Evan swung around with surprise, and pleasure lit his face immediately. He was a lean young man with a long, aquiline nose, hazel eyes and an expression of gentle, lugubrious humor. Now he was quite openly delighted.
“Mr. Monk!” He had never lost the sense that Monk was his superior and must be treated with a certain dignity.”How are you? Are you looking forme?” There was a definite note of hope in his voice.
“I am,” Monk confessed, more pleased at Evan's eagerness than he would willingly have expected, or conceded.
Evan ordered a pint of cider and a thick mutton-and-pickle sandwich, made with two crusty slices, and another pint for Monk, then made his way over to a corner where they could be relatively private.
“Yes?” he said as soon as they were seated. “Have you a case?”
Monk half hid his smile. “I'm not sure. But you have.”
Evan's eyebrows shot up. “I have?”
“General Carlyon.”
Evan's disappointment was apparent. “Oh-not much of a case there, I'm afraid. Poor woman did it. Jealousy is a cruel thing. Ruined a good many lives.” His face puckered. “But how are you involved in it? “ He took a large bite from his sandwich.
“Rathbone is defending her,” Monk answered.”He hired me to try and find out if there are any mitigating circumstances-and even if it is possible that it was not she who killed him but someone else.”
“She confessed,” Evan said, holding his sandwich in both hands to keep the pickle from sliding out.
“Could be to protect the daughter,” Monk suggested. “Wouldn't be the first time a person confessed in order to take the blame for someone they loved very deeply.”
“No.” Evan spoke with his mouth full, but even so his doubt was obyious. He swallowed and took a sip of his cider, his eyes still on Monk. “But it doesn't look like it in this case. We found no one who saw the daughter come downstairs.”
“But could she have?”
“Can't prove that she didn't-just no cause to think she did. Anyway, why should she kill her father? It couldn't possibly gain her anything, as far as she was concerned; the harm was already done. She is married and had a child-she couldn't go back to being a nun now. If she'd killed him, then…”
“She'd have very little chance indeed of becoming a nun,” Monk said dryly. “Not at all a good start to a life of holy contemplation.”
“It was your idea, not mine.” Evan defended himself, but mere was an answering flick of humor in his eyes. “And as for anyone else-who? I can't see Mrs. Carlyon confessing to save Louisa Furnival from the gallows, can you?”
“Not intentionally, no, only unintentionally, if she thought it was Sabella.” Monk took a long pull from his cider.
Evan frowned. “We thought it was Sabella to begin with,” he conceded. “Mrs. Carlyon only confessed when it must have seemed to her we were going to arrest Sabella.”
“Or Maxim Furnival,” Monk went on. “Perhaps he was jealous. It looks as if he had more cause. It was Louisa who was doing the flirting, setting the pace. General Carlyon was merely responding.”
Evan continued with his sandwich, and spoke with his mouth full again. “Mrs. Furnival is the sort of woman who always flirts. It's her manner with most men. She even flirted with me, in a sort of way.” He blushed very slightly, not at the memory- he was a most personable young man, and he had been flirted with before-but at reciting it to Monk. It sounded so unbecomingly immodest. “This can't have been the first time she made a public spectacle of exercising her powers. Why, if he put up with it all these years-the son is thirteen so they have been married fourteen years at least, and actually I gather quite a lot longer-why would Maxim Furnival suddenly lose his head so completely as to murder the general? From what I gather of him, General Carlyon was hardly a romantic threat to him. He was a highly respectable, rather pompous soldier well past his prime, stiff, not much sense of humor and not especially handsome. He had money, but so has Furnival.”
Monk said nothing, and began to wish he had ordered a sandwich as well.
“Sorry,” Evan said sincerely. “I really don't think there is anything you can do for Mrs. Carlyon. Society will not see any excuses for murdering a husband out of jealousy because he flirted. In feet, even if he had a full-blown affair and flaunted it publicly, she would still be expected to turn the other way, affect not to have seen anything amiss, and behave with dignity.” He looked apologetic and his eyes were full of regret. “As long as she was provided for financially, and had the protection of his name, she would be considered to have a quite satisfactory portion in life, and must do her duty to keep the sanctity and stability of the home-whether he wished to return to it or not.”
Monk knew he was right, and whatever his private thoughts of the morality of it, that was how she would be judged. And of course any jury would be entirely composed of men, and men of property at that. They would identify with the general. After all, what would happen to them if women were given the idea that if their husbands flirted they could get away with killing them? She would find very short shrift there.
“I can tell you the evidence as we found it if you like, but it won't do any good,” Evan said ruefully. “There's nothing interesting in it; in fact nothing you couldn't have deduced for yourself.”
“Tell me anyway,” Monk said without hope.
Evan obliged, and as he had said, there was nothing of any use at all, nothing that offered even a thread to follow.
Monk went back to the bar and ordered a sandwich and two more pints of cider, then after a few more minutes of conversation about other things, bade Evan farewell and left the public house. He went out into the busy street with a sense of the warmth of friendship which was still a flavor to be relished with a lingering surprise, but even less hope for Alexandra Carlyon than before.
Monk would not go back to Rathbone and admit defeat. It was not proved. Really he had no more than Rathbone had told him in the beginning. A crime had three principal elements, and he cited them in his mind as he walked along the street between costermongers' barrows, young children of no more than six or seven years selling ribbons and matches. Sad-faced women held bags of old clothes; indigent and disabled men offered toys, small handmade articles, some carved of bone or wood, bottles of this and that, patent medicines. He passed by news vendors, singing patterers and every other inhabitant of the London streets. And he knew beneath them in the sewers there would be others hunting and scavenging a living, and along the river shore seeking the refuse and the lost treasures of the wealthier denizens of the great city.
Motive had foiled him. Alexandra had a motive, even if it was a self-defeating and short-sighted one. She had not looked like a woman torn by a murderously jealous rage. But that might be because it had been satisfied by his death, and now she could see the folly, and the price of it.
Sabella had motive, but it was equally self-defeating, and she had not confessed. Indeed she seemed genuinely concerned for her mother. Could it be she had committed the crime, in a fit of madness, and did not even remember it? From her husband's anxiety, it seemed not impossible he thought so.
Maxim Furnival? Not out of jealousy over Louisa, unless the affair were a great deal deeper than anyone had so far discovered. Or was Louisa so in love with the general she would have caused a public scandal and left her husband for him? On the evidence so far that was absurd.
Louisa herself? Because the general had flirted with her and then rejected her? There was no evidence whatsoever to suggest he had rejected her at all. On the contrary, there was every indication he was still quite definitely interested- although to what degree it was impossible to say.