by Anne Perry
“Of course. I understand. Perhaps I shall do that,” Monk accepted because he really had no alternative. A trip to Buckinghamshire seemed indicated, unless he could find some record of the late Reverend Wyndham without recourse to travel. He left the Geographical Society, if not with hope, then at least with a sense of purpose.
But even the most diligent search of the appropriate register of the clergy yielded no Reverend Wyndham in Buckinghamshire, or in any other part of the country. He began to walk very slowly along the footpath away from the library, disappointment deep inside him like the cold and the damp of the afternoon.
Perhaps he had been naive to have thought it might be so easy. Either the information was incorrect, an invention for the benefit of whoever she was telling, or else it was basically true, but she had changed her name, presumably to avoid the disgrace of whatever crime had brought her across Monk’s path.
He ignored a flower seller and a boy with the latest edition of the newspapers.
Perhaps the whole thing was nothing to do with his profession. Maybe he had met her purely personally. Her sense of injury might spring from some sexual betrayal he had committed.
His heart went cold at the thought. Had they been lovers and he had deserted her? Had there perhaps been a child, and he had left her, rather than take responsibility? It was not impossible. Men had done that from time immemorial. God knew, there were illegitimate children all over the country, and bungled abortions as well. He had seen them himself, even since the accident, let alone before. If that were true, she could not hate him any more profoundly than he would hate himself. He deserved the ruin she wished him.
He passed a seller of hot pies, and for a moment the savory aroma tempted him, then his stomach revolted at the thought of eating.
He had to know the truth. At any cost, whatever labor or pain, he must know.
And if he was guilty of such a thing, how could he tell Hester? She would not forgive him for that. She would not stand by with her courage and spirit, and help him fight his way back.
Neither would Callandra. Nor John Evan, for that matter.
He had to be the first to know.
But where to turn next? If Drusilla had changed her name, it could have been anything before, any of a million names.
He stepped off the curb and avoided the traffic and the horse dung.
Except almost all people wanted to keep some sense of identity, some link with the past. There was often a connection, a link of sound, of initial letter, or some other association in the mind. At times it was a family name, a mother or grandmother’s maiden name, for example.
He reached the far pavement just as a landau missed him by no more than a yard.
Perhaps the part about Buckinghamshire was true? Or about the church?
He turned on his heel, back across the road again, and strode back to the library where the directory of all clergy was lodged, and asked to see it again. This time he searched the incumbents of Buckinghamshire for any senior clergyman who had died within the last ten years.
But there were none whose names suggested any connection, however tenuous, with Drusilla Wyndham.
“Is this all?” he asked the clerk who was hovering anxiously. “Is there any way one might have been missed? Perhaps I had better look further back than ten years.”
“Of course, sir, if you think it will help,” the clerk agreed. “If you could be a little more precise as to what it is you are searching for, perhaps I could be of some assistance.” He adjusted his spectacles and sneezed. “I do beg your pardon.”
“I’m looking for a clergyman who died in Buckinghamshire, probably within the last ten years,” Monk replied, feeling foolish and desperate. “But I have been given the wrong name.”
“Then I don’t know how you can find it, sir,” the clerk said, shaking his head unhappily. “Do you know anything else about him?”
“No …”
“Do you not have even the least idea what his name is? Not even what it may have sounded like?” The man appeared to be pressing the issue simply for something to say. He looked most uncomfortable.
“It may have sounded like Wyndham,” Monk replied, also only for civility’s sake.
“Oh, dear. I am afraid I can think of nothing. Of course, there was the Reverend Buckingham, who died in Norfolk.” The clerk gave a jerky, bitter laugh, and sneezed again. “In a place called Wymondham, which of course is pronounced ‘Wyndham,’ at least locally. But that is hardly of use to you—”
He stopped, startled because Monk had risen to his feet and clapped him on the back so sharply his spectacles flew off his nose and landed on the floor.
“You are brilliant, sir!” Monk said enthusiastically. “Quite brilliant! Why did I not think of that myself? Once you see it, it is as obvious as daylight. Thank God for one man with brains.”
The clerk blushed furiously and was quite unable to frame any reply.
“What can you tell me about him?” Monk demanded, picking up the spectacles, polishing them and handing them back. “Where was he living? What was the cause of his death? How old a man was he? What family had he? What, precisely, was his position?”
“Good gracious!” The clerk blinked at him like an owl, his spectacles in his hand. “Well … well, I can certainly find out for you, sir. Yes, yes indeed. May I inquire why it is you must know? Is he perhaps a relative?”
“I believe he may be a relative of someone of the utmost importance to me,” Monk replied truthfully, if deviously. “Someone who holds my very life in their hands. Yes, please tell me everything you can about the late Reverend Buckingham, and his family. I shall wait here.”
“Ah—well—I may be … yes, of course.” He sneezed again and apologized. “To be sure.” And he scurried off about his task.
Monk paced the floor until the clerk returned some twenty-five minutes later, pink-faced and brimming with triumph.
