Funeral in Blue (7 page)

“To fight for?” Monk said curiously. It was an odd word to use.

Kristian met his eyes. “I met her in 1848,” he said softly. “We were all caught up in the revolution.”

“Is that where you lived then?”

“Yes. I was born in Bohemia, but my father was Viennese, and we had returned there. I was working in one of the hospitals and I knew students of all sorts, not just medical. All over Europe—Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Venice, even in Hungary—there was a great hope of new freedoms, a spirit of courage in the air. But of course, to us Vienna seemed to be the heart of it.”

“And Mrs. . . .”

“Elissa von Leibnitz,” Kristian supplied. “Yes, she was passionate for the cause of liberty. I knew no one with more courage, more daring to risk everything for victory.” He stopped. Monk could see in his face that he was reliving those days, sharp and fresh as if they were only just past. There was softness in his eyes, and pain. “She had a brighter spirit than anyone else. She could make us laugh . . . and hope . . .” He stopped again, and this time he turned away from them, hiding his face.

Monk glanced at Runcorn and saw an instant of pity so naked it stunned him. It did not belong to the man he thought he knew. It felt intrusive for him to have seen it. Then it was gone and nothing but embarrassment remained, and an anger for being forced to feel something he did not wish to, a confusion because things were not as he had supposed, and not easy. He rushed into speech to cover the silence and his own awkwardness. “Were you both involved in the revolutions in Europe then, Dr. Beck?”

“Yes.” Kristian straightened up, lifting his head a little, then turned around slowly to face Runcorn. “We fought against those who led the tyranny. We tried to overthrow it and win some freedom for ordinary people, a right to read and write as they believed. As you know, we failed.”

Runcorn cleared his throat. The politics of foreigners were not his concern. His business was crime there in London, and he wanted to remain on ground he understood. “So you came home . . . at least you came here, and Mrs. Beck . . . Mrs. . . . what did you say?”

“Frau von Leibnitz, but she was my wife by then,” Kristian replied.

“Yes . . . yes, of course. You came to London?” Runcorn said hastily.

“In 1849, yes.” A shadow passed over Kristian’s face.

“And practiced medicine here?”

“Yes.”

“And Mrs. Beck, what did she do? Did she make friends here again?” Runcorn asked, although Monk knew from the tone of his voice that he had no purpose in mind, he was foundering. What he wanted to know was were they happy, had Elissa taken lovers, but he did not know how to say it so the answer was of value.

“Yes, of course,” Kristian answered. “She was always interested in the arts, music and painting.”

“Was she interested in your work?” Monk interrupted.

Kristian was startled. “Medicine? No . . . no she wasn’t. It . . .” He changed his mind and remained silent.

“When did she first meet Allardyce?” Runcorn went on.

“I don’t know. About four or five months ago, I think.”

“She didn’t say?”

“Not that I remember.”

Runcorn questioned him for several more minutes but knew he was achieving nothing. When there was a sharp knock on the door and a medical student asked if Kristian was ready to see patients again, both Monk and Runcorn were happy to leave.

“Was Maude Oldenby the only patient you visited?” Runcorn asked as Kristian stood at the door.

The ghost of a smile touched Kristian’s lips. “No. I also saw Mrs. Mary Ann Jackson, of 21 Argyle Street.” He went out and closed the door quietly. They heard his footsteps down the corridor.

Neither of them remarked that Argyle Street was rather a long way from Haverstock Hill, but only a few hundred yards from Acton Street.

“He’s lying,” Runcorn said when they were outside on the pavement again.

“What about?” Monk said curiously.

“I don’t know,” Runcorn said, beginning to walk rapidly and avoiding Monk’s gaze. “But he is. Don’t you know what your wife is doing and who her friends are?”

“Yes . . . but . . .”

“But what? But nothing. He knows. He’s lying. Let’s take the omnibus back.”

They did, and Monk was glad of it; it made conversation impossible, and he was able to concentrate on his own thoughts. He would have defended Kristian to Runcorn, out of loyalty to Callandra, but he also was convinced that Kristian was lying. Without saying as much, he had affected to know almost nothing of Elissa’s daily life. Certainly he was dedicated to medicine, but he was also a warm and emotional man. He was deeply moved by his wife’s death, and when he had spoken of their days in Vienna the passion of it was still there in him, taking him back to it whether he wished or not.

