A sudden, fearful death (16 page)

Monk wished he had some art or gift
to soften what must be said, but he knew of none. Perhaps simple truth was the
best. Prevarication would lengthen it to no purpose.

"No, Mr. Barrymore, I used to
be in the police, but I left the force. Now I work privately." He loathed
saying that. It sounded grubby, as if he chased sneak thieves and errant wives.
"Lady Callandra Daviot"—that sounded better—"is a member of the
Board of Governors of the hospital, and had a deep regard for Miss Barrymore.
She is concerned in case the police do not learn all the facts of the case, or
do not pursue it thoroughly, should it lead to troubling any authorities or
persons of consequence. Therefore she asked me, as a personal favor to her, if
I would pursue the matter myself."

A wan smile flickered over
Barrymore's face and vanished again.

"Does it not concern you to
disturb important people, Mr. Monk? I would have thought you more vulnerable to
disfavor than the police. One assumes they have the force of government to back
them."

"That rather depends on who
the important people are," Monk pointed out.

Barrymore frowned. They were still
standing in the middle of the charming room with the garden beyond. It did not
seem an occasion to sit.

"Surely you cannot suspect
anyone of that nature to be involved in Prudence's death." Barrymore said
the last word as if he still found it difficult to grasp, and none of the first
agonizing pain had yet dulled.

"I have no idea," Monk
replied. "But it is very usual for a murder investigation to uncover a
great many other events and relationships which people would prefer to have
kept secret. Sometimes they will go to considerable lengths to see that they
remain so, even if it means concealing the real crime."

"And you imagine you will be
able to learn something that the police will not?" Barrymore asked. He was
still courteous but his disbelief was undeniable.

"I don't know, but I shall
try. I have in the past succeeded where they have failed."

"Have you?" It was not a
challenge, not even a question, merely a noting of fact. "What can we tell
you? I know nothing of the hospital at all." He stared out of the window
at the sunlight on the leaves. "Indeed, I know very little of the practice
of medicine. I am a collector of rare butterflies, myself. Something of an
authority on the subject." He smiled sadly, looking back at Monk. "It
all seems rather pointless now, doesn't it?"

"No," Monk said quietly.
'The study of what is beautiful can never be wasted, especially if you are seeking
to understand and preserve it."

"Thank you," Barrymore
said with a flash of gratitude. It was a minor thing, but at such times of numb
tragedy the mind remembers the smallest kindness and clings to it amid the
confusion and despair of events. Barrymore looked up at Monk and suddenly
realized they were both standing and he had offered no hospitality of any sort.
"Please sit down, Mr. Monk," he asked, sitting himself. "And
tell me what I can do that will help. I really don't understand...."

"You could tell me something
about her."

Barrymore blinked. "How can
that help? Surely it was some madman? What sane person would do that to
..." He was obliged to struggle to retain command of himself.

"That may be so," Monk
interposed, to save Barrymore embarrassment. "But it is also possible that
it was someone she knew. Even madmen have to have some sort of reason, unless
they are simply lunatics, and there is no reason so far to suppose that there
was a lunatic loose in the hospital. It is a place for the treatment of
illnesses of the body, not of the mind. But of course, the police will make extensive
inquiries to see if there were any strangers observed at all. You may be quite
sure of that."

Banymore was still confused. He
looked at Monk without comprehension.

"What do you want to know
about Prudence? I cannot conceive of any reason at all why anyone who knew her
would wish her harm."

"I heard she served in the
Crimea?"

Unconsciously Barrymore
straightened his shoulders. "Yes, indeed she did." There was pride in
his voice. "She was one of the first to go out there. I remember the day
she left home. She looked so terribly young." His eyes looked far beyond
Monk into some place in his own inner vision.

"Only the young are so very
confident. They have no idea what the world may bring them." He smiled
with intense sadness. "They don't imagine that failure or death may come
to them. It will always be someone else. That is immortality, isn't it? The
belief."

Monk did not interrupt.

"She took one tin trunk,"
Barrymore went on. "Just a few plain blue gowns, clean linen, a second
pair of boots, her Bible and journal, and her books on medicine. She wanted to
be a doctor, you see. Impossible, I understand that, but it didn't stop her
wanting it. She knew a great deal." For the first time he looked directly
at Monk. "She was very clever, you know, very diligent. Studying came
naturally to her. Nothing like her sister, Faith. She is quite different. They
loved one another. After Faith was married and moved north, they wrote to each
other at least once a week." His voice was thick with emotion. "She's
going to be ..."

"How were they
different?" Monk asked, interrupting him for his own sake.

"How?" He was still
gazing into the park, and the memories of happiness. "Oh, Faith was
always laughing. She loved to dance. She cared about things, but she was such a
flirt, then, so pretty. She found it easy to make people like her." He was
smiling. "There were a dozen young men who were longing to court her. She
chose Joseph Barker. He seemed so ordinary, a little shy. He even stuttered now
and again when he was nervous." He shook his head a little as if it still
surprised him. "He couldn't dance, and Faith loved to dance. But she had
more sense than her mother or I. Joseph has made her very happy."

"And Prudence?" Monk
prompted.

The light died out of his face.

"Prudence? She did not want to
marry, she only cared about medicine and service. She wanted to heal people and
to change things." He sighed. "And always to know more! Of course her
mother wanted her to marry, but she turned away all suitors, and there were
several. She was a lovely girl...." Again he stopped for a moment, his
feelings too powerful to hide.

Monk waited. .Barrymore needed time
to recover control and master the outward show of his pain. Somewhere beyond
the garden a dog barked, and from the other direction came the sound of
children laughing.

