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He shook his head firmly. “She wouldn’t have killed Elissa. She wouldn’t have hurt her at all!”
“Possibly not. But would you?”
He looked startled, as if he had not even thought of such a thing. For the first time she hoped. Her heart lurched and steadied.
“No! I. .” He let out his breath slowly. “How could you think that. .” He stopped.
“Where were you?” she persisted. “Where did you follow her, Charles? Someone killed Elissa Beck. It wasn’t the artist, and it wasn’t one of the gamblers. I want above everything else to be able to prove it wasn’t you.”
“I don’t know who it was!” There was desperation in his voice now, rising close to panic.
“Where did Imogen go?” she said again.
“Swinton Street. .” he whispered.
“Then where?”
“I. .” He gulped. “I. . got very angry.” He closed his eyes as if he could not bear to say it while looking at her. “I made a complete fool of myself. I created a scene, and one of the doormen hit me over the head with something. . I think I remember falling. Later I woke up in the dark, my head feeling as if it were splitting, and I lay for quite a little while so dizzy I daren’t move.” He bit his lip. “When I did, I crawled around and realized I was in a small room, not much more than a cupboard. I shouted, but no one came, and the door was heavy, and of course it was locked. It was daylight when they let me out.” Now he was looking at her, no more evasion in his face, only the most
agonizing embarrassment.
She believed him. She was so overwhelmed with relief that the stiff, formal office swam around her in a blur, and she had to make an effort not to buckle at the knees. Very deliberately, she walked forward and sat down in the chair opposite his desk. “Good,” she said almost normally. “That’s. . good.” What an idiotic understatement. He was not guilty! It was impossible. He had spent the entire night locked up in a cupboard. She remembered the bruises on his face, how ill he had looked when she had seen him afterwards. They would remember him and could swear to it. She would tell Monk, of course, and get their testimony before they realized how important it was. Charles was safe. What was a little humiliation compared with what she had feared?
She looked up at him and smiled.
For an instant he thought she was laughing at him, then he read her face more closely and his eyes filled with sudden tears. He turned away and blew his nose.
She gave him a moment, but only one, then she stood up and went to him, putting her arms around him and holding him as tightly as she could. She said nothing. She could not promise that it would be all right, that Imogen was not involved, or even that Imogen would stop gambling now. She did not know any of those things. But she did know that he could not have killed Elissa himself, and she could prove it.
The trip to the hospital was one of the worst journeys Monk could ever recall having made. He and Runcorn took a hansom, intending it to wait outside so they would have no difficulty in obtaining one for the return to the police station with Kristian Beck. Neither of them even mentioned the possibility of taking the police van in which criminals were customarily transported. They sat side by side without speaking, avoiding looking at each other. To do so would have made the silence even more obvious.
Monk thought about how he would tell Callandra that he had failed, and as he tried to work out in his mind what words he would use, each time he discarded them as false and unintentionally condescending, something she deserved least of all from him.
By the time they reached the hospital, and Runcorn had instructed the cabbie to wait, his sense of failure was for having led her to hope so fiercely, rather than warning her more honestly in the beginning, so she might have been better prepared for this.
They went up the steps side by side, and in through the doors to the familiar smells of carbolic, disease, drifting coal smuts, and floors too often wet. The corridors were empty except for three women with mops and buckets, but they did not need to ask their way. They both knew by now where Kristian’s rooms were, and the operating room.
“Are we. .” Monk began.
“Are we what?” Runcorn said tartly, glaring at him.
“Going to wait until he’s seen his patients?” Monk finished.
“What the hell do you think I’m going to do?” Runcorn snapped. “Take him away with a knife in his hand, and some poor devil’s arm half off?” He drove his fists savagely into his pockets and strode along the corridor ahead of Monk, not looking back at him. He turned the corner and left Monk to follow.
As it happened, Kristian was not operating, but he still had five people in his waiting room, and Runcorn sat down on the bench as if he were the sixth. He gave Monk one glowering look and then ignored him.
The door opened and Kristian came out. He saw Runcorn first, then Monk.
Monk would not lie, even by implication. He wished he could have, because he knew Kristian would see the rest of those waiting for him, and it would have been easier if he had not known why the police were there. But the instant he met Monk’s eyes the question existed, and then the understanding. Something inside him faded, as if he had come to the end of a long test of endurance and reached the point at which he could no longer struggle.
“Mr. Newbury?” he said, turning away and looking at a large man with a pale, flabby face and receding hair. “Will you come in, please?”
Newbury stood up and limped across the floor, watched by everyone else in the room.
Monk sat stiffly in his seat, willing himself not to fidget, not to stand up and pace back and forth. The other people were sick, and probably frightened of whatever pain or debility lay ahead of them. Kristian faced God knew what. All Monk had to deal with was the misery of arresting Kristian, and then of telling Hester and Callandra what had happened. Comparatively, it was nothing.
Still the minutes dragged by, and as one patient went in after another, he alternated between anger with Runcorn simply for being there, for knowing what was in Monk’s mind because he had worked with him and could remember a thousand things Monk could not, and a desire to say something to him to ease the waiting, because he knew Runcorn also loathed this necessity. He, too, admired Kristian, whether he wanted to or not, and would have given a great deal for it to have been anyone else, preferably someone of a class and type he despised. Best of all if it could have been a gambler, but Allardyce would have done. Far better an artist, living a bohemian and essentially alien and dissolute life, than a doctor who spent his time healing the sick, the ordinary poor who came to this particular hospital. But Runcorn did not have the courage or the imagination not to do his duty.
