The Face of a Stranger (29 page)

And he had learned little of Joscelin Grey that he had not already
deduced from the other calls.

* * * * *

Dawlish was a stout, expensively dressed man with a high forehead and
dark, clever eyes, but at present he was displeased at the prospect of
speaking with the police, and appeared distinctly ill at ease. There was no
reason to assume it was an unquiet conscience; to have the police at one's house,
for any reason, was socially highly undesirable, and judging from the newness
of the furniture and the rather formal photographs of the family—Mrs. Dawlish
seated in imitation of the Queen—Mr. Dawlish was an ambitious man.

It transpired that he knew remarkably little about the business he had
half committed himself to support. His involvement was with Joscelin Grey
personally, and it was this which had caused him to promise funds, and the use
of his good name. "Charming fellow," he said, half facing Monk as he
stood by the parlor fire. "Hard when you're brought up in a family, part
of it and all that, then the eldest brother marries and suddenly you're
nobody." He shook his head grimly. "Dashed hard to make your way if
you're not suited to the church, and invalided out of the army. Only thing
really is to marry decently." He looked at Monk to see if he understood.
"Don't know why young Joscelin didn't, certainly a handsome enough chap,
and pleasing with women. Had all the charm, right words to say, and so on.
Amanda thought the world of him." He coughed. "My daughter, you know.
Poor girl was very distressed over his death. Dreadful thing! Quite
appalling." He stared down at the embers and a sharp sadness filled his
eyes and softened the lines around his mouth. "Such a decent man. Expect
it in the Crimea, die for your country, and so on; but not this. Lost her first
suitor at Sebastopol, poor girl; and of course her brother at Balaclava.
That's where he met young Grey." He swallowed hard and looked up at Monk,
as if to defy his emotions. "Damned good to him." He took a deep
breath and fought to control a conflict of emotions that were obviously acutely
painful. "Actually spoke to each other night before the battle. Like to
think of that, someone we've met, with Edward the night before he was killed.
Been a great source of—" He coughed again and was forced to look away, his
eyes brimming. "Comfort to us, my wife and I. Taken it hard, poor woman;
only son, you know. Five daughters. And now this."

"I understand Menard Grey was also a close friend of your
son's," Monk said, as much to fill the silence as that it might have
mattered.

Dawlish stared at the coals. "Prefer not to speak of it," he
replied with difficulty, his voice husky. "Thought a lot of him—but he led
Edward into bad ways—no doubt about it. It was Joscelin who paid his debts—so
he did not die with dishonor."

He swallowed convulsively. "We became fond of Joscelin, even on
the few weekends he stayed with us." He lifted the poker out of its rest
and jabbed at the fire fiercely. "I hope to heaven you catch the madman
who did it."

"We'll do everything we can, sir." Monk wanted to say all
sorts of other things to express the pity he felt for so much loss. Thousands
of men and horses had died, frozen, starved, or been massacred or wasted by
disease on the bitter hillsides of a country they neither knew nor loved. If he
had ever known the purpose of the war in the Crimea he had forgotten it now. It
could hardly have been a war of defense. Crimea was a thousand miles from England.
Presumably from the newspapers it was something to do with the political
ramifications of Turkey and its disintegrating empire. It hardly seemed a
reason for the wretched, pitiful deaths of so many, and the grief they left
behind.

Dawlish was staring at him, waiting for him to say something, expecting
a platitude.

"I am sorry your son had to die in such a way." Monk held out
his hand automatically. "And so young. But at least Joscelin Grey was able
to assure you it was with courage and dignity, and that his suffering was
brief."

Dawlish took his hand before he had time to think.

"Thank you." There was a faint flush on his skin and he was
obviously moved. He did not even realize until after Monk had gone that he had
shaken hands with a policeman as frankly as if he had been a gentleman.

* * * * *

That evening Monk found himself for the first time caring about Grey
personally. He sat in his own quiet room with nothing but the faint noises from
the street in the distance below. In the small kindnesses to the Dawlishes, in
paying a dead man's debts, Grey had developed a solidity for more than in the
grief of his mother or the pleasant but rather insubstantial memories of his
neighbors. He had become a man with a past of something more than a resentment
that his talent was wasted while the lesser gifts of his elder brother were
overrewarded, more than the rejected suitor of a weak young woman who preferred
the ease of doing as she was told and the comfort of status to the relative
struggle of following her own desires. Or perhaps she had not really wanted
anything enough to fight for it?

Shelburne was comfortable, physically everything was provided; one did
not have to work, morally there were no decisions—if something was unpleasant
one did not have to look at it. If there were beggars in the street, mutilated
or diseased, one could pass to the other side. There was the government to make
the social decisions, and the church to make the moral ones.

Of course society demanded a certain, very rigid code of conduct, of
taste, and a very small circle of friends and

suitable ways to pass one's time, but for those who had been brought up
from childhood to observe it, it was little extra effort.

Small wonder if Joscelin Grey was angry with it, even contemptuous after
he had seen the frozen bodies on the heights before Sebastopol, the carnage at
Balaclava, the filth, the disease and the agony of Scutari.

In the street below a carriage clattered by and someone shouted and
there was a roar of laughter.

Suddenly Monk found himself feeling this same strange, almost impersonal
disgust Grey must have suffered coming back to England afterwards, to a family
who were strangers insofar as their petty, artificial little world was
concerned; who knew only the patriotic placebos they read in the newspapers,
and had no wish to look behind them for uglier truths.

