The face of a stranger

by Anne Perry

  “No,'' she said when at last she caught her breath. “No it was not. I can see that perhaps it was foolish, on reflection. But at the time I really hoped—"

  "Hoped«what? For goodness sake, explain yourself."

  Slowly, with a good deal of help, criticism and consolation from Hester, Imogen recounted detail by detail exactly what she had done, what she had told Monk, and why.

  * * * * *

  Four hours later, in the golden sunlight of early evening, Hester stood in the park by the Serpentine watching the light dimple on the water. A small boy in a blue smock carrying a toy boat under his arm passed by with his nursemaid. She was dressed in a plain stuff dress, had a starched lace cap on her head and walked as uprightly as any soldier on parade. An off-duty bandsman watched her with admiration.

  Beyond the grass and trees two ladies of fashion rode along Rotten Row, their horses gleaming, harnesses jingling and hooves falling with a soft thud on the earth.

  Carriages rattling along Knightsbridge towards Piccadilly seemed in another world, like toys in the distance.

  She heard Monk's step before she saw him. She turned when he was almost upon her. He stopped a yard away; their eyes met. Lengthy politeness would be ridiculous between them. There was no outward sign of fear in him— his gaze was level and unflinching—but she knew the void and the imagination that was there.

  She was the first to speak.

  "Imogen came to you after my father's death, in the rather fragile hope that you might discover some evidence that it was not suicide. The family was devastated. First George had been killed in the war, then Papa had been shot in what the police were kind enough to say might have been an accident, but appeared to everyone to be suicide. He had lost a great deal of money. Imogen was trying to salvage something out of the chaos—for Charles's sake, and for my mother's." She stopped for a moment, trying to keep her composure, but the pain of it was still very deep.

  Monk stood perfectly still, not intruding, for which she was grateful. It seemed he understood she must tell it all without interruption in order to be able to tell it at all.

  She let out her breath slowly, and resumed.

  "It was too late for Mama. Her whole world had collapsed. Her youngest son dead, financial disgrace, and then her husband's suicide—not only his loss but the shame of the manner of it. She died ten days later—she was simply broken—" Again she was obliged to stop for several minutes. Monk said nothing, but stretched out his hand and held hers, hard, firmly, and the pressure of his fingers was like a lifeline to the shore.

  In the distance a dog scampered through the grass, and a small boy chased a penny hoop.

  "She came to you without Charles's knowing—he would not have approved. That is why she never mentioned it to you again—and of course she did not know you hadj forgotten. She says you questioned her about everything that

  had happened prior to Papa's death, and on successive meetings you asked her about Joscelin Grey. I shall tell you what she told me—"

  A couple in immaculate riding habits cantered down the Row. Monk still held her hand.

  "My family first met Joscelin Grey in March. They had none of them heard of him before and he called on them quite unexpectedly. He came one evening. You never met him, but he was very charming—even I can remember that from his brief stay in the hospital where I was in Scutari. He went out of his way to befriend other wounded men, and often wrote letters for those too ill to do it for themselves. He often smiled, even laughed and made small jokes. It did a great deal for morale. Of course his wound was not as serious as many, nor did he have cholera or dysentery."

  Slowly they began to walk, so as not to draw attention to themselves, close together.

  She forced her mind back to that time, the smell, the closeness of pain, the constant tiredness and the pity. She pictured Joscelin Grey as she had last seen him, hobbling away down the steps with a corporal beside him, going down to the harbor to be snipped back to England.

  "He was a little above average height," she said aloud. "Slender, rair-haired. I should think he still had quite a limp—I expect he always would have had. He told them his name, and that he was the younger brother of Lord Shelburne, and of course that he had served in the Crimea and been invalided home. He explained his own story, his time in Scutari, and that his injury was the reason he had delayed so long in calling on them.''

  She looked at Monk's face and saw the unspoken question.