What had happened since then? It was thirteen years. How much did people change in that time? What did they learn of each other that became unbearable? Infatuation died, but did love? What was the difference? Did one learn that too late? Was it Elissa that Kristian still so obviously cared for, or the memory of the time when they had fought for liberty and high idealism on the barricades of Vienna?

Did Callandra know anything of this? Had she ever even met Elissa? Or, like Monk, had she imagined some tedious woman with whom Kristian was imprisoned in an honorable but intolerably lonely marriage of convenience? He had a cold, gripping fear that it was the latter.

What if she had then discovered this woman Argo Allardyce had seen, the woman whose beauty haunted him and stared out of the canvas to capture the imagination of the onlooker?

What did one love in a woman? Love was surely for honor and gentleness, courage, laughter and wisdom, and a hundred thoughts shared. But infatuation was for what the heart thought it saw, for what the vision believed. A woman with a face like Elissa Beck’s could have provoked anything!

Hester went to the hospital early, in part to see how Mary Ellsworth was progressing. She found her weak and a little nauseous, but with no fever, and no swelling or suppuration around the wound. However, even if the operation were entirely successful, she knew even better than Kristian did that that was only the beginning of healing. Mary’s real illness lay in her mind, the fears and anxieties, the introspection and the numbing boredom that crippled her days.

Hester spoke with her for a little while, trying to encourage her, then went to find Callandra. She looked in the patients’ waiting rooms and was told by a young nurse that she had seen Callandra in the front hall, but when Hester got there she met only Fermin Thorpe, looking angry and important. He seemed about to speak to Hester, then with a curt gesture of irritation he turned on his heel and went the other way. Callandra came from one of the wards, her hair flying up in a gray-brown streamer, the main coil of it askew.

“That man is an interfering nincompoop!” she said furiously, her face flushed, her eyes bright. “He wants to reduce the allowance of porter every day for nurses. I don’t approve of drunkenness any more than he does, but he’d get far better work out of them if he increased their food ration! It’s drink on an empty stomach that does it.” She blinked. “Talking about stomachs, how is Mary Ellsworth?”

Hester smiled a little bleakly. “Miserable, but there’s no infection in the wound.”

“And no heart in her,” Callandra said for her. All the time she was speaking her eyes were seeking Hester’s, looking desperately for some reassurance, some inner comfort that this nightmare would be brief and any moment they would all waken and find it was explained, proved sad, but some kind of release.

Hester longed to be able to tell her so, but she could not bring herself to, even for a day or two’s ease. “No, no heart,” she agreed. “But perhaps when it doesn’t hurt quite so much she’ll be better.”

“No more laudanum?” Callandra asked, pity softening her face.

“No. It’s too easy to depend on it. And it can be caustic, which is the last thing she needs with that wound in her stomach. Believe me, she’d sooner have the pain of the moment!”

Callandra hesitated, as if she were reading double and triple meanings into the words, then she smiled at her own foolishness and poked her flying hair back into the knot on the back of her head and went purposefully towards the apothecary’s room, leaving Hester to take a quick cup of tea with one of the nurses and then catch the omnibus back to Grafton Street.

In the afternoon Hester busied herself with housework, a large part of which was quite unnecessary. Her housekeeper came in three days a week and did most of the laundry, ironing and scrubbing. Everything that mattered had already been done, but she was too restless to sit still, so she began to clean out the kitchen cupboards, setting everything from them onto the table. Surely it must have been the artists’ model who was killed, and Kristian’s wife the unfortunate witness? It was the only answer that made sense.

Except that of course it wasn’t obvious at all.

She had every cupboard empty and a bowl full of soapy water on the bench, ready to begin scrubbing, when the doorbell rang and she was obliged to go and answer it.

Charles was on the step, looking even more haggard than three days ago, with hollows around his eyes like bruises, and a cut on his jaw, but this time he was at no loss for words.

