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“But Rathbone was still wrong,” Hester concluded.
“Yes.” Monk was not yet satisfied. “But if Taft took his own life because he was guilty, it’s a hell of a lot more than just suicide. If he’d killed only himself Oliver might be seen as to blame. There’s no way anyone could foresee he’d kill his wife and daughters as well. That puts him right outside anybody’s understanding, or sympathy.”
“So how are you going to find out why he killed them too?”
“Learn everything I can,” he replied. “And I’d still like to know what happened to the money. Everyone’s forgotten that, in this mess.”
Hester reached for the marmalade, then realized she had already put some on the side of her plate. “They spent it,” she replied. “That’s obvious.”
“Is it?”
She pulled a little face, just a twitch of her lips. “William, have you any idea what Mrs. Taft’s gowns cost? Or those of her daughters?”
“No.” He was puzzled. “I know what yours cost, and it doesn’t amount to the sort of money that’s missing from the congregation’s donations to charity.”
She sighed. “I suppose, in a backhanded sort of way, I should be pleased that you didn’t notice how beautifully they fitted, or how very up to date they were.”
“But that sort of price?” he said with disbelief.
“A good portion of it. Calfskin boots-kid gloves-silk fichus and guipure lace.”
“So Mrs. Taft knew about the money too,” he deduced.
“Maybe. But not if she simply took delivery of the clothes and never saw the bills. I dare say she never had to manage the household accounts herself and wouldn’t have had the faintest idea.”
“Could she be so-” He stopped as Scuff came into the kitchen, looking at him, then at Hester. He was scrubbed pink, his skin still damp, his shirt collar crisp and blemishless. He drew in breath to say something, then changed his mind. He looked anxious.
Hester never failed to see an expression, and seldom misread it. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.
Scuff cut himself two slices of bread and took the piece of bacon she had left for him on the griddle. He made himself a sandwich and came to sit at the table before answering. He drew in a deep breath, putting off the moment of biting into the fresh bread and the crisp, savory bacon.
“How are we going to help Mr. Rathbone … I mean, Sir Oliver?” he asked. “I could do something …” He glanced down at his plate then up again quickly.
Hester nearly answered, then left it for Monk.
“We were just talking about it,” Monk answered. “I’m going to see if I can find out exactly why Taft killed himself, and why on earth he killed his family. I think there’s something important to that that we don’t know.”
“ ’E was a thief an’ ’e couldn’t take it that everybody would know.” Scuff said what to him was obvious. “Some people are like that. Truth don’t matter; it’s what people think that they care about.”
“The photograph was of Drew, not Taft,” Monk pointed out.
Scuff shrugged and bit into the sandwich. He could no longer resist it. “Maybe there was one of him too,” he said with his mouth full.
Hester started to correct him but changed her mind.
Scuff saw it and gulped down the mouthful, then looked at Monk.
“We are pretty certain there wasn’t. Though we can’t know for sure. It isn’t among the ones Sir Oliver had, anyway.”
Hester poured tea for Scuff and passed him the mug, but he did not touch it; instead he kept staring at Monk. “Oh. Well, what can I do?” he asked again.
Monk saw the eagerness in his face. Scuff needed to help, for Rathbone’s sake, but even more he needed to be part of what they were doing. To shut him out would brand him in his own mind as excluded, and of no use. Perhaps to someone who had always belonged that would be ridiculous, but Monk understood exclusion. His own slow recovery of bits and pieces of his life from before his amnesia had shown him that he had once been a man who did not have a family or a place in other people’s emotions. He had been respected, feared, and disliked. The loneliness he remembered from that life, the absence of warmth that comes from being liked for yourself, not for your achievements, had never totally left him. He could so easily recognize the echo of it in Scuff.
He must find something for Scuff to do, something that mattered.
“You ought to be at school,” he said slowly, to give himself time to think.
Scuff’s face fell. He struggled to hide his hurt and failed.
