Cain His Brother (16 page)

“Previously you spoke of selling the business while it is still profitable and of excellent reputation,” he pointed out. It was irrelevant-she could do neither-but he was interested in her change of mind.

“Have you a manager in mind?”

“I don't know!” She leaned forward and her full skirts touched and spilled over the fender. She seemed not to notice. “Perhaps it would be better than selling. Then all our present employees could remain. There is that to consider.” She was ardent to convince him. “And it would be a continued source of security for us… something for my sons to inherit. That is better than a sum of money which can disappear alarmingly quickly. A piece of misguided advice, a young man willful, unwilling to be counseled by those who are older and he considers staid and unimaginative. I have heard of it happening.”

He bent over and moved her skirt, in case a coal should fall or spark and set it alight.

She barely noticed.

“Aren't you looking rather far ahead?” he said a little coolly.

“I have to, Mr. Monk. There is no one to take care of me but myself. I have five children. They must be provided for.”

“There is Lord Ravensbrook,” he reminded her. “He has both means and influence, and seems more than willing to be of every assistance. I think your anxiety is greater than it need be, Mrs. Stonefield.” He hated it, but his suspicions were wakened. Perhaps the relationship between herself and her husband was not as ideal as she had said. Possibly it was she whose affections had wandered elsewhere, not he? She was an extremely attractive woman. There was in her an element of passion and daring far deeper than mere physical charm. He found himself drawn to her, watching her with fascination, even while his mind was weighing and judging facts.

“And I have already tried to explain, Mr. Monk, that I do not wish to forfeit my freedom and become dependent upon the goodwill of Lord Ravensbrook,” she went on, her voice thick with emotion she could not hide. “I won't have that, Mr. Monk, as long as I have any way at all of preventing it. I am growing more afraid day by day, but I am not yet beyond my wits' end. And whether you believe it or not, I am doing what my husband would have wished. I knew him well, for all that you may think perhaps I did not.”

“I don't doubt you did, Mrs. Stonefield.” It was quite out of character for him to lie. He barely knew why he did it, except some need to comfort her.

He could hardly touch her and he had no instinct to. It did not come to him naturally to express himself by touch. Whether it ever had, he could not know.

“Yes you do,” she said with a pinched smile, a bitter humor of knowledge.

“You have explored every other possibility than the one that Caleb killed him, because you think it more likely.” She leaned back in her chair again, and finally became aware of her skirt near the fender and almost automatically tweaked it away. “And I suppose I cannot blame you. Every day I daresay some man deserts his wife and children, either for money or another woman. But I knew Angus. He was a man to whom dishonor was not only abhorrent, it was frightening. He avoided it as another might have the touch of leprosy or the plague.” Her voice at last lost its steadiness and cracked with the effort of control. “He was a truly good man, Mr. Monk, a man who knew evil for the ugliness and the ruin it is. It had no disguise of charm for him.”

His intelligence told him it was a bereaved woman speaking with the hindsight of love, and his instinct told him it was the truth. This is how he had always looked in her eyes, and although she admired it wholeheartedly, it also exasperated or oppressed her at times.

“Now so many days have passed,” she said very quietly, “I fear it may be beyond anyone's ability to prove what has happened to him.”

He felt guilty, which was unreasonable. Even if he had followed Angus on the very day he disappeared, he might still not have been able to prove murder against Caleb. There were enough ways of disposing of a body in Limehouse. The river was deep there, with its ebb tide to carry flotsam out and its cargo boats coming and going. At the moment there were also the common graves for the victims of typhoid, to name only a few. He put half a dozen more coals on the fire.

“You do not always need a body to presume death,” he said carefully, watching her face. “Although it may be a good deal harder to prove murder- and Caleb's guilt.”

“I don't care about Caleb's guilt.” Her eyes did not deviate from his face.

“God will take care of him.”

“But not of you?” he asked. “I would have thought you a great deal more deserving… and more urgent.”

“I cannot wait for charity, Mr. Monk,” she answered with some asperity.

