Cain His Brother

by Anne Perry

  “No. I’ve racked my memory, what there is of it.” A bitter mockery passed over his face. “There’s nothing at all. Not a shred. She’s beautiful, amusing, a delight to be with, and there’s not even a ghost, not a tiny thread, of familiarity.” His voice rose, sharp in desperation. “Nothing!”

  Rathbone caught a moment of the nightmare, the bitter horror of living inside a man you did not know. The one thing which in all eternity you could never escape was yourself. Quite suddenly and devastatingly he understood Monk as he never had before.

  But if he were to be of use, he must quash emotion. A man clouded by feelings was less able to think rationally or to perceive the truth.

  “Then perhaps it was not she you wronged,” he said thoughtfully, “but someone she loved. A woman will often feel more passionately and take far greater risks to protect a loved one than she will to save herself.”

  He saw the sudden light of hope in Monk’s eyes.

  “But for God’s salce, who?” he demanded. “It could be anyone!”

  There was a light rap on the door, and they both ignored it.

  “Well I know of no one better able to investigate it than you,” Rathbone pointed out. “And it matters, Monk.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk between them. “Don’t delude yourself you can remain unharmed if she chooses to pursue this. Even if she proves nothing at all, such a charge, quite unsubstantiated, would still be enough to ruin you. If you were a gentleman in society, with means and family reputation, and she were a young woman seeking a husband, then you might ride it out. You could say she was hysterical, a lightly balanced woman, given to vapors or imaginings … even that she had imagined your favor and taken your rejection hard. But no one is going to believe that of a man in your position.”

  “Good God, don’t you think I know that!” Monk said furiously. “If she were a young woman seeking a husband, and I were likely material, she wouldn’t do it anyway. Think what it would do to her own reputation. What gentleman will look at her now? I’m not so damned ignorant I don’t know what it will cost her. Nor is she. That’s what makes it so terrifying. She hates me enough to destroy herself in order to destroy me.”

  “Then whatever you did to cause it is profound,” Rathbone said. It was not meant in cruelty, but there was no time or space to deal in less than the truth, and he was aware of his desk just beyond the door, and his next appointment. “I’m not sure how much it may protect you to know,” he went on, “but if you do search, I would begin by looking for someone who may have been unjustly convicted, or a person hanged, or jailed and perhaps died there. Don’t begin with thefts or embezzlements, or the victims of petty crime. In other words, start with the result of the investigation, not the weight of the evidence or your own certainty that the prosecution was just.”

  “Will it help if I find it?” Monk asked, pinned between hope and bitterness.

  Rathbone toyed with a lie, but only for an instant. Monk was not a man to give another an easy sop. He did not deserve it himself.

  “Possibly not,” he answered. “Only if it comes to trial, and you could prove she has a motive of revenge. But if she has as much intelligence as you suggest, I doubt she’ll seek a prosecution. She’d be unlikely in that event to get one, certainly not a conviction, unless she had an extraordinary biased jury.” His face tightened and his eyes were steady. “She will do far more damage to you, and leave you less chance of escape, vindication, or counterattack, if she simply passes the word around. She will not land you in prison that way, but she will ruin your career. You will be reduced to—”

  “I know!” Monk snapped, rising to his feet abruptly, and with a sharp intake of breath as his aching muscles and bruised body hurt him. “I shall have to scrape a living working for people in the fringes of trade or the underworld, looking for errant husbands, collecting bad debts and chasing petty thieves.” He turned his back on Rathbone and stared out of the window. “And I shall be lucky if they can afford to pay me enough for me to eat daily. There will be no more cases of any interest to Callandra Daviot, and she can’t keep supporting me for nothing. I don’t need you to tell me that. I shall have to move lodgings, and when my clothes wear out I shall be reduced to secondhand. I know all that.”

  Rathbone longed to be able to say something, anything, of comfort, but there was nothing, and he was increasingly aware of the faint noises from the office, and his next client waiting.

