Defend and Betray (42 page)

“You don't think he saw something to do with the murder, do you?” Monk asked as casually as he could.

Diggins shook his head. “I can't think what that might be, sir, that he wouldn't have repeated it, like it would be his duty to. Anyway, it was long before the murder. It was early in the evening, before they even went in to dinner. Nothing untoward had happened then.”

“Was it before Mrs. Erskine went upstairs?”

“Now that I wouldn't know, sir. I only know young Robert came out of the kitchen and was on his way up the back stairs on an errand for Mrs. Braithwaite, she's the housekeeper, when he crossed the passage and near bumped into General Carlyon, and stood there like a creature paralyzed and let all the linens he'd fetched fall in a heap on the floor, and turned on his heel and went back into the kitchen like the devil was after him. All the linens had to be sorted out and some o' them ironed again. The laundress wasn't best pleased, I can tell you.” He shrugged. “And he wouldn't say a word to anyone, just went white and very quiet. Perhaps he was took ill, or something. Young people can be veiy odd.”

“A drummer boy, you said?” Monk confirmed. “He'd be used to seeing some terrible things, no doubt...”

“I daresay. I never bin in the army myself, sir, but I should imagine so. But good training. Given him his obedience, and the respect for his elders. He's a good lad. He won't never do that again, I'm sure.”

“No. No, 'course not.” Thoughts raced through his mind as to how he could approach the boy—what he could say— the denials, the desperate embarrassment and the boy's shame. With sickening doubt as to the wisdom of it, where his duty or his honor lay, he made up his mind. “Thank you very much, Mr. Diggins. You have been most helpful, I appreciate it.”

“No-more than-my duty, Mr. Monk.”

Monk found himself outside in the street a few moments later, still torn with indecision. A drummer boy who had served with Carlyon, and then come face-to-face with him in the Furnivals' house on the night of the murder, and fled in— what? Terror, panic, shame? Or just clumsiness?

No—he had been a soldier, although then little more than a child. He would not have dropped his laundry and fled simply because he bumped into a guest.

Should Monk have pursued it? To what end? So Rathbone could get him on the stand and strip his shame bare before the court? What would it prove? Only that Carlyon was indeed an abuser of children. Could they not do that anyway, without destroying this child and making him relive the abuse in words—and in public? It was something Alexandra knew nothing of anyway, and could not have affected her actions.

It was the other abuser they needed to find, and to prove. Was it Maxim Furnival? Or Peverell Erskine? Both thoughts were repulsive to him.

He increased his pace, walking along Albany Street, and within moments was at Carlyon House. He had no excitement in the chase, only an empty, sick feeling in his stomach.

All the family were at the trial, either waiting to give evidence or in the gallery watching the proceedings. He went to the back door and asked if he might speak to Miss Buchan. It stuck in his throat to say it, but he sent a message that he was a friend of Miss Hester Latterly's and had come on an errand for her.

After only ten minutes kicking his heels in the laundry room he was finally admitted to the main house and conducted up three flights of stairs to Miss Buchan's small sitting room with its dormer windows over the roofs.

“Yes, Mr. Monk?” she said dubiously.

He looked at her with interest. She was nearer seventy than sixty, very thin, with a sharp, intelligent face, long nose, quick faded eyes, and the fine fresh complexion that goes with auburn hair, although it was now gray, almost white. She was a hot-tempered woman of great courage, and it showed in her face. He found it easy to believe she had acted as Hester had told him.

“I am a friend of Miss Latterly's,” he said again, establishing himself before he launched into his difficult mission.

“So you told Agnes,” she said skeptically, looking him up and down, from his polished leather boots and his long straight legs to his beautifully cut jacket and his smooth, hard-boned face with its gray eyes and sarcastic mouth. She did not try to impress him. She knew from his look, something in his bearing, that he had not had a governess himself. There was no nursery respect in him, no memories of another woman like her who had ruled his childhood.

He found himself coloring, knowing his ordinary roots were as visible to her as if he had never lost his provincial accent and his working-class manners. Ironically, his very lack of fear had betrayed him. His invulnerability had made him vulnerable. All his careful self-improvement hid nothing.

“Well?” she said impatiently. “What do you want? You haven't come this far just to stand here staring at me!”