He had felt the same himself after visiting the "rookeries,"
the hell-like, rotting tenements crawling with vermin and disease, sometimes
only a few dozen yards from the lighted streets where gentlemen rode in
carriages from one sumptuous house to another. He had seen fifteen or twenty
people in one room, all ages and sexes together, without heating or sanitation.
He had seen child prostitutes of eight or ten years old with eyes tired and old
as sin, and bodies riddled with venereal disease; children of five or even less
frozen to death in the gutters because they could not beg a night's shelter.
Small wonder they stole, or sold for a few pence the only things they
possessed, their own bodies.

How did he remember that, when his own father's face was still a blank
to him? He must have cared very much, been so shocked by it that it left a scar
he could not forget, even now. Was that, at least in part, the fire behind his
ambition, the fire behind his relentless drive to improve himself, to copy the
mentor whose features he could not recall, whose name, whose station, eluded
him? Please God that was so. It made a more tolerable man of him, even one he
could begin to accept.

Had Joscelin Grey cared?

Monk intended to avenge him; he would not be merely another unsolved
mystery, a man remembered for his death rather than his life.

And he must pursue the Latterly case. He could hardly go back to Mrs.
Latterly without knowing at least the outline of the matter he had promised
her to solve, however painful the truth. And he did intend to go back to her.
Now that he thought about it, he realized he had always intended to visit her
again, speak with her, see her face, listen to her voice, watch the way she
moved; command her attention, even for so short a time.

* * * * *

There was no use looking among his files again; he had already done that
almost page by page. Instead he went directly to Runcorn.

"Morning, Monk." Runcorn was not at his desk but over by the
window, and he sounded positively cheerful; his rather sallow face was touched
with color as if he had walked briskly in the sun, and his eyes were bright.
"How's the Grey case coming along? Got something to tell the newspapers
yet? They're still pressing, you know.'' He sniffed faintly and reached in his
pocket for a cigar. "They'll be calling for our blood soon; resignations,
and that sort of thing!"

Monk could see his satisfaction in the way he stood, shoulders a little
high, chin up, the shine on his shoes gleaming in the light.

"Yes sir, I imagine they will," he conceded. "But as you
said over a week ago, it's one of those investigations that is bound to rake up
something extremely unpleasant, possibly several things. It would be very rash
to say anything before we can prove it."

"Have you got anything at all, Monk?" Runcorn's face hardened,
but his sense of anticipation was still there, his scent of blood. "Or are
you as lost as Lamb was?"

"It looks at the moment as if it could be in the family, sir,"
Monk replied as levelly as he could. He had a sickening awareness that Runcorn
was controlling this, and enjoying it. "There was considerable feeling
between the brothers," he went on. "The present Lady Shelburne was
courted by Joscelin before she married Lord Shelburne—"

"Hardly a reason to murder him," Runcorn said with contempt.
“Would only make sense if it had been Shelburne who was murdered. Doesn't
sound as if you have anything there!"

Monk kept his temper. He felt Runcorn trying to irritate him, provoke
him into betraying all the pent-up past that lay between them; victory would be
sweeter if it were acknowledged, and could be savored in the other's presence.
Monk wondered how he could have been so insensitive, so stupid as not to have
known it before. Why had he not forestalled it, even avoided it altogether? How
had he been so blind then when now it was so glaring? Was it really no more
than that he was rediscovering himself, fact by fact, from the outside?

"Not that in itself." He went back to the question, keeping
his voice light and calm. "But I think the lady still preferred Joscelin,
and her one child, conceived just before Joscelin went to the Crimea, looks a
good deal more like him than like his lordship."

Runcorn's face fell, then slowly widened again in a smile, showing all
his teeth; the cigar was still unlit in his hand.

"Indeed. Yes. Well, I warned you it would be nasty, didn't I?
You'll have to be careful, Monk; make any allegations you can't prove, and the
Shelburnes will have you dismissed before you've time to get back to
London."

Which is just what you want, Monk thought.

"Precisely sir," he said aloud. "That is why as far as
the newspapers are concerned, we are still in the dark. I came because I wanted
to ask you about the Latterly case—"

"Latterly! What the hell does that matter? Some poor devil
committed suicide." He walked around and sat down

at his desk and began fishing for matches. "It's a crime for the
church, not for us. Have you got any matches, Monk? We wouldn't have taken any
notice of it at all if that wretched woman hadn't raised it. Ah—don't bother,
here they are. Let them bury their own dead quietly, no fuss." He struck a
light and held it to his cigar, puffing gently. "Man got in over his head
with a business deal that went sour. All his friends invested in it on his recommendation,
and he couldn't take the shame of it. Took that way out; some say coward's way,
some say it's the honorable way." He blew out smoke and stared up at Monk.
"Damn silly, I call it. But that class is very jealous of what it thinks
is its good name. Some of them will keep servants they can't afford for the
sake of appearance, serve six-course meals to guests, and live on bread and
dripping the rest of the time. Light a fire when there's company, and perish
with cold the rest of the time. Pride is a wicked master, most especially
social pride." His eyes flickered with malicious pleasure. "Remember
that, Monk."

He looked down at the papers in front of him. "Why on earth are you
bothering with Latterly? Get on with Grey; we need to solve it, however painful
it may prove. The public won't wait much longer; they're even asking questions
in the House of Lords. Did you know that?"

"No sir, but considering how Lady Shelburne feels, I'm not
surprised. Do you have a file on the Latterly case, sir?"

"You are a stubborn man, Monk. It's a very dubious quality. I've
got your written report that it was a suicide, and nothing to concern us. You
don't want that again, do you?"

"Yes sir, I do." Monk took it without looking at it and walked
out.

* * * * *

He had to visit the Latterlys' house in the evening, in his own time,
since he was not officially working on any case that involved them. He must
have been here before; he could not have met with Mrs. Latterly casually, nor
expected her to report to the police station. He looked up and down the street,
but there was nothing familiar in it.