Revenge in a Cold River (19 page)

“Ah! You caught it. Sure, and it is. But not for a long time. I've been in California—but you know that….”

Now Monk was aware that Gillander was watching him far more closely than his casual air would suggest. He was leaning back in his seat, the mug of soup on the galley table at his elbow, but his neck was stiff and his eyes were searching Monk's face.

“You must know Aaron Clive pretty well,” Monk remarked, just a little late to be a reply. “Especially back in '49.”

“I was young then,” Gillander said ruefully. “Used to work on smaller boats as a deckhand, sailing up and down the coast. Across the Atlantic now and then and way out east. I first got to know him in San Francisco when I was finding work where I could. He made one of the biggest gold strikes of all. Created a kind of empire, over the past few years. Never gambled it away, like some people. Built himself a nice place, but invested some of his fortune in things that paid, and went on paying. Gold, trade for the things people need, more money, more trade—gold again.” There was no hard edge to Gillander's voice, no envy.

“But you went for freedom and adventure on the open seas,” Monk observed. He understood that far more. He had never wanted power other than that which gave him safety for work and let him owe no one. The rest of what was worth having was health, skill, courage, being answerable to nobody. Great wealth tied you to its service, whether it was land, trade, or gold.

He had a sudden memory of a coastline of pale hills in the sunlight, wild rocks, seas that leaped high and white where they crashed onto the shore, a haze of amber light as the day was dying, luminous over the water.

Gillander was watching him curiously. Did he see the memory in Monk's face, and the momentary loss of time and place?

Monk brought the subject back to the suspected robbery, moving his position to face Gillander more completely. “This robbery we think is planned…against Clive—he's the wealthiest, and maybe most vulnerable along this stretch of the river.”

“And you obviously think I know something about it?” Gillander was direct again, staring at Monk almost challengingly.

“I think there's another mind at the back of it,” Monk answered. He was playing his hand far more openly than he had intended, but he did not want to be caught trying to be devious, and failing. The more he spoke to this man, the more he feared that Gillander actually knew more about him than he did himself, at least for a short space of time in the gold rush, twenty years ago. Had he known Clive as well? He thought back to his interview with the man. Clive had given no sign of knowing Monk at all. Had he forgotten him? Or never known him? Or the whole matter was simply of no importance to him?

“Do you know who?” Gillander asked.

“There have been some suggestions made,” Monk replied. “Why? Do you?”

Gillander gave a slight shrug. “Well, Clive has many enemies. Anyone that rich has to have. But most of them are from the early days. Why would anyone wait so long?”

“Opportunity,” Monk said immediately. “Clive's been here in England only a couple of years. Things like this take planning. Maybe he was too powerful in California for anyone to dare.”

“So you're looking for a Californian?” Gillander looked amused.

“Or an Englishman,” Monk said with an answering smile. “Or a European of any other sort. There was every nationality under the sun in San Francisco in '49. Take your pick.”

“So there was,” Gillander agreed. “Then you're looking for anyone who feels that the uncrowned king of San Francisco twenty years ago would be a good person to rob here on the Thames—now.”

Monk decided to tell Gillander the exact truth, as Miriam had suggested it. “I think it might be revenge,” he said, watching Gillander closely.

Gillander was unnaturally motionless, but for so short a time Monk considered he might have imagined it.

“Again, why wait so long?” Gillander said then, moving his shoulders a little as if suddenly uncomfortable on his seat.

Monk felt the prickle of excitement, like scenting the prey, seeing movement where something was hiding, waiting, breathing in the darkness.

“So long?” he asked. “Not so long when you think of the journey, the planning necessary.”

Gillander said nothing.

Monk smiled back at him. “Or were you assuming that the revenge had to be for something that happened long ago? Say in '48 or '49?”

Gillander was too agile-minded to lie. He must see the pitfalls ahead. What was it he imagined Monk knew?

“Those were the wildest years, the biggest claims,” he said carefully, still watching Monk. He seemed to discount Hooper in the exchange. Was that because Monk had been there, and Hooper had not?

Monk actually knew nothing, but Gillander did not know that.

“You're implying revenge for something lost?” Monk said with a lift of surprise in his voice. “I was thinking of something personal…perhaps an attempted murder, the seduction or ravishing of a woman. Something closer to a man's heart than money.”

