The Silent Cry (5 page)

"Thank you… you are very kind. I…" She gave a little shiver.

"I don't even know what I want yet… what there is to be done." She rose to her feet, swayed a moment and grasped for his arm which he gave instantly. "First I must go to St. Thomas's hospital, and see Rhys.”

"Do you think that is wise?" the doctor cautioned. "You are in a state of extreme shock, my dear. Allow me to go for you. I can at least see that he is given the very best professional help and care. I will see that he is brought home as soon as it is medically advisable.

In the meantime I shall care for him myself, I promise you.”

She hesitated, torn between love and good sense.

"Let me at least see him!" she pleaded. "Take me. I promise I shall not be a burden. I am in command of myself!”

He hesitated only a moment. "Of course. Take a little brandy, just to revive yourself, then I shall accompany you." He glanced at Evan. "I am sure you are finished here, Sergeant. Anything else you need to know can wait until a more opportune time.”

It was dismissal, and Evan accepted it with a kind of relief. There was little more he could learn here now. Perhaps later he would speak to the valet and other servants. The coachman might know where his master was in the habit of going. In the meantime there were people he knew in St. Giles, informers, men and women upon whom pressure could be placed, judicious questions asked, and a great deal might be learned.

"Of course," he conceded, rising to his feet. "I shall try to bother you as little as possible, ma'am." He took his leave as the doctor was taking the decanter of brandy from the butler and pouring a little into a glass.

Outside in the street, where it was beginning to snow, he turned up his coat collar and walked briskly. He wondered what Monk would have done. Would he have thought of some brilliant and probing questions whose answers would have revealed a new line of truth to follow and unravel? Would he have felt any less crippled by pity and horror than Evan did? Had there been something obvious which his emotion had prevented him from seeing?

Surely the obvious thing was that father and son had gone whoring in St. Giles, and been careless, perhaps paid less than the asking price, perhaps been too high-handed or arrogant showing off their money and their gold watches, and some ruffian, afire with drink, had attacked them and then, like a dog at the smell of blood, run amok?

Either way, what could the widow know of it? He was right not to harry her now.

He put his head down against the east wind and increased his pace.

Rhys Duff was kept in hospital for a further two days, and on the Monday, the fifth day after the attack, he was brought home, in great pain, and still without having spoken a word. Dr. Corriden Wade was to call every day, or as he progressed, every second day, but of course it would be necessary to have him professionally nursed. At the recommendation of the young policeman on the case, and having made appropriate enquiries as to her abilities, Wade agreed to the employment of one of the women who had gone out to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, a Miss Hester Latterly. She was, of necessity, used to caring for young men who had suffered near mortal injuries in combat. She was considered an excellent choice.

To Hester herself it was an agreeable change after having nursed an elderly and extremely trying lady whose problems were largely matters of temper and boredom, only slightly exacerbated by two broken toes.

She could probably have managed just as well with a competent lady's maid, but she felt more dramatic with a nurse, and impressed her friends endlessly by likening her plight to that of the war heroes Hester had nursed before her.

Hester kept a civil tongue with difficulty, and only because she required the employment in order to survive. Her father's financial ruin had meant she had no inheritance. Her elder brother Charles would always have provided for her, as men were expected to provide and care for their unmarried female relations, but such dependence would be suffocating to a woman like Hester, who had tasted an extraordinary freedom in the Crimea, and a responsibility at once both exhilarating and terrifying. She was certainly not going to spend the rest of her days in quiet domesticity being obedient and grateful to a rather unimaginative if kindly brother.

It was infinitely preferable to bite one's tongue and refrain from telling Miss Golightly she was a fool… for the space of a few weeks.

She thought as she settled herself in the hansom that was to take her to this new position that there were other very considerable advantages to her independent situation. She could make friends where and with whom she chose. Charles would not have had any objection to Lady Callandra Daviot; well, not any severe objection.

She was well bred and had been highly respectable while her army surgeon husband was alive. Now as a fairly wealthy widow, she was becoming rather less so. Indeed some might have considered her a trifle eccentric. She had made a pact with a private agent of enquiry that she would support him financially during his lean times, as long as he shared with her his more interesting cases. That was not in any sense respectable: but it was enormously diverting, at times tragic and always absorbing. Frequently it accomplished if not happiness, at least a resolution and some kind of justice.

The hansom was moving at a brisk pace through the traffic. She shivered in the cold.

And there was the agent of enquiry himself. Charles would never have approved of William Monk. How could Society possibly accept a man without a memory? He could be anyone! He could have done anything!

