“Then who did?” She stared straight back at him, meeting his eyes unrelentingly. It hurt to see the fear deep in them, the loyalties struggling, the pain. But she had seen death often when she had accompanied her husband abroad on his duties. As an army surgeon’s wife she had mixed with other military wives on various postings in Europe, and often she had lent what assistance she could to those who were injured or ill. She had no practical training, as Hester had, but intelligence served for much, and experience had taught her more. Her husband had died before the Crimean War, or she would have seen that terrible conflict, too.
“Not Max,” Kristian insisted, but there was less certainty in his eyes, and he knew that she had seen it. “He loved her,” he repeated. “Callandra . . .”
She could not wait. The constable would be back any moment now. “What was she meeting him for?” she asked.
He winced. His voice was very quiet. “I don’t know. I didn’t know he was in London until the funeral.”
“And I imagine you did not know the other times he was in London this year, either?”
He started to deny it and then stopped, seeing the truth in her face.
“He was here at least twice before,” she told him. “He saw Elissa, and not you. Doesn’t that call for some explanation?”
His face was ashen gray. She could only guess how much the thought of Max’s guilt hurt him. It was a double betrayal on top of the loss, but turning from it now altered nothing, except that it placed the truth one step further away, and his own life in even greater danger. Those were words she could say while still refusing to picture their meaning. At least while she was talking, thinking of what to do, she could keep it at bay. “If not Max Niemann, who else?” she demanded. Her voice sounded peremptory, even hostile. “Kristian! There is no time to be keeping secrets!”
His eyes opened wide. “I don’t know! For God’s sake, Callandra, I have no idea. She came and went and I barely saw her. We used to be allies in a great cause, friends and lovers once. The last two or three years we’ve been strangers meeting in the same house and exchanging empty words. I was consumed in my own causes, and I knew hers were demons, taking us both to destruction, but I didn’t know what to do about it and I didn’t alter my own cause enough to find out.”
Guilt was naked in him. She saw it and could not argue. Perhaps he had deliberately not tackled something which was demanding and dangerous, and which he feared was going to eat away a part of him he needed to keep. Perhaps Elissa had been every bit as lonely as he, and equally unable to do anything about it.
No, that was an excuse. She would have been more so. She had no occupation to use her passion and her intellect to fill her time. Even an hour ago Callandra could not have imagined feeling deep and hurting pity for Elissa Beck, however much she had wasted her talents and ignored all the causes Callandra could name. But now she could not escape pity, nor could she wholly excuse Kristian, for all her furious words.
He saw it in her face. He did not try to evade it, but accepted the unspoken change.
“I’ll ask William to go to Vienna,” she said again.
He was about to speak when they both heard the constable’s footsteps loud and sharp along the corridor. There was no time for anything except the briefest of good-byes before she was escorted out and back up the steps to the entrance, gulping in the tainted air of the street, the sunlight and the everyday noises of horses and wheels and people shouting and jostling, exactly as if life were as always.
She found her carriage and gave orders to go straight to Monk’s house in Grafton Street.
She found him in, as she had expected. It was still only early afternoon, and they had no plan to follow yet, no ideas to pursue.
Again she did not pretend to the usual courtesies. As soon as the door was closed she began. “I can think of nothing we can do except pursue Max Niemann,” she told Monk and Hester. “Kristian says he is certain Niemann could not be guilty, but I think that is loyalty speaking rather than realism.” She ignored the sudden widening of Monk’s eyes. “It seems from the evidence that Mrs. Beck was bored and hungering for excitement such as she had known in the past,” she continued relentlessly. “Perhaps she was remembering her days in Vienna with regret compared with the present. Niemann turns up in London, still in love with her, remembering her as she was.” She took a deep breath, avoiding Monk’s eyes, and Hester’s also. “She may have led him to suppose she returned his feelings, and then realized what she was doing and changed her mind. We will probably never know what was said, or quite what emotions drew him. People in love can do things they would be incapable of in other circumstances.”
What an idiotically facile understatement. She dared not even guess what lunacy she herself could commit. Friends of a lifetime would think she had lost her wits, and probably they would be right.
“He will have gone back to Vienna now,” Monk was saying reasonably. Was that pity in his voice?
It stung her. She felt peculiarly naked in his gaze, which saw so much. His own vulnerability had made him attuned to the weaknesses of others, even those he cared for, and on whose grief or foolishness he would rather not have trespassed.
“I assumed he had,” she said crisply. “If not, then I have very little idea where to look for him. Also I know of no one in London, except for Kristian, who will hear no ill of him, who can tell us anything of what manner of man he is.”
“Vienna?” Hester said in surprise, looking from Callandra to Monk.
“Can you think of anything better?” Callandra asked. She sounded more defiant than she had intended, but she did not apologize.
“I don’t know Vienna,” Monk said hesitantly. “And I have no German at all.” He gave a slight, embarrassed shrug. “I should be no use. Perhaps I could find someone who would?”
“I need a detective, not an errand boy!” Callandra said, fear eating away at her self-control. “If we don’t succeed, Kristian could hang.” She had put it into words at last. Only anger gave her any semblance of dignity.
“I’ll find someone to translate for me,” he said with sudden gentleness. “And to guide me around the city. Perhaps the British Embassy can help. I’m perfectly happy to lie to them. Kristian is not British, but Elissa was, and Pendreigh’s name might help. From what you say, he has friends in powerful places.”
The relief in Callandra was visible, like color returning. “Yes . . . I’ll write letters. There’s bound to be someone