Gillander did all he could to keep absolute composure, but tiny things betrayed him: a second's holding of the breath, a tightness across the shoulders, a pallor to the skin of his handsome face. “And Aaron Clive is to be the victim?” He forced a lift of disbelief into his question. “Mrs. Clive is well, and unseduced or ravished. No one attempted to kill her, or Clive.” He realized his error. “That I know of…of course….”

“You know them both well?” Monk said innocently.

There was color now in Gillander's cheeks. “I was a young man, very young, twenty, of no account, when I knew them in '49. I ran errands.” He indicated the ship with a wave of his hand. “I got all this since then. Sorry, but from what little I do know of Aaron and Mrs. Clive now, I don't think your idea makes any sense.”

“What about Piers Astley?” Monk suggested almost casually, but never taking his eyes off Gillander's face.

“Piers Astley?” Monk knew Gillander was repeating the name to give himself time to think.

“Miriam Clive's first husband. Attacked, disappeared, and later declared dead. And she married Mr. Clive,” Monk explained. “Don't you think he might bear Clive some grudge? Miriam Clive is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, and if he is alive, he would clearly still be in love with her.”

Gillander's eyebrows shot up. “Piers Astley…behind a plot now to ruin Clive?” His face was filled with disbelief, and laughter.

“One of the oldest motives in the world,” Monk explained, but there was unease rippling through him like a fast-rising tide.

“Piers Astley's dead!” Gillander told him.

“Presumed dead,” Monk corrected. “There's a big difference, a crucial one.”

Gillander sighed and suddenly looked stricken, as if the joke had evaporated as he watched. “He's dead,” he said quietly. “I saw his body, riddled with bullets. Actually I was one of the two who buried him. If we were in California I could take you to the grave. It's unmarked, but he's there, God help him.”

Monk was stunned. “Then why was he only presumed dead, and his widow not told?”

Gillander rose to his feet—stiffly for a man so young, barely forty. “She was carrying a child.” His voice cracked as he said it. “With the shock, she lost it. That was when Aaron Clive slipped in to look after her. She was ill, vulnerable, in a very bad way. Piers Astley isn't planning a revenge against anyone.” He looked across at Monk. “Perhaps she was too grieved to remember clearly exactly what she was told about Astley's death. Perhaps a part of her was unconsciously living in a vain hope so that she then confused it with reality. I don't know. But it's not your jurisdiction. Stick to the Thames, Monk! This is deep water of a different sort. It doesn't belong to you.”

Monk stood up also. Gillander was right. It was not his jurisdiction. If what Gillander said was true, and Astley was really dead, then he needed to begin again searching for whoever meant to harm Aaron Clive. If he was even right about that!

As he and Hooper got back into their own boat and set off downriver again it was Miriam Clive's face he could not get out of his mind. She was beautiful, troubled, so filled with emotion she moved like a storm with her own energy. But was she speaking the truth? Did she even know it?

Or had her grief, and her lost child, turned her mind from reality to a nightmare that never resolved itself?

S
INCE
B
EATA WAS IN
mourning, there were few places she could go alone in public. Too often she walked in the park along the smooth gravel paths under the bare trees as she was doing now. The beauty of their stark branches against the sky pleased her. Their nakedness was not masked by leaves, and there was a unique grace to it.

She moved slowly, more because she was loath to return home than for any other reason. And yet dressed entirely in black, walking with a measured pace and not stopping to speak to anyone, she must have appeared to be the perfect, traditional mourning widow, solitary under a leaden sky. People did not approach her, treating her supposed grief with respect.

She felt no grief, except for the wasted years she had spent, hating Ingram and yet doing nothing about it. She had allowed him to convince her that there was nothing she could do. But was that true?

Had imprisonment been freedom of another kind? She could not make her own decisions, which meant she had not had to think, or consider, take any responsibility for the results. The excuse was perfect. “I had no choice. I couldn't fail because I was not allowed to try!” If no success were possible, then equally, neither was any failure. As an errant wife if she had left him then the law would have brought her back, if he had wished it. Perhaps he would not have. She had not tried.

How childlike, in the ugliest way. It was not innocence; it was the abdication of responsibility.

She walked down the slight incline, past the shrubbery—now only the evergreens in leaf—and went over the bridge.

