by Anne Perry
“I was standing in my usual place in Doughty Street near Mecklenburg Square, like as I always do, on the corner, knowing as how there is ladies living in many of them buildings, especially ladies as has their own maids what does sewing for them, and the like.”
Question from Mr. Lamb: “So you were there at six o’clock in the evening?”
“I suppose I must have been, though I carsen’t tell the time, and I don’t have no watch. But I see’d the gentleman arrive what was killed. Something terrible, that is, when even the gentry’s not safe.”
“You saw Major Grey arrive?”
“Yes sir. What a gentleman he looked, all happy and jaunty, like.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes sir, he was.”
“Did he go straight in? After paying the cabby, of course.”
“Yes sir, he did.”
“What time did you leave Mecklenburg Square?”
“Don’t rightly know, not for sure. But I heard the church clock at St. Mark’s strike the quarter just afore I got there.”
“Home?”
“Yes sir.”
“And how far is your home from Mecklenburg Square?”
“About a mile, I reckon.”
“Where do you live?”
“Off the Pentonville Road, sir.”
“Half an hour’s walk?”
“Bless you, no sir, more like quarter. A sight too wet to be hanging around, it was. Besides, girls as hang around that time of an evening gets themselves misunderstood, or worse.”
“Quite. So you left Mecklenburg Square about seven o’clock.”
“Reckon so.”
“Did you see anyone else go into Number Six, after Mr. Grey?”
“Yes sir, one other gentleman in a black coat with a big fur collar.”
There was a note in brackets after the last statement to say it had been established that this person was a resident of the apartments, and no suspicion attached to him.
The name of Mary Ann Brown was written in the same hand at the bottom, and a rough cross placed beside it.
Monk put it down. It was a statement of only negative value; it made it highly unlikely that Joscelin Grey had been followed home by his murderer. But then the crime had happened in July, when it was light till nine in the evening. A man with murder, or even robbery, on his mind would not wish to be seen so close to his victim.
By the window Evan stood still, watching him, ignoring the clatter in the street beyond, a drayman shouting as he backed his horse, a coster calling his wares and the hiss and rattle of carriage wheels.
Monk picked up the next statement, in the name of Alfred Cressent, a boy of eleven who swept a crossing at the corner of Mecklenburg Square and Doughty Street, keeping it clear of horse droppings principally, and any other litter that might be let fall.
His contribution was much the same, except that he had not left Doughty Street until roughly half an hour after the ribbon girl.
The cabby claimed to have picked Grey up at a regimental club a little before six o’clock, and driven him straight to Mecklenburg Square. His fare had done no more than pass the time of day with him, some trivial comment about the weather, which had been extraordinarily unpleasant, and wished him a good night upon leaving. He could recall nothing more, and to the best of his knowledge they had not been followed or especially remarked by anyone. He had seen no unusual or suspicious characters in the neighborhood of Guilford Street or Mecklenburg Square, either on the way there or on his departure, only the usual peddlers, street sweepers, flower sellers and a few gentlemen of unobtrusive appearance who might have been clerks returning home after a long day’s work, or pickpockets awaiting a victim, or any of a hundred other things. This statement also was of no real help.
Monk put it on top of the other two, then looked up and found Evan’s gaze still on him, shyness tinged with a faint, self-deprecating humor. Instinctively he liked Evan—or could it be just loneliness, because he had no friend, no human companionship deeper than the courtesies of office or the impersonal kindness of Mrs. Worley fulfilling her “Christian duty.” Had he had friends before, or wanted them? If so, where were they? Why had no one welcomed him back? Not even a letter. The answer was unpleasant, and obvious: he had not earned such a thing. He was clever, ambitious—a rather superior ratcatcher. Not appealing. But he must not let Evan see his weakness. He must appear professional, in command.
“Are they all like this?” he asked.
“Pretty much,” Evan replied, standing more upright now that he was spoken to. “Nobody saw or heard anything that has led us even to a time or a description. For that matter, not even a definitive motive.”
Monk was surprised; it brought his mind back to the business. He must not let it wander. It would be hard enough to appear efficient without woolgathering.
“Not robbery?” he asked.
Evan shook his head and shrugged very slightly. Without effort he had the elegance Monk strove for, and Runcorn missed absolutely.
“Not unless he was frightened off,” he answered. “There was money in Grey’s wallet, and several small, easily portable ornaments of value around the room. One fact that might be worth something, though: he had no watch on. Gentlemen of his sort usually have rather good watches, engraved, that sort of thing. And he did have a watch chain.”
Monk sat on the edge of the table.
“Could he have pawned it?” he asked. “Did anyone see him with a watch?” It was an intelligent question, and it came to him instinctively. Even well-to-do men sometimes ran short of ready money, or dressed and dined beyond their means and were temporarily embarrassed. How had he known to ask that? Perhaps his skill was so deep it was not dependent on memory?
Evan flushed faintly and his hazel eyes looked suddenly awkward.
“I’m afraid we didn’t find out, sir. I mean, the people we asked didn’t seem to recall clearly; some said they remembered something about a watch, others that they didn’t. We couldn’t get a description of one. We wondered if he might have pawned it too; but we didn’t find a ticket, and we tried the local pawnshops.”
