The Face of a Stranger (32 page)

Monk smiled; Evan deserved praise and he was glad to give it.

"Thank you. I ought to have done that myself. It might even have
been less time, if the quarrel was an old one-say ten minutes each way, and
five minutes for the fight. That's not long for a man to be out of sight at a
club."

Evan looked down, a faint color in his face. He was smiling.

"It doesn't get us any further," he pointed out ruefully.
"It could have been Shelburne, or it could have been anyone else. I
suppose we shall have to investigate every other family he could have
blackmailed? That should make us rather less popular than the ratman. Do you
think it was Shelburne, sir, and we'll just never prove it?"

Monk stood up.

"I don't know but I'm damned if it'll be for lack of trying."
He was thinking of Joscelin Grey in the Crimea, seeing the horror of slow death
by starvation, cold and disease, the blinding incompetence of commanders sending
men to be blown to bits by enemy guns, the sheer

stultifying of it all; feeling fear and physical pain, exhaustion,
certainly pity, shown by his brief ministrations to the dying in Scutari—all
while Lovel stayed at home in his great hall, marrying Rosamond, adding money
to money, comfort to comfort.

Monk strode to the door. Injustice ached in him like a gathering boil,
angry and festering. He pulled the handle sharply and jerked it open.

"Sir!" Evan half rose to his feet.

Monk turned.

Evan did not know the words, how to phrase the warning urgent inside
him. Monk could see it in his face, the wide hazel eyes, the sensitive mouth.

"Don't look so alarmed," he said quietly, pushing the door to
again. "I'm going back to Grey's flat. I remember a photograph of his
family there. Shelburne was in it, and Menard Grey. I want to see if Grimwade
or Yeats recognize either of them. Do you want to come?"

Evan's face ironed out almost comically with relief. He smiled in spite
of himself.

"Yes sir. Yes I would." He reached for his coat and scarf.
"Can you do that without letting them know who they are? If they know they
were his brothers—I mean-Lord Shelburne—"

Monk looked at him sideways and Evan pulled a small face of apology.

"Yes of course," he muttered, following Monk outside.
"Although the Shelburnes will deny it, of course, and they'll still ride
us to hell and back if we press a charge!"

Monk knew that, and he had no plan even if anyone in the photograph were
recognized, but it was a step forward, and he had to take it.

Grimwade was in his cubbyhole as usual and he greeted them cheerfully.

"Lovely mild day, sir." He squinted towards the street.
"Looks as if it could clear up."

"Yes," Monk agreed without thinking. "Very pleasant."
He was unaware of being wet. "We're going up to

Mr. Grey's rooms again, want to pick up one or two things."

"Well with all of you on the case, I 'spec' you'll get somewhere
one of these days." Grimwade nodded, a faint trace of sarcasm in his
rather lugubrious face. "You certainly are a busy lot, I'll give yer
that."

Monk was halfway up the stairs with the key before the significance of
Grimwade's remark came to him. He stopped sharply and Evan trod on his heel.

"Sorry," Evan apologized.

"What did he mean?" Monk turned, frowning. "All of us?
There's only you and me—isn't there?"

Evan's eyes shadowed. "So far as I know! Do you think Runcorn has
been here?"

Monk stood stiffly to the spot. "Why should he? He doesn't want to
be the one to solve this, especially if it is Shelburne. He doesn't want to
have anything to do with it."

"Curiosity?" There were other thoughts mirrored in Evan's
face, but he did not speak them.

Monk thought the same thing—perhaps Runcorn wanted some proof it was
Shelburne, then he would force Monk to find it, and then to make the charge.
For a moment they stared at each other, the knowledge silent and complete
between them.

"I'll go and find out." Evan turned around and went slowly
down again.

It was several minutes before he came back, and Monk stood on the stair
waiting, his mind at first searching for a way out, a way to avoid accusing
Shelburne himself. Then he was drawn to wonder more about Runcorn. How old was
the enmity between them? Was it simply an older man fearing a rival on the
ladder of success, a younger, cleverer rival?

Only younger and cleverer? Or also harder, more ruthless in his
ambitions, one who took credit for other people's work, who cared more for
acclaim than for justice, who sought the public, colorful cases, the ones well
reported; even a man who managed to shelve his failures onto other people, a
thief of other men's work?

If that were so, then Runcorn's hatred was well earned, and his revenge
had a justice to it.

Monk stared up at the old, carefully plastered ceiling. Above it was the
room where Grey had been beaten to death. He did not feel ruthless now—only
confused, oppressed by the void where memory should be, afraid of what he
might find out about his own nature, anxious that he would fail in his job.
Surely the crack on the head, however hard, could not have changed him so much?
But even if the injury could not, maybe the fear had? He had woken up lost and
alone, knowing nothing, having to find himself clue by clue, in what others
could tell him, what they thought of him, but never why. He knew nothing of the
motives for his acts, the nice rationalizations and excuses he had made to
himself at the time. All the emotions that had driven him and blocked out
judgment were in that empty region that yawned before the hospital bed and
Runcorn's face.

But he had no time to pursue it further. Evan was back, his features
screwed up in anxiety.

"It was Runcorn!" Monk leaped to the conclusion, suddenly
frightened, like a man faced with physical violence.

Evan shook his head.

"No. It was two men I don't recognize at all from Grimwade's
description. But he said they were from the police, and he saw their papers
before he let them in."

"Papers?" Monk repeated. There was no point in asking what
the men had looked like; he could not remember the men of his own division, let
alone those from any other.

"Yes." Evan was obviously still anxious. "He said they
had police identification papers, like ours."