But she had a little longer to decide what she would do, and how. Ingram had left her very well provided for financially, so she had no need even to consider how she would live. Which meant equally that she had no need to marry again. But she wanted to marry Oliver Rathbone…didn't she? It had been only Ingram's stubborn survival that had kept them apart.

And the fear of another involvement in emotions, and in intimacy. Had she the courage to put all the pain and humiliation of the past behind her, and try again?

She stopped and gazed at the dark brown water.

She must stop this. It was ridiculous. Courage! Nothing worth having was gained without courage. Or if it were, then it was lost again the first time a hard wind blew. She despised cowardice, and yet here she was on the brink of it herself.

She turned and walked briskly back the way she had come.

T
HAT EVENING SHE WENT
again to Aaron and Miriam Clive's house to dine. The excuse for it was a further discussion on the chair that was to be endowed in Ingram's name. That was if anyone should inquire—or worse, offer a criticism of her for leaving her home for a frivolous reason such as merely dining out.

It would be so much easier to boast a little about the endowment, rather than give them a freezing reply as to the impertinence of such a remark.

She dressed in black, of course, but in a different gown from the previous time. This one was more feminine, the silk softer and more becoming. She wore the traditional jet jewelry. Whitby, where the best jet was mined, must make a fortune out of bereavement!

She would rather have worn pearls; they were so much more flattering to the face than the jagged black facets of jet. But she was not in a mood for weathering the comments, spoken or imagined.

Actually it was only admiration she saw in Aaron Clive's face as she was shown into the withdrawing room where he and Miriam were standing beside the fire, waiting for her to arrive.

Aaron bowed, smiling, and complimented her on the gown. Miriam, in deep burgundy herself, took both Beata's hands warmly and bade her welcome.

“We are waiting for Dr. Finch?” Beata asked, glancing around. “I am so glad I did not cause you to delay dinner. I was afraid I would be early, and then left a fraction late.” It was the truth. She had dithered in her decision over the jet…as if it mattered to anyone!

“Dr. Finch is not coming,” Aaron replied. “We really don't need to inconvenience him this evening. We can easily inform him of any decision we reach.”

Miriam shrugged her beautiful shoulders and smiled. “We never intended to ask him. This is simply an excuse to have a pleasant dinner together. He's nice enough, but if he were here then we would have to talk about the chair, the subjects, or the requirements of students permitted to study, and so on.” She regarded Beata critically. “You look awfully tired, my dear. You must be bored to weeping. London is very nice, but don't you long for the wild days in San Francisco sometimes? I don't remember anyone mourning there; there were no tears.” She smiled suddenly, her whole amazing face lighting. “Wouldn't you love to go out in the sun, in a pair of whaddayoucallums, and ride a bicycle over one of the hills?”

That was not true. People lost many they loved, but they mourned inwardly, as Miriam herself had done. But Beata chose not to say so. She laughed in spite of herself, in her memory feeling the wind in her face, and the freedom of wearing “bloomers,” big like a skirt, but divided like trousers. One of the best of inventions. “Not quite like riding sidesaddle in Rotten Row,” she agreed.

“But we would do that, too,” Miriam said quickly. “All dressed in black, of course,” she added. “Perhaps even with a half veil. I always think ladies' top hats with a half veil one of the most seductive headwear imaginable. Far more than the most glittering tiara.”

“You will invite comment,” Aaron pointed out. Beata could not tell from his voice whether that was a criticism, or merely an observation, but she thought it the latter, as there was laughter in his eyes.

“Good,” Miriam said, smiling at him for an instant before turning back to Beata. “I should hate to go to so much trouble, and then not be noticed.”

Beata had no idea whether she meant it or not. From the look on Aaron's face, neither had he. Could she not know that she was always noticed?

They spoke of current events and people in the news, until it was time to go through to the dining room and take their places. All three of them sat at one end of the magnificent gleaming cherrywood table.

The food was excellent. A delicate clear soup was followed by a white fish in sauce, then a rack of lamb with lightly cooked vegetables. But Beata was too engaged in conversation to care very much. They moved from one subject to another, observations on common memories of the past. Sometimes it was of people they had all known. They were far too well-mannered to speak of what was openly controversial, yet they managed to differ quite often.

“He was always very agreeable,” Aaron remarked of one gentleman they mentioned.

“Of course he was,” Miriam agreed ruefully. “He was a banker. He would have been considerably damaged if you had removed from his keeping the money you had with him.”

