Funeral In Blue Part 13

She put down her cup. "As you know, I have engaged Mr. Monk to learn all the truth he can as to the events in Acton Street." It was a rather overdelicate way of phrasing it, and the moment it had pa.s.sed her lips, she wished she had been more frank. "I am afraid that much of what he has discovered is not what either you or I would have wished." Pendreigh's attention upon her was absolute, his eyes unwavering. "What has he discovered, Lady Callandra? Please be candid with me. Elissa was my daughter; I cannot afford to know less than the truth."

"Of course not. I apologise if I seemed to be prevaricating," she said sincerely. "I do not believe for an instant that Dr. Beck has any guilt at all, but since he was her husband, naturally the police have to consider him suspect."

"That is a regrettable comment upon human nature," Pendreigh said with a very slight tremor in his voice. "And more so upon the state of marriage. But I suppose it is true." He ignored his tea, leaning a little forward across the table. It was a feat of elegance that he could do so without looking ungainly. He was a very tall man and his knees were level with its surface. "Please do not try to spare my feelings, Lady Callandra." He tried to smile, and failed. It was a twisted grimace of pain. "I do not believe my son-in-law guilty, but then I have known him for many years. Why do you not?" She drew in her breath to answer truthfully, then realised the danger not only to herself but, by implication, to Kristian also.

"Because I have watched his work in the hospital," she said instead.

"But it is only my opinion, and will carry no weight with the police, or anyone else. I had hoped Mr. Monk would find some person with a strong motive, and perhaps some evidence to implicate them, but so far he has not done, but another possibility has come to my attention." She hated telling him of the gambling. Already she was all but certain he did not know, at least not the extent of it.

Pendreigh put his cup down and pushed it a little further into the middle of the table. His hand was trembling very slightly. "It seems to me quite obvious that the artist's model was the intended victim, and Elissa was simply unfortunate enough to have witnessed the crime.

Surely that is what the police are really pursuing? Any consideration of Kristian must be merely a formality."

"I imagine so. Nevertheless, I would prefer to have forestalled them before this," she answered.

"Exactly what has Monk found?" he asked.

This was the moment she could not avoid. "That Mrs. Beck gambled," she answered, watching his face. "And lost very heavily." She saw his eyes widen and something within him flinch, but so deep it was visible more as a shadow than a movement. But she was convinced in that instant that he had not known. No man could have lied with the skill to blanch the colour from his skin, to convey such pain within, and yet not move at all. "I ... I wish I had not had to tell you," she stumbled on. "But the police are aware of it, and I am afraid it provides a very powerful motive. Many men have killed for less reason than to avoid ruin. It occurred to me that perhaps in desperation to pay debts she may have incurred an enmity..." She drew in her breath. "Somehow..." Did he understand enough not to need the ugly picture detailed?

Pendreigh said nothing. He seemed too stunned to be able to respond.

He stared into the distance, through her, as if seeing ghosts, broken dreams, things he loved taken from him.

"But I saw her regularly over the last year since I moved to London!" he protested, still trying to push the reality from him. "She was just as well dressed as always! She never seemed in any... difficulty!" Callandra wished she could have avoided reason and gone with hope, but there was none that stood the light. "She will have chosen the times when she was winning to call upon you," she pointed out. "With skill and imagination one can appear well dressed. One has friends. There are p.a.w.nshops..." Something died in his face. "I see." The words were a whisper.

"I think she could not help it," Callandra went on gently. She heard herself almost with disbelief. She was defending the woman who had driven Kristian to despair and the shadow of debtors' prison; he was probably on the verge of being blamed for her murder. "Mr. Pendreigh He recalled his attention and turned his eyes to her, but he did not speak.

"Mr. Pendreigh, we must do what we can to help. You have said you do not believe Dr. Beck is guilty. Then someone else must be."

"Yes..." he said, then more abruptly: "Yes ... of course." He focused his attention with difficulty. "What about the artist, Allardyce? I should be loath to think it was he, but it has to be a possibility. Elissa was extremely beautiful..." For a moment his voice faltered, and he made an immense effort to bring it back into control. "Men were fascinated by her. It wasn't just her face, it was a ... a vitality, a love of life, an energy which I never saw in anyone else. Allardyce loved to paint her. Perhaps he wanted more than that, and she refused him. He might have..." He did not finish the thought, but the rest of it was obvious. It did not surprise her that he could not bear to put it into words.

But Monk had told her that Allardyce could account for his time. He had spent the evening at the Bull and Half Moon in Southwark, miles from Acton Street, the other side of the Thames.

"It was not he," she told Pendreigh. "The police can prove that." A sharp frown creased his forehead, making two deep lines like cuts between his brows. Then we are back to the only answer which makes sense... Sarah Mackeson was the intended victim. If the police do not pursue that to the very end then we must employ Monk to do so.