“Nothing?”
Evan shook his head. “Nothing at all, sir.”
“So we wouldn’t know it, even if it turned up?” Monk said disappointedly, jerking his hand at the door. “Some miserable devil could walk in here sporting it, and we should be none the wiser. Still, I daresay if the killer took it, he will have thrown it into the river when the hue and cry went up anyway. If he didn’t he’s too daft to be out on his own.” He twisted around to look at the pile of papers again and riffled through them untidily. “What else is there?”
The next was the account of the neighbor opposite, one Albert Scarsdale, very bare and prickly. Obviously he had resented the inconsideration, the appalling bad taste of Grey in getting himself murdered in Mecklenburg Square, and felt the less he said about it himself the sooner it would be forgotten, and the sooner he might dissociate himself from the whole sordid affair.
He admitted he thought he had heard someone in the hallway between his apartment and that of Grey at about eight o’clock, and possibly again at about quarter to ten. He could not possibly say whether it was two separate visitors or one arriving and then later leaving; in fect he was not sure beyond doubt that it had not been a stray animal, a cat, or the porter making a round—from his choice of words he regarded the two as roughly equal. It might even have been an errand boy who had lost his way, or any of a dozen other things. He had been occupied with his own interests, and had seen and heard nothing of remark. The statement was signed and affirmed as being true with an ornate and ill-natured signature.
Monk looked across at Evan, still waiting by the window.
“Mr. Scarsdale sounds like an officious and unhelpful little beggar,” he observed dryly.
“Very, sir,” Evan agreed, his eyes shining but no smile touching his lips. “I imagine it’s the scandal in the buildings; attracts notice from the wrong kind of
people, and very bad for the social reputation.”
“Something less than a gentleman.” Monk made an immediate and cruel judgment.
Evan pretended not to understand him, although it was a patent lie.
“Less than a gentleman, sir?” His face puckered.
Monk spoke before he had time to think, or wonder why he was so sure.
“Certainly. Someone secure in his social status would not be affected by a scandal whose proximity was only a geographical accident, and nothing to do with him personally. Unless, of course, he knew Grey well?”
“No sir,” Evan said, but his eyes showed his total comprehension. Obviously Scarsdale still smarted under Grey’s contempt, and Monk could imagine it vividly. “No, he disclaimed all personal acquaintance with him. And either that’s a lie or else it’s very odd. If he were the gentleman he pretends to be, he would surely know Grey, at least to speak to. They were immediate neighbors, after all.”
Monk did not want to court disappointment.
“It may be no more than social pretension, but worth inquiring into.” He looked at the papers again. “What else is there?” He glanced up at Evan. “Who found him, by the way?”
Evan came over and sorted out two more reports from the bottom of the pile. He handed them to Monk.
“Cleaning woman and the porter, sir. Their accounts agree, except that the porter says a bit more, because naturally we asked him about the evening as well.”
Monk was temporarily lost. “As well?”
Evan flushed faintly with irritation at his own lack of clarity.
“He wasn’t found until the following morning, when the woman who cleans and cooks for him arrived and couldn’t get in. He wouldn’t give her a key, apparently didn’t trust her; he let her in himself, and if he wasn’t there then she just went away and came another time. Usually he leaves some message with the porter.”
“I see. Did he go away often? I assume we know where to?” There was an instinctive edge of authority to his voice now, and impatience.
“Occasional weekend, so far as the porter knows; sometimes longer, a week or two at a country house, in the season,” Evan answered.
“So what happened when Mrs.—what’s her name?— arrived?”
Evan stood almost to attention. “Huggins. She knocked as usual, and when she got no answer after the third attempt, she went down to see the porter, Grimwade, to find out if there was a message. Grimwade told her he’d seen Grey arrive home the evening before, and he hadn’t gone out yet, and to go back and try again. Perhaps Grey had been in the bathroom, or unusually soundly asleep, and no doubt he’d be standing at the top of the stairs by now, wanting his breakfast.”
“But of course he wasn’t,” Monk said unnecessarily.
“No. Mrs. Huggins came back a few minutes later all fussed and excited—these women love a little drama—and demanded that Grimwade do something about it. To her endless satisfaction”—Evan smiled bleakly—“she said that he’d be lying there murdered in his own blood, and they should do something immediately, and call the police. She must have told me that a dozen times.” He pulled a small face. “She’s now convinced she has the second sight, and I spent a quarter of an hour persuading her that she should stick to cleaning and not give it up in favor of fortune-telling—although she’s already a heroine, of sorts, in the local newspaper—and no doubt the local pub!”
Monk found himself smiling too.
“One more saved from a career in the fairground stalls—and still in the service of the gentry,” he said. “Heroine for a day—and free gin every time she retells it for the next six months. Did Grimwade go back with her?”
“Yes, with a master key, of course.”
“And what did they find, exactly?” This was perhaps the most important single thing: the precise facts of the discovery of the body.
Evan concentrated till Monk was not sure if he was remembering the witness’s words or his own sight of the rooms.