“He died some eight years ago, sir, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1851.” He frowned. “The cause of death was listed as chill, rather unspecific. He was not an elderly man, indeed only in his fifty-sixth year, and apparently had been in good health until that time.”
“His family!” Monk said urgently. “Did he have children?”
“Why yes, yes he did. And he left a widow, a Mary Ann.”
“Names of the children!” Monk demanded. “What were their names? What were their ages?”
“My goodness, sir, don’t distress yourself so! Yes, there were children, indeed there were. One son named Octavian, which is curious, since apparently he was the eldest—”
“Curious?”
“Yes sir. Clergymen often have large families, and Octavian means eighth, you know.…”
“Daughters! Did he have daughters?”
“Yes, yes he did. Eldest named Julia, second named Septima. Poor man really cannot count! Quite amusing … yes! Yes! I am coming to the rest. Another son named Marcus … all very Roman. Perhaps it was an interest of his, a hobby. Yes! And a last daughter named Drusilla—ah!” This last gasp was because Monk had again clapped him on the back and driven the air out of his lungs. “I take it that is the lady whom you are seeking?”
“Yes, yes. I think it is. Now—the living. What was his position, and where?”
“Wymondham, sir. It is only a small village.”
“Was he simply the parson?” It did not seem to fit what he had seen of Drusilla. Could it be no more than an extraordinary coincidence, and after all, have no meaning?
“No sir,” the clerk replied with growing enthusiasm himself. “I believe he had an attachment to the Norwich Cathedral, or he had had in the recent past. A distinguished scholar, so my informant tells me.”
“Ah—thank you.” Hope surged back up again. “Is there anything else you know? About the family, for example? The widow? The daughters? In what circumstances do they find themselves now?”
The clerk’s face fell.
“I’m sorry, sir, I have no idea.
I daresay you would have to travel to Norfolk for that.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you. I am enormously obliged to you.” And indeed he was. He raced out of the building and flung himself into the first vacant hansom that passed, shouting to the driver to take him to the police station, where he could find John Evan and tell him what he now knew.
But he was obliged to wait nearly three hours before Evan returned from the case he was on, by which time it was long after dark and had begun to rain. They sat together in the coffee shop, warming themselves with hands around hot mugs, sipping slowly at the steaming liquid, a babble of noise around them and constant movement as people came and went.
“Buckingham!” Evan said with surprise. “I don’t recall the name.”
“But there must be a case concerning a Buckingham!” Monk insisted. “Try eight years ago specifically.” It was a cry of desperation. Terror gripped inside him that his wrong against Drusilla had been personal … and unforgivable not only to her but to himself as well.
“I went back over all your cases,” Evan said with pain in his eyes. “There was no Buckingham that I can remember, either charged or accused. But of course I’ll try again. I’ll look specifically for the name.”
“Perhaps I’d better go to Norfolk.” Monk stared beyond Evan without seeing the thronged room or hearing the laughter. “That’s where they lived.”
“Why would you have gone to Norfolk?” Evan was puzzled. “You only dealt with London cases. If it happened there, the local police would have handled it, not you.” He shrugged very slightly, and shivered as if someone had opened an outside door, although the coffee shop was almost too hot, with its crowded atmosphere and steaming drinks, and the fire leaping in the hearth. “I suppose it could have started in London, and there have been witnesses—and suspects, for that matter—in Norfolk. I’ll try.” He frowned, knowing he was speaking only for comfort. “Don’t worry, if it’s there, I’ll find it.”
And if it is not, Monk thought, then any injury to her was personal, and how in God’s name do I learn that? How will I ever know my own view of it, why I did whatever it was, what I thought or felt, what there is in mitigation for me?
He finished his coffee and stood up. He had not the heart even to meet Evan’s eyes. What would he think or feel when he knew the truth, what bitter disillusion and sense of betrayal? He was so afraid of it, it was as if it had already happened.
“Thank you,” he said with his voice choking in his throat. He wanted to add more, but could think of nothing. “Thank you.”
Hester was also deeply afraid for Monk, not for what he might have done—she had not concerned herself with that—but for the ruin it would bring him when Drusilla made her charges public. The fact that she could not prove them was immaterial. She had chosen her time and place to be melodramatic with great skill. Not a man or woman emerging from the party in North Audley Street would forget the sight of her pitching headlong out of the moving cab, her clothes torn, screaming that she had been assaulted. Whatever reason told them, they would relive the emotions, the horror and the sense of outrage. And they would be totally unprepared to accept that they had been duped. It would make them foolish, and that would be intolerable.
Something must be done to help him, something practical and immediate. There was little use trying to limit the damage after it was done.
She and Callandra had talked about it sitting late at night in the small room in the Limehouse hospital, in the few moments when they were not either working or asleep. Callandra was deeply distressed, even in the face of the disease and death around her, and Hester realized with a quick uprush of pleasure how fond she must be of Monk. Callandra’s regard for him was far more than mere interest, and the adding of a new dimension to her life.
But she had been able to offer no practical counsel.
