time he was at no loss for words.
“Oh, Hester, I’m so glad you’re home.” He came inside, moving stiffly, without waiting for her to ask. “I was afraid you might be at a hospital. . or something. Are you still. . no, I suppose you’re not. I mean. . it’s. .” He stood in the center of the room, and took a couple of deep breaths.
Hester interrupted him. “When you followed Imogen the other evening, you said it was somewhere in the direction of the Royal Free Hospital, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Swinton Street. Why?”
“Do you now know of someone she might have been visiting?” Hester asked.
“No.” The word came so quickly it almost cut off the question, but if anything, the fear in his eyes increased. He started to say something else. It seemed to be a denial, then he stopped. “I suppose you heard that there was a double murder in Acton Street, just beyond the hospital?” He was watching her intently.
“Yes, a doctor’s wife and an artists’ model.”
“Oh my God!” His legs folded, and he sank down into the armchair.
For a moment she was afraid he had collapsed. “Charles!” She knelt in front of him, clasping his hands, intensely relieved to feel strength in them. She was about to say that the locality didn’t mean anything and could have no connection with Imogen when, like a drench of cold water, she realized that he was afraid that it did. He was lying by misdirection and evasion. He was refusing to look at whatever it was that hovered just beyond his words.
“Charles!” she started again, more urgently. “What do you know about where she is going? You followed her to Swinton Street, which is a block from Acton Street. .”
He jerked his head up. “That’s not where she went the night of the murders!” he said abruptly. “I know that, because I followed her myself.”
“Where did she go?” she asked.
