“I don't know what he will ask you,” Hester said exas-peratedly. “He wouldn't tell me, even if I were to ask him. I have no right to know. And far better I don't. But I do know he has a strategy-and it could win. Please believe me, and don't press me to give you answers I don't have.”

“I'm sorry.” Edith was suddenly penitent. She rose to her feet quickly and walked over to the window, less graceful than usual because she was self-conscious. “When this trial is over I am still going to look for a position of some sort. I know Mama will be furious, but I feel suffocated there. I spend all my life doing nothing whatsoever that matters at all. I stitch embroidery no one needs, and paint pictures even I don't like much. I play the piano badly and no one listens except out of politeness. I make duty, calls on people and take them pots of conserve and give bowls of soup to the deserving poor, and feel like such a hypocrite because it does hardly any good, and we go with such an air of virtue, and come away as if we've solved all their problems, and weVe hardly touched them.” Her voice caught for an instant. “I 'm thirty-three, and I'm behaving like an old woman. Hester, I'm terrified that one day I'm going to wake up and I will be old-and I'll have done nothing at all that was worth doing. I'll never have accomplished anything, served any purpose, helped anyone more man was purely convenient, never felt anything really deeply once Oswald died-been no real use at all.” She kept her back to them, and stood very straight and still.

“Then you must find work of some sort to do,” Hester said firmly. “Even if it is hard or dirty, paid or unpaid, even thankless-it would be better than waking up every morning to a wasted day and going to bed at night knowing you wasted it. I have heard it said that most of what we regret is not what we did but what we did not do. I think on the whole that is correct. You have your health. It would be better to wait on others than do nothing at all.”

“You mean go into service?” Edith was incredulous and there was a frail, slightly hysterical giggle under the surface of her voice.

“No, nothing quite so demanding-it would really be more than your mother deserves. I meant helping some poor creature who is too ill or too mithered to help herself.” She stopped. “Of course that would be unpaid, and that might not work…”

“It wouldn't. Mama would not permit it, so I would have to find lodgings of my own, and that requires money-which I don't have.”

Major Tiplady cleared his throat.

“Are you still interested in Africa, Mrs. Sobell?”

She turned around, her eyes wide.

“Go to Africa? How could I do that? I don't know anything about it. I hardly think I should be of any use to anyone. I wish I were!”

“No, not go there.” His face was bright pink now. “I-er-well, I'm not sure, of course…”

Hester refused to help him, although with a sweet surge of pleasure she knew what he wanted to say.

He threw an agonized glance at her, and she smiled back charmingly.

Edith waited.

“Er…” He cleared his throat again. “I thought-I thought I might… I mean if you are serious about people's interest? I thought I might write my memoirs of Mashona-land, and I-er…”

Edith's face flooded with understanding-and delight.

“Need a scribe. Oh yes, I should be delighted. I can think of nothing I should like better! My Adventures in Mashona-land, by Major-Major Tiplady. What is your given name?”

He blushed crimson and looked everywhere but at her.

Hester knew the initial was H, but no more. He had signed his letter employing her only with that initial and his surname.

“You have to have a name,” Edith insisted. “I can see it, bound in morocco or calf-nice gold lettering. It will be marvelous! I shalt count it such a privilege and enjoy every word. It will be almost as good as going there myself-and in such splendid company. What is your name, Major? How will it be styled?”

“Hercules,” he said very quietly, and shot her a look of total pleading not to laugh.

“How very fine,” she said gently. “My Adventures in Mashonaland, by Major Hercules Tiplady. May we begin as soon as this terrible business is over? It is the nicest thing that has happened to me in years.”

“And to me,” Major Tiplady said happily, his face still very pink.

Hester rose to her feet and went to the door to ask the maid to prepare luncheon for them, and so that she could give rein to her giggles where she could hurt no one-but it was laughter of relief and a sudden bright hope, at least for Edith and the major, whom she had grown to like remarkably. It was the only good thing at the moment, but it was totally good.

Chapter 11

Monk began the weekend with an equal feeling of gloom, not because he had no hope of finding the third man but because the discovery was so painful. He had liked Peverell Erskine, and now it looked inevitable it was he. Why else would he have given a child such highly personal and useless gifts? Cassian had no use for a quill knife, except that it was pretty and belonged to Peverell -as for a silk handkerchief, children did not use or wear such things. It was a keepsake. The watch fob also was too precious for an eight-year-old to wear, and it was personal to Peverell's profession, nothing like the Carlyons', which would have been something military, a regimental crest, perhaps.

He had told Rathbone, and seen the same acceptance and unhappiness in him. He had mentioned the bootboy also, but told Rathbone that there was no proof Carlyon had abused him, and that that was the reason the boy had turned and fled in the Furnival house the night of the murder. He did not know if Rathbone had understood his own action, what were the reasons he accepted without demur, or if he felt his strategy did not require the boy.

Monk stood at the window and stared out at the pavement of Grafton Street, the sharp wind sending a loose sheet of newspaper bowling along the stones. On the corner a peddler was selling bootlaces. A couple crossed the street, arm in arm, the man walking elegantly, leaning over a little towards the woman, she laughing. They looked comfortable together, and it shot a pang of loneliness through him that took him by surprise, a feeling of exclusion, as if he saw the whole of life that mattered, the sweeter parts, through glass, and from a distance.

Evan's last case file lay on the desk unopened. In it might lie the answer to the mystery that teased him. Who was the woman that plucked at his thoughts with such insistence and such powerful emotion, stirring feelings of guilt, urgency, fear of loss, and over all, confusion? He was afraid to discover, and yet not to was worse. Part of him held back, simply because once he had uncovered it there would be nothing left to offer hope of finding something sweet, a better side of himself, a gentleness or a generosity he had failed in so far. It was foolish, and he knew it, even cowardly-and that was the one criticism strong enough to move him. He walked over to the table and opened the cover.

He read the first page still standing. The case was not especially complex. Hermione Ward had been married to a wealthy and neglectful husband, some years older than herself. She was his second wife and it seemed he had treated her with coolness, keeping her short of funds, giving her very little social life and expecting her to manage his house and care for the two children of his first wife.

The house had been broken into during the night, and Albert Ward had apparently heard the burglar and gone downstairs to confront him. There had been a struggle and he had been struck on the head and died of the wound.

Monk pulled around a chair and sat down. He continued with the second page.