Now Hester sat in the warmth and clean, sweet-smelling comfort of Enid’s bedroom in Ravensbrook House and watched Enid’s frail form, at last peacefully asleep. Genevieve had gone home, weary with grief and the mounting anxiety and loneliness of her loss, dreading the trial of Caleb which must shortly begin.
Hester tidied a few things which were hardly out of place, then returned to her seat. It was so different from just a few days ago. Then Monk faced no greater danger than failing on a case which had seemed hopeless from the beginning. Two weeks ago Enid had been delirious and fighting for her life. She had tossed from side to side, moaning in pain as her body ached and her mind wandered in nightmare and delusion, mixing past and present and distorting everything.
Hester smiled in spite of herself. One heard some very strange things in a sickroom. Perhaps that was one of the reasons certain people were wary of taking nurses rather than a lady’s maid, who presumably already knew a great many of her mistress’s secrets.
Enid had rambled about many things, snatches of thoughts, old griefs and loneliness, longings she had never realized and perhaps would never have given words in her conscious mind. There had been fear in her, and half-guessed-at disillusion. She had also referred more than once to letters which were quite openly declarations of love. Hester hoped Enid had not kept them. She doubted very much they were from Lord Ravensbrook. Nothing in what she had seen of him suggested such fluency or ease of expression. He seemed a very formal man, even stilted when it came to speaking of feelings—which did not, of course, mean that his emotions were less, or that his physical expression of them was not as profound as any other man’s.
She had debated whether to mention it to Enid, and warn her that she was capable of indiscretion in her illness, and therefore perhaps in her sleep, if she should ever become feverish again. Then she had decided it might be seen as an impertinence and place a barrier of embarrassment between them. If Enid had managed so far to conduct her marriage without such a disaster, then it might very well continue so, without Hester’s advice.
She looked across at Enid’s sleeping form now. She seemed utterly at peace; in fact, there was a very slight smile on her face, as if she dreamed of something pleasant.
Perhaps she was thinking of some of those past letters. They might still give her happy memories, days when she knew she was admired, found beautiful. Love letters were strange; they could do so much good, if kept discreetly … and in the wrong hands so much damage.
Hester had received very few herself, and most of them had been formal, more a statement of ardent hope than any real understanding or knowledge of her nature. Only those from soldiers had had any meaning, and they were romantic, heartfelt, but in some measure cries of desperation and loneliness from young men far from home in an alien and dreadful circumstance, and who simply found a gentle touch and a listening ear, a single spark of beauty in the midst of pain and loss, and the fear of loss. She had treasured them for what they were, not reading into them more.
She winced with embarrassment as she recalled one she had received long ago, before the Crimean War had even begun, from a young man her father had considered a very acceptable suitor. It had been couched in ardent terms, and far too familiar, in her opinion. It had stated a love which had appalled her, because he did not even see her, only what he could turn her into. She prickled with discomfort even now at the thought of it. She had never wanted to meet the man again.
In fact, she could remember vividly the next time they had met. It had been at the dinner table in her father’s home—her mother was quite unaware of her feelings, and had sat smiling at the foot of the table, blandly staring at her across a sea of linen and crystal, making optimistic remarks about domestic happiness, while Hester squirmed, her face scarlet, willing to give anything at all to be elsewhere. She could still feel that wretched young man’s eyes on her, and the thoughts she imagined must be in his mind as he sat there. In some ways it had been one of the worst evenings of her life.
If only he had not written, she would never have suffered so much. She might even have found him quite tolerable. He was not personally displeasing, quite intellig
ent, not too opinionated—in fact, altogether an agreeable person.
What ridiculous harm a letter could do if it overstated the intimate, or pressed a case too far, too soon.
It was as if the room had suddenly blazed with light. Of course! That was the answer! Not perhaps in the highest moral standard … in fact, definitely quite questionable. But Monk was in a desperate situation.
The problem was to whom she should send them. It must be the people of Drusilla’s own social circle, or it would hardly accomplish the purpose. And Hester had no idea who composed the current fashionable society, because it had not interested her much for some years.
Now it was of the utmost urgency.
However, she thought on reflection that Callandra would probably not be much more knowledgeable than she. If she knew, it would be by chance, not design. If ever there was a woman who did not give a whit about fashionable company, or who dined or danced with whom, it was Callandra Daviot.
Genevieve was not of that social standing. Her husband was in business, albeit a very respectable one. But gentlemen only dabbled, they did not actually work.
She looked across at Enid. There was the answer.
Of course she could not possibly tell her why she wished to know, not because she needed to protect Monk—Enid would not have believed it of him without better proof than there was so far. Anyway, Hester could always moderate the story somewhat at this point. But Enid would certainly have the gravest doubts about what Hester intended to do about it. In fact, it might very well be sufficient to keep her from providing the information altogether.
It must be obtained without the reason for it given. And perhaps that might not be so very difficult? Hester could ask her about the last party she attended, who was there, what they wore, who danced, who flirted, what was served to eat. In fact, she could ask her to describe several parties. Enid did not know her well enough to be aware that normally she had no interest whatever in such things.