by Anne Perry
“There is no need to be concerned, Mrs. Penrose,” he said gravely. “I shall be very discreet.”
“But how?” she pressed urgently, her voice sharpening. “What could you possibly say to explain away such questions? Servants talk, you know.” She shook her head sharply. “Even the best of them. And what would my neighbors think? What imaginable reason does a respectable person have for employing a private inquiry agent?”
“Do you wish to cease the inquiry, ma’am?” he asked quite quietly. He would understand it very well if she did; indeed, he still did not know what use she would make of the information he sought, even if he found it for her, since no prosecution was planned.
“No,” she said fiercely, gritting her teeth. “No I do not. It’s just that I must think very clearly before I allow you to proceed. It would be reckless to go ahead and do more damage simply because I feel strongly about the matter.”
“I had planned to say there had been a small unpleasantness of damage in the garden,” Monk told her. “A few broken plants, and if you have them, glass frames. I will ask if the gardeners or servants have seen any boys playing who might have trespassed and done the harm. That will hardly be a cause for scandal or unseemly speculation.”
Her face flickered with amazement, then relief. “Oh, what an excellent idea,” she said eagerly. “I should never have thought of that. It sounds so simple and everyday a thing. Thank you, Mr. Monk, my mind is quite at ease.”
He smiled in spite of himself. “I’m glad you are satisfied. But your own gardener will not be quite so easy.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is perfectly aware that no one has broken your cold frames,” he replied. “I had better make it someone else’s, and hope they do not compare notes all along the road.”
“Oh!” But she gave a little laugh, and the thought of it seemed to amuse her rather than trouble her. “Would you like to see Rodwell today? He is in the back garden now.”
“Yes, thank you. This would seem a good opportunity.” And without further discussion she led him to the side door into the arbor and left him to find the gardener, who was bent to his knees pulling weeds from the border.
“Good morning, Rodwell,” Monk said pleasantly, stopping beside him.
“Mornin’ sir,” Rodwell answered without looking up.
“Mrs. Penrose gave me permission to speak to you about some breakages locally, in case you happened to have seen any strangers in the area,” Monk continued.
“Oh?” Rodwell sat back on his haunches and regarded Monk curiously. “Breakages o’ what, sir?”
“Cold frames, beading plants, that sort of thing.”
Rodwell pursed his lips. “No, I can’t say as I’ve seen anyone strange ’round ’ere. Sounds like boys to me, that does—playing, like as not.” He grunted. “Throwin’ balls, cricket, and that sort o’ thing. Mischief, more’n like, not downright wickedness.”
“Probably,” Monk agreed, nodding. “But it is not a pleasant thought that some stranger might be hanging around, doing malicious damage, even if it’s only slight.”
“Mrs. Penrose never said nothing about it.” Rodwell screwed up his face and peered at Monk doubtfully.
“She wouldn’t.” Monk shook his head. “Nothing broken in your garden, I daresay.”
“No—nothing at all—well … no but a few flowers, like, against the west wall. But that could ’a bin anything.”
“You haven’t seen anyone you don’t know hanging around in the last two weeks or so? You are sure?”
“No one at all,” Rodwell said with absolute certainty. “I’d ’a chased them orf smart if I ’ad. Don’t ’old wi’ strangers in gardens. Things get broke, just like you said.”
“Oh well, thank you for your time, Rodwell.”
“You’re welcome, sir.” And with that the gardener adjusted his cap to a slightly different angle and resumed his weeding.
Next Monk called at number sixteen, explained his purpose, and asked if he might speak to the lady of the house. The maid took the message and returned within ten minutes to admit him to a small but extremely pleasant writing room where a very elderly lady with many ropes of pearls around her neck and across her bosom was sitting at a rosewood bureau. She turned and looked at Monk with curiosity, and then as she regarded his face more closely, with considerable interest. Monk guessed she must be at least ninety years old.
