The Face of a Stranger (6 page)

"More or less," Evan agreed, straightening up again. "At
least we don't have anything else to go on. We don't even know if it was a
stranger, or someone he knew."

"No sign of a forced entry?"

"No sir. Anyway, no burglar is likely to force an entry into a
house when all the lights are still on."

"No." Monk cursed himself for an idiotic question. Was he
always such a fool? There was no surprise in Evan's face. Good manners? Or fear
of angering a superior not noted for tolerance? "No, of course not,"
he said aloud. "I suppose he wouldn't have been surprised by Grey, and
then lit the lights to fool us?"

"Unlikely sir. If he were that coolheaded, he surely would have
taken some of the valuables? At least the money in Grey's wallet, which would
be untraceable."

Monk had no answer for that. He sighed and sat down behind the desk. He
did not bother to invite Evan to sit also. He read the rest of the porter's
statement.

Lamb had asked exhaustively about all visitors the previous evening, if
there had been any errand boys, messengers, even a stray animal. Grimwade was
affronted at the very suggestion. Certainly not: errand boys were always
escorted to the appropriate place, or if possible their errands taken over by
Grimwade himself. No stray animal had ever tainted the buildings with its
presence—dirty things, stray animals, and apt to soil the place. What did the
police think he was—were they trying to insult him?

Monk wondered what Lamb had replied. He would certainly have had a
pointed answer to the man on the relative merits of stray animals and stray
humans! A couple of acid retorts rose to his mind even now.

Grimwade swore there had been two visitors and only two. He was
perfectly sure no others had passed his window. The first was a lady, at about
eight o'clock, and he would sooner not say upon whom she called; a question of
private affairs must be treated with discretion, but she had not visited Mr.
Grey, of that he was perfectly certain. Anyway, she was a very slight creature,
and could not possibly have inflicted die injuries suffered by the dead man.
The second visitor was a man who called upon a Mr. Yeats, a longtime resident,
and Grimwade had escorted him as far as the appropriate landing himself and
seen him received.

Whoever had murdered Grey had obviously either used one of the other
visitors as a decoy or else had already been in the building in some guise in
which he had so far been overlooked. So much was logic.

Monk put the paper down. They would have to question Grimwade more
closely, explore even the minutest possibilities; there might be something.

Evan sat down on the window ledge.

Mrs. Huggins's statement was exacdy as Evan had said, if a good deal
more verbose. Monk read it only because he wanted time to think.

Afterwards he picked up the last one, the medical report. It was the
one he found most unpleasant, but maybe also the most necessary. It was written
in a small, precise hand, very round. It made him imagine a small doctor

with round spectacles and very clean ringers. It did not occur to him
until afterwards to wonder if he had ever known such a person, and if it was
the first wisp of memory returning.

The account was clinical in the extreme, discussing the corpse as if
Joscelin Grey were a species rather than an individual, a human being full of
passions and cares, hopes and humors who had been suddenly and violently cut
off from life, and who must have experienced terror and extreme pain in the
few minutes that were being examined so unemotionally.

The body had been looked at a little after nine thirty a.m. It was that
of a man in his early thirties, of slender build but well nourished, and not
apparently suffering from any illness or disability apart from a fairly recent
wound in the upper part of the right leg, which might have caused him to limp.
The doctor judged it to be a shallow wound, such as he had seen in many
ex-soldiers, and to be five or six months old. The body had been dead between
eight and twelve hours; he could not be more precise than that.

The cause of death was obvious for anyone to see: a succession of
violent and powerful blows about the head and shoulders with some long, thin
instrument. A heavy cane or stick seemed the most likely.

Monk put down the report, sobered by the details of death. The bare
language, shorn of all emotion, perversely brought the very feeling of it
closer. His imagination saw it sharply, even smelled it, conjuring up the sour
odor and the buzz of flies. Had he dealt with many murders? He could hardly
ask.

"Very unpleasant," he said without looking up at Evan.

"Very," Evan agreed, nodding. "Newspapers made rather a
lot of it at the time. Been going on at us for not having found the murderer.
Apart from the fact that it's made a lot of people nervous, Mecklenburg Square
is a pretty good area, and if one isn't safe there, where is one safe? Added to
that, Joscelin Grey was a well-liked, pretty harmless young ex-officer, and of
extremely good family.

He served in the Crimea and was invalided out. He had rather a good record,
saw the Charge of the Light Brigade, badly wounded at Sebastopol." Evan's
face pinched a little with a mixture of embarrassment and perhaps pity. “A lot
of people feel his country has let him down, so to speak, first by allowing
this to happen to him, and then by not even catching the man who did it."
He looked across at Monk, apologizing for the injustice, and because he
understood it. "I know that's unfair, but a spot of crusading sells
newspapers; always helps to have a cause, you know! And of course the running
patterers have composed a lot of songs about it—returning hero and all
that!"

Monk's mouth turned down at the corners.

"Have they been hitting hard?"

"Rather," Evan admitted with a little shrug. "And we
haven't a blind thing to go on. WeVe been over and over every bit of evidence
there is, and there's simply nothing to connect him to anyone. Any ruffian
could have come in from the street if he dodged the porter. Nobody saw or heard
anything useful, and we are right where we started." He got up gloomily
and came over to the table.

"I suppose you'd better see the physical evidence, not that there
is much. And then I daresay you'd like to see the flat, at least get a feeling
for the scene?"

Monk stood up also.