  “Then for your own peace of mind at least, you had better do all you can to discover who she is,” he said grimly. “And more importantly, who she was, and why she hates you so much she is prepared to do this.”

  “Thank you,” Monk murmured as he went out, closing the door behind him and all but bumping into the clerk hovering until he should leave, and he might show in the gentleman waiting impatiently at his elbow.

  Of course Rathbone was right. He had not really needed anyone to tell him, it was simply a release of the loneliness of it to hear the words from someone else, and someone who, for all their past differences, at least believed his account. And his advice regarding where to search was sound.

  He walked along Vere Street deep in thought, oblivious of other pedestrians or carriages passing him by.

  There was only one course open to him, and deeply as he loathed the prospect, he dared not delay. He must search his past records of cases and try to find the one in which Drusilla had been involved, albeit indirectly. At least Rathbone’s suggestions gave him somewhere to start. It would be impossible to approach Runcorn. He would be only too delighted to add to Monk’s predicament by denying him access. He had no rights to police information anymore, and Runcorn would be legally justified in refusing him. The irony of it would be the sweetest taste of victory for him at last, after all the years that Monk had trodden on his heels, mocked him and bettered him in case after case. And he would have to admit his amnesia. He had never known for certain how much Runcorn guessed, but no acknowledgment had ever passed between them. Runcorn had never had the satisfaction of being certain, and of knowing that Monk knew he knew.

  Monk turned from Great Wild Street into Drury Lane.

  John Evan was a different matter, as different as could be. He had not known Monk before the accident, and he had guessed the truth, working with him so closely in that first dreadful case. He had proved a good friend, loyal, despite all the odds, in the hardest of circumstances. He was young, full of charm and enthusiasm, a country parson’s son with no money at all, but the casual ease of one born to what in better times had been minor gentry. Evan had admired him. He had chosen to see the best in him. That was why it was peculiarly painful now to have to tell him of this problem and seek his help in uncovering its cause.

  In fact, he almost changed his mind about going to him at all. Perhaps it would do no good, and all he would do would be to lose Evan’s regard before he had to.

  That was not only the coward’s way out, it was the fool’s. Evan would learn sooner or later. Better now, and from Monk. Better at least to see him fight than allow defeat by surrender. He hailed a hansom and took it as far as the corner nearest his old station.

  It was a bright morning. He had barely noticed. The sun had already melted the rime of ice on the footpath, and the harness of passing carriages winked and glistened. An errand boy was whistling as he walked with a swing in his stride.

  Monk reached the police station and went straight up the steps and inside. To hesitate might lose him his courage.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Monk,” the desk sergeant said with surprise. “What can we be doin’ for you?”

  “I’d like to see Mr. Evan, if you please?”

  “About a crime, is it, sir?”

  The man’s face was unreadable, and Monk could not remember their relationship. It was probably not cordial. Monk was his senior, and the man was middle-aged. Monk had probably treated him with impatience, considering him second-rate. He winced now at what he imagined.

  “I’m not sure whether it i
s or not,” he said as smoothly as he could. “I need rather more information, and perhaps advice. Is Mr. Evan in the station?”

  “You won’t be needin’ ter see Mr. Runcorn, then?” the sergeant said sententiously, a very slight smile touching his lips.

  “No, I won’t, thank you.” Monk met his eyes without a flicker.

  “Thought not.” The sergeant’s smile widened a fraction.

  “ ’Aven’t forgot the Moidore case, sir, I ’aven’t.”

  Monk forced himself to smile back. “Thank you, Sergeant. A very nice memory you have, tastefully selective.”

  “Yer welcome, sir. I’ll fetch Mr. Evan for yer.” And he turned and disappeared behind the door, to reappear less than a minute later. “ ’E’ll meet you in the coffee shop ’round the corner, sir, in five minutes. Wiser that way, sir.”

  “I admire a man of wisdom,” Monk agreed. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  When Evan came into the coffee shop his long, humorous face with its aristocratic nose and rueful mouth looked full of anxiety. He sat down opposite Monk, ignoring the coffee placed there for him.