“Well,” she said with satisfaction. “You are an odd-looking young man to be inquiring about broken glass in the garden.” She looked him up and down, from his discreet polished boots up his immaculate trouser legs to his elegant jacket, and lastly to his hard, lean face with its penetrating eyes and sardonic mouth. “You don’t look to me as if you would know a spade or a hoe if you tripped over one,” she went on. “And you certainly don’t earn your living with your hands.”
His own interest was piqued. She had an amiable face, deeply lined, full of humor and curiosity, and there was nothing critical in her remarks. The anomaly appeared to please her.
“You had better explain yourself.” She turned away from the bureau completely as if he interested her far more than the letters she had been writing.
He smiled. “Yes ma’am,” he conceded. “I am not really concerned with the glass. It can very easily be replaced. But Mrs. Penrose is a little alarmed at the thought of strangers wandering around. Miss Gillespie, her sister, is given to spending time in the summerhouse, and it is not pleasant to think that one might be being watched when one is unaware of it. Perhaps the concern is unnecessary, but it is there nonetheless.”
“A Peeping Tom. How very distasteful,” the old lady said, grasping the point instantly. “Yes, I can understand her pursuing the matter. A girl of spirit, Mrs. Penrose, but a very delicate constitution, I think. These fair-skinned girls sometimes are. It must be very hard for them all.”
Monk was puzzled; it seemed an overstatement. “Hard for them all?” he repeated.
“No children,” the old lady said, looking at him with her head a trifle on one side. “But you must be aware of that, young man?”
“Yes, yes of course I am. I had not thought of it in connection with her health.”
“Oh dear—isn’t that a man all over.” She made a little tut-tut noise. “Of course it is to do with her health. She has been married some eight or nine years. What else would it be? Poor Mr. Penrose puts a very good face on it, but he cannot help but feel it all the same. Another cross for her to bear, poor creature. Afflictions of health are among the worst.” She let out her breath in a little sigh. She regarded him closely with a slight squint of concentration. “Not that you would know, by the look of you. Well, I haven’t seen any Peeping Toms, but then I cannot see beyond the garden window anyway. My sight is going. Happens when you get to my age. Not that you’d know that either. Don’t suppose you are more than forty-five.”
Monk winced, but forbore from saying anything. He preferred to think he did not look anything like forty-five, but this was not the time for vanity, and this outspoken old lady was certainly not the person with whom to try anything so transparent.
“Well, you had better ask the outdoor servants,” she went on. “Mind you, that is only the gardener and sometimes the scullery maid, if she can escape the cook’s eye. Made it sound like a whole retinue, didn’t I? Ask them, by all means. Let me know if they tell you anything interesting. There’s little enough of interest ever happens here nowadays.”
He smiled. “The neighborhood is too quiet for you?”
She sighed. “I don’t get about as much as I used to, and nobody brings me the gossip. Perhaps there isn’t any.” Her eyes widened. “We’ve all become so terribly respectable these days. It’s the Queen. When I was a girl it was different.” She shook her head sadly. “We had a king then, of course. Wonderful days. I remember when they brought the news of Trafalgar. It was the greatest naval victory in Europe, you know.” She looked at Monk sharply to be sure he appreciated the i
mport of what she was saying. “It was a matter of England’s survival against the Emperor of the French, and yet the fleet came in with mourning flags flying, and in silence—because Nelson had fallen.” She gazed beyond Monk into the garden, her eyes misty with remembrance. “My father came into the room and my mother saw his face and we all stopped smiling. ‘What is it?’ she said immediately. ‘Are we defeated?’ My father had tears on his cheeks. It was the only time I ever saw him weep.”
Her face was alight with the wonder of it still, all the myriad lines subtly altered by the innocence and the emotions of youth.
“ ‘Nelson is dead,’ my father said very gravely. ‘Have we lost the war?’ my mother asked. ‘Shall we be invaded by Napoleon?’ ‘No,’ my father answered. ‘We won. The French fleet is all sunk. No one will land on England’s shores again.’ ” She stopped and stared up at Monk, watching to see if he caught the magnitude of it.
He met her eyes and she perceived that he had caught her vision.
