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“Do as you’re told!” Monk said.
Allardyce obeyed, passing him a small claw-headed hammer, and a moment later there was a splintering of wood and the screech of nails prying loose as the board with the knothole came up. Lying in the dust below, glinting in the light, was a delicate gold earring, the loop stained with blood.
“That was Elissa’s,” Allardyce said after a moment’s utter silence. “I painted it; I know.” His voice cracked. “But this is where Sarah was lying! It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does,” Monk said quietly. “It means Elissa was killed first. The earring was torn off when he put his arm around her neck. . and broke it. It probably caught in his sleeve and in her struggle was ripped from her. He didn’t notice it fall. Then when Sarah came out of one of the other rooms and saw Elissa dead, he killed her, too, and she fell onto the floor, over where the earring had disappeared.”
Allardyce rubbed his hand across his face, leaving a smear of green paint on his cheek. “Poor Sarah,” he said softly. “All she ever did was look beautiful. And be in the wrong place.”
Runcorn pushed his hands deep into his pockets and stared at Monk. He didn’t say anything, but there was no need. The time had come when they could avoid it no longer. It was not Sarah who was the intended victim; it had been no more to do with her than mischance. It was not gamblers or debt collectors. Max Niemann’s visits to London, his meetings with Elissa that Kristian knew nothing of, were more motive, not less. Even the paid debts made it worse. Either it was the very last of Kristian’s money, or uglier even than that, it was money Elissa had sold herself for.
“I’m going to the hospital,” Runcorn said wearily. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll come,” Monk replied. He bent and picked up the delicate earring and dropped it into Runcorn’s hand. “You can put your carpets any damn way you like, Mr. Allardyce, but if you alter that floorboard I’ll jail you as an accomplice. Do you understand?”
Allardyce did not answer but stood, head bowed, in the middle of the floor as Monk and Runcorn went out and down the steps back into the rain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Monk left the house early in the morning, almost before his footsteps died away and Hester heard the front door close, her mind was filled again with the fear that Charles was involved in Elissa’s death. It loomed so sharp and painful she would almost rather the unsigned letter Charles had left with her were a love letter from some man than proof that it was Elissa who had introduced Imogen to the gambling which had grown into a thing that now raged through her like a destroying fire.
She had to know. As long as it was still unresolved every nightmare was a possibility. And yet it was also possible that the note was not from Elissa, and the two women had never met, and whatever had made Charles lie to her about having driven down Drury Lane was perfectly innocent, at least as far as Elissa was concerned. It could be simply embarrassing, a little foolish.
As soon as Mrs. Patrick, her housekeeper, arrived, Hester explained that she had an urgent errand to run. With the letter in her reticule, she put on her hat and coat and went out into the rain. It was a considerable journey from Grafton Street to the Hampstead Hospital to ask Kristian for any piece of Elissa’s handwriting to compare.
All the long journey she sat and twisted her hands together, trying to keep her racing imagination from picturing Imogen and Elissa, Charles’s fury when he found out, his incomprehension, and all the violence and tragedy that could have flowed from it. She argued one way, and then the other, hope to terror, and back again. It was so easy to let the mind race away, creating pictures, building pain.
By the time she reached the hospital and alighted she was so tense she stumbled over the curb and regained her balance only just in time to prevent herself from falling. This was ridiculous! She had faced battlefields. Why did it strike into the heart of her that her brother might have killed Elissa Beck?
Because whoever it was had killed Sarah Mackeson as well. There was an element in a crime of desperation to save someone you love from a force of destruction. But killing Sarah was to save himself, an instinctive resort to violence at the cost of someone else’s life.
She ran up the steps, all but bumping into a student doctor coming down. He scowled at her and muttered something under his breath. She stopped and asked the porter if Dr. Beck was in, and was told with a nod of sympathy that he was. She thanked him and hurried down the corridor to the patients’ waiting room, where there were already three people sitting huddled in their pain and anxiety, now and then talking to each other to ease the imagination and the passing of time.
Hester considered whether to use the prerogative of interrupting, which she could exercise as someone who worked in the hospital. Then she looked at their faces, strained already with hardship far beyond her own, and decided to wait.
She also talked, to fill the time, learning something of their lives and telling them a little of her own, until at last it was her turn, and there were seven more people waiting after her.
Kristian was startled. “Hester? You’re not ill? You look very pale,” he said with concern. Considering his own ashen face and hollow eyes, at any other time the remark would have held its element of irony.
“No, thank you,” she said quickly. “I’m just worried, like all of us.” There was no point in being evasive. “I have a letter and I need to compare the handwriting in order to know who sent it, because there is no signature. I am hoping I am mistaken, but I must be certain. Have you anything that Elissa wrote? It doesn’t matter what it is; a laundry list would do.”
A shadow of humor crossed his eyes, then vanished. “Elissa didn’t write laundry lists. I expect I can think of something, bu
t it will be at home, not here. . ”
“Doesn’t matter, if you will give me permission to look for it.”
“What is the other letter you wish to compare it with?”
She avoided his eyes. “I would rather not say. . please. . unless I have to.”
There was a minute’s silence. Not even any hospital noises intruded through the thick walls into the room.
“There is a letter she wrote me, some time ago, in the top drawer of the chest in my bedroom. I. . I would like it back. .” His voice broke and he gulped in, trying to control it.
“I don’t need to take it away,” she said quickly. “I don’t need to read it. . just compare the handwriting. They may be quite different, and it will mean nothing at all.”
“And if they are the same?” he said huskily. “Will that mean that Elissa did something. . wrong?”
