“For heaven’s sake, man, did you imagine I would stay away?” Niemann said in amazement. “The past means too much not to have come this short distance. It’s absurd, isn’t it, that after all we’ve seen and done together, that one of us should die in an artist’s studio in London?”
Kristian smiled very slightly, but there was gentleness in it, and no bitterness that Hester could see. “I think she would have preferred something a little. . more dramatic,” he said wryly. Then his voice dropped. “And to some purpose, not the idiotic accident of calling at an artist’s studio at the wrong moment.”
Niemann put his hand on Kristian’s arm with only the barest hesitation, just a flicker across his face that vanished again. “I’m sorry,” he said fervently. “Elissa, of all people, should have gone out in a blaze of glory. There’s so much futility in the world, so many idiotic tragedies that strike from nowhere. All I can think of is the emptiness now that she’s gone.” His voice was thick with emotion, and he did not move his hand from Kristian’s arm, as if in touching him he could share some bond which was precious to him.
“Another day. . later. . we must talk about the past,” Kristian responded. “It’s been far too long. Present crises press and I’ve allowed them to crowd out too much.”
Niemann smiled and shook his head. “Still the same!” He gave Kristian’s arm another swift clasp, then moved on to allow the next person to speak.
A little later Hester was standing a yard or two from Pendreigh. He was a remarkably striking man. Even in repose his face had power in it, a balance of nose and brow. If he were aware of other people looking at him he gave no sign of it, yet even in his present grief he did not neglect his duty as host.
“May I offer you something more, Mrs. Monk?” He had remembered who she was.
“No thank you, Mr. Pendreigh,” she declined. She wanted to say something to draw him into conversation, and yet the tragedy which had brought her there was one which inner decency treated in silence. “You must be very tired of trying to think of courteous things to say to people.” She smiled impulsively. “I imagine you would far rather be alone, and yet custom requires you do all this.” She half gestured to the room full of people all talking, nodding discreetly, murmuring meaningless words no one was really listening to, and drinking Pendreigh’s excellent wine. They all wore black; the only difference was in the cut and the fabric, some denser than others, some softer and more exquisitely cut.
He looked at her for a moment as if he actually saw her. The spell of retreat was broken, and a bottomless pain filled his face. “Actually, I’m not sure,” he said quietly. “I think this has a. . a sort of comfort about it. It’s. . ghastly. . and yet perhaps it’s better than being alone.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have spoken so intrusively. I beg your pardon.”
The formal smile was back again. “You don’t need to, Mrs. Monk. Forgive me, I need to bid Mr. and Mrs. Harbinger good-bye. They seem to be about to leave.” He gave a slight shrug as if he did not know what he wished to say, and with the faintest bow, he left.
Hester turned to look for Kristian, and saw him standing alone by the door into the withdrawing room. His face was set in a blank, inner concentration that isolated him. He looked utterly confused, as if he had lost sight of the duty Pendreigh strove so hard to fulfill.
Then an elderly woman approached him, and he recalled his obligation, forcing himself to smile at her and say something trivial and polite.
Half an hour later, Hester and Monk excused themselves, but all the way home Hester wondered why the reception had been at Elissa’s father’s house and not at her husband’s, which was, after all, where she had lived for the last thirteen years.
“Perhaps Pendreigh was afraid Kristian would not be well enough to carry the occasion himself,” Monk suggested.
She looked sideways at him in the hansom as they moved through the streets muffled by fog, passing from the thick, yellow-gray density which caught in the throat and out into a paler, thinner patch where the light broke through and she could see the black lattice of branches above. There was a pallor of tiredness in his face, and he was staring ahead as if half his attention were in his own thoughts.
“Have you any idea who killed her?” she asked.
“No,” he answered without turning.
“But you don’t think Runcorn will imagine it was Kristian, do you?” she pressed.
The hansom jolted to a stop at the intersection, then started forward again. The vehicles passing in the opposite direction were visible only as shadows in the gloom.
“He has to consider it,” he replied. “We don’t know yet if Elissa Beck was the intended victim or simply an unfortunate witness.”
“What do you know about the other woman?”
“Very little. She was an artists’ model, entirely for Allardyce over the last few years. She was in her middle thirties, already past her prime for such a job. Runcorn’s got men trying to find out as much as possible about her, lovers, anyone to whom she owed money. Nothing that means anything yet.”
“But surely she was more likely to be the intended victim, and Elissa Beck only a witness?”
“Perhaps.”
She wanted to pursue it, but she saw the tight line of his lips and knew it would serve no purpose. She almost had to bite her tongue to keep it still. She had found none of the comfort or assurance she expected. Why had he not said at least that if Runcorn were stupid enough to suspect Kristian, then Monk would prove him wrong? She wanted to ask him, but she knew she did not want the answer.
In the late afternoon Monk went out again, without saying where to. He had not changed out of his best black, almost as if for him the funeral were not over.
Hester waited an hour, trying to make up her mind, then, also still in her black, she took a hansom and gave the driver Kristian’s address in Haverstock Hill. She did not know if he had returned home, but she felt compelled to seek him. Why had he not held the reception in Elissa’s own house? Why had he allowed Fuller Pendreigh to take control of so much? The whole of the funeral arrangements was out of character for the man she knew, or thought she did. She had worked with him as Monk had not. The black feathermen, the ostrich plumes, the hearse and four, were far from the simple dignity of life and death as he had known it in the hospital or the fever wards they had set up in Limehouse. He was a man too used to the reality of physical death to wrap it in ceremony, and too genuine in his emotion. His pity and his grief needed no display to others.
Was Elissa’s death really so different, so shattering, that he had changed utterly? Or had Hester misread him all the time? Had there always been a ritualistic high churchman beneath the uncluttered man she had known?
It seemed an endless journey through the fog-shrouded streets, but eventually she reached the house and requested the driver to wait while she ascertained that Kristian was there. She had no intention of having to search for another cab were he not. She rang the doorbell three times and was about to leave when Kristian himself opened it. His face looked eerie and his eyes enormous in the light from the street lamp. The hall behind him was in darkness, except for a single gas bracket burning low at the foot of the stairs.
“Hester? Is something wrong?” There was an edge of alarm in his voice.
“No,” she said quickly. “No one is ill. I came because I was concerned for you. I barely had the opportunity to speak with you earlier.”
“That is most thoughtful of you, but I assure you I am merely tired.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips, but there was no echo in his eyes. “It is an effort to accept people’s sympathies graciously and think of something to say in return which is not so bland as to be a kind of rebuff. I think we are all reminded of our own losses. A hundred other griefs come far too close to us at such times.”
“May I dismiss my hansom?” It was an oblique way of inviting herself in.
He hesitated.
She blushed to do it, but with her back to the light he could not have seen. “Thank you,” she accepted before he spoke, and turned around to go back and pay the driver.
He was left with no alternative but to invite her in. He led the way to a small morning room where he reached up and turned the gas a little higher. She saw that the room was pleasantly furnished. There were three armchairs, all odd, but of similar rusty shades, lending an illusion of warmth which in fact was not there. The old Turkish rug was full of reds and blues. The fire did not appear to have been used recently. There was a worn embroidered screen in front of it and no poker, coal tongs or shovel in the hearth.
Kristian looked ill at ease, but he invited her to sit down.
She accepted, beginning to realize just how crass she had been in forcing her way in. It was inexcusably