“No.” He collected himself rapidly. “No, Miss Buchan. I'm a detective. I'm trying to help Mrs. Alexandra Carlyon.” He watched her face to see how she reacted.

“You're wasting your time,” she said bleakly, sudden pain obliterating both her curiosity and her humor.”There's nothing anyone can do for her, poor soul.”

“Or for Cassian?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed; she looked at him in silence for several seconds. He did not turn away but met her gaze squarely.

“What would you be trying to do for him?” she said at last.

“See it doesn't happen to him anymore.”

She stood still, her shoulders stiff, her eyes on his.

“You can't,” she said at last. “He'll remain in this house, with his grandfather. He has no one else now.”

“He has his sisters.”

She pursed her lips slowly, a new thought turning over in her mind.

“He could go to Sabella,” he suggested tentatively.

“You'd never prove it,” she said almost under her breath, her eyes wide. They both knew what she was referring to; there was no need to speak the words. The old colonel was in their vision as powerfully as if some aura of him were there, like a pungent smoke after a man and his cigar or pipe” have passed by.

“I might,” he said slowly. “Can I speak to Cassian?”

“I don't know. Depends what you want to say. I'll not let you upset him—God knows the poor child has enough to bear, and worse to come.”

“I won't do more than I have to,” Monk pressed. “And you will be there all the time.”

“I most certainly will,” she said darkly. “Well, come on then, don't stand there wasting time. What has to be done had best be done quickly.”

Cassian was alone in his own room. There were no school-books visible, nor any other improving kind of occupation, and Monk judged Miss Buchan had weighed the relative merits of forced effort to occupy his mind and those of allowing him to think as he wished and permit the thoughts which had to lie below the surface to come through and claim the attention they would sooner or later have to have. Monk approved her decision.

Cassian looked around from the window where he was gazing. His face was pale but he looked perfectly composed. One could only guess what emotions were tearing at him beneath. Clutched in his fingers was a small gold watch fob. Monk could just see the yellow glint as he turned his hand.

“Mr. Monk would like to talk to you for a while,” Miss Buchan said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I don't know what he has to say, but it might be important for your mother, so pay him attention and tell him all the truth you know.”

“Yes, Miss Buchan,” the boy said obediently, his eyes on Monk, solemn but not yet frightened. Perhaps all his fear was centered in the courtroom at the Old Bailey and the secrets and the pain which would be torn apart and exposed there, and the decisions that would be made. His voice was flat and he looked at Monk warily.

Monk was not used to children, except the occasional urchin or working child his normal routine brought him into contact with. He did not know how to treat Cassian, who had so much of childhood in his protected, privileged daily life, and nothing at all in his innermost person.

“Do you know Mr. Furnival?” he asked bluntly, and felt clumsy in asking, but small conversation was not his milieu or his skill, even with adults.

“No sir,” Cassian answered straightaway.

“You have never met him?” Monk was surprised.

“No sir.” Cassian swallowed. “I know Mrs. Furnival.”

It seemed irrelevant. “Do you.” Monk acknowledged it only as a courtesy. He looked at Miss Buchan. “Do you know Mr. Furnival?”

“No I do not.”

Monk turned back to Cassian. “But you know your sister Sabella's husband, Mr. Pole?” he persisted, although he doubted Fenton Pole was the man he needed.

“Yes sir.” There was no change in Cassian's expression except for a slight curiosity, perhaps because the questions seemed so pointless.

Monk looked at the boy's hands, still grasping the piece of gold.

“What is that?”

Cassian's fingers closed more tightly on it and there was a faint pink color fresh in his cheeks. Very slowly he held it out for Monk to take.

Monk picked it up. The watch fob opened up to be a tiny pair of scales, such as the blind figure of Justice carries. A chill touched him inside.

“That's very handsome,” he said aloud. “A present?”

Cassian swallowed and said nothing.

“From your uncle Peverell?” Monk asked as casually as he could.

For a moment no one moved or spoke, then very slowly Cassian nodded.

“When did he give it to you?” Monk turned it over as if admiring it further.

“I don't remember,” Cassian replied, and Monk knew he was lying.

Monk handed it back and Cassian took it quickly, closing his hand over it again and then putting it out of sight in his pocket.

