He was approaching the river. It shone pale under the winter sky, the mist rising in wreaths, softening the dark shingles' edges and carrying the raw smell of sewage on the outgoing tide. Dark barges and ferries moved up and down. It was not the season for pleasure boats.
He wished he had John Evan with him, as he had had when he first returned to the police force after his accident, and before he had quarreled finally and irreparably with Runcorn, storming out the instant before Runcorn dismissed him. Evan, with his charm and gentleness of manner, was so much better at eliciting confidences from people. They forgot their natural reticence and shared their thoughts.
But Evan was still with the police, so Monk could not call upon him for help except when there was an investigation in which he too was involved and was prepared to disclose his information, at great risk to himself.
Runcorn would never forgive such an act. He would see it as a personal and professional betrayal.
It had often crossed Monk's mind that he would like to offer Evan a position as his assistant in some future day when he earned sufficient to support a second person. But that was only a dream, and perhaps a foolish one. At present he did not always make enough even for himself. There were weeks when he was profoundly grateful for his patroness, Lady Callandra Daviot, who made up the difference in his income.
All she asked in return was that he share with her all those cases which had elements of interest for her… and they were considerable. She was a woman of high intelligence and curiosity, decisive opinions, and a consuming and generally tolerant interest in human nature in all its manifestations.
In the past, Monk had inquired into matters solely at her behest, when she felt that an injustice was threatened or had been done.
To begin with, he caught a cab to see Mrs. Stonefield in her own home, as he had said he would. It would give him a clearer impression of her, of the family's well-being, both financial and social, and-if he were perceptive enoughalso of the relationships beneath the surface of what she had told him.
The house was on Upper George Street, on the corner of Seymour Place just east of the Edgware Road. It took him more than an hour in heavy traffic and a hard, soaking rain, from the far side of the river to arrive at the other side of Mayfair, alight, and pay the driver. It was nearly four o'clock, and the lamplighters were already out in the thickening dusk. He turned his coat collar up and crossed the footpath to knock on the front door. At this hour any formal callers would have been and gone, if indeed she were receiving callers.
He shivered and turned to look back at the street. It was quiet and eminently respectable. Rows of similar windows looked out onto neat front gardens. Areaways were swept clean. Behind closed back gates would be cellar chutes for coal, dustbins, scrubbed scullery steps and back door en- trances for tradesmen and deliveries.
Was this what Angus Stonefield wanted? Or had he become suffocated by its predictability and discretion? Had his soul yearned for something wilder, more exhilarating, something that challenged the mind and disturbed the heart? And had he been prepared to sacrifice safety, the warmth of family, as its price? Had he grown to loathe being known by his neighbors, relied upon by his dependents; every day, every year mapped out before him to a decent and uneventful old age?
Monk felt a sharp sadness that it was such a vivid possibility. Stonefield would not be the first man to have run away from the reality of love and its responsibilities, to grasp instead the illusion and excitement of lust and what might seem like freedom, only later to realize it was loneliness.
Another gust of rain soaked him just as he turned back to the door and it opened. The fair-haired parlormaid looked at him inquiringly.
“William Monk, to call upon Mrs. Stonefield,” he announced, dropping his card on the tray she held. “I believe she is expecting me.”
“Yes sir. If you care to wait in the morning room, I shall see if Mrs.
Stonefield is at home,” she replied, stepping back for him to enter. Monk walked through the pleasant hall behind her to wait in the room which he was shown. It gave him an opportunity to glance around and make some estimate of Stonefield's character and circumstances-although if he were in difficulties, the front rooms where guests were received would be the last to show it. Monk had known families to live without heat, and eat little more than bread and gruel, and yet keep up the facade of prosperity the moment visitors called. Generosity, even extravagance, was displayed to foster the pretense. Sometimes it aroused his contempt for the ridiculousness of it. At others he was moved to a strange, hurting pity that they found it necessary, that they believed their worth to their friends lay in such things.
He stood in the small, tidy room in which the maid had left him, and looked around it. To the outward eye it presented every sign of comfort and good taste. It was a little overcrowded, but that was the fashion, and there was no fire lit, in spite of the weather.
The furniture was solid and the upholstery of good quality and, as far as he could see, not overly worn. He looked more closely at the antimacassars on the backs of the chairs, but they were clean and unfaded or rubbed. The gas mantles on the walls were immaculate, the curtains unfaded in the folds. The red-and-cream Turkey carpet was only slightly worn in a passage from doorway to hearth. There were no darker patches on the wallpaper to indicate a picture missing. The fine china and glass ornaments were unchipped. He could see no hairline cracks carefully glued together.
Everything was of good quality and individual taste. It reaffirmed the impression of Genevieve Stonefield he had already formed.
He was about to begin reading the titles of the books in the oak case when he was interrupted by the return of the maid to conduct him to the withdrawing room.
He had intended to make a discreet assessment of that room also, but as soon as he was through the doorway his entire attention was taken by Genevieve Stonefield herself. She was dressed in a smoky blue gown with darker stripes of velvet around the skirt. Perhaps it was an obvious choice for a woman of her warm skin and rich hair, but nonetheless, it was extraordinarily flattering. She was not lovely in the classical mold, and certainly she had not the pallor and childlike daintiness which was currently admired. There was an earthy, more immediate quality to her, as if in other circumstances she would have been full of laughter, imagi- nation, even hunger. Her features were those of a woman who threw herself wholeheartedly into whatever she espoused. Monk could not imagine what sort of a man Angus Stonefield could be to have won her love in the first place and then to have left her willingly. It precluded his being any kind of coward, or a retreater from life.
The room and its furnishings dissolved into irrelevance. “Mr. Monk,” she said eagerly. “Please do sit down. Thank you, Janet.” She lifted one hand in dismissal of the maid. “If anyone else should call, I am not at home.” “Yes ma'am.” Janet went out obediently, closing the door behind her. As soon as they were alone, Genevieve turned to Monk, then realized it was far too soon for him to have learned anything. She attempted to disguise her disappointment and her foolishness for having allowed hope in the first place.
He wanted to tell her that his initial suspicions seemed less and less likely, but to do so he would have to tell her what they were, and he was not prepared to do that.
“I have been to Mr. Stonefield's place of business,” he began. “Only briefly, as yet, but I can see nothing out of order. I shall return when Mr. Arbuthnot is present and see what more he can tell me.”