  "He said he had known George—before the battle of the Alma, where George was killed. Naturally the whole family made him most welcome, for George's sake, and for his own. Mama was still deeply grieved. One knows with one's mind that if young men go to war there is always a chance they will be killed, but that is nothing like a preparation for the feelings when it happens. Papa had his loss, so Imogen said, but for Mama it was the end of something Jerribly precious. George was the youngest son and she always had a special feeling for him. He was—" She struggled with memories of childhood like a patch of sunlight in a closed garden. "He looked the most like Papa—he had the same smile, and his hair grew the same way, although it was dark like Mama's. He loved animals. He was an excellent horseman. I suppose it was natural he should join the cavalry.

  "Anyway, of course they did not ask Grey a great deal about George the first time he called. It would have been very discourteous, as if they had no regard for his own friendship, so they invited him to return any time he should find himself free to do so, and would wish to—"

  "And he did?" Monk spoke for the first time, quietly, just an ordinary question. His face was pinched and there was a darkness in his eyes.

  "Yes, several times, and after a while Papa finally thought it acceptable to ask him about George. They had received letters, of course, but George had told them very little of what it was really like." She smiled grimly. "Just as I did not. I wonder now if perhaps we both should have? At least to have told Charles. Now we live in different worlds: And I should be distressing him to no purpose."

  She looked beyond Monk to a couple walking arm in arm along the path.

  "It hardly matters now. Joscelin Grey came again, and stayed to dinner, and then he began to tell them about the Crimea. Imogen says he was always most delicate; he never used unseemly language, and although Mama was naturally terribly upset, and grieved to hear how wretched the conditions were, he seemed to have a special sense of how much he could say without trespassing beyond sorrow and admiration into genuine horror. He spoke of battles, but he told them nothing of the starvation and the disease. And

  he always spoke so well of George, it made them all proud to hear.

  "Naturally they also asked him about his own exploits. He saw the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. He said the courage was sublime: never were soldiers braver or more loyal to their duty. But he said the slaughter was the most dreadful thing he had ever seen, because it was so needless. They rode right into the guns; he told them that." She shivered as she remembered the cartloads of dead and wounded, the labor all through the night, the helplessness, all the blood. Had Joscelin Grey felt anything of the overwhelming emotions of anger and pity that she had?

  "There was never any chance whatsoever that they could have survived,'' she said quietly, her voice so low it was almost carried away by the murmur of the wind. "Imogen said he was very angry about it. He said some terrible things about Lord Cardigan. I think that was the moment I most thought I should have liked him."

  Deeply as it hurt, Monk also most liked him for it. He had heard of that suicidal charge, and when the brief thrill of admiration had passed, he was left with a towering rage at the monumental incompetence and the waste, the personal vanity, the idiotic jealousies that had uselessly, senselessly squandered so many lives.

  For what, in heaven's name, could he have hated Joscelin Grey?

  She was talking and he was not listening. Her face was earnest, pinched for the loss and the pain. He wanted to touch her, to tell her simply,
elementally, without words that he felt the same.

  What sort of revulsion would she feel if she knew it was he who had beaten Joscelin Grey to death in that dreadful room?

  "—as they got to know him," she was saying, "they all came to like him better and better for himself. Mama used to look forward to his visits; she would prepare for

  them days before. Thank heavens she never knew what happened to him."

  He refrained at the last moment, when it was on the tip of his tongue, from asking her when her mother had died. He remembered something about shock, a broken heart.

  "Go on," he said instead. "Or is that all about him?"

  "No." She shook her head. "No, there is much more. As I said, they were all fond of him; Imogen and Charles also. Imogen used to like to hear about the bravery of the soldiers, and of the hospital in Scutari, I suppose at least in part because of me."

  He remembered what he had heard of the military hospital—of Florence Nightingale and her women. The sheer physical labor of it, quite apart from the social stigma. Nurses were traditionally mostly men; the few women were of the strongest, the coarsest, and they did little but clean up the worst of the refuse and waste.

