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lieve in Christ. They crucified Him.”
“Eighteen hundred years ago,” Monk pointed out. “Nobody did it who’s alive today, Jew or otherwise.” He knew he was being unkind as he said it. Ferdi was only repeating what he had been taught. He was not equipped to find reasons for it, even to know where to look in the history of society, or the need for belief and justification to rationalize such a thing. The boy felt a stab of shame, and yet he kept on doing it. “Do a lot of people feel like that?” Monk asked.
“Everybody does that I know,” Ferdi replied, screwing up his face. “Or they say they do. I suppose it’s the same thing. . isn’t it?”
Monk had no answer, and it probably had nothing to do with Elissa Beck’s death anyway. It was just another facet of Kristian he had not expected, and could not fit in with the man he had known, or thought he had. He ordered coffee for both of them, forgetting it was chocolate they had had before.
Ferdi smiled, but said nothing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The upcoming trial of Kristian Beck caused a certain amount of public interest. It was not exactly a cause celebre. He was not famous, and certainly far from the first man to have been accused of killing his wife. That was a charge with which everyone was familiar, and not a few felt a certain sympathy. At least they withheld their judgment until they should hear what she had done to prompt such an act. The charge of killing Sarah Mackeson as well was another matter. Opinion as to her style of life, her values or morality, varied from one person to another. There were those who considered she might have been little better than a prostitute, but even so, the brutality of her death filled them with revulsion.
The first picture of Elissa, taken from one of Allardyce’s best sketches, that was published in the newspapers changed almost everyone’s view, and any tolerance or compassion for Kristian vanished. The beauty of her face, with its ethereal sense of tragedy, moved men and women alike. Anyone who killed such a creature must be a monster.
Hester was with Charles when she saw the newspaper. She had heard Monk’s description of Elissa, but she was still unprepared for the reality.
They were standing in her front room, which was robbed of its life for her because Monk was in Vienna and not returning tonight, or tomorrow, or any date that had been set. She was disconcerted by how profoundly she missed him. There was no point to the small chores she had to perform daily, no one with whom to share her thoughts, good and bad.
Charles had come because he was still desperately worried about Imogen, but he was also concerned for Kristian, and for her, too.
“I was uncertain whether to bring the newspaper,” he said, glancing at it where it lay open on the table. “But I felt sure you would see it sometime. . and I thought it might be easier if it were here. . ” He still looked uncomfortable at his assumption. “And if you had someone with you.”
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. She found she was quite suddenly moved by his care. He was trying so hard to reach across the gulf they had allowed to grow between them. “Yes, I am glad you are here.” Her eyes moved to the picture of Elissa again. “William tried to describe her to me, but I was still unprepared for a face that would touch me so closely.” She looked across at him. “I never met her, and I suppose I imagined someone I would dislike, because in my mind she. .” She stopped. She should not expose Callandra’s vulnerability to anyone at all. She ignored his look of confusion. “But when I see her, I feel as if I have lost someone I knew.” She went on as if no explanation were necessary. “I wonder if other people feel like that? It’s going to make it far worse for Kristian, isn’t it?”
His face pinched a little. “I think so. I’m sorry. I know you admire him a great deal. But. .” He hesitated, obviously uncertain how to say what he was thinking, perhaps even if he should say it at all. And yet it was equally plainly something he believed to be true.
She helped him. “You are trying to tell me he might be guilty, and I must be prepared for that.”
“No, actually I was thinking that one can never know another person as well as one thinks one does,” he replied gently. “Perhaps one cannot even know oneself.”
“Are you being kind to me?” she asked. “Or are you equivocating the way you always do?”
He looked a little taken aback. “I was saying what I thought. Do you think I always equivocate?” There was a thread of hurt in the question.
“I’m sorry,” she answered quickly, ashamed of herself. “No, you are just careful not to overstate things.”
“You mean I am unemotional?” he pressed.
She could hear Imogen’s accusation in that, and unreasonably it angered her. She would not have been happy married to a man as careful and as guarded of his inner life as Charles was, but he was her brother, and to defend him was as instinctive as recoiling when you are struck. If she sensed capacity to be hurt, she tried to shield it. If she sensed failure, and she hardly admitted even the word, then she lashed out to deny it, and to cover it from anyone else’s sight.
“Being self-controlled is not the same thing as having no emotions,” she said with something approaching anger, as if she were speaking through him to Imogen.
“No. . no.” He was watching her closely. “Hester. . don’t. .”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could help, but. .”
She smiled at him. “I know. There is nothing. But thank you for coming.”
He leaned forward and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then suddenly put his arms around her and hugged her properly, holding her closely for a moment before letting her go, coughing to clear his throat, and muttering good-bye before he turned to leave.
Sitting alone at the breakfast table, Callandra also was deeply shaken by the picture of Elissa in the newspaper. Her first thought was not how it might affect the jury in the court, but her own amazement that Elissa should look so vulnerable. She had found it difficult enough when Hester had told her that she was beautiful, and then that her actions in Vienna had been passionate and brave. Callandra had created in her mind the picture of a hard and brittle loveliness, something dazzling, but a matter of perfect bones and skin, dramatic coloring, perhaps handsome eyes. She was not prepared for a face where the heart showed through, where the dreams were naked and the pain of disillusion clear for anyone to see. How could Kristian have stopped loving her?
Why do people stop loving? Could it be anything but a weakness within themselves, an incapacity to give and go on giving, somewhere a selfishness? Her mind raced back over all she could remember of Kristian, every time they had met in the hospital, and before that the long hours they had spent during the typhoid outbreak in Limehouse. Every picture, every conversation, seemed to her tirelessly generous. She could see, as if it were before her now, his face in the flickering lights of the makeshift ward, exhausted, lined with anxiety, his eyes dark and shadowed around the sockets. But he had never lost his temper or his hope. He had tried to ease the distress of the dying, not only their physical pain but their fear and grief.
Or was she recalling it as she wished it to have been? It was so easy to do. She thought she was clear-sighted, a realist, but then perhaps everyone thought he was.