He smiled. “I apologize. Of course not. But I should like to deal with Caleb before waiting for God. I am doing all I can, and I am much closer than I was last time we spoke. I have found a witness who saw Angus in Limehouse, on the day of his disappearance, in a tavern where he might easily have met Caleb. I'll find others. It takes time, but people will talk. It is just a matter of finding the right ones and persuading them to speak. I'll get Caleb himself, in the end.”

“Will you…” She was on the edge of hope, but not allowing herself to grasp it. “I really don't care if you cannot prove it was Caleb.” The shadow of a smile touched her mouth. “I don't even know what Angus would want. Isn't that absurd? For all that they were so utterly different, and Caleb hated him, he still loved Caleb. It seemed as if he would not forget the child he had been and the good times they had spent together before they quarreled. It hurt him every time he went to Limehouse after Caleb, yet he would not give up.”

She looked away. “Sometimes it would be weeks, especially after a particularly wretched visit, but then he would relent and go back again. On those times he'd be gone even longer, as if it were necessary to make up the difference. I suppose childhood bonds are very deep.”

“Did he tell you much of his visits to Caleb?” Monk asked. “Did he give you any indication of where they met, or where they might have been? If you can think of any description at all, it might help.”

“No,” she said with a slight frown, as though it puzzled her on recollection. “He never spoke of it at all. I think perhaps it was his silence which made me wonder if it was as much guilt as love which took him.”

“Guilt?”

There was a gentle pride in her face when she replied, a very slight, unconscious lift of her chin. “Angus had made a success of everything, his profession, his family and his place in society. Caleb had nothing. He was feared and hated where Angus was loved and respected. He lived from hand to mouth, never knowing where the next meal would come from. He had no home, no family, nothing in his whole life of which to be proud.”

It was a grim picture. Suddenly, with a jolt as if he had opened a door into a different, icy world, Monk perceived the loneliness of Caleb Stone, the failure that ate at his soul every time he saw his brother, the happy, smooth, successful mirror image of what he might have been. And Angus's pity and his guilt would only make it worse.

And yet for Angus too, perhaps the memory of love and trust, the times when all things were equal for them and the divisions and griefs of the future still unknown, held a kind of sweetness that bound them together.

Why should it boil over into violence now? What had happened to change it?

He looked at Genevieve. The strain was clearly marked in her face now.

There were tiny lines in the skin around her mouth and eyes, visible even in the gaslight. Angus had been gone fifteen days. She was also using at least half her time nursing Enid Ravensbrook. No wonder she was tired and riven with fear.

“Have you someone in mind you can appoint to manage the business in Mr.

Stonefield's absence?” he asked. It was hardly relevant to him, and yet he found himself waiting for the answer, willing that she had not. It seemed so coldly practical for a woman not yet surely a widow.

“I thought Mr. Niven,” she answered frankly. “In spite of the error of judgment which brought him to his present state, he is of absolute honesty, and of unusual skill and knowledge in the business. I think he would not be so rash or so lenient in another's cause. Mr. Arbuthnot has always thought well of him, and might not be averse to continuing with us if it was in Mr.

Niven's service. Mr. Niven is also very agreeable, and I should not mind thinking of him in Angus's place, since there needs must be someone. He has no family of his own, and would not be seeking to put me, or my sons, from their place.”

It should have made no difference whatever, and yet he found himself chilled by the readiness of her reply.

“I had not realized you knew him personally,” he said.

“Of course. He and Angus had a most cordial relationship. He has dined with us on many occasions. He is one of the few people we entertain in our home.” The shadow crossed her features again. “But naturally I cannot approach him yet. It would be quite improper until I have some proof of Angus's fate that will satisfy the law.” She sat very straight and sighed, as if controlling herself with an effort.

He wondered exactly what emotion it was that lay so powerfully just beneath the surface of her composure. There was a strength in her at odds with her gentle, very womanly appearance, the aura of obedient wife and devoted mother, some depth to her far out of the ordinary. It troubled him, because he had liked what he had first believed of her; even her quiet strength was appealing. He did not want to think of it as ruthlessness.