“I danced all night before Waterloo,” she went on enthusiastically, and Monk imagined the colors, the music, and the swirling skirts she could still see in her mind. “I was in Brussels with my husband. I danced with the Iron Duke himself.” All the laughter vanished from her expression. “And then, of course, the next day there was the battle.” Her voice was suddenly husky and she blinked several times. “And all that night we heard news and more news of the dead. The war was over, the Emperor beaten forever. It was the greatest victory in Europe, but dear God, how many young men died! I don’t think I knew anyone who had not lost somebody, either dead or so injured as never to be the same again.”
Monk had seen the carnage left by the Crimean War and he knew what she meant; even though that conflict had been so much smaller, the spirit and the pain were the same. In a sense it was worse, because there was no perceivable purpose to it. England was under no threat, as it had been from Napoleon.
She saw the emotion and the anger in his face. Suddenly her own sorrow vanished. “And of course I knew Lord Byron,” she went on with sudden animation. “What a man! There was a poet for you. So handsome.” She gave a little laugh. “So beautifully romantic and dangerous. What wonderful scandal there was then. Such burning ideals, and men did something about them then.” She gave a little gasp of fury, her ancient hands clenched into fists on her lap. “And what have we today? Tennyson.”
She groaned and then looked at Monk with a sweet smile. “I suppose you want to see the gardener about your Peeping Tom? Well, you had better go and do so, with my blessing.”
He smiled back at her with genuine regard. It would have been much pleasanter to remain and listen to her reminiscences, but he had undertaken a duty.
He rose to his feet. “Thank you, ma’am. Courtesy compels me, or I should not leave so readily.”
“Ha! Very nicely said, young man.” She nodded. “I think from your face there is more to you than chasing trivia, but that is your affair. Good day to you.”
He bowed his head and took his leave of her. However, neither the gardener nor the scullery maid could tell him anything of use whatever. They had not seen any stranger in the area. There was no access to the garden of number fourteen except if someone chose to climb the wall, and the flower beds on either side had not been damaged or disturbed. A Peeping Tom, if indeed there had been such a person, must have come some other way.
The occupant of number twelve was of no assistance either. He was a fussy man with gray hair, which was sparse in front, and gold-rimmed eyeglasses. No, he had seen no one in the area who was not known to him and of excellent character. No, he had suffered no breakages in his cold frames. He was sorry, but he could be of no help, and since he was extremely busy, would Mr. Monk be so good as to excuse him.
The residents of the house whose garden abutted number fourteen at the end were considerably more lively. There were at least seven children whom Monk counted, three of them boys, so he abandoned the broken cold frames and returned to the Peeping Tom.
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Hylton said with a frown. “What a foolish thing. Men with too little to occupy themselves, no doubt. Everyone ought to be busy.” She poked a strand of hair back into its place and smoothed her skirts. “Keep themselves out of trouble. Miss Gillespie, you said? What a shame. Such a nice young lady. And her sister as well. Devoted, they are, which is so pleasant to see, don’t you think?” She waved Monk toward the window where he could have a good view of their garden, the wall dividing it from the Penroses’, but gave him no time to answer her rhetorical question. “And a very agreeable man, Mr. Penrose is too, I am sure.”
“Do you have a gardener, Mrs. Hylton?”
“A gardener?” She was obviously surprised. “Dear me, no. I am afraid the garden is rather left to its own devices, apart from my husband cutting the grass every so often.” She smiled happily. “Children, you know? I was afraid at first you were going to say someone had been too wild with the cricket ball and broken a window. You have no idea what a relief it was!”
“The action of a Peeping Tom does not frighten you, ma’am?”
“Oh dear no.” She looked at him narrowly. “I doubt if there really was one, you know. Miss Gillespie is very young. Young girls are given to fancies at times, and to nerves.” She smoothed her skirts again and rearranged the billowing fabric. “It comes of just sitting around waiting to meet a suitable young man, and hoping he will choose her above her fellows.” She took a deep breath. “Of course, she is very pretty, and that will help, but entirely dependent upon her brother-in-law to support her until then. And as I understand it, there is no dowry to mention. I shouldn’t be too concerned, if I were you, Mr. Monk. I expect it was a cat in the bushes, or some such thing.”