Monk pretended to forget it, walking away from the window towards the small table where, from the ruler, block of paper, and jar of pencils, it was obvious Cassian did his schoolwork since coming to Carlyon House. He felt Miss Buchan watching him, waiting to intervene if he trespassed too far, and he also felt Cassian tense and his eyes follow him. A moment later he came over and stood at Monk's elbow, his face wary, eyes troubled.

Monk looked at the table again, at the other items. There was a pocket dictionary, a small book of mathematical tables, a French grammar and a neat folding knife. At first he thought it was for sharpening pencils, then he saw what an elegant thing it was, far too sophisticated for a child. He reached out for it, out of the corner of his eye saw Cassian tense, his hand jerk upward, as if to stop him, then freeze motionless.

Monk picked up the knife and opened it. It was fine-bladed, almost like a razor, the sort a man uses to cut a quill to repair the nib. The initials p.e. were engraved on the handle.

“Very nice,” Monk said with a half smile, turning to Cassian. “Another gift from Mr. Erskine?”

“Yes—no!” Cassian stopped. “Yes.” His chin tightened, his lower lip came forward, as if to defy argument.

“Very generous of him,” Monk commented, feeling sick inside. “Anything else he gave you?”

“No.” But his eyes swiveled for an instant to his jacket, hanging on the hook behind the door, and Monk could just see the end of a colored silk handkerchief poking out from an inside pocket.

“He must be very fond of you,” he said, hating himself for the hypocrisy.

Cassian said nothing.

Monk turned back to Miss Buchan.

“Thank you,” he said wearily. “There isn't a great deal more to ask.”

She looked doubtful. It was plain she did not see any meaning to the questions about the gifts; it had not occurred to her to suspect Peverell Erskine. Perhaps it was just as well. He stayed a few moments longer, asking other things as they came to his mind, times and people, journeys, visitors, nothing that mattered, but it disguised the gifts and their meaning.

Then he said good-bye to the child, thanked Miss Buchan, and left Carlyon House, his knowledge giving him no pleasure. The sunlight and noise of the street seemed far away, the laughter of two women in pink-and-white frills, parasols twirling, sounding tinny in his ears, the horses' hooves loud, the hiss of carriage wheels sibilant, the cry of a peddler a feraway irritant, like the buzzing of a bluebottle fly.

* * * * *

Hester arrived home from the trial weary and with very little to tell Major Tiplady. The day's evidence had been largely what anyone might have foreseen, first Peverell Erskine saying, with something that looked vaguely like reluctance, what an excellent man Thaddeus Carlyon had been.

Rathbone had not tried to shake him, nor to question his veracity nor the accuracy of his observations.

Next Damaris Erskine had been asked about her brother, and had echoed her husband's sentiments and seconded his observations. Rathbone had not asked her anything else at all, but had reserved the right to recall her at a later time, should that prove to be in the interests of the defense.

There had been no revelations. The crowd was growing more intense in their anger towards Alexandra. The general was the kind of man they most liked to admire—heroic, upright, a man of action with no dangerous ideas or unnerving sense of humor, no opinions they would have to disapprove of or feel guilty about understanding, a good family man whose wife had most hideously turned on him for no sane reason. Such a woman should be hanged, to discourage all other women from such violence, and the sooner the better. It was murmured all through the day, and said aloud when finally the court rose for the weekend.

It was a discouraging day, and she came back to Great Titchfield Street tired and frightened by the inevitability of events, and the hatred and incomprehension in the air. By the time she had recounted it all to Major Tiplady she was close to tears. Even he could find no hope in the situation; the best he could offer was an exhortation to courage, the greatest of all courage, to continue to fight with all one has even when victory seems beyond possibility.

* * * * *

The following day a crisp wind blew from the east but the sky was sharp blue and flowers were fluttering in the wind. It was Saturday, and there was no court sitting, so there was brief respite. Hester woke with a sense not
of
ease but of greater tension because she would rather have continued with it now that it was begun. This was only prolonging the pain and the helplessness. It would have been a blessing were there anything more she could do, but although she had been awake, turning and twisting, thrashing it over and over in her mind, she could think of nothing. They knew the truth of what had happened to Alexandra, what she had done, and why—exactly, passionately and irrevocably why. She had not known there was another man, let alone two others, or who they were.