There is something in her life, in her past which has driven a former lover, a rival, a creditor, to quarrel with her in a way which ended in murder. The reason is there! We must find it!"

"I will speak to William, of course," Callandra agreed with a fervour which was to convince herself as much as Pendreigh. "He said that apparently she was a very handsome woman, and her life was a little ..

. haphazard." That was a euphemism she hoped he would understand. She did not wish to speak ill of Sarah Mackeson, and yet she hoped profoundly that the answer was as simple as that.

Pendreigh sighed. There was an unhappiness in him so profound it filled the room with grief more effectively than hanging every picture with crepe would have done, or turning all the mirrors to face to the wall and stopping the clocks.

"Rejection can make people behave irrationally," Callandra went on quietly, 'even far against anything they really wish for or believe.

But remorse afterwards does not undo the act, nor bring back that which has been destroyed." He dropped his head into his hands, hiding his emotion. "No, of course not," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled. "We must save what we can from the tragedy." She was uncertain whether to rise to her feet now, and excuse herself, or if it would be kinder to wait a few moments rather than force him to stand, as courtesy demanded, before he had had time to compose himself.

She was actually hungry, and would like to have eaten more of the cuc.u.mber sandwiches, but it seemed an oddly heartless thing to do, and she left them. Instead she sat straight-backed, upright on the edge of the chair, waiting until he should be ready to bid her goodbye with the kind of dignity he could afterwards remember without embarra.s.sment.

* * * Monk and Runcorn were together in Runcorn's office the following day.

They were both tired and irritable after spending a morning and early afternoon ploughing through steady rain from one gambling establishment to another in the path of Elissa Beck, and people like her, both men and women. The addiction to the excitement of chance and the small element of skill involved made no discrimination of age or wealth, man or woman. There was something in certain characters that once they had tasted the thrill of winning, could not let it go, even when part of them was perfectly aware of the destruction it was causing. They saw their winnings as larger than they were, their losses as smaller, and always there was the hope that the next turn of the card would redeem it all.

"I don't understand it!" Runcorn said desperately, staring at his sodden boots where he had been obliged to step in the gutter to pa.s.s a group of women talking to each other and oblivious of pa.s.sers-by. "It's like a kind of madness! Why do people do it?" Monk could understand it, at least in part enough to feel a brush of fear at how easily he might have become one of them if his path in life had been a little different.

"A need to feel alive," he said, and then, seeing the disgust and incomprehension in Runcorn's face, wished he had held his tongue.

"Vermin!" Runcorn said savagely, yanking his boot off and ma.s.saging his cold, wet foot.

Monk looked up sharply, then realised Runcorn was referring to the debt-collectors, not the gamblers.

"Wish we could catch a few of them and make a charge stick!" Runcorn went on. "I'd like to see 'em in the Coldbath Fields, on the treadmill, or pa.s.sing the shot!" He was referring to the worst prison in London and the habitual punishments of walking inside a turning machine, where, in order to remain upright, a man had constantly to keep putting one foot in front of the other on a step which gave beneath his weight, spinning the wheel and pitching him forward again.

Pa.s.sing the shot was a useless exercise of bending to pick up a cannonball, straightening the back, pa.s.sing it to the next man who put it down again. One could be forced to do it for hours until every muscle ached and movement was pain. It was all utterly purposeless, except to break the spirit.

"Yes," Monk agreed with feeling. "So would I. But we haven't found a jot of evidence to suggest any debt-collector went after her. In fact, we can't even find anyone who'll admit she owed them. She got the money from somewhere ... or someone." Runcorn looked up from the drawer where he was searching for dry socks.

"You believe them?" he asked.

Monk did not need to think about it, he already had. "Yes. Not their words, their lack of fear or anger. The emotion isn't there. If anything, they're disappointed to lose a good customer. They thought she was worth more." Runcorn pursed his lips and pulled out one thick woollen sock, then another. "That's what I thought too. What about Sarah Mackeson?" Monk tried to read Runcorn's face the doubt, the hope, the anger in it until Runcorn turned away, pulling on his socks one at a time.

"We've found nothing to suggest anyone cared enough to kill her," Monk said miserably. He would rather have said there was pa.s.sion, envy, fear, anything better than indifference. The most feeling she awoke seemed to have been in Allardyce, because she was beautiful to paint.

The only other person who cared was Mrs. Clark.

"I wish we knew which of them was killed first!" Runcorn said, slamming the drawer shut. "But the surgeon can't tell us a d.a.m.n thing." Monk sat on the edge of the desk with his hands in his pockets. He turned over in his mind what possible evidence there could be that would tell them which woman had died first. It would be no use at all going back to the doctor. All he could say was that they had died in the same manner, and common sense said they had been killed by the same person. Only physical facts would make a difference.