“Oh, Hester, I’m so glad you’re home.” He came inside, moving stiffly, without waiting for her to ask. “I was afraid you might be at a hospital . . . or something. Are you still . . . no, I suppose you’re not. I mean . . . it’s . . .” He stood in the center of the room, and took a couple of deep breaths.

Hester interrupted him. “When you followed Imogen the other evening, you said it was somewhere in the direction of the Royal Free Hospital, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Swinton Street. Why?”

“Do you now know of someone she might have been visiting?” Hester asked.

“No.” The word came so quickly it almost cut off the question, but if anything, the fear in his eyes increased. He started to say something else. It seemed to be a denial, then he stopped. “I suppose you heard that there was a double murder in Acton Street, just beyond the hospital?” He was watching her intently.

“Yes, a doctor’s wife and an artists’ model.”

“Oh my God!” His legs folded, and he sank down into the armchair.

For a moment she was afraid he had collapsed. “Charles!” She knelt in front of him, clasping his hands, intensely relieved to feel strength in them. She was about to say that the locality didn’t mean anything and could have no connection with Imogen when, like a drench of cold water, she realized that he was afraid that it did. He was lying by misdirection and evasion. He was refusing to look at whatever it was that hovered just beyond his words.

“Charles!” she started again, more urgently. “What do you know about where she is going? You followed her to Swinton Street, which is a block from Acton Street . . .”

He jerked his head up. “That’s not where she went the night of the murders!” he said abruptly. “I know that, because I followed her myself.”

“Where did she go?” she asked.

“South of High Holborn,” he said immediately. “Down Drury Lane, just beyond the theater, nowhere near the top of the Gray’s Inn Road.” He stared at her almost defiantly.

Why was he so quick to deny that Imogen had been there?

She stood up and moved away, turning her back to him so he would not see the anxiety in her face. “I understand they were killed in an artist’s studio,” she said almost lightly. “The model worked for him and spent quite a lot of time there, and the doctor’s wife went for a sitting because he was painting a portrait of her.”

“Then the artist did it,” he said quickly. “The newspapers didn’t say that.”

“Apparently, he wasn’t there. A misunderstanding, I suppose.”

He sat silently.

“So you don’t need to worry,” she continued, as if she had dismissed the matter. “Anyone walking about in the evening is in no more danger in Swinton Street than anywhere else.”

She heard his intake of breath. He was frightened, confused, and now feeling even more alone. Would it persuade him at last to be more open?

But the silence remained.

Her patience broke and she swung around to face him. “What is it you are afraid of, Charles? Do you think Imogen knows someone who might be involved with this? Argo Allardyce, for example?”

“No! Why on earth should she know him?” But the color washed up his face, and he must have felt its heat. “I don’t know!” he burst out. “I don’t know what she’s doing, Hester! One day she’s elated, the next she’s in despair. She dresses in her best clothes and goes out without telling me where. She lies about things, about where she’s been, who she’s visited. She gets unsigned messages about meeting someone, and she knows from the handwriting who it is and where to go!”

He fished in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, offering it to her. She took it. It was simply an agreement to meet, no place given, and unsigned. Charles pressed his hands over his face, leaving white marks on his cheeks, and he winced sharply when he touched his jaw. “She’s changed so much I can hardly recognize her sometimes, and I don’t know why!” he said wretchedly. “She won’t tell me anything . . . she doesn’t trust me anymore. What can I think?” His eyes were hot and desperate, begging for help.

Hester heard all the details of what he said, but overriding it all she heard the panic in him, the knowledge that he had lost control and for the first time in his life his emotions were in a chaos he could not hide.

“I don’t know,” she said gently, going over to him again. “But I’ll do everything I can to find out, I promise you.” She looked at him more closely, seeing the darkening bruises. “What did you do to your face?”

“I . . . I fell. It doesn’t matter. Hester . . .”

“I know,” she said gently. “You think perhaps you would rather not find out the truth, but that isn’t so. As long as you don’t know, you will imagine, and all the worst things will be there in your mind.”

“I suppose . . . but . . .” He stood up awkwardly, as if his joints hurt. “I’m really not sure, Hester. Perhaps I’m worrying . . . I mean . . . women can be . . .”