“Come in, Mrs. Stonefield.” He closed the door behind her and helped her with her wet cloak and bonnet. She looked extremely tired. There were fine lines in her face which had not been there a few days earlier.
“Thank you,” she accepted, sitting down reluctantly, perched on the edge of the chair as if to relax would somehow leave her vulnerable.
“How is Lady Ravensbrook?” he asked.
“Ill,” she answered, her eyes dark with distress. “Very ill. We do not know if she will live. Miss Latterly is doing everything for her that can be done, but it may not be enough. Mr. Monk, have you learned anything about my husband? My situation is growing desperate.”
“I am very sorry about Lady Ravensbrook,” Monk said quietly, and he meant it. He had liked her in the brief moment they had met. Her face had had courage and intelligence. It hurt to think of her dying so pointlessly. He looked at Genevieve. How much more must she feel a helpless sense of loss.
She was sitting rigidly on the edge of her chair, face earnest, waiting for him to answer her questions.
“I am afraid it begins to look increasingly as if you are right,” he said gravely. “I wish I could hold out a more helpful answer, but I have traced him into Limehouse on the day of his disappearance, and there seems no reason to doubt he went to see Caleb, as he had so often before.”
She bit her lip and her hands tightened in her lap, but she did not interrupt him.
“I am still looking, but I have not yet found anyone who has seen him since then,” he went on.
“But Mr. Monk, what I need is proof!” She took a deep breath. “I know in my heart what has happened. I have known since he did not return home at the time he said he would. I have feared it for long enough, but I could not dissuade him. But the authorities will not accept that!” Her voice was rising in desperation as she could not make him understand. “Without proof I am simply an abandoned woman, and God knows, London is full of them.” She shook her head as if in despair. “I cannot make any decisions. I cannot dispose of property, because as long as he is legally supposed to be alive, it is his, not mine or my children's. We cannot even appoint a new person to manage the business. And willing as Mr. Arbuthnot is, he has neither the confidence nor the experience to do it adequately himself. Mr. Monk, I must have proof!”
He stared at her earnest, anguished face and saw the fear in it. That was all he could see, it was so sharp and urgent. Did it mask grief she could not bear to allow herself, least of all now when there was so much to be done, and she was not alone where she could weep in private? Or was something less attractive behind it-a driving concern for money, property, a very thriving business which would be hers alone as a widow?
Perhaps if Monk were doing his duty to Angus as well as to her, he would look a little closer at Genevieve as well. It was an ugly thought, and he would far rather it had not entered his head, but now that it was there he could not ignore it.
“Previously you spoke of selling the business while it is still profitable and of excellent reputation,” he pointed out. It was irrelevant-she could do neither-but he was interested in her change of mind.
“Have you a manager in mind?”
“I don't know!” She leaned forward and her full skirts touched and spilled over the fender. She seemed not to notice. “Perhaps it would be better than selling. Then all our present employees could remain. There is that to consider.” She was ardent to convince him. “And it would be a continued source of security for us… something for my sons to inherit. That is better than a sum of money which can disappear alarmingly quickly. A piece of misguided advice, a young man willful, unwilling to be counseled by those who are older and he considers staid and unimaginative. I have heard of it happening.”
He bent over and moved her skirt, in case a coal should fall or spark and set it alight.
She barely noticed.
“Aren't you looking rather far ahead?” he said a little coolly.
“I have to, Mr. Monk. There is no one to take care of me but myself. I have five children. They must be provided for.”
“There is Lord Ravensbrook,” he reminded her. “He has both means and influence, and seems more than willing to be of every assistance. I think your anxiety is greater than it need be, Mrs. Stonefield.” He hated it, but his suspicions were wakened. Perhaps the relationship between herself and her husband was not as ideal as she had said. Possibly it was she whose affections had wandered elsewhere, not he? She was an extremely attractive woman. There was in her an element of passion and daring far deeper than mere physical charm. He found himself drawn to her, watching her with fascination, even while his mind was weighing and judging facts.
“And I have already tried to explain, Mr. Monk, that I do not wish to forfeit my freedom and become dependent upon the goodwill of Lord Ravensbrook,” she went on, her voice thick with emotion she could not hide. “I won't have that, Mr. Monk, as long as I have any way at all of preventing it. I am growing more afraid day by day, but I am not yet beyond my wits' end. And whether you believe it or not, I am doing what my husband would have wished. I knew him well, for all that you may think perhaps I did not.”
“I don't doubt you did, Mrs. Stonefield.” It was quite out of character for him to lie. He barely knew why he did it, except some need to comfort her.
He could hardly touch her and he had no instinct to. It did not come to him naturally to express himself by touch. Whether it ever had, he could not know.
“Yes you do,” she said with a pinched smile, a bitter humor of knowledge.
“You have explored every other possibility than the one that Caleb killed him, because you think it more likely.” She leaned back in her chair again, and finally became aware of her skirt near the fender and almost automatically tweaked it away. “And I suppose I cannot blame you. Every day I daresay some man deserts his wife and children, either for money or another woman. But I knew Angus. He was a man to whom dishonor was not only abhorrent, it was frightening. He avoided it as another might have the touch of leprosy or the plague.” Her voice at last lost its steadiness and cracked with the effort of control. “He was a truly good man, Mr. Monk, a man who knew evil for the ugliness and the ruin it is. It had no disguise of charm for him.”
His intelligence told him it was a bereaved woman speaking with the hindsight of love, and his instinct told him it was the truth. This is how he had always looked in her eyes, and although she admired it wholeheartedly, it also exasperated or oppressed her at times.
“Now so many days have passed,” she said very quietly, “I fear it may be beyond anyone's ability to prove what has happened to him.”
He felt guilty, which was unreasonable. Even if he had followed Angus on the very day he disappeared, he might still not have been able to prove murder against Caleb. There were enough ways of disposing of a body in Limehouse. The river was deep there, with its ebb tide to carry flotsam out and its cargo boats coming and going. At the moment there were also the common graves for the victims of typhoid, to name only a few. He put half a dozen more coals on the fire.
“You do not always need a body to presume death,” he said carefully, watching her face. “Although it may be a good deal harder to prove murder- and Caleb's guilt.”
“I don't care about Caleb's guilt.” Her eyes did not deviate from his face.
“God will take care of him.”
“But not of you?” he asked. “I would have thought you a great deal more deserving… and more urgent.”
“I cannot wait for charity, Mr. Monk,” she answered with some asperity.
He smiled. “I apologize. Of course not. But I should like to deal with Caleb before waiting for God. I am doing all I can, and I am much closer than I was last time we spoke. I have found a witness who saw Angus in Limehouse, on the day of his disappearance, in a tavern where he might easily have met Caleb. I'll find others. It takes time, but people will talk. It is just a matter of finding the right ones and persuading them to speak. I'll get Caleb himself, in the end.”
“Will you…” She was on the edge of hope, but not allowing herself to grasp it. “I really don't care if you cannot prove it was Caleb.” The shadow of a smile touched her mouth. “I don't even know what Angus would want. Isn't that absurd? For all that they were so utterly different, and Caleb hated him, he still loved Caleb. It seemed as if he would not forget the child he had been and the good times they had spent together before they quarreled. It hurt him every time he went to Limehouse after Caleb, yet he would not give up.”
She looked away. “Sometimes it would be weeks, especially after a particularly wretched visit, but then he would relent and go back again. On those times he'd be gone even longer, as if it were necessary to make up the difference. I suppose childhood bonds are very deep.”
“Did he tell you much of his visits to Caleb?” Monk asked. “Did he give you any indication of where they met, or
