Hester stared from one to the other of them, her clear, intelligent eyes filled with a growing perception that something was profoundly wrong.
"Of course," Imogen said more briskly, covering her feelings. "Mr. Monk did not come until after Papa was dead; there was no occasion." She did not look at her husband, but she was obviously speaking to him. "And if you recall, Joscelin did not return after that."
"You can hardly blame him." Charles's voice contained a sharpening of criticism, an implication that Imogen was somehow being unfair. "He was as distressed as we were. He wrote me a very civil letter, expressing his condolences." He put his hands in his pocket, hard, and hunched his shoulders. "Naturally, he felt it unsuitable to call, in the circumstances. He quite understood our association must end; very delicate of him, I thought." He looked at Imogen with impatience, and ignored Hester altogether.
"That was like him, so very sensitive." Imogen was looking far away. "I do miss him."
Charles swiveled to look at her beside him. He seemed about to say something, and then changed his mind and bit it off. Instead he took his hand out of his pocket and put it around her arm. "So you didn't meet him?" he said to Monk.
Monk was still floundering.
"No." It was the only answer he had left himself room to make. "He was out of town." Surely that at least could have been true?
"Poor Joscelin." Imogen appeared unaware of her husband, or his fingers tightening on her shoulder. "He must have felt dreadful," she went on. "Of course he was not responsible, he was as deceived as any of us, but he was the sort of person who would take it on himself." Her voice was sad, gentle and utterly without criticism.
Monk could only guess, he dared not ask: Grey must somehow have been involved in the business venture in which Latterly Senior lost money, and so ill advised his friends. And it would seem Joscelin had lost money himself, which he could hardly afford; hence perhaps the request to the family estate for an increased allowance? The date on the letter from the solicitor was about right, shortly after Latterly's death. Possibly it was that financial disaster that had prompted Joscelin Grey to gamble rashly, or to descend to blackmail. If he had lost enough in the business he might have been desperate, with creditors pressing, social disgrace imminent. Charm was his only stock in trade; his entertainment value was his passport to hospitality in other people's houses the year round, and his only path to the heiress who might ultimately make him independent no longer begging from his mother and the brother he scarcely loved.
But who? Who among his acquaintances was vulnerable enough to pay for silence; and desperate, murderous enough to kill for it?
Whose houses had he stayed in? All sorts of indiscretions were committed on long weekends away from the city. Scandal was not a matter of what was done but of what was known to have been done. Had Joscelin stumbled on some well-kept secret adultery?
But adultery was hardly worth killing over, unless there was a child to inherit, or some other domestic crisis, a suit for divorce with all its scandal, and the complete social ostracism that followed. To kill would need a secret far worse, like incest, perversion or impotence. The shame of impotence was mortal, God knew why, but it was the most abhorred of afflictions, something not even whispered of.
Runcorn was right, even to speak of such a possibility would be enough to have him reported to the highest authorities, his career blocked forever, if he were not dismissed out of hand. He could never be forgiven for exposing a man to the ruin which must follow such an abominable scandal.
They were all staring at him. Charles was making no secret of his impatience. Hester was exasperated almost beyond endurance; her fingers were fiddling with the plain cambric handkerchief and her foot tapped rapidly and silently on the floor. Her opinion was in every line of her remarkable face.
"What is it you think you may know, Mr. Monk?" Charles said sharply. "If there is nothing, I would ask that you do not distress us again by raking over what can only be to us a tragedy. Whether my father took his own life or it was an accident while his mind was distracted with distress cannot be proved, and we should be obliged if you allowed