  She was speaking again. "It was about four weeks after they first met him that he first mentioned the watch—"

  "Watch?" He had heard nothing of a watch, except he recalled they had found no watch on the body. Constable Harrison had found one at a pawnbroker's—which had turned out to be irrelevant.

  "It was Joscelin Grey's," she replied. "Apparently it was a gold watch of great personal value to him because he had been given it by his grandfather, who had fought with the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. It had a dent in it where a ball from a French musket struck it and was deflected, thus saving his grandfather's life. When he had first expressed a desire to be a soldier himself, the old man had given it to him. It was considered something of a talisman. Joscelin Grey said that poor George had been nervous that night, the night before the Battle of the Alma, perhaps something of a premonition, and Joscelin had lent him the watch. Of course George was killed the next day, and so never returned it. Joscelin did not make much of it, but he said that if it had been returned to them with George's effects, he would be most grateful if he might

  have it again. He described it most minutely, even to the inscription inside."

  "And they returned it to him?" he asked.

  "No. No, they did not have it. They had no idea what could have happened to it, but it was not among the things that the army sent them from George's body, nor his personal possessions. I can only presume someone must have stolen it. It is the most contemptible of crimes, but it happens. They felt quite dreadful about it, especially Papa."

  “And Joscelin Grey?''

  "He was distressed, of course, but according to Imogen he did his best to hide it; in fact he hardly mentioned it again."

  "And your father?"

  Her eyes were staring blindly past him at the wind in the leaves. "Papa could not return the watch, nor could he replace it, since in spite of its monetary value, its personal value was far greater, and it was that which really mattered. So when Joscelin Grey was interested in a certain business venture, Papa felt it was the very least he could do to oifer to join him in it. Indeed from what both he and Charles said, it seemed at the time to be, in their judgment, an excellent scheme."

  "That was the one in which your father lost his money?"

  Her face tightened.

  "Yes. He did not lose it all, but a considerable amount. What caused him to take his life, and Imogen has accepted now that he did so, was that he had recommended the scheme to his friends, and some of them had lost far more. That was the shame of it. Of course Joscelin Grey lost much of his own money too, and he was terribly distressed. ''

  "And from that time their friendship ceased?"

  "Not immediately. It was a week later, when Papa shot himself. Joscelin Grey sent a letter of condolence, and Charles wrote back, thanking him, and suggesting that they discontinue their acquaintance, in the circumstances."

  "Yes, I saw the letter. Grey kept it—I don't know why."

  "Mama died a few days after that." She went on very quietly. "She simply collapsed, and never got up again. And of course it was not a time for social acquaintance: they were all in mourning." She hesitated a moment. "We still are."

  "And it was after your father's death that Imogen came to see me?" he prompted after a moment.

  "Yes, but not straightaway. She came the day after they buried Mama. I cannot think there was ever anything you could have done, but she was too upset to be thinking as deeply as she might, and who can blame her? She just found it too hard then to accept what must have been the truth."

  They turned and began walking back again.

  "So she came to the police station?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "And told me everything that you have told me now?"

  "Yes. And you asked her all the details of Papa's death: how he died, precisely when, who was in the house, and soon."

  "And I noted it?"

  "Yes, you said it might have been murder, or an accident, although you doubted it. You said that you would make some investigation."

  "Do you know what I did?"

  "I asked Imogen, but she did not know, only that you found no evidence that it was other than it seemed, which was that he took his own life while in deep despair. But you said you would continue to investigate it and let her know if you discovered anything further. But you never did, at least not until after we saw you again in the church, more than two months later.''

  He was disappointed, and becoming frightened as well. There was still no direct connection between himself and Joscelin Grey, still less any reason why he should have hated him. He tried a last time.

  "And she does not know what my investigations were? I told her nothing?"