Aaron was startled. His dark eyes widened. “You really thought him such an opportunist?” There was disappointment in his face, though whether at her, or at the possibility that she could be right, Beata could not tell. She recalled the banker clearly enough. He had three quite comely daughters to see married well, and the responsibility of their making successful matches never seemed to leave him.

“Not so different from London,” she observed with a smile. “One does what one has to, to care for one's own.”

“He was charming,” Miriam agreed. “Although charm is skin deep…” She glanced at Beata, then back at Aaron. “It's a practice, not a quality. Fame, fortune, and friendship can be won or lost on charm.”

Beata saw a flicker of irritation in Aaron's face. “What is charm?” she asked quickly, to forestall any sharpness between them. “Can you tell, beyond that it is there in people you like?”

“Or who take you in, until it is too late,” Miriam added. “You realize that what you had believed was warmth is actually cold, and completely empty.” There was a momentary edge to her voice that sounded like pain, but she was still smiling.

“I don't always like charming people,” Aaron said with a slight downturning of the corners of his mouth, but rueful, not angry.

“It is the quality that makes you believe that they like you, whether you initially feel that about them,” Miriam replied with complete certainty. She did not look at either of them.

“Believe that they like you?” Beata caught the precise wording.

“Yes…correctly or not,” Miriam agreed. She seemed to avoid Aaron's eyes deliberately. “They might not actually like you at all. In fact, quite the opposite. But you may not ever know that. Some people are beguiled by charm all their lives. They never see it, probably because they know better than to look.”

“How foolish.” Aaron shrugged. “And perhaps essentially vain. Just because someone smiles at you doesn't mean more than that they have good manners.”

“I'm surprised that you should say that.” This time Miriam did look at him. “I would need all my fingers and toes to count the people who believed you liked them because you treated them with such warmth. It was always one of the qualities for which you were known.”

“Perhaps I did like them,” he said, then glanced at Beata, and she knew that beneath the surface lightness he was studying her intently. Why? What had changed without her realizing it?

“I always had the impression that you were far too wise, and too gracious, to allow any other belief,” Beata said quite honestly. Then she turned to Miriam. “And that warmth and inner vitality lifted your beauty above that of any other woman in California.”

Aaron put his hand out and touched Miriam's arm. It was gentle, affectionate, but quite unmistakably a gesture of possession.

They finished the meal and all three of them returned to the withdrawing room. They spoke easily of many other memories. Aaron was very relaxed and he was surprisingly funny, when he chose. Beata did not stay late, but she left with laughter still ringing in her ears, and a startling feeling of being alive again.

M
IRIAM KEPT HER WORD
about riding with Beata in Rotten Row, that lovely long earthen and gravel path beside Hyde Park where ladies and gentlemen of the aristocracy and of high fashion took their daily ride on horseback, frequently regardless of the weather.

This day was dry, but there was a hard, cutting wind whining a little in the bare branches above them. It was not a morning to dawdle in conversation as the horses walked sedately. It was definitely an occasion on which to move to the front of those getting ready, then take a brisk canter along the open stretch ahead. Had it been twice the length, they would both have chosen to urge their horses into a gallop.

They came back breathless but with their hearts pounding and the blood drumming in their ears. They gave their horses to the grooms and took the waiting carriage back to Beata's home, not far away.

“Thank you, that was marvelous,” Beata said cheerfully as they took their riding boots off in the hall and went in stocking feet into the morning room, where the fire was burning nicely. A few minutes later one of the footmen brought slippers, including a pair for Miriam, and two silver-handled mugs and a jug of steaming hot chocolate.

“Do I have to pretend solemnity?” Beata asked with a smile as the footman closed the door behind him, leaving them alone.

Miriam smiled back. “I should be disappointed,” she admitted. “I was hoping you would feel something good—relief, exhilaration, at the very least—the chance to forget propriety and do as you wished.”

“I did,” Beata said frankly. She looked across at Miriam sitting comfortably a little sideways in the chair. She did not have the smooth perfection of youth anymore, but the laughter and the passion in her face would always capture the attention, and perhaps it would always disturb.

Memories came back to her of gold rush days…not just of the town or the bay with its jungle of ships of every kind, mostly abandoned by their crews who had left them, with all they could carry, to go to the goldfields.