Funeral in Blue (10 page)

A little later Hester was standing a yard or two from Pendreigh. He was a remarkably striking man. Even in repose his face had power in it, a balance of nose and brow. If he were aware of other people looking at him he gave no sign of it, yet even in his present grief he did not neglect his duty as host.

“May I offer you something more, Mrs. Monk?” He had remembered who she was.

“No thank you, Mr. Pendreigh,” she declined. She wanted to say something to draw him into conversation, and yet the tragedy which had brought her there was one which inner decency treated in silence. “You must be very tired of trying to think of courteous things to say to people.” She smiled impulsively. “I imagine you would far rather be alone, and yet custom requires you do all this.” She half gestured to the room full of people all talking, nodding discreetly, murmuring meaningless words no one was really listening to, and drinking Pendreigh’s excellent wine. They all wore black; the only difference was in the cut and the fabric, some denser than others, some softer and more exquisitely cut.

He looked at her for a moment as if he actually saw her. The spell of retreat was broken, and a bottomless pain filled his face. “Actually, I’m not sure,” he said quietly. “I think this has a . . . a sort of comfort about it. It’s . . . ghastly . . . and yet perhaps it’s better than being alone.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have spoken so intrusively. I beg your pardon.”

The formal smile was back again. “You don’t need to, Mrs. Monk. Forgive me, I need to bid Mr. and Mrs. Harbinger good-bye. They seem to be about to leave.” He gave a slight shrug as if he did not know what he wished to say, and with the faintest bow, he left.

Hester turned to look for Kristian, and saw him standing alone by the door into the withdrawing room. His face was set in a blank, inner concentration that isolated him. He looked utterly confused, as if he had lost sight of the duty Pendreigh strove so hard to fulfill.

Then an elderly woman approached him, and he recalled his obligation, forcing himself to smile at her and say something trivial and polite.

Half an hour later, Hester and Monk excused themselves, but all the way home Hester wondered why the reception had been at Elissa’s father’s house and not at her husband’s, which was, after all, where she had lived for the last thirteen years.

“Perhaps Pendreigh was afraid Kristian would not be well enough to carry the occasion himself,” Monk suggested.

She looked sideways at him in the hansom as they moved through the streets muffled by fog, passing from the thick, yellow-gray density which caught in the throat and out into a paler, thinner patch where the light broke through and she could see the black lattice of branches above. There was a pallor of tiredness in his face, and he was staring ahead as if half his attention were in his own thoughts.

“Have you any idea who killed her?” she asked.

“No,” he answered without turning.

“But you don’t think Runcorn will imagine it was Kristian, do you?” she pressed.

The hansom jolted to a stop at the intersection, then started forward again. The vehicles passing in the opposite direction were visible only as shadows in the gloom.

“He has to consider it,” he replied. “We don’t know yet if Elissa Beck was the intended victim or simply an unfortunate witness.”

“What do you know about the other woman?”

“Very little. She was an artists’ model, entirely for Allardyce over the last few years. She was in her middle thirties, already past her prime for such a job. Runcorn’s got men trying to find out as much as possible about her, lovers, anyone to whom she owed money. Nothing that means anything yet.”

“But surely she was more likely to be the intended victim, and Elissa Beck only a witness?”

“Perhaps.”

She wanted to pursue it, but she saw the tight line of his lips and knew it would serve no purpose. She almost had to bite her tongue to keep it still. She had found none of the comfort or assurance she expected. Why had he not said at least that if Runcorn were stupid enough to suspect Kristian, then Monk would prove him wrong? She wanted to ask him, but she knew she did not want the answer.

In the late afternoon Monk went out again, without saying where to. He had not changed out of his best black, almost as if for him the funeral were not over.

