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She saw the frown cross his face before he answered.
“I’m beginning to wonder about that myself,” he said slowly. “He is said to have taken a fairly heavy dose of opium and then cut his wrists.” He gestured slightly with one hand. “Up on One Tree Hill, in Greenwich Park.”
“Said to have?”
Monk shook his head a little. “The evidence seems unclear. The doctor who examined him saw nothing containing opium, no powder wrappers, no bottle for a liquid or to drink water from. No knife or razor. And one of Lambourn’s assistants said he wasn’t distressed about his report being refused, that he intended to fight. But the other one says he was completely broken by it.”
Hester stood up and fetched the teapot off the stove. She poured a cup for each of them. Its fragrant steam filled the air as she passed one cup across the table to him.
“His wife says he was strong, and his sister says he was weak,” he said. “And even if he was murdered, I don’t know what it can have had to do with Zenia Gadney’s murder, except that his wife says there could be a connection.”
“Why does she think that?” Again Hester was confused.
“I feel it’s because she’s desperate,” he confessed. “I can’t think of anything worse than for the person you love most in the world to take their own life, without warning you, and without explaining anything at all as to why, or giving you any chance to help or understand.”
Hester felt an ache of pity for this woman she knew nothing else about. How could happiness be so impossibly fragile? One day you have a home, a place in society, and the only thing that really matters, a companion of heart and mind. Then the next day everything is gone, hideously and without reason. Everything you thought you knew swept away and what’s left only looks like what you had, but it’s empty.
“Hester …?” His voice cut across her thoughts.
“Nor can I. Everything that matters-gone.”
“Yes. Loving is always dangerous.” He gave a bleak smile and touched her hand gently across the table. “As you have told me more than once, the only thing worse is not loving at all.”
At that moment Scuff appeared at the door, looking pleased with himself and holding a book in his hand.
“I finished it,” he announced triumphantly, meeting Hester’s eyes for her approval. Then he looked over toward the stove. “Supper yet?”
“Not yet,” she answered, keeping her face composed with difficulty. “You have chores to do. Then when you’ve finished it’ll be sausages and bubble and squeak.”
His grin was enormous. He glanced at Monk just to be sure for himself that he was all right, then he turned and left. They heard his feet clattering out into the scullery and the backyard to sweep and clean up.
“So much for safety of heart,” Hester said, standing up again. “I’d better put the bubble and squeak on, and get on with the pudding, or it won’t be cooked in time.”
The following morning, Hester visited the office of a man she had known in her nursing days in the army, thirteen years earlier. She had seen him two or three times since then, and she hoped he would remember her.
Dr. Winfarthing was a large man in all respects. He was tall and rotund; his hair was thick, auburn touched now with gray, and flying all over the place. His features were generous and he regarded the world benignly through a pair of spectacles that always looked as if they were about to slide off his nose.
“Of course I remember you, girl,” he said cheerfully. “Best nurse I know, and most trouble. Who have you upset now?”
She took no offense whatever. The remark was perfectly justified, and from him, almost a compliment. When she had returned from the Crimea she had had high and totally unrealistic hopes of reforming the nursing profession. She was impatient with delay, even more so with those who clung to the old because it was familiar, even if it was wrong. When she thought people’s lives were at stake, she had not even tried to be tactful.
“No one just at the moment,” she replied with a rueful smile.
Winfarthing waved expansively to offer her a seat in his spacious, chaotic office. As always it was crowded with books, many of them not even remotely connected with medicine. Indeed, some of them were of poetry, some fairy stories that had amused him or pleased his imagination over the years.
“Should I flatter myself that you have come simply to see how I am?” he asked with a crooked smile. “Ah, this will be good fun-let’s see how will you answer now, without hurting my feelings, but still retaining a semblance of grace.”
“Dr. Winfarthing!” she protested. “I-”
“Need help with something,” he finished for her, still smiling. “Is it medical, or political?”
The question was so accurate, it reminded her just how well they had known each other, and how transparent she was to him.
“I’m not sure,” she said candidly. “Did you know Dr. Joel Lambourn?”
The light vanished from Winfarthing’s face and suddenly it was crumpled and sad, his years sitting heavily on him. “I did,” he replied. “And I liked him. He was a remarkably decent man. You’d have liked him, too, even if he had exasperated you. Although, come to think of it, he probably wouldn’t have. You really aren’t any wiser than he was, poor soul.”
Hester was taken aback. Winfarthing had always been able to do that to her. He was one of the kindest men she knew, yet his perception was scalpel-sharp, and if he liked you, he had no hesitation in speaking frankly. His trust in her was a compliment, as if they were equals, and pretense had no place in their communication.
