The Sins of the Wolf (26 page)

“Of course she didn’t,” Hector agreed crossly. “But we do.”

“Naturally we do,” Quinlan agreed. Monk thought he only just avoided adding “you fool.”

“And one of us knows whether they are right or wrong,” Hector went on doggedly.

Kenneth’s face was pink. “I do, Uncle Hector. It is my job to keep them. And they are right … to the farthing.”

“Of course they are,” Oonagh said frankly, looking first at Kenneth, then at Hector. “We all know you are distressed over Mother’s death, but you are beginning to speak irresponsibly, Uncle Hector. That does not do any of us justice. It would be a good idea if you were to stop discussing that subject before you say something we shall all regret.” Her eyes were very steady on his. “Mother would not have wished us to quarrel with each other, or make hurtful remarks like that.”

Hector looked numbed, as if for a moment he had forgotten Mary’s death, and then suddenly the whole weight of grief struck him again. The color fled from his face and he seemed about to collapse.

Eilish leaned towards him to give him physical support, which seemed necessary to keep him upright in his chair, and immediately Baird rose and came around to him, half lifting him up.

“Come on, Uncle Hector. Let me take you to your room. I think you had better he down for a while.”

A look of fury crossed over Quinlan’s face as Eilish and Baird between them helped Hector to his feet and led him, shambling erratically, out of the room. They could hear their footsteps lurching across the hall, and Eilish’s voice in encouragement, and then Baird’s deeper tones.

“I’m so sorry,” Oonagh apologized, looking at Monk. “I am afraid poor Uncle Hector is not as well as we would wish. This has all struck him very hard.” She smiled gently, tacitly seeking Monk’s understanding. “I am afraid he sometimes gets confused.”

“ ‘Not as well,’ ” Quinlan said viciously. “He’s blind drunk, the old ass!”

Alastair shot him a look of warning, but refrained from saying anything.

Deirdra rang the bell for the servants to clear away the dishes and bring the next course.

They were finished with dinner and back in the withdrawing room before Oonagh found her opportunity to speak privately with Monk. They were all in the room, but so discreetly that it seemed unnoticed by anyone else, she led him farther and farther from the others until they were standing in front of the large window, now closed against the rapidly chilling night, and out of earshot of anyone. He was suddenly aware of the perfume of her.

“How is your errand progressing, Mr. Monk?” she said softly.

“I have learned little that might not have been expected,” he replied guardedly.

“About us?”

There was no point in prevaricating, and she was not a woman to whom he would lie, or wished to over this.

“Naturally.”

“Have you discovered where Deirdra spends so much money, Mr. Monk?”

“Not yet.”

She pulled a small, rueful face, full of apology, and something else beyond it, deep within her which he could
not
read.

“She manages to go through enormous amounts, quite unexplained by the running of this house, which has been largely in my mother’s hands until her death, and of course mine.” She frowned. “Deirdra says she spends it on clothes, but she is exceptionally extravagant, even for a woman of fashion and some social position to maintain.” She took a deep breath and looked at Monk very squarely. “It is causing my brother Alastair some concern. If … if you should find out, in the course of your investigations, we would be most grateful to learn.” The ghost of a smile curved her
lips. “We would express that gratitude in whatever manner was appropriate. I do not wish to insult you.”

“Thank you,” he said frankly. He was obliged to admit, his pride could be quite easily offended. “If I should learn the answer to that, which I may do, I will inform you directly I am certain.”

She smiled, in a moment’s candid understanding, and a moment later fell back into ordinary, meaningless chatter.

He took his leave shortly before a quarter to eleven, and was in the hall waiting for McTeer to emerge through the green baize door when Hector Farraline came lurching down the stairs and slid the last half dozen steps to land clinging to the newel post, his face wearing an expression of intense concentration.

“Are you going to find out who killed Mary?” he said in a whisper, surprisingly quiet for one so inebriated.

“Yes,” Monk replied simply. He did not think rational argument or explanation would serve any purpose, only prolong an encounter which was going to be at least trying.