“The small outer hall was perfectly orderly,” Evan began. “Usual things you might expect to see, stand for coats and things, and hats, rather a nice stand for sticks, umbrellas and so forth, box for boots, a small table for calling cards, nothing else. Everything was neat and tidy. The door from that led directly into the sitting room; and the bedroom and utilities were off that.” A shadow passed over his extraordinary face. He relaxed a little and half unconsciously leaned against the window frame.
“That next room was a different matter altogether. The curtains were drawn and the gas was still burning, even though it was daylight outside. Grey himself was lying half on the floor and half on the big chair, head downward. There was a lot of blood, and he was in a pretty dreadful state.” His eyes did not waver, but it was with an effort, and Monk could see it. “I must admit,” he continued, “I’ve seen a few deaths, but this was the most brutal, by a long way. The man had been beaten to death with something quite thin—I mean not a bludgeon—hit a great many times. There had pretty obviously been a fight. A small table had been knocked over and one leg broken off, several ornaments were on the floor and one of the heavy stuffed chairs was on its back, the one he was half on.” Evan was frowning at the memory, and his skin was pale. “The other rooms hadn’t been touched.” He moved his hands in a gesture of negation. “It was quite a while before we could get Mrs. Huggins into a sane state of mind, and then persuade her to look at the kitchen and bedroom; but eventually she did, and said they were just as she had left them the previous day.”
Monk breathed in deeply, thinking. He must say something intelligent, not some fatuous comment on the obvious. Evan was watching him, waiting. He found himself self-conscious.
“So it would appear he had a visitor some time in the evening,” he said more tentatively than he had wished. “Who quarreled with him, or else simply attacked him. There was a violent fight, and Grey lost.”
“More or less,” Evan agreed, straightening up again. “At least we don’t have anything else to go on. We don’t even know if it was a stranger, or someone he knew.”
“No sign of a forced entry?”
“No sir. Anyway, no burglar is likely to force an entry into a house when all the lights are still on.”
“No.” Monk cursed himself for an idiotic question. Was he always such a fool? There was no surprise in Evan’s face. Good manners? Or fear of angering a superior not noted for tolerance? “No, of course not,” he said aloud. “I suppose he wouldn’t have been surprised by Grey, and then lit the lights to fool us?”
“Unlikely sir. If he were that coolheaded, he surely would have taken some of the valuables? At least the money in Grey’s wallet, which would be untraceable.”
Monk had no answer for that. He sighed and sat down behind the desk. He did not bother to invite Evan to sit also. He read the rest of the porter’s statement.
Lamb had asked exhaustively about all visitors the previous evening, if there had been any errand boys, messengers, even a stray animal. Grimwade was affronted at the very suggestion. Certainly not: errand boys were always escorted to the appropriate place, or if possible their errands taken over by Grimwade himself. No stray animal had ever tainted the buildings with its presence—dirty things, stray animals, and apt to soil the place. What did the police think he was—were they trying to insult him?
Monk wondered what Lamb had replied. He would certainly have had a pointed answer to the man on the relative merits of stray animals and stray humans! A couple of acid retorts rose to his mind even now.
Grimwade swore there had been two visitors and only two. He was perfectly sure no others had passed his window. The first was a lady, at about eight o’clock, and he would sooner not say upon whom she called; a question of private affairs must be treated with discretion, but she had not visited Mr. Grey, of that he was perfectly certain. Anyway, she was a very slight creature, and could not possibly have inflicted the injuries suffered by the dead man. The second visitor was a man who called upon a Mr. Yeats,
a longtime resident, and Grimwade had escorted him as far as the appropriate landing himself and seen him received.
Whoever had murdered Grey had obviously either used one of the other visitors as a decoy or else had already been in the building in some guise in which he had so far been overlooked. So much was logic.
Monk put the paper down. They would have to question Grimwade more closely, explore even the minutest possibilities; there might be something.
Evan sat down on the window ledge.
Mrs. Huggins’s statement was exactly as Evan had said, if a good deal more verbose. Monk read it only because he wanted time to think.
Afterwards he picked up the last one, the medical report. It was the one he found most unpleasant, but maybe also the most necessary. It was written in a small, precise hand, very round. It made him imagine a small doctor with round spectacles and very clean fingers. It did not occur to him until afterwards to wonder if he had ever known such a person, and if it was the first wisp of memory returning.
The account was clinical in the extreme, discussing the corpse as if Joscelin Grey were a species rather than an individual, a human being full of passions and cares, hopes and humors who had been suddenly and violently cut off from life, and who must have experienced terror and extreme pain in the few minutes that were being examined so unemotionally.
The body had been looked at a little after nine thirty A.M. It was that of a man in his early thirties, of slender build but well nourished, and not apparently suffering from any illness or disability apart from a fairly recent wound in the upper part of the right leg, which might have caused him to limp. The doctor judged it to be a shallow wound, such as he had seen in many ex-soldiers, and to be five or six months old. The body had been dead between eight and twelve hours; he could not be more precise than that.
The cause of death was obvious for anyone to see: a succession of violent and powerful blows about the head and shoulders with some long, thin instrument. A heavy cane or stick seemed the most likely.