Runcorn was watching him. "We never found the earring," he said, as if following Monk's thoughts. It was disconcerting to have him so perceptive.

"Well, if it got caught in his clothing, whoever it was, he'd have thrown it away," Monk replied. "It wasn't on the floor." Runcorn said nothing, and silence filled the room again.

"The ear bled," Monk said aft era while, 'so we know the earring was ripped off in the struggle." Runcorn climbed to his feet, looking beyond Monk to the rain streaming down the window. "Do you want to go to Acton Street again?" he asked.

"We can try again. If we could prove Sarah Mackeson died first it would change everything." Monk stood up also. "It's worth trying. And we could ask Allardyce how often he saw Max Niemann, and when."

"Think he could be involved?" Runcorn said hopefully. "Lovers' quarrel? Nothing to do with the doctor?" His voice sank at the end.

If Elissa and Max Niemann had been lovers that was more motive for Kristian than ever. And Kristian had lied about where he was, even if unintentionally.

But then Niemann had lied to Kristian also, by omission, allowing Kristian to believe that the funeral was the first time he had been to London in years.

"Can you send men to find out where Niemann stayed?" Monk asked, collecting his coat from the stand. "If he stayed at the same place each time he was in London, we can see how often he was here."

"You think he paid her debts?" Runcorn said quickly. His face was pinched with unhappiness. "At a price, maybe?"

"Wouldn't be the first woman who felt she had to sell herself to pay her debts," Monk replied, walking to the door and opening it. The thought sickened him, but it was pointless denying its possibility. As they pa.s.sed the desk Runcorn gave the sergeant instructions to send men searching the hotels for where Niemann had stayed.

Monk and Runcorn set out in the direction of Acton Street, intending to pick up a hansom on the way, but they were no more than two hundred yards from Allardyce's studio when they finally saw one that was free.

It was not worth the effort or the fare. Runcorn shrugged in disgust and waved it away.

Allardyce was busy, and irritated to see them, but he knew better than to refuse them admittance.

"What is it now?" he said with ill grace.

Runcorn walked into the studio and looked around, his coat dripping water on the floor. Allardyce was working at a picture on the easel; his s.h.i.+rt was smeared with paint where he had wiped his hands.

"You told us you saw Niemann with Mrs. Beck a number of times," Monk began, 'before the night she was killed."

"Yes. They were friends. I never saw them quarrel." Allardyce looked at him challengingly, his blue eyes clear and hard.

"How often altogether, then or earlier?"

"Earlier?"

"You heard me. Did he come over from Vienna just once, or several times?"

"Two or three that I know of."

"When?"

"I don't remember." Allardyce shrugged. "Once in the spring, once in the summer."

"You've moved things!" Runcorn accused, pulling at the sofa. "It used to be over there!" Allardyce glared at him. "I have to live here!" he said bitterly. "Do you think I want it exactly as it was? I need the light. And wherever I live I can't get rid of the memories and I can't bring them back, but I don't have to keep it just as it was. I'll have the sofa and the carpets any d.a.m.n way I like."

"Put them back," Runcorn ordered.

"Go to h.e.l.l!" Allardyce responded.

"Just a minute!" Monk stepped forward and almost collided with Runcorn. "We can work out where the bodies lay. Look at the line of the windows, they haven't moved." He faced Allardyce. "Put the carpets where they were now!" Allardyce remained motionless. "What for? What have you found?"

"Nothing yet. It's only an idea. Do you know which woman died first?"

"No, of course Allardyce stopped, suddenly realising what he meant.

"You think someone might have killed Sarah, and Elissa was an accidental witness? Who?" His face was full of disbelief. "She never did anyone any harm. A few silly quarrels, like everybody."

"Maybe she learned something she wasn't meant to know?" Monk suggested.

"Put the carpets back!" Runcorn repeated.

Silently Allardyce obeyed, moving them with Monk's help. They were neither large nor heavy and he was almost finished when Monk noticed that just under the fringed edge of one of there was a knot hole in the pine boards. "I didn't see that before!"

"That's why I put the edges there," Allardyce pointed out.

Monk put his foot on the fringe and scuffed it up, showing the hole again. He glanced at Runcorn and saw the flash of understanding in his eyes. "Get me a chisel or one of those heavy knives," he ordered Allardyce.

"What for? What is it?"

"Do as you're told!" Monk snapped.

Allardyce obeyed, pa.s.sing him a small claw-headed hammer, and a moment later there was a splintering of wood and the screech of nails prying loose as the board with the knot hole came up. Lying in the dust below, glinting in the light, was a delicate gold earring, the loop stained with blood.