"Yes I would. You never know, something might suggest
itself." Although he could imagine nothing. If Lamb had not succeeded, and
this keen, delicate young junior, what was he going to find? He felt failure
begin to circle around him, dark and enclosing. Had Runcorn given him this
knowing he would fail? Was it a discreet and efficient way of getting rid of
him without being seen to be callous? How did he even know for sure that
Runcorn was not an old enemy? Had he done him some wrong long ago? The
possibility was cold and real. The shadowy outline of himself that had
appeared so far was devoid of any quick acts of compassion, any sudden
gentlenesses or warmth to seize hold of and to like. He was discovering himself
as a

stranger might, and what he saw so far did not excite his admiration. He
liked Evan far more than he liked himself.

He had imagined he had hidden his complete loss of memory, but perhaps
it was obvious, perhaps Runcorn had seen it and taken this chance to even some
old score? God, how he wished he knew what kind of man he was, had been. Who
loved him, who hated him—and who had what cause? Had he ever loved a woman, or
any woman loved him? He did not even know that!

Evan was walking quickly ahead of him, his long legs carrying him at a
surprisingly fast pace. Everything in Monk wanted to trust him, and yet he was
almost paralyzed by his ignorance. Every foothold he trod on dissolved into
quicksand under his weight. He knew nothing. Everything was surmise, constantly
shifting guesses.

He behaved automatically, having nothing but instinct and ingrained
habit to rely on.

The physical evidence was astonishingly bare, set out like luggage in a
lost-and-found office, ownerless; pathetic and rather embarrassing remnants of
someone else's life, robbed now of their purpose and meaning—a little like his
own belongings in Grafton Street, objects whose history and emotion were
obliterated.

He stopped beside Evan and picked up a pile of clothes. The trousers
were dark, well cut from expensive material, now spotted with blood. The boots
were highly polished and only slightly worn on the soles. Personal linen was
obviously changed very recently; shirt was expensive; cravat silk, the neck
and front heavily stained. The jacket was tailored to high fashion, but ruined
with blood, and a ragged tear in the sleeve. They told him nothing except a
hazard at the size and build of Joscelin Grey, and an admiration for his pocket
and his taste. There was nothing to be deduced from the bloodstains, since they
already knew what the injuries had been.

He put them down and turned to Evan, who was watching him.

"Not very helpful, is it, sir?" Evan looked at them with

a mixture of unhappiness and distaste. There was something in his face
that might have been real pity. Perhaps he was too sensitive to be a police
officer.

"No, not very," Monk agreed dryly. "What else was
there?"

"The weapon, sir." Evan reached out and picked up a heavy
ebony stick with a silver head. It too was encrusted with blood and hair.

Monk winced. If he had seen such grisly things before, his immunity to
them had gone with his memory.

"Nasty." Evan's mouth turned down, his hazel eyes on Monk's
face.

Monk was conscious of him, and abashed. Was the distaste, the pity, for
him? Was Evan wondering why a senior officer should be so squeamish? He
conquered his revulsion with an effort and took the stick. It was unusually
heavy.

"War wound," Evan observed, still watching him. "From
what witnesses say, he actually walked with it: I mean it wasn't an
ornament."

"Right leg." Monk recalled the medical report. "Accounts
for the weight." He put the stick down. "Nothing else?"

"Couple of broken glasses, sir, and a decanter broken too. Must
have been on the table that was knocked over, from the way it was lying; and a
couple of ornaments. There's a drawing of the way the room was, in Mr. Lamb's
file, sir. Not that I know of anything it can tell us. But Mr. Lamb spent hours
poring over it."

Monk felt a quick stab of compassion for Lamb, then for himself. He
wished for a moment that he could change places with Evan, leave the decisions,
the judgments to someone else, and disclaim the failure. He hated failure! He
realized now what a driving, burning desire he had to solve this crime—to
win—to wipe that smile off Runcorn's face.

"Oh—money, sir." Evan pulled out a cardboard box and opened
it. He picked up a fine pigskin wallet and,

separately, several gold sovereigns, a couple of cards from a club and
an exclusive dining room. There were about a dozen cards of his own, engraved
"Major the Honorable Joscelin Grey, Six, Mecklenburg Square, London."

"Is that all?" Monk asked.

"Yes sir, the money is twelve pounds seven shillings and sixpence
altogether. If he were a thief, it's odd he didn't take that."

"Perhaps he was frightened—he may have been hurt himself." It
was the only thing he could think of. He motioned Evan to put the box away.
"I suppose we'd better go and have a look at Mecklenburg Square."

"Yes sir." Evan straightened up to obey. "It's about half
an hour's walk. Are you well enough for it yet?"

"A couple of miles? For heaven's sake, man, it was my arm I broke,
not both my legs!" He reached sharply for his jacket and hat.

Evan had been a little optimistic. Against the wind and stepping
carefully to avoid peddlers and groups of fellow travelers on the footpath, and
traffic and horse dung in the streets, it was a good forty minutes before they
reached Mecklenburg Square, walked around the gardens and stopped outside Number
6. The boy sweeping the crossing was busy on the corner of Doughty Street, and
Monk wondered if it was the same one who had been there on that evening in
July. He felt a rush of pity for the child, out in all weather, often with
sleet or snow driving down the funnel of the high buildings, dodging in among
the carriages and drays, shoveling droppings. What an abysmal way to earn your
keep.. Then he was angry with himself— that was stupid and sentimental
nonsense. He must deal with reality. He squared his chest and marched into the
foyer. The porter was standing by a small office doorway, no more than a
cubbyhole.

"Yes sir?" He moved forward courteously, but at the same time
blocking their further progress.

"Grimwade?" Monk asked him.

"Yes sir?" The man was obviously surprised and embarrassed.
"I'm sorry, sir, I can't say as I remember you. I'm not usually bad about
faces—" He let it hang, hoping Monk would help him. He glanced across at
Evan, and a flicker of memory lit in his face.

"Police," Monk said simply. "We'd like to take another
look at Major Grey's flat. You have the key?"

The man's relief was very mixed.