doing this before, remember the slow building anger. It had all been a lie, a brutal and carefully calculated lie to earn first acceptance from the Latterlys, then their friendship, and finally to deceive them into a sufficient sense of obligation, over the lost watch, to repay him by supporting his business scheme. Grey had used his skill to play like an instrument first their grief, then their debt. Perhaps he had even done the same with the Dawlishes.
The rage was gathering up inside him again. It was coming back exactly as it had before. He was walking faster and faster, the rain beating in his face now. He "was unaware of it. He splashed through the swimming gutters into the street to hail a cab. He gave the address in Mecklenburg Square, as he knew he had done before.
When he got out he went into the building. Grimwade handed him the key this time; the first time there had been no one there.
He went upstairs. It seemed new, strange, as if he were reliving the first time when it was unknown to him. He got to the top and hesitated at the door. Then he had knocked. Now he slipped the key into the lock. It swung open quite easily and he went in. Before Joscelin Grey had come to the door, dressed in pale dove, his fair face handsome, smiling, just a little surprised. He could see it now as if it had been only a few minutes ago.
Grey had asked him in, quite casually, unperturbed. He had put his stick in the hall stand, his mahogany stick with the brass chain embossed in the handle. It was still there. Then he had followed Grey into the main room. Grey had been very composed, a slight smile on his face. Monk had told him what he had come for: about the tobacco business, the failure, Latterly's death, the fact that Grey had lied, that he had never known George Latterly, and there had been no watch.
He could see Grey now as he had turned from the sideboard, holding out a drink for Monk, taking one himself. He had smiled again, more widely.
"My dear fellow, a harmless little lie." His voice had been light, very easy, very calm. "I told them what an excellent fellow poor George was, how brave, how charming, how well loved. It was what they wanted to hear. What does it matter whether it was true or not?"
"It was a lie," Monk had shouted back. "You didn't even know George Latterly. You did it purely for money."
Grey had grinned.
"So I did, and what's more, I shall do it again, and again. I have an endless stream of gold watches, or whatever; and there's not a thing you can do about it, policeman. I shall go on as long as anyone is left who remembers the Crimea-which will be a hell of a long time-and shall damned well never run out of the dead!''
Monk had stared at him, helpless, anger raging inside him till he could have wept like an impotent child.
"I didn't know Latterly," Grey had gone on. "I got his name from the casualty lists. They're absolutely full of names, you've no idea. Although actually I got some of the better ones from the poor devils themselves-saw them die in Scutari, riddled with disease, bleeding and spewing all over the place. I wrote their last letters for them. Poor George might have been a raving coward, for all I know. But what good does it do to tell his family that? IVe no idea what he was like, but it doesn't take much wit to work out what they wanted to hear! Poor little Imogen adored him, and who can blame her? Charles is a hell of a bore; reminds me a bit of my eldest brother, another pompous fool." His fair face had become momentarily ugly with envy. A look of malice and pleasure had slid into it. He looked at Monk up and down knowingly.
"And who wouldn't have told the lovely Imogen whatever she would listen to? I told her all about that extraordinary creature, Florence Nightingale. I painted up the heroism a bit, certainly, gave her all the glory of 'angels of mercy' holding lamps by the dying through the night. You should have seen her face." He had laughed; then seeing something in Monk, a vulnerability, perhaps a memory or a dream, and understanding its depth in a flash: "Ah