“She was the best woman I ever knew.” Hector blinked and his eyes filled with a terrible sadness. “You should have seen her when she was young. She was never beautiful, like Eilish, but she had the same sort of quality about her, a light inside, a sort of fire.” He gazed across the hall past Monk, and for a moment his glance caught the huge portrait of his brother, which until now Monk had noticed only vaguely. The old man’s hp curled and his face filled with a vortex of emotions, love, hate, envy, loathing, regret, longing for things past, even pity.

“He was a bastard, you know—at times,” he said in little more than a whisper, but his voice shook with intensity. “The handsome Hamish, my elder brother, the colonel. I was only a major, you know? But I was a better soldier than he ever was! Cut a fine figure. Knew how to speak to the ladies. They adored him.”

He slid down to sit on the lowest step. “But Mary was always the best. She used to walk with her back so straight,
and her head so high. She had wit, Mary. Make you laugh till you wept … at the damnedest things.” He looked regrettably close to weeping now, and impatient as he was, Monk felt a twinge of pity for him. He was an old man, living on the bounty of a younger generation who had nothing but contempt for him, and a sense of duty. The fact that he probably deserved nothing more would be no comfort at all.

“He was wrong,” Hector said suddenly, swiveling around to look straight at the portrait again. “Very wrong. He shouldn’t have done that to her, of all people.”

Monk was not interested. Hamish Farraline had been dead over eight years. There could be no connection with Mary’s death, and that was all that mattered now. Impatience was gnawing inside him. He moved away.

“Watch for McIvor,” Hector called after him.

Monk turned back.

“Why?”

“She liked him,” Hector said simply, his eyes wide. “You could always tell when Mary liked someone.”

“Indeed.”

He could not be bothered to wait for McTeer. The old fool was probably asleep in his pantry. He took his own coat off the hall stand and made for the front door just as Alastair came out of the withdrawing room, apologizing for McTeer’s absence.

Monk said good-night again, nodded towards Hector on the stairs, and went out of the front door. He had refused the offer of assistance to call a cab, and had set out to walk southwards when he saw an unmistakable figure pass beneath the lamplight so rapidly he almost missed her. But no one else could have quite that ethereal grace, or that flame of hair. Most of her head was covered by the hood of her cape, but as she turned towards the light her brow was pale and the copper red clear above it.

Where on earth was Eilish Fyffe going alone, and on foot, at eleven o’clock at night?

He waited until she was well past him, across the grass of the circle to the far side of Ainslie Place, where she was about to disappear either east into St. Combe Street or south into Glenfinlas Street. Then he ran quickly and soundlessly after her, arriving at the corner just in time to see her pass under the lamp at the beginning of Charlotte Square.

Had she an assignation? It seemed not only the obvious conclusion but the only one. Why else would she be out alone, and obviously wishing not to be seen?

She was moving rapidly past the square. It was only two very short blocks before it ended in a big junction with Princes Street and Lothian Road, Shandwick Place and Queensferry Street. Where on earth was she going? He had never cared much for her, but now his opinion took a rapid and decisive turn for the worse.

She crossed the junction without a glance either way, still less behind her, and continued at a fast walk along Lothian Road. To their left were the Princes Street Gardens, and looming over them, brooding and medieval, the huge mass of the mound with the castle clinging to its top.

Monk kept an even hundred yards behind her, and was almost taken by surprise when she turned left and disappeared into Kings Stables Road. He was familiar with the way. It was his own route home, were he to walk. Not long and it would lead into the Grassmarket, and then Cowgate. Surely she could not be going that way? What would these dark, crowded buildings and narrow alleys possibly hold for a lady like Eilish?

His mind was still turning over the contradictions and impossibilities of it when suddenly he was engulfed in sharp, numbing pain and a black hole opened up in front of him.

He regained his senses, still on the pavement, propped up against the wall, his head aching abominably, his body cold and his temper volcanic. Eilish was nowhere to be seen.