The possibilities were endless, and almost all of them unpleasant. Had he been a hero, an aristocrat or a gentleman, someone would have recognised him and owned him.

Since the one thing he knew about himself for certain was that he was a policeman, that automatically placed him in a social category somewhere beneath even the most regrettable trade. And of course trade was beneath any of the professions. Younger sons of the gentry went into the army or the church or the law those who did not marry wealth and relieve themselves of the necessity of having to do anything. Elder sons, naturally, inherited land and money, and lived accordingly.

Not that Hester's friendship with Monk could easily be categorised.

Pressing through the traffic in the rain, she thought of it with a mixture of emotions, all of them disturbingly powerful. It had lurched from an initial mutual contempt, to a kind of trust which was unique in her life, and, she believed, in his also. And then as if suddenly afraid of such vulnerability, they had been quick to quarrel, to find fault and keep little rein on temper.

But in times of need, and the mutual caring for some cause, they had worked together in an understanding that ran deeper than words, or the need or time for explanations.

In one fearful hour in Edinburgh, when they had believed they faced death, it had seemed to be that kind of love which touches only a few lives, a depth of unity which is of the heart and mind and soul, and for one aching moment of the body also.

In the lurching of the cab and the hiss of wheels in the rain she could remember Edinburgh as if it had been yesterday.

But the experience had been too dangerous to the emotions, too demanding for either of them to dare again.

Or had it only been he who would not dare?

That was a question she did not want to ask herself, she had not meant to allow the thought into her mind… and there it was, hard and painful. Now she refused to express it. She did not know. She did not want to. Anyway, it was all irrelevant. There were parts of Monk she admired greatly: his courage, his strength of will, his intelligence, his loyalty to his beliefs, his passion for justice, his ability to face almost any kind of truth, no matter how dreadful, and the fact that he was never, ever a hypocrite.

She also hated the streak of cruelty she knew in him, the arrogance, the frequent insensitivity. And he was a fool where judgement of character was concerned. He could no more read a woman's wiles than a dog could read Spanish! He was consistently attracted to the very last sort of woman who could ever make him happy.

Unconsciously she was clenching her hands as she sat in the cold.

He was bewitched, taken in again and again by pretty, softly spoken, outwardly helpless women, who were shallow of nature, manipulative and essentially searching for comfortable lives far from turmoil of any kind. He would have been bored silly by any one of them within months.

But their femininity flattered him, their agreement to his wildest assertions had seemed like good nature and good sense, and their charming manners pleased his notion of feminine decorum. He fancied himself comfortable with them, whereas in truth he was only soothed, unchallenged, and in the end bored, imprisoned and contemptuous.

But still he made the same mistake! His recent visit to one of the smaller German principalities was the perfect example. He had fallen under the spell of the extremely shallow and utterly selfish Countess Evelyn von Seidlitz. She was deliciously pretty with her enormous brown eyes and dimpling laugh. She had a wicked sense of humour and knew precisely how to charm, flatter and entertain. She was lovely to look at and fun to be with. She was also cold, manipulative and greedy.

They were pressed in on all sides by hansoms, drays, carriages. Drivers were shouting. A horse squealed.

Monk had seen through the Countess eventually, of course, but it had required unarguable evidence to convince him. And then he was angry, above all, it seemed, with Hester! She did not know why. She recalled their last meeting with twinges of pain which took her unexpectedly. It had been highly acrimonious, but then so had a great many of their meetings. Normally it caused her irritation that she had not managed to think of a suitable retaliation at the right moment, or satisfaction that she had. She was frequently furious with him, and he with her. It was not unpleasant, in fact at times it was exhilarating. There was a kind of honesty in it, and it was without real hurt. She would never have struck at any part of him she felt might be genuinely vulnerable.

So why did their last encounter leave her this ache, this feeling of being bruised inside? She tried to recall exactly what he had said.

She could not now even remember what the quarrel had been about: something to do with her arbitrariness, a favourite subject with him.

He had said she was autocratic, that she judged people too harshly and only according to her own standards, which were devoid of laughter or humanity.

The hansom lurched forward again.

He said she knew how to nurse the sick and reform the dilatory, the incompetent or the feckless, but she had no idea how to live like an ordinary woman, how to laugh or cry and experience the feelings of anything but a hospital matron, endlessly picking up the disasters of other people's lives, but never having one of her own. Her ceaseless minding of other people's business, the fact that she thought she always knew better, made her a bore.

The sum of it had been that he could do very well without her, and while her qualities were admirable, and socially very necessary, they were also personally unattractive.

