is here on police business. He doesn't know or care about Beethoven and Joscelin's music box. Please try to concentrate on something relevant-in the remote likelihood there is anything. He wants to know if Joscelin offended someone-owed them money-God knows what!"
Her face altered so slightly it could have been a change in the light, had not the sky beyond the windows been a steady cloudless blue. Suddenly she looked tired.
"I know Joscelin found finances a little difficult from time to time," she answered quietly. "But I do not know of any particulars, or whom he owed."
"He would hardly have discussed such a thing with my wife." Lovel swung around sharply. "If he wanted to borrow he would come to me-but he had more sense than to try. He had a very generous allowance as it was."
Monk glanced frantically at the splendid room, the swagged velvet curtains, and the garden and parkland beyond, and forbore from making any remark as to generosity. He looked back at Rosamond.
"You never assisted him, ma'am?"
Rosamond hesitated.
"With what?" Lovel asked, raising his eyebrows.
"A gift?" Monk suggested, struggling to be tactful. "Perhaps a small loan to meet a sudden embarrassment?"
"I can only assume you are trying to cause mischief," Lovel said acidly. "Which is despicable, and if you persist I shall have you removed from the case."
Monk was taken aback; he had not deliberately intended offense, simply to uncover a truth. Such sensibilities were peripheral, and he thought a rather silly indulgence now. Lovel saw his irritation and mistook it for a failure to understand. "Mr. Monk, a married woman does not own anything to dispose of-to a brother-in-law or anyone else."
Monk blushed for making a fool of himself, and for the patronage in Lovel's manner. When reminded, of course he knew the law. Even Rosamond's personal jewelry was not hers in law. If Lovel said she was not to give it away, then she could not. Not that he had any doubt, from the catch in her speech and the.flicker of her eyes, that she had done so.
He had no desire to betray her; the knowledge was all he wanted. He bit back the reply he wished to make.
"I did not intend to suggest anything done without your permission, my lord, simply a gesture of kindness on Lady Shelburne's part."
Lovel opened his mouth to retort, then changed his mind and looked out of the window again, his face tight, his shoulders broad and stiff.
"Did the war affect Major Grey deeply?" Monk turned back to Rosamond.
"Oh yes!" For a moment there was intense feeling in her, then she recalled the circumstances and struggled to control herself. Had she not been as schooled in the privileges and the duties of a lady she would have wept. "Yes," she said again. "Yes, although he mastered it with great courage. It was not many months before he began to be his old self-most of the time. He would play the piano, and sing for us sometimes." Her eyes looked beyond Monk to some past place in her own mind. "And he still told us funny stories and made us laugh. But there were occasions when he would think of the men who died, and I suppose his own suffering as well."
Monk was gathering an increasingly sharp picture of Joscelin Grey: a dashing young officer, easy mannered, perhaps a trifle callow; then through experience of war with its blood and pain, and for him an entirely new kind of responsibility, returning home determined to resume as much of the old life as possible; a youngest son with little money but great charm, and a degree of courage.
He had not seemed like a man to make enemies through wronging anyone-but it did not need a leap of imagination to conceive that he might have earned a jealousy powerful enough to have ended in murder. All that was needed for that might lie within this lovely room with its tapestries and its view of the parkland.
"Thank you, Lady Shelburne," he said formally. "You have given me a much clearer picture of him than I had. I am most grateful." He turned to Lovel. "Thank you, my lord. If I might speak with Mr. Menard Grey-"
"He is out," Lovel replied flatly. "He went to see one of the tenant farmers, and I don't know which so there is no point in your traipsing around looking. Anyway, you are looking for who murdered Joscelin, not writing an obituary!"