  “What is it?” he asked. “It must be important to bring you to the station.” He searched Monk’s face. “You look awful. Are you ill?”

  Monk drew a deep breath, and as briefly as possible without omitting anything essential, he told him the story.

  Evan did not interrupt, but his expression grew more and more distressed as the account neared its climax.

  “What can I do?” he said finally when Monk finished. “Surely she won’t try to prosecute? She’d be rained as well … and she’d never prove anything! The worst—” He stopped.

  “Yes?” Monk said, biting his lip. “You were going to say the worst that could happen is that her own circle would believe her? It isn’t. Even those who don’t believe her will deny me the benefit of the doubt.”

  Evan had barely touched his coffee, and they were both unaware of the bustle and noise around them, the hum of chatter and aroma of food.

  “No, actually I was going to say the worst that happened to her was that her gown was torn. She was in no way harmed in her person. But I suppose a torn gown is enough. It indicates an intention to do a great deal more.” Evan regarded his cold coffee with distaste. He had not touched it. “We must find out who she is, and why she is prepared to take such a violent and costly revenge. Tell me all you know about her, and I’ll search all your past case files. Her name is Drusilla Wyndham? How old is she? What is her appearance? Where does she live? Whom does she associate with?”

  Monk realized how idiotically little he did know. He felt foolish and the embarrassment of it burned up his cheeks.

  “I don’t even know if her name is correct,” he said grimly. “I never saw her in company of anyone else. I would hazard she is in her early thirties. She is very small, slender, dainty but with a fine figure. She has a beautiful face.…” He winced as he said it. “Fair brown hair, hazel eyes, and a charming voice with a little catch in it when she laughs. I have no idea where she lives, or with whom she associates, except that the Geographical Society would appear to be one place she frequents. She dresses very well, but not extravagantly. The chief charm of her appearance is her grace and her poise.”

  “Not a lot,” Evan said with a look of concern. “You said she was in her early thirties, and yet presumably unmarried? Is that not odd for such a charming young woman? Could she be widowed?”

  “I don’t know.” Monk had been too delighted in her company to tax himself with such questions. He realized now what a self-indulgent oversight it was.

  “I presume she was well-spoken?” Evan continued. “That would narrow it at least to one class of person.”

  A couple sat down at the table next to them, still side by side, and laughing.

  “Yes … she is well-bred,” Monk agreed.

  “But hardly a lady,” Evan added with a sudden twist of dry humor. “Doesn’t give us a great deal to help. I’ll start with the cases where someone was hanged, or died in prison, and where there was a woman of that general description involved somewhere, a relative or close friend, some other victim of the tragedy.”

  “Of course, it could be someone I didn’t catch,” Monk said with sudden thought. “Perhaps a case I didn’t solve, and the crime went unpunished. Perhaps she thinks I failed justice.”

  Evan rose to his feet, leaning a little on the table.

  “Don’t make it harder than it has to be,” he said quietly. “Let’s begin with the more obvious. Anyway”—he smiled—“I don’t think you had many unsolved cases, from what I hear of you.”

  Monk said nothing, and watched Evan as he made his way out, turning once at the door to give a tiny salute of courage.

  Monk spent the afternoon with the police as they continued dragging the river around the Isle of Dogs and across Bugsby’s Reach, and searched the docks and inlets and the slums and alleys along the water’s edge. They even searched some of the pigsties and middens or cesspits. They found much that was filthy, violent and tragic, including two dead bodies, but neither of them could have been Angus Stonefield. One was a child, the other a woman.

  Monk went home in the dark close to despair. He had never seen such an accumulation of human misery, and he was weary, his body ached and he was cold to the bone. His feet were soaked and he no longer had any sensation left in his toes. He would not go with them again. Reluctantly he felt a new respect, deep and painful, gouging out undiscovered parts of himself, for men who could see such things day after day and still keep their courage and their innate kindness and sense of hope. All he felt was anger, and since he could change nothing, his brain told him that was useless, but his stomach still knotted inside.