  "No." She shook her head. "But I imagine, from the questions you asked her about Papa and the business, such as she knew it, that you inquired into that."

  "Did I meet Joscelin Grey?"

  "No. You met a Mr. Marner, who was one of the principals. You spoke of him; but you never met Joscelin Grey so far as she knows. In fact the last time she saw you you said quite plainly that you had not. He was also a victim of the same misfortune, and you seemed to consider Mr. Marner the author of it, whether intentionally or not."

  It was something, however frail; a place to begin.

  "Do you know where I can find Mr. Mamer now?"

  "No, I am afraid not. I asked Imogen, but she had no knowledge."

  "Did she know his Christian name?"

  Again she shook her head. "No. You mentioned him only very briefly. I'm sorry. I wish I could help."

  "You have helped. At least now I know what I was doing before the accident. It is somewhere to begin." That was a lie, but there was nothing to be gained in the truth.

  "Do you think Joscelin Grey was killed over something to do with the business? Could he have known something about this Mr. Marner?" Her face was blank and sad with the sharpness of memory, but she did not evade the thought. "Was the business fraudulent, and he discovered it?"

  Again he could only lie.

  "I don't know. I'll start again, from the beginning. Do you know what manner of business it was, or at least the names of some of the friends of your father who invested in it? They would be able to give me the details."

  She told him several names and he wrote them down, with addresses. He thanked her, feeling a little awkward, wanting her to know, without the embarrassment for both of them of his saying it, that he was grateful—for her candor, her understanding without pity, the moment's truce from all argument or social games.

  He hesitated, trying to think of words. She put her hand very lightly on his sleeve and met his eyes for an instant. For a wild moment he thought of friendship, a closeness better than romance, cleaner and more honest; then it disappeared. There was the battered corpse of Jos
celin Grey between him and everyone else.

  "Thank you," he said calmly. "You have been very helpful. I appreciate your time and your frankness." He smiled very slightly, looking straight into her eyes. "Good afternoon, Miss Latterly."

  12

  The name Marner meant nothing to Monk, and the following day, even after he had been to three of the addresses Hester had given him, he still had no more than a name and the nature of the business—importing. It seemed no one else had met the elusive Mr. Marner either. All inquiries and information had come from Latterly, through Joscelin Grey. The business was for the importing of tobacco from the United States of America, and a very profitable retailing of it was promised, in alliance with a certain Turkish house. No one knew more than that; except of course a large quantity of figures which indicated the amount of capital necessary to begin the venture and the projected increase to the fortunes of those who participated.

  Monk did not leave the last house until well into the afternoon, but he could not afford time for leisure. He ate briefly, purchasing fresh sandwiches from a street seller, then went to the police station to seek the help of a man he had learned investigated business fraud. He might at least know the name of dealers in tobacco; perhaps he could find the Turkish house in question.

  "Marner?" the man repeated agreeably, pushing his

  fingers through his scant hair. "Can't say as I've ever heard of him. You don't know his first name, you say?"

  "No, but he floated a company for importing tobacco from America, mixing it with Turkish, and selling it at a profit."

  The man pulled a face.

  "Sounds unpleasant—can't stand Turkish myself—but then I prefer snuff anyway. Marner?" He shook his head. "You don't mean old Zebedee Marner, by any chance? I suppose you've tried him, or you wouldn't ask. Very sly old bird, that. But I never knew him mixed up with importing."

  "What does he do?"

  The man's eyebrows went up in surprise.

  "Losing your grip, Monk? What's the matter with you?" He squinted a little. "You must know Zebedee Marner. Never been able to charge him with anything because he always weasels his way out, but we all know he's behind half the pawnbrokers, sweatshops and brothels in the Limehouse area right down to the Isle of Dogs. Personally I think he takes a percentage from the child prostitutes and the opium as well, although he's far too downy to go anywhere near them himself." He sighed in disgust. "But then, of course, there's a few who wouldn't say as far as that."