*  *  *

The following day he returned to Ainslie Place in a vicious and desperate frame of mind, and set up vigil as soon as it was dark.

However it was not Eilish he saw, but a scruffy-looking man in soiled and very worn clothes approaching number seventeen nervously, looking from right to left as if he feared observation.

Monk moved farther back into the shadows, then remained absolutely motionless.

The man passed under a streetlamp and for a moment his face was visible. It was the same man Monk had seen several days before, not with Eilish, but with Deirdra. The man fished out a watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and put it back.

Curious. He did not look like a man who would be able to read a watch, far less own one.

Several minutes passed by. The man fidgeted in acute discomfort. Monk stood without moving even the angle of his head. Along the footpath the lamps made little pools of light. Between was a no-man’s-land of gathering mist and shadows. It was growing colder. Monk was beginning to feel it in his motionless state. It ate into his bones and crept up through the soles of his feet.

Then suddenly she was there. She must have come around through the areaway gate, into the street from the side—not Eilish, but the small, urgent figure of Deirdra. She did not even glance down the street or to the grass center of the Place, but went straight to the man. They stood close together for several minutes, heads bent, talking in voices so low that from where he stood Monk could not even hear a murmur.

Then suddenly Deirdra shook her head vigorously, the man touched her arm in a gentle reassuring gesture, and she turned and went back inside the house. He departed the way he had come.

Monk waited until long after midnight, growing colder and colder, but no one else came or went in the Farraline
house. He could have kicked himself for not having followed the man.

Two more cold and increasingly desperate days followed in which Monk learned nothing useful, indeed nothing that common sense could not have deduced for him. He wrote at some length to Rathbone, detailing everything he had learned so far, and when he returned to his lodgings about noon on the third day there were two letters for him, one from Rathbone outlining the general provisions of Mary Farraline’s will. She had left her very considerable property, both real and personal, more or less equally among the children. Alastair had already inherited the house and most of the business on the death of his father. The second letter was from Oonagh, inviting him to attend a large civic dinner that evening and apologizing for the invitation’s being so extremely late.

Monk accepted. He had nothing left to lose. Time was treading hard on his heels, and fruitless nights spent watching the Farraline house had yielded nothing. Neither Deirdra nor Eilish had appeared again.

He dressed very carefully, but his mind was too absorbed in rehearsing every piece of information he had to be nervous as to his elegance or social acceptability. How could Hester have been idiotic enough to get herself into this appalling situation? The few impressions she had given him were useless. What if Deirdra and Eilish were both conducting clandestine affairs with men from the heart of the slums? What if Mary knew? It made no sense to murder her because of it. If she had not made it public already, then she was not going to. A family quarrel, no matter how fierce, was not cause for murder by anyone but a lunatic.

If Eilish had been the victim, that would be readily explainable. Either Quinlan or Baird McIvor might have excellent cause. Or even Oonagh, if Baird was really in love with her.

But that made little sense either. It could hardly be Baird she was creeping along Kings Stables Road at night to see.

He arrived at the huge hall in which the dinner was to be held with his letter from Oonagh in his hand, ready to show to any doorman who might question his right to be there, but his assurance must have been sufficient and no one accosted him.

It was a dazzling occasion. Chandeliers blazed from every ceiling. He could imagine them being lowered and footmen with tapers spending hours lighting them before winding them back up again. Every niche in the gorgeous ceilings seemed to be ablaze. Fiddlers played a nameless accompaniment while guests milled around nodding and smiling and hoping to be recognized by all the right people. Servants mixed discreetly offering refreshments, and a resplendent liveried doorman announced the arrival of those whom Society considered important.

It was easy to see Eilish. Even in black she seemed to radiate a warmth and a light. Her hair was a more gorgeous ornament than the tiaras of duchesses, and her pale skin against the black of her gown seemed luminous.

From the gallery where Monk was standing he soon observed Alastair’s pale head, and the moment after, Oonagh. Even from above, where he could see only an angle of her face, she carried with her an aura of calm and a sense of both power and intelligence.