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“Does he blame himself?” Monk asked curiously.
“Actually, yes, he does. He says he ought to have seen it, but he didn’t.”
“What about Drew? Did he call?”
“No. Not while Gavinton was there, anyway, and there is nothing to suggest that he came later on. But even if he had, Taft didn’t die until a few minutes after five in the morning, by which time Drew was miles away and can prove it. So can Gavinton. Not that anyone suspects him.”
“Five in the morning?” Monk was mildly surprised. “That’s late to commit suicide. Just about daylight again.” Had Taft sat up all night, trying to think of a way out? Or trying to find the courage to end his life?
“Yes, it is,” Courtland agreed. “Neighbors heard the shot and sent for the police. They got there from the local station well within half an hour. They found Taft shot through the roof of the mouth. Mrs. Taft had been strangled and both daughters suffocated. The gun was there, the house doors were locked. Drew was at home in his bed, as his servants will testify.” He swallowed the last of his pie. “Naturally the police searched the house, but they could find nothing to suggest anything other than the tragically obvious conclusion.”
Monk was largely ignoring his food, good as it was. He tried to picture the scene in his mind. It was all too easy. He had tasted despair himself, in the long dark hours of the night. Most people do, at one time or another. Money problems become insurmountable; news comes of a death in the family; there is incurable illness, failure, a consuming love that is not returned; or perhaps there is simply the loss of a friend who to that point had made all other grief bearable.
Some people retreat into silence, some weep, some lose their tempers and break things, very few kill themselves. That is a journey whose end is unknown, except that there is no return from it. Why had Taft, a man who professed an overpowering Christian faith, taken that road?
The obvious answer was that his faith was not real and perhaps never had been-at least not for some considerable time. But Hester had felt that his self-love was real enough; that didn’t fit the picture of suicide either.
“Do you believe the police’s conclusion?” Monk asked Courtland, looking up to meet his eyes.
“Short of finding some evidence to the contrary, I have to,” Courtland replied. “And I can’t even think of what that evidence could be.”
Monk could think of nothing either. He finished his meal in near silence, then thanked Courtland and left.
Monk spent the rest of the day examining the police evidence in detail, and it stood up to his closest scrutiny. Both Gavinton and Drew’s accounts of their whereabouts were unassailable. Gavinton had been at home with his wife and family. His wife was restless and had not slept well. She had told the police, ruefully, that the sight of her husband sleeping, blissfully unaware of her insomnia, had added to her sense of being utterly alone in the house. She had finally given in to temptation, and woken her lady’s maid to make her a cup of hot milk. The maid had confirmed this, with sufficient detail to remove doubt.
Monk had not considered Gavinton likely to be guilty of violence anyway. He decided to go to see him only because such an omission would have been incompetent.
He had found Gavinton pale-faced and looking harassed. He agreed to speak to Monk with the air of a man who felt he had little alternative. He was standing behind an unusually tidy desk, no more than one pile of papers on it.
“I’m not sure what I can tell you, Mr. Monk.” He waved his hand indicating the chair opposite. “I am as stunned as you must be by Taft’s suicide. Even more that he should take the fearful action of killing his family as well. I have no explanation to offer.”
“Was there anything he said or did that with hindsight seems relevant to you now?” Monk asked, aware that Gavinton had no obligation to answer him.
Gavinton was profoundly disconcerted. He was not used to a failure he could not deny, or about which he could shift most of the blame on to someone else. He looked down at the all-but-empty desk. “I’ve thought about that, and in spite of the fact that I defended the man, and therefore I imagined I had come to know him to a degree-I certainly knew where I thought him most vulnerable-the answer is that I cannot think of anything that makes sense of what he’s done. Believe me; I want to for my own sake.”
Monk smiled bleakly. He had no difficulty in believing that.
“
You saw him that evening …” he began.
“Yes. He was upset, of course. But he hadn’t actually seen the photograph,” Gavinton said quickly.
“Did you tell him what it was?” Monk had no intention of letting him escape the issue.
“I had no choice,” Gavinton said tartly. “He had to understand why I couldn’t allow it to be seen by the jury. It was … repellent. The boy was only five or six years old … thin as a rail. If you’d seen his face-” He stopped abruptly, his voice choking off. “I think if the jury’d seen it they’d have wanted to hang Drew. I did myself.” He gave a violent shudder, something of a courtroom gesture. Even now he could not entirely stop playing for effect.
“And Taft?” Monk pursued. “Was he disillusioned to the point of despair?” Monk was trying to imagine what might have been going through Taft’s mind.
“I described it as factually as I could, without details,” Gavinton replied. “Taft was stunned, and angry, but he certainly didn’t appear insane or suicidal.”
Monk did not reply to that.
“Could there have been a photograph of him also?” he asked instead.
Gavinton looked as if he were cornered, his face tight, eyes moving from one point to another in the room. He considered for a few moments before at last replying, “I thought about that too, but it didn’t seem to be on his mind. He was disillusioned with Drew, of course, but his overriding distress seemed to spring from the realization that Drew changing his testimony would mean he himself would almost certainly be convicted. Whatever sentence Rathbone handed down, Taft’s career as a preacher was over, and that mattered to him above all else.”
“Did you see Mrs. Taft?” Monk asked.
