“I went to see Kristian,” she replied, intending to tell him only that much.
His eyes narrowed. “Why? You’ve already seen him.”
She hesitated. How little could she tell him and be believed? “I was concerned for him.”
“So you went to his house, after the funeral of his wife?” he said with open disbelief. “Didn’t it occur to you that he might wish to be alone?”
She was stung by his belief in her insensitivity, partly because she had been intrusive exactly as he accused. “Yes, of course it did! I didn’t go imagining I could comfort him. I went because I needed to know . . .” Then she stopped. She did not want to tell him yet what she had seen. He would know that Kristian could be guilty, then sooner or later he would have to tell Runcorn.
“What?” he said sharply. “What did you need to know?”
She was angry at being caught, having either to tell him the truth or to think of a convincing lie that would not stand between them forever. Or she could simply refuse to answer. “I would prefer to speak about it at another time,” she said a little primly.
“You would what?” he said incredulously, his grasp tightening on her arm.
“Let go of me, William. You are bruising me,” she said coldly.
He loosened his grip without removing his hand. “Hester, you are deliberately being evasive. What have you discovered that is so ugly that you are prepared to compromise yourself for it?”
“I’m . . .” she began, then the truth of what he was saying bit more deeply. She
She looked at Monk’s face and met his eyes squarely. “I went to find out why the funeral meal was held in Pendreigh’s house, not Elissa’s own home,” she answered.
“And why was it?” he said softly, a shadow in his face.
“Because Elissa gambled,” she replied. “Compulsively. Kristian has hardly anything left, no furniture, no carpets, no resident servants, nothing but her bedroom and one shabby sitting room, without a fire.”
He stared at her, absorbing what she had said. “Gambled?” he repeated.
“Yes. It became so she couldn’t help it, no matter how much she lost. In fact, if she weren’t risking more than she could afford, it didn’t have any excitement for her.”
He looked very pale, his face tight. He did not say anything of how he understood all that that meant, but he did not need to. It stood like a third entity, a darkness in the room with them.
CHAPTER FIVE
Monk was profoundly disturbed by what Hester had told him. He set out early, walking head down, through the still-shrouded streets. If it were true, then Kristian had a far deeper and more urgent motive for killing Elissa than any of them had realized before.
If she were driving him beyond poverty into ruin, the loss of his home, his reputation, his honor, even a time when debts could not be met, with the prospect of debtors’ prison, then Monk could very easily imagine panic and desperation prompting anyone in Kristian’s position to think of murder.
The Queen’s Prison was still kept exclusively for debtors, but all too often they were thrown in with everyone else: thieves, forgers, embezzlers, arsonists, cutthroats. They might remain there until their debts were discharged, dependent upon outside help even for food, and upon the grace of God for any kind of protection from cold, lice, disease, and the violence of their fellows, never mind the inner torments of despair.
Kristian was a man who in the past had faced injustice and fought it with violence, but then he had not stood alone. Half of Europe had risen in revolution against oppression, but perhaps the memory of it lay so deep in him that he would believe it was the answer again. Violence could have been instinctive rather than reasoned, and then, when it was too late, understanding and remorse returned.
It was too easily believable to discard. If he were honest, Monk could even understand it. Were anyone to threaten all he had spent his life building—his career, his reputation, the core of his own integrity and independence, his power to follow the profession he chose, to exercise his skills and feel of value to the things he believed in—he would fight to survive. He was not prepared to swear what weapons he would use, or decline, however bitter the price, or the shame afterwards.
There was an icy wind that morning, and he bent his head against it, feeling it sting his face. A newsboy was calling out something about a dispatch bearer for President Davis of the Confederacy in America who had been arrested in New Orleans, about to embark for England. It barely touched the periphery of Monk’s mind. He still had to know the truth, all of it, and he had to be aware of what Runcorn knew. If Kristian were not guilty, he would defend him to the last stand.
But if he were guilty, then such defense as there might be was different. Except there was no moral defense. Had it been only Elissa, some plea of mitigation might have been possible. He was certainly not the only man to have a wife who had driven him to the edge of madness, and violence lurks in many, if they are frightened or hurt enough. But whoever it was had then killed Sarah Mackeson also, simply because she was there. Nothing could justify that.
He would not yet tell Runcorn anything about what he had learned. It was still reasonable to assume that Sarah Mackeson was the intended victim, and even that Argo Allardyce was lying when he said he had not been back to Acton Street all night. They should begin by finding the woman companion that Elissa Beck had undoubtedly taken with her to her portrait sittings. She could have valuable testimony as to what had happened that night, at least up to the point when she and Elissa had parted. Where had she left Elissa, and for what reason? No doubt Runcorn had thought of that, too.
He stopped abruptly, causing the man behind him on the footpath to collide with him and nearly lose his balance. The other man swore under his breath and moved on, leaving Monk staring into the distance where one of the new horse-drawn trams loomed out of the thinning mist.