“I will do all I can, Mrs. Stonefield,” he promised, his tone of voice unwittingly putting some distance between them. “As you suggest, I shall concentrate my efforts upon satisfying the authorities that your husband is dead, and leave the manner of his death for others to worry about. In the meantime, since it may not be an easy task, or a quick one, I advise you to consider Lord Ravensbrook's offer of a home for yourself and your family, even if it is upon temporary terms.”

She sensed his thoughts and stood up gracefully, gathering her cape around her with a quick movement, but her face registered distaste and a hardening stubbornness of resistance.

“It will be a last resort, Mr. Monk, and I am not yet come to that pass.

I think I shall call upon Mr. Niven, and test his feelings in the matter, before I return to Lady Ravensbrook. Good day to you.”

The next few hours passed with agonizing slowness for Hester. She sat by Enid's bedside watching her haggard face, which was white, sweat-soaked, with two blotches of hectic color on the cheekbones. Her hair was tangled, her body tensed, turning and shivering with pain, too sore to touch. Hester could do little but keep patting her softly with cool cloths, but still her fever rose. She was delirious, seldom wholly aware of where she was.

Genevieve returned some time in the evening and looked in for a few moments. She was not due to take her turn until morning, when Hester would go to the dressing room for a few hours' sleep.

They exchanged glances. Genevieve was flushed. Hester presumed it to be from the chill outside, until she spoke.

“I have just been to see Mr. Monk. I am afraid he does not understand my urgency to know of Angus's fate.” She stopped just inside the door, her voice low in case she should disturb Enid. “Sometimes I think the suspense is more than I can bear. Then I went to call upon Mr. Niven… Titus Niven… he used to prosper in the same business as my husband, until very lately. He was also a friend.”

Even though she had spoken so softly, Enid started and tried to sit up.

Quickly Hester eased her down again, smoothing her hair off her brow and speaking softly to her, although she was uncertain if Enid heard her or not.

Genevieve looked at Hester, her face tight with fear. The question was so plain it needed no speech. She was afraid the crisis was coming, and Enid might not survive the night.

Hester had no answer. Anything she could say would be only a guess, and a hope.

Genevieve let out her breath slowly. The ghost of a smile returned to her face, but it was only a reaching across pain in a moment's closeness; there was no happiness in it. Whatever comfort or ray of light Titus Niven had been able to give, it was gone again. Even the gentleness with which she had spoken his name seemed forgotten.

“There is no point in your remaining,” Hester told her honestly. “It might be tonight, it might not be until tomorrow. There's nothing you can do, except be ready to take over in the morning.” She tried to smile, and failed.

“I will,” Genevieve promised, touching her lightly on the shoulder. Then she turned and went out of the door, closing it behind her with barely a click.

The early evening was dark, rain battering against the windows behind the thick drawn curtains. The clock on the mantel was the only other sound except for the soft hissing of the gas, and every now and again a moan or whimper from Enid.

A little after half past seven, Lord Ravensbrook knocked on the door and immediately came in. He looked worn and there was a flicker of fear in the back of his eyes, thinly masked by pride.

“How is she?” he asked. Perhaps it was a pointless question, but he knew of nothing else to say, and it was expected. He needed to say something.

“I think the crisis may be tonight,” she answered. She saw his face pinch, almost as if she had struck him. She regretted for a moment that she had been so forthright. Maybe it was brutal. But what if Enid died tonight, and she had not told him? There was nothing he could do for her, but afterwards his grief would be allied with guilt. She would have treated him as if he were a child, not able to stand the truth, not worthy to be told it. The healing would be harder, and perhaps never completed.

“I see.” He stood still in the middle of the room, with its shadows and florals, its femininity, isolated by his inability to speak, the social conventions that bound them to their separate roles. He was a peer of the realm, a man expected to have courage both physical and moral, absolute mastery of his emotions. She was a woman, the weaker vessel, expected to weep, to lean on others, and above all she was an employee. The fact that he did not actually pay her was irrelevant. He was as incapable of crossing the chasm between them as she. Very possibly it had not even occurred to him. He simply stood still and suffered.