Hester waited an hour, trying to make up her mind, then, also still in her black, she took a hansom and gave the driver Kristian’s address in Haverstock Hill. She did not know if he had returned home, but she felt compelled to seek him. Why had he not held the reception in Elissa’s own house? Why had he allowed Fuller Pendreigh to take control of so much? The whole of the funeral arrangements was out of character for the man she knew, or thought she did. She had worked with him as Monk had not. The black feathermen, the ostrich plumes, the hearse and four, were far from the simple dignity of life and death as he had known it in the hospital or the fever wards they had set up in Limehouse. He was a man too used to the reality of physical death to wrap it in ceremony, and too genuine in his emotion. His pity and his grief needed no display to others.

Was Elissa’s death really so different, so shattering, that he had changed utterly? Or had Hester misread him all the time? Had there always been a ritualistic high churchman beneath the uncluttered man she had known?

It seemed an endless journey through the fog-shrouded streets, but eventually she reached the house and requested the driver to wait while she ascertained that Kristian was there. She had no intention of having to search for another cab were he not. She rang the doorbell three times and was about to leave when Kristian himself opened it. His face looked eerie and his eyes enormous in the light from the street lamp. The hall behind him was in darkness, except for a single gas bracket burning low at the foot of the stairs.

“Hester? Is something wrong?” There was an edge of alarm in his voice.

“No,” she said quickly. “No one is ill. I came because I was concerned for you. I barely had the opportunity to speak with you earlier.”

“That is most thoughtful of you, but I assure you I am merely tired.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips, but there was no echo in his eyes. “It is an effort to accept people’s sympathies graciously and think of something to say in return which is not so bland as to be a kind of rebuff. I think we are all reminded of our own losses. A hundred other griefs come far too close to us at such times.”

“May I dismiss my hansom?” It was an oblique way of inviting herself in.

He hesitated.

She blushed to do it, but with her back to the light he could not have seen. “Thank you,” she accepted before he spoke, and turned around to go back and pay the driver.

He was left with no alternative but to invite her in. He led the way to a small morning room where he reached up and turned the gas a little higher. She saw that the room was pleasantly furnished. There were three armchairs, all odd, but of similar rusty shades, lending an illusion of warmth which in fact was not there. The old Turkish rug was full of reds and blues. The fire did not appear to have been used recently. There was a worn embroidered screen in front of it and no poker, coal tongs or shovel in the hearth.

Kristian looked ill at ease, but he invited her to sit down.

She accepted, beginning to realize just how crass she had been in forcing her way in. It was inexcusably intrusive. She had allowed her concern to rob her of all sensitivity. She did not know him nearly well enough to be placing herself there.

What could she possibly say to redeem the situation?

Honesty—it would either make her actions excusable or condemn her beyond recall. She plunged in. “William is working with Superintendent Runcorn to try to find out who is responsible for this. They loathe each other, but they both want to know the truth enough to bury their feelings for the time being.”

Kristian’s face was almost expressionless as he sat opposite her. Was it from exhaustion at the end of one of the worst days of his life, and was he too in debt to old friendships to throw her out, as most men would have done in the circumstances? Or was he really concealing a very different self he did not wish her to see, more particularly did not wish her to report back to the clever, perceptive, ruthless Monk, who never let go of a case, no matter who was destroyed by the truth?

An icy fear gripped her for Callandra, and she was ashamed of it. She knew Kristian better than that.

“Kristian, was Elissa very religious?”

“What?” He looked totally startled, then the dull color spread up his cheeks, but he offered no explanation.

“The funeral was very High Church.” She knew she was hurting him, although not how.

“That was my father-in-law’s wish,” he said. He was not looking directly at her but somewhere a trifle to her left.

She was aware of feeling cold. The room was too chilly for comfort. Surely he had been sitting somewhere else when she had rung the doorbell. Was he keeping her there in the hope that the cold would persuade her to leave? If so, he had forgotten most of what he had learned about her. Did he really not remember the long, exhausting nights of labor and despair they and Callandra had spent together in Limehouse?

“And you conceded to it?” she asked with a lift of surprise.

“He is deeply grieved!” he replied a trifle sharply. “If it comforts him it does no harm, Hester.” It was a reproof, and she felt its sting.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “It is very generous of you. It did not seem your way, and it is an enormous expense.”