That was what had hurt. Criticism was fair, it was expected, and she could certainly give him back as much in quality and quantity as she received. But rejection was another thing altogether.

And it was completely unfair. For once she had done nothing to warrant it. She had remained in London nursing a young man desperately damaged by paralysis. Apart from that, she had been occupied trying to save Oliver Rathbone from himself, in that he had undertaken the defence in a scandalous slander case, and very nearly damaged his own career beyond repair. As it was, it had cost him his reputation in certain circles. Had he not been granted a knighthood shortly before the affair, he could certainly abandon all hope of one now! He had shed too ugly a light on royalty in general to find such favour any more. He was no longer considered as 'sound' as he had been all his life until then. Now he was suddenly 'questionable'.

But she found herself smiling at the thought of him. Their last meeting had been anything but acrimonious. Theirs was not really a social acquaintance, rather more a professional friendship. He had surprised her by inviting her to accompany him to dinner, and then to the theatre. She had accepted, and enjoyed it so much she recalled it now with a little shiver of pleasure.

At first she had felt rather awkward at the sudden shift in their relationship. What should she talk about? For once there was no case in which they had a common interest. It was years since she had dined alone with a man for other than professional reasons.

But she had forgotten how sophisticated he was. She had seen the vulnerable side of him in the slander case. At dinner and at the theatre he was utterly different. Here he was in command. As always he was immaculately dressed in the understated way of a man who knows he does not need to impress, his position is already assured. He had talked easily of all manner of things, art, politics, travel, a little philosophy and a touch of trivial scandal. He had made her laugh. She could picture him now sitting back in his chair, his eyes looking at her very directly. He had unusual eyes, very dark in his lean, narrow face with its fairish hair, long nose and fastidious mouth. She had never known him so relaxed before, as if for a space of time duty and the law had ceased to matter.

He had mentioned his father once or twice, a man Hester had met several times, and of whom she was extraordinarily fond. He even told her a few stories about his student days and his first, disastrous cases. She had not been sure whether to sympathise or be amused. She had looked at his face, and ended laughing. He had not seemed to mind in the least.

They had nearly been late for the theatre and had taken their seats almost as the curtain rose. It was a melodrama a terrible play. She had sat trying not to acknowledge to herself how bad it was. She must keep facing the stage. Rathbone sitting beside her would be bound to be aware if she gazed around or took more interest in the other members of the audience. She had sat rigidly facing forwards, trying to enjoy it.

Then she had glanced at him, after one particularly dreadful sequence of lines, and saw him wince. A few moments later she had looked at him again, and this time found him looking back, his eyes bright with rueful amusement.

She had dissolved in giggles, and knew that when he pulled out a large handkerchief and held it to his mouth, it was for the same reason. Then he had leaned across to her and whispered, "Shall we leave, before they ask us not to disrupt the performance?" and she had been delighted to agree.

Afterwards they had walked along the icy street still laughing, mimicking some of the worst lines and parodying the scenes. They had stopped by a brazier where a street peddler was selling roasted chestnuts, and he had bought two packets, and they had walked along together trying not to burn their fingers or their tongues.

It had been one of the happiest evenings she could remember, and curiously comfortable.

She was still smiling at its recollection when the hansom reached her destination in Ebury Street and set her down, with her luggage. She paid the driver and presented herself at the side door, where a footman helped her in with her case and directed her to where she should wait to meet the mistress.

Hester had been told little about the circumstances of Rhys Duffs injuries, only that they were sustained in an attack in which his father had been killed. She had been far more concerned with the nature of his distress and what measures she could take to help him. She had seen Dr. Riley at the hospital, and he had professed a continuing interest in Rhys Duffs ease, but it was the family doctor, Corriden Wade, who had approached her. He had told her only that Rhys Duff was suffering from profound bruising both external and internal. He was in a state of the most serious shock, and had so far not spoken since the incident. She should not try to make him respond, except in so far as to make his wishes known regarding his comfort. Her task was to relieve his pain as far as was possible, to change the dressings of his minor external wounds. Dr. Wade himself would care for the more major ones. She must keep him clean, warm and prepare for him such food as he was willing to take. This, of course, should be bland and nourishing.

She was also to keep his room warm and pleasant for him, and to read to him if he should show any desire for it. The choice of material was to be made with great care. There must be nothing disturbing, either to the emotions or the intellect, and nothing which would excite him or keep him from as much rest as he was able to find. In Hester's view, that excluded almost everything that was worthy of either the time or effort of reading. If it did not stir the intellect, the emotions or the imagination, what point was there in it? Should she read him the railway timetable?