"Did he see if they were from our station?"

"Yes sir, they were." His face puckered. "But I can't
think who they could be. Anyway, why on earth would Runcorn send anyone else?
What for?"

"I suppose it would be too much to ask that they gave names?"

"I'm afraid Grimwade didn't notice."

Monk turned around and went back up the stairs, more worried than he
wished Evan to see. On the landing he put the key Grimwade had given him into
the lock and swung Grey's door open. The small hallway was just as before, and
it gave him an unpleasant jar of familiarity, a sense of foreboding for what
was beyond.

Evan was immediately behind him. His face was pale and his eyes
shadowed, but Monk knew that his oppression stemmed from Runcorn, and the two
men who had been here before them, not any sensitivity to the violence still
lingering in the air.

There was no purpose in hesitating anymore. He opened the second door.

There was a long sigh from behind him almost at his shoulder as Evan let
out his breath in amazement.

The room was in wild disorder; the desk had been tipped over and all its
contents flung into the far corner—by the look of them, the papers a sheet at a
time. The chairs were on their sides, one upside down, the seats had been taken
out, the stuffed sofa ripped open with a knife. All the pictures lay on the
floor, backs levered out.

"Oh my God." Evan was stupefied.

"Not the police, I think," Monk said quietly.

"But they had papers," Evan protested. "Grimwade actually
read them."

"Have you never heard of a good screever?"

"Forged?" Evan said wearily. "I suppose Grimwade wouldn't
have known the difference."

"If the screever were good enough, I daresay we wouldn't
either." Monk pulled a sour expression. Some forgeries of testimonials,
letters, bills of sale were good enough to deceive even those they were purported
to come from. At the upper end, it was a highly skilled and lucrative trade,
at the lower no more than a makeshift way of buying a little time, or fooling
the hasty or illiterate.

"Who were they?" Evan went past Monk and stared around the
wreckage. "And what on earth did they want here?"

Monk's eyes went to the shelves where the ornaments had been.

"There was a silver sugar scuttle up there," he said as he
pointed. "See if it's on the floor under any of that paper." He
turned slowly. "And there
were
a couple of pieces of jade on that
table. There were two snuffboxes in that alcove; one of them had an inlaid lid.
And try the sideboard; there should be silver in the second drawer."

"What an incredible memory you have; I never noticed them."
Evan was impressed and his admiration was obvious in his luminous eyes before
he knelt down and began carefully to look under the mess, not moving it except
to raise it sufficiently to explore beneath.

Monk was startled himself. He could not remember having looked in such
detail at trivialities. Surely he had gone straight to the marks of the
struggle, the bloodstains, the disarranged furniture, the bruised paint and the
crooked pictures on the walls? He had no recollection now of even noticing the
sideboard drawer, and yet his mind's eye could see silver, laid out neatly in
green-baize-lined fittings.

Had it been in some other place? Was he confusing this room with
another, an elegant sideboard somewhere in his past, belonging to someone else?
Perhaps Imogen Latterly?

But he must dismiss Imogen from his mind—however easily, with whatever
bitter fragrance, she returned. She was a dream, a creation of his own memories
and hungers. He could never have known her well enough to feel anything but a
charm, a sense of her distress, her courage in righting it, the strength of her
loyalty.

He forced himself to think of the present; Evan searching in the
sideboard, the remark on his memory.

"Training," he replied laconically, although he didn't

understand it himself. "You'll develop it. It might not be the
second drawer, better look in all of them."

Evan obeyed, and Monk turned back to the pile on the floor and began to
pick his way through the mess, looking for something to tell him its purpose,
or give any clue as to who could have caused it.

"There's nothing here." Evan closed the drawer, his mouth
turned down in a grimace of disgust. "But this is the right place; it's
all slotted for them to fit in, and lined with cloth. They went to a lot of
trouble for a dozen settings of silver. I suppose they expected to get more.
Where did you say the jade was?"

"There." Monk stepped over a pile of papers and cushions to
an empty shelf, then wondered with a sense of unease how he knew, when he could
have noticed it.

He bent and searched the floor carefully, replacing everything as he
found it. Evan was watching him.

"No jade?" he asked.

"No, it's gone." Monk straightened up, his back stiff.
"But I find it hard to believe ordinary thieves would go to the trouble,
and the expense, of forging police identification papers just for a few pieces
of silver and a jade ornament, and I think a couple of snuffboxes." He
looked around. "They couldn't take much more without being noticed.
Grimwade would certainly have been suspicious if they had taken anything like
furniture or pictures."

“Well, I suppose the silver and the jade are worth something?"

"Not much, after the fence has taken his cut." Monk looked at
the heap of wreckage on the floor and imagined the frenzy and the noise of such
a search. "Hardly worth the risk," he said thoughtfully. "Much
easier to have burgled a place in which the police have no interest. No, they
wanted something else; the silver and the jade were a bonus. Anyway, what
professional thief leaves a chaos like this behind him?"

"You mean it was Shelburne?" Evan's voice was half an octave
higher with sheer disbelief.

Monk did not know what he meant.

"I can't think what Shelburne could want," he said, staring
around the room again, his mind's eye seeing it as it had been before.
"Even if he left something here that belonged to him, there are a dozen
reasons he could invent if we'd asked him, with Joscelin dead and not able to
argue. He could have left it here, whatever it was, any time, or lent it to
Joscelin; or Joscelin could simply have taken it." He stared around the
ceiling at the elaborate plaster work of acanthus leaves. "And I can't
imagine him employing a couple of men to forge police papers and come here to
ransack the place. No, it can't have been Shelburne."

"Then who?"