Now it was his turn to blush painfully. It startled her to see it. She had no idea what she had said to provoke it. He was obviously acutely embarrassed. He looked down at his hands as he answered. “None of it is my way, but if it helps him to go through the ritual, how could I deny him that? They were unusually close. She admired him intensely.” He raised his eyes to meet hers at last. “He had great physical courage also, you know? When he was still little more than a boy he was a mountaineer. There was an accident, and at great risk to his own life, he rescued the three other members of his party. Climbing was very fashionable then, and the incident became well-known. One of the men he rescued wrote a book about it.” He half smiled. “I think in a way Elissa was trying to live up to him.”

In spite of herself, Hester found her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He shrugged and shook his head a little.

“Was that why you allowed him to host the funeral meal also?” she asked.

He looked away again. “In part. They are a Liverpool family, not London. He has only been here a year or so, but he has many friends here, people I don’t know, and he wished them to be invited. As you saw, a great number came.”

Without thinking, she gazed around the room. Even in the meager light of the one lamp, she could see it was shabby. The fabric on the arms of the chairs was worn where hands and elbows rested. There was a track of faded color across the carpet from the door to each of the chairs. This was a room as one might furnish for the servants to sit in during the brief times free from their duties.

She looked again at Kristian, and saw with a rush of horror that his eyes were hot with shame. Why had he brought her to this room? Surely any other room would be better? Was it nothing to do with desiring her to leave? Was it conceivable . . . She stared at him, and a flood of understanding opened up between them. “The rest of the house?” she said in almost a whisper.

He looked down at the floor. “This is the best,” he answered. “Apart from the hall and Elissa’s bedroom. The rest is empty.”

She was stunned, ashamed for herself and for him because she had exposed something immeasurably private. At the same time it was incomprehensible. Kristian worked harder than any other man she knew. Even Monk did not work consistently as long. A great deal of it was done without payment, she knew that from Callandra, who was very familiar with the hospital’s finances, but his ordinary hours were rewarded like any other doctor’s.

It flickered through her mind that he could even have given certain things away, but that would have been a noble thing to do. He would have looked her in the face and said it with pride, not down at the floor in silent misery.

“What happened?” She said the words hoarsely, conscious of a terrible intrusion. Had Elissa not been murdered, she would never have deepened such a pain by seeking explanation, but like probing for a bullet in torn flesh, it might be the only way towards healing.

“Elissa gambled,” he said simply. “It was only a little to begin with, but lately it became so she couldn’t help it.”

“Ggambled?” She felt as if she had been struck. Her mind staggered, trying to retain balance. “Gambled?” she repeated pointlessly.

“It became a compulsion.” His voice was flat, without expression. “At first it was just a little excitement, then, when she won, it took hold of her. Then it went on, even when she began to lose. You think the next time you will make it up again. Reason doesn’t have any part in it. In the end, all you think about is the next chance to test your luck, to feel the excitement in the mind, the blood beating as you wait for the card, or the dice, or whatever it is.”

She looked around the room, her throat tightening in misery for the emptiness of it. “But it can cost you everything,” she said, her voice choking in spite of herself. Anger boiled inside her at the futility of it. She turned to face him. “And you can’t ever win unless somebody else loses.”

This time his eyes did not waver. He was not evading the truth anymore, and there was a mark of defiance in him. “I know. If there were no real danger, no loss, it wouldn’t make the heart go faster and the stomach knot inside. If you are a real gambler, you must risk more than you can afford to lose. I don’t think it was even the winning that mattered anymore; it was the defying of fate and walking away.”

But she had not. She had lost. It had taken from her the warmth and beauty of her home, then even the necessities of it, and it had cost her husband grief, exhaustion and the comfort of a home he had labored to provide, and a shame that was almost insupportable. All social life had been swept away. He could not accept an invitation from anyone, because he could not return it. He was cut off, isolated, and surely terrified of ever-increasing debt he would not be able to meet. This would become public disgrace, perhaps eventually even the utter despair of debtor’s prison, as other bills of life could not be met and creditors closed in, angry and vengeful.