“I see,” Monk said thoughtfully, not that his mind was on any kind of animal, or Marianne’s possible imagination, but upon her financial dependence. “I daresay you are right,” he added quickly. “Thank you, Mrs. Hylton. I think I shall take your advice and abandon the pursuit. I wish you good day, ma’am.”
He had luncheon in a small, busy public house in the Euston Road, and then walked for some time in deep thought, hands in his pockets. The more he considered the evidence the more he disliked the conclusions it suggested. He had never thought it likely anyone came over the garden wall, now he considered it so improbable as to exclude it from his mind. Whoever had attacked Marianne had come through her own house, and therefore was known either to her or to her sister, almost certainly both.
Since they did not intend to prosecute, why had they called Monk? Why had they mentioned the matter at all?
The answer to that was obvious. Julia did not know of it. Marianne had been forced to explain the bruises in some way, and her state of distress; probably her clothes were torn or stained with grass or even blood. And for her own reasons she had not been willing to tell Julia who it was. Perhaps she had encouraged him to begin with, and then become frightened, and since she was ashamed, had claimed it was a stranger, the only answer that would be morally acceptable. No one would believe she would yield to a complete stranger or give him the slightest encouragement.
It was after three when he returned to Hastings Street and again sought admittance. He found Julia in the withdrawing room with Marianne and Audley, who had apparently come home early yet again.
“Mr. Monk?” he said with quite open surprise. “I had not realized cousin Albert had spoken of us so exceedingly well!”
“Audley!” Julia rose to her feet, her cheeks hot pink. “Please come in, Mr. Monk. I am sure my husband did not mean to make you feel less than welcome.” Her eyes searched Monk’s face with an anxiety she could not conceal, but she studiously avoided looking at Marianne. “It is a little early for tea, but may we offer you some cold lemonade? It is really a very hot day.”
“Thank you.” Monk accepted both because he was thirsty and because he wished to observe them all a little more closely, especially the two women. How deep was the trust between them,
and how much was Julia really misled? Did she suspect her sister of an unwise dalliance? Was it all perhaps to protect her from Audley’s moral outrage if he thought she were less than a victim? “That is very kind of you,” he added, sitting in the chair she indicated.
She rang the bell and dispatched the maid to fetch the refreshments.
Monk felt he owed Julia some explanation for Audley, and racked his brain to think of an acceptable lie. To say he had left something behind would be too transparent. Audley would be suspicious immediately, so would Monk in his place. Dare he suggest an errand? Would Julia be quick enough?
But she preempted him.
“I am afraid I have not got it ready yet,” she said, swallowing hard.
“What ready?” Audley asked, frowning at her.
She turned to him with a guileless smile. “Mr. Monk said he would be kind enough to take a small parcel back to cousin Albert for me, but I have been remiss and it is not yet ready.”
“What are you sending to Albert?” Audley demanded, frowning. “I didn’t know you were so fond of him. You did not give me that impression.”
“I suppose I am not, really.” She was elaborately casual, but Monk saw that her hands were clenched tight. “It is a relationship I feel I should keep. After all, he is family,” She forced a smile. “I thought a small gift would be a good beginning. Besides, he has several family records I should be most obliged to share.”
“You have not mentioned this before,” he argued. “What records?”
“Of our grandparents,” Marianne put in quickly, her voice sharp. “They are his also, and since he is older than we, he has memories which are far more vivid. I should like to know more. After all, I never knew my mother. Julia was kind enough to suggest cousin Albert might help.”
Audley drew breath to say something further, then changed his mind. For a young woman utterly dependent upon him, Marianne had a forthright manner and appeared to have little awe of him. Or perhaps she was sufficiently devoted to Julia that she would have charged to her defense regardless, and only thought of her own peril afterwards.