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She looked sideways at him in the hansom as they moved through the streets muffled by fog, passing from the thick, yellow-gray density which caught in the throat and out into a paler, thinner patch where the light broke through and she could see the black lattice of branches above. There was a pallor of tiredness in his face, and he was staring ahead as if half his attention were in his own thoughts.
“Have you any idea who killed her?” she asked.
“No,” he answered without turning.
“But you don’t think Runcorn will imagine it was Kristian, do you?” she pressed.
The hansom jolted to a stop at the intersection, then started forward again. The vehicles passing in the opposite direction were visible only as shadows in the gloom.
“He has to consider it,” he replied. “We don’t know yet if Elissa Beck was the intended victim or simply an unfortunate witness.”
“What do you know about the other woman?”
“Very little. She was an artists’ model, entirely for Allardyce over the last few years. She was in her middle thirties, already past her prime for such a job. Runcorn’s got men trying to find out as much as possible about her, lovers, anyone to whom she owed money. Nothing that means anything yet.”
“But surely she was more likely to be the intended victim, and Elissa Beck only a witness?”
“Perhaps.”
She wanted to pursue it, but she saw the tight line of his lips and knew it would serve no purpose. She almost had to bite her tongue to keep it still. She had found none of the comfort or assurance she expected. Why had he not said at least that if Runcorn were stupid enough to suspect Kristian, then Monk would prove him wrong? She wanted to ask him, but she knew she did not want the answer.
In the late afternoon Monk went out again, without saying where to. He had not changed out of his best black, almost as if for him the funeral were not over.
Hester waited an hour, trying to make up her mind, then, also still in her black, she took a hansom and gave the driver Kristian’s address in Haverstock Hill. She did not know if he had returned home, but she felt compelled to seek him. Why had he not held the reception in Elissa’s own house? Why had he allowed Fuller Pendreigh to take control of so much? The whole of the funeral arrangements was out of character for the man she knew, or thought she did. She had worked with him as Monk had not. The black feathermen, the ostrich plumes, the hearse and four, were far from the simple dignity of life and death as he had known it in the hospital or the fever wards they had set up in Limehouse. He was a man too used to the reality of physical death to wrap it in ceremony, and too genuine in his emotion. His pity and his grief needed no display to others.
Was Elissa’s death really so different, so shattering, that he had changed utterly? Or had Hester misread him all the time? Had there always been a ritualistic high churchman beneath the uncluttered man she had known?
It seemed
an endless journey through the fog-shrouded streets, but eventually she reached the house and requested the driver to wait while she ascertained that Kristian was there. She had no intention of having to search for another cab were he not. She rang the doorbell three times and was about to leave when Kristian himself opened it. His face looked eerie and his eyes enormous in the light from the street lamp. The hall behind him was in darkness, except for a single gas bracket burning low at the foot of the stairs.
“Hester? Is something wrong?” There was an edge of alarm in his voice.
“No,” she said quickly. “No one is ill. I came because I was concerned for you. I barely had the opportunity to speak with you earlier.”
“That is most thoughtful of you, but I assure you I am merely tired.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips, but there was no echo in his eyes. “It is an effort to accept people’s sympathies graciously and think of something to say in return which is not so bland as to be a kind of rebuff. I think we are all reminded of our own losses. A hundred other griefs come far too close to us at such times.”
“May I dismiss my hansom?” It was an oblique way of inviting herself in.
He hesitated.
She blushed to do it, but with her back to the light he could not have seen. “Thank you,” she accepted before he spoke, and turned around to go back and pay the driver.
He was left with no alternative but to invite her in. He led the way to a small morning room where he reached up and turned the gas a little higher. She saw that the room was pleasantly furnished. There were three armchairs, all odd, but of similar rusty shades, lending an illusion of warmth which in fact was not there. The old Turkish rug was full of reds and blues. The fire did not appear to have been used recently. There was a worn embroidered screen in front of it and no poker, coal tongs or shovel in the hearth.
Kristian looked ill at ease, but he invited her to sit down.
She accepted, beginning to realize just how crass she had been in forcing her way in. It was inexcusably intrusive. She had allowed her concern to rob her of all sensitivity. She did not know him nearly well enough to be placing herself there.
What could she possibly say to redeem the situation?
Honesty-it would either make her actions excusable or condemn her beyond recall. She plunged in. “William is working with Superintendent Runcorn to try to find out who is responsible for this. They loathe each other, but they both want to know the truth enough to bury their feelings for the time being.”
Kristian’s face was almost expressionless as he sat opposite her. Was it from exhaustion at the end of one of the worst days of his life, and was he too in debt to old friendships to throw her out, as most men would have done in the circumstances? Or was he really concealing a very different self he did not wish her to see, more particularly did not wish her to report back to the clever, perceptive, ruthless Monk, who never let go of a case, no matter who was destroyed by the truth?
An icy fear gripped her for Callandra, and she was ashamed of it. She knew Kristian better than that.
“Kristian, was Elissa very religious?”