"I'm sorry," Barrymore
said after a few moments. "I loved her very much. One should not have
favorite children, but Prudence was so easy for me to understand. We shared so
many things—ideas—dreams ..." He stopped, again his voice thick with
tears.

"Thank you for sparing me your
time, sir." Monk rose to his feet. The interview was unbearable, and he
had learned all he could. "I will see what I can find from the hospital,
and perhaps any other friends you think she may have spoken to lately and who
may have some knowledge."

Barrymore recalled himself. "I
have no idea how they could help, but if there is anything ..."

"I would like to speak to Mrs.
Barrymore, if she is well enough."

"Mrs. Barrymore?" He
seemed surprised.

"She may know something of her
daughter, some confidence perhaps, which might seem trivial but could lead us
to something of importance."

"Oh—yes, I suppose so. I will
ask her if she feels well enough." He shook his head very slightly.
"I am amazed at her strength. She has borne this, I think, better than
I." And with that observation, he excused himself and went to seek his
wife.

He returned a few moments later and
conducted Monk to another comfortable well-furnished room with flowered sofas
and chairs, embroidered samplers on the walls, and many small ornaments of
various types. A bookcase was filled with books, obviously chosen for their
contents, not their appearance, and a basket of silks lay open next to a
tapestry on a frame.

Mrs. Barrymore was far smaller than
her husband, a neat little woman in a huge skirt, her fair hair graying only
slightly, pulled back under a lace cap. Of course today she was wearing black,
and her pretty, delicately boned face showed signs that she had wept very
recently. But she was perfectly composed now and greeted Monk graciously. She
did not rise, but extended to him a beautiful hand, partially covered by a
fingerless lace mitten.

"How do you do, Mr. Monk? My
husband tells me you are a friend of Lady Callandra Daviot, who was a patron of
poor Prudence's. It is most kind of you to take an interest in our
tragedy."

Monk silently admired Barrymore's
diplomacy. He had not thought of such an elegant way of explaining it.

"Many people are moved by her
loss, ma'am," he said aloud, brushing her fingertips with his lips. If
Barrymore chose to present him as a gentleman, he would play the part; indeed,
he would find acute satisfaction in it. Even though undoubtedly it was done for
Mrs. Barrymore's benefit, to spare her the feeling that her life was being
pried into by lesser people.

"It is truly terrible,"
she agreed, blinking several times. Silently she indicated where he might be
seated, and he accepted. Mr. Barrymore remained standing beside his wife's
chair, a curiously remote and yet protective attitude. "Although perhaps
we should not be taken totally by surprise. That would be naive, would it
not?" She looked at him with startlingly clear blue eyes.

Monk was confused. He hesitated,
not wanting to preempt her by saying the wrong thing.

"Such a willful girl,"
Mrs. Barrymore went on, pinching in her mouth a little. "Charming and
lovely to look at, but so set in her ways." She stared beyond Monk toward
the window. "Do you have daughters, Mr. Monk?"

"No ma'am."

"Then my advice would be of
little use to you, except of course that you may one day." She turned back
to him, her lips touched by the ghost of a smile. "Believe me, a pretty
girl can be an anxiety, a beauty even more so, even if she is aware of it,
which does guard against certain dangers—

and increases others." Her
mouth tightened. "But an intellectual girl is immeasurably worse. A
modest girl, comely but not ravishing, and with enough wit to know how to
please but no ambitions toward learning, that is the best of all possible
worlds." She looked at him carefully to make sure he understood. "One
can always teach a child to be obedient, to learn the domestic arts and to have
good manners."

Mr. Barrymore coughed
uncomfortably, shifting his weight to the other foot.

"Oh, I know what you are
thinking, Robert," Mrs. Barrymore said as if he had spoken. "A girl
cannot help having a fine mind. All I am saying is that she would have been so
much happier if she had contented herself with using it in a suitable way,
reading books, writing poetry if she so wished, and having conversations with
friends." She was still perched on the edge of her chair, her skirts
billowed around her. "And if she desired to encourage others, and had a
gift for it," she continued earnestly, "then there is endless
charitable work to be done. Goodness knows, I have spent hours and hours upon
such things myself. I cannot count the numbers of committees upon which I have
served." She counted them off on her small mittened fingers. "To
feed the poor, to find suitable accommodation for girls who have fallen from
virtue and cannot be placed in domestic service anymore, and all manner of
other good causes." Her voice sharpened in exasperation. "But Prudence
would have none of that She would pursue medicine! She read all sorts of books
with pictures in them, things no decent woman should know!" Her face
twisted with distaste and embarrassment. "Of course I tried to reason
with her, but she was obdurate."

Mr. Barrymore leaned forward,
frowning. "My dear, there is no use in trying to make a person different
from the way she is. It was not in Prudence's nature to abandon her
learning." He said it gently, but there was a note of weariness in his
voice as if he had said the same thing many times before and, as now, it had
fallen on deaf ears.

Her neck stiffened and her pointed
chin set in determination.

"People have to learn to
recognize the world as it is." She looked not at him but at one of the
paintings on the wall, an idyllic scene in a stable yard. "There are some
things one may have, and some one may not." Her pretty mouth tightened.
"I am afraid Prudence never learned the difference. That is a
tragedy." She shook her head. "She could have been so happy, if only
she had let go of her childish ideas and settled down to marry someone like
poor Geoffrey Taunton. He was extremely reliable and he would have had her.
Now, of course, it is all too late." Then without warning her eyes filled
with tears. "Forgive me," she said with a ladylike sniff. "I
cannot help but grieve."

"It would be inhuman not
to," Monk said quickly. "She was a remarkable woman by all accounts,
and one who brought comfort to many who were in the throes of intense
suffering. You must be very proud of her."