"That was Elissa's," Allardyce said aft era moment's utter silence. "I painted it, I know." His voice cracked. "But this is where Sarah was lying! It doesn't make sense."

"Yes, it does," Monk said quietly. "It means Elissa was killed first.

The earring was torn off when he put his arm around her neck... and broke it. It probably caught in his sleeve and in her struggle was ripped from her. He didn't notice it fall. Then when Sarah came out of one of the other rooms and saw Elissa dead, he killed her too, and she fell onto the floor, over where the earring had disappeared." Allardyce rubbed his hand across his face, leaving a smear of green paint on his cheek. "Poor Sarah," he said softly. "All she ever did was look beautiful. And be in the wrong place." Runcorn pushed his hands deep into his pockets and stared at Monk. He didn't say anything, but there was no need. The time had come when they could avoid it no longer. It was not Sarah who was the intended victim; it had been no more to do with her than mischance. It was not gamblers nor debt-collectors. Max Niemann's visits to London, his meetings with Elissa that Kristian knew nothing of were more motive, not less. Even the paid debts made it worse. Either it was the very last of Kristian's money or, uglier even than that, it was money Elissa had sold herself for.

"I'm going to the hospital," Runcorn said wearily. "You don't have to come if you don't want to."

"I'll come," Monk replied. He bent and picked up the delicate earring and dropped it into Runcorn's hand. "You can put your carpets any d.a.m.n way you like, Mr. Allardyce, but if you alter that floorboard I'll gaol you as an accomplice. Do you understand?" Allardyce did not answer but stood, head bowed, in the middle of the floor as Monk and Runcorn went out and down the steps back into the rain.

Chapter Eight.

When Monk left the house early in the morning, almost before his footsteps died away and Hester heard the front door close, her mind was filled again with the fear that Charles was involved in Elissa's death.

It loomed so sharp and painful she would almost rather the unsigned letter Charles had left with her were a love letter from some man than proof that it was Elissa who had introduced Imogen to the gambling which had grown into a rage like a destroying fire.

She had to know. As long as it was still unresolved every nightmare was a possibility. And yet it was also possible that the note was not from Elissa, and the two women had never met, and whatever had made Charles lie to Hesterabout having driven down Drury Lane was perfectly innocent, at least as far as Elissa was concerned. It could be simply embarra.s.sing, a little foolish.

As soon as Mrs. Patrick, her housekeeper, arrived, Hester explained that she had an urgent errand to run. With the letter in her reticule, she put on her hat and coat and went out into the rain. It was a considerable way from Grafton Street to the Hampstead Hospital to ask Kristian for any piece of Elissa's handwriting to compare.

All the long journey she sat and twisted her hands together, trying to keep her racing imagination from picturing Imogen and Elissa, Charles's fury when he found out, his incomprehension, and all the violence and tragedy that could have flowed from it. She argued one way, and then the other, hope to terror, and back again. It was so easy to let the mind race away, creating pictures, building pain.

By the time she reached the hospital and alighted she was so tense she stumbled over the kerb of the pavement and regained her balance only just in time to prevent herself falling. This was ridiculous! She had faced battlefields! Why did it strike into the heart of her that her brother might have killed Elissa Beck?

Because whoever it was had killed Sarah Mackeson as well. There was an element of justice in a crime of desperation to save someone you love from a force of destruction. But killing Sarah was to save himself, an instinctive resort to violence, at the cost of someone else's life.

She ran up the steps, all but b.u.mping into a student doctor coming down. He scowled at her and muttered something under his breath. She stopped and asked the porter if Dr. Beck was in, and was told with a nod of sympathy that he was. She thanked him and hurried down the corridor to the patients' waiting room where there were already three people sitting huddled in their pain and anxiety, now and then talking to each other to ease the imagination and the pa.s.sing of time.

Hester considered whether to use the prerogative of interrupting, which she could exercise as someone who worked in the hospital. Then she looked at their faces, strained already with hards.h.i.+p far beyond her own, and decided to wait.

She also talked, to fill the time, learning something of their lives and telling them a little of her own, until at last it was her turn, and there were seven more people waiting after her.

Kristian was startled. "Hester? You're not ill? You look very pale," he said with concern. Considering his own ashen face and hollow eyes, at any other time the remark would have held its element of irony.

"No, thank you," she said quickly. "I'm just worried, like all of us." There was no point in being evasive. "I have a letter and I need to compare the handwriting in order to know who sent it, because there is no signature. I am hoping I am mistaken, but I must be certain. Have you anything that Elissa wrote? It doesn't matter what it is, a laundry list would do." A shadow of humour crossed his eyes, and vanished. "Elissa didn't write laundry lists. I expect I can think of something, but it will be at home, not here."