  The following morning he woke early, long before the light, and lay in bed planning what he would do to find Drusilla Wyndham. It might not save his reputation or his livelihood, but he had to know to answer the fears and the darkness within himself. What manner of man was he? That was the one truth which was inescapable. And there were increasing times when the dread of that answer was worse than the answer itself, because his imagination covered them all.

  He rose at seven and ate a solitary breakfast, then before eight, left and walked for almost an hour, his head bent in thought, heedless of passersby, of carriages clattering within feet of him, idlers, street sellers, crossing sweepers, neatly suited office clerks hurrying to business, fashionable rakes and gamblers returning from a night’s pleasure.

  Finally just before nine he took a hansom to the Geographical Society, and went in at the entrance to seek some official of whom he could inquire.

  He was uncharacteristically nervous. Usually his confidence intimidated people. He had only to meet their eyes and ask curtly in his precise diction, and he was answered. Today he felt at a disadvantage even before he spoke.

  How far had she spread the accusation? Had these people already heard? He did not feel like a villain, only a fool!

  “Good morning, sir?” the porter said inquiringly. “May I be of service? Were you seeking information regarding any particular meeting, or speaker?”

  Monk had already composed his lie. It was the sort of thing he had done often enough before, when it mattered infinitely less personally. It had been so much easier then.

  “Actually I met a lady on the steps as she was leaving here nearly two weeks ago,” he began with acute self-consciousness. “She was kind enough to recommend several other societies and groups to me, but unfortunately I have mislaid the piece of paper on which I wrote them, and I do not know her well enough to call upon her. Indeed, I do not know her address.” Was he talking too much—answering what had not been asked? “It was a chance meeting because she bumped into me, quite literally, and so we fell into conversation.” He searched the man’s face, but it was perfectly bland. There was not a shred of suspicion or disbelief in it.

  “Indeed, sir. Perhaps I can be of assistance. I do know of several other societies which have si
milar areas of interest, although I must say, none of them, to my knowledge, deal in such an erudite manner, or have so fine a group of speakers.”

  “That is what the lady said. She was very dainty, almost … so tall.” Monk drew a level at Drusilla’s height. “She had very handsome fair-brown hair and the most remarkable hazel eyes, very wide and candid, a most direct glance.” He hated the description, but it was as she had seemed to him then. “She seemed to me to be of considerable intelligence and ease of manner. An unusual person, and most admirable. I would have judged her to be just above thirty.”

  “Sounds like Miss Wyndham,” the porter said, nodding his head. “Very well-spoken young lady.”

  “Wyndham?” Monk raised his eyebrows as if he had not heard her name before. “I wonder, would that be Major Wyndham’s daughter, from the Hussars?” As far as he knew, there was no such person.

  The porter pursed his lips doubtfully.

  “Er, no, sir, I don’t think so. I rather recall overhearing some snatch of conversation suggesting Miss Wyndham came from Buckinghamshire, and her father was in the clergy, before an early demise, poor man. Very sad. He cannot have been an elderly gentleman.”

  “Sad indeed,” Monk agreed, his mind racing. Buckinghamshire. It should not be so difficult to trace a well-to-do clergyman who had died recently. He must have been more than a mere parson, and presumably his name was also Wyndham.

  “I suppose it happened a few years ago now?” he said, trying to make his voice conversational.

  “I really don’t know, sir. It was spoken of with some sadness, but then it would be. And she was not in mourning.”

  “I only wish to know so that I did not intrude, and if I should mention it if I have to write,” Monk explained. “Would it be possible for you to give me the lady’s address, then I could request a new list of the places she recommended?”

  “Well, sir, I hardly think that would be proper,” the porter said regretfully, nodding to two gentlemen who passed and touching his hat in a gesture of respect. He turned back to Monk. “You see, sir, I’m afraid the society would not sanction such a practice. I’m sure you understand. But if you care to write a letter and leave it with us, there would be no bar to me forwarding it to her.”