Herbert." She pulled a sad, mocking little face. "Rather to the contrary, he appears to be a brilliant surgeon but personally a boringly correct man, rather pompous, self-opinionated, socially, politically, and religiously orthodox."
She was watching Monk all the time. "I doubt if he ever had an original idea except in medicine, in which he is both innovative and courageous. It seems as if that has drained all his creative energies and attentions, and what is left is tedious to a degree." The laughter in her eyes was sharp and the interest in them more and more open, betraying that she did not believe for an instant that he fell into that category.
"Do you know him personally, Lady Ross Gilbert?" he asked, watching her face.
Again she shrugged, one shoulder a fraction higher than the other. "Only as business required, which is very little.
I have met Lady Stanhope socially, but not often." Her voice altered subtly, a very delicately implied contempt. "She is a very retiring person. She prefers to spend her time at home with her children-seven, I believe. But she always seemed most agreeable-not fashionable, you understand, but quite comely, very feminine, not in the least a strident or awkward creature." Her heavy eyelids lowered almost imperceptibly. "I daresay she is in every way an excellent wife. I have no reason to doubt it."
"And what of Nurse Barrymore?" he asked, again watching her face, but he saw no flicker in her expression, nothing to betray any emotion or knowledge that troubled her.
"I knew of her only the little I observed myself or what was reported to me by others. I have to confess, I never heard anything to her discredit." Her eyes searched his face. "I think, frankly, that she was just as tedious as he is. They were well matched."
"An interesting use of words, ma'am."
She laughed quite openly. "Unintentional, Mr. Monk. I had no deeper meaning in my mind."
"Do you believe she nourished daydreams about him?" he asked.
She looked up at the ceiling. "Heaven knows. I would have thought she would place them more interestingly-Dr. Beck, for a start. He is a man of feeling and humor, a little vain, and I would have thought of a more natural appetite." She gave a little laugh. "But then perhaps that was not what she wanted." She looked back at him again. "No, to be candid, Mr. Monk, I think she admired Sir Herbert intensely, as do we all, but on an impersonal level. To hear that it was a romantic vision surprises me. But then life is constantly surprising, don't you find?" Again the light was in her eyes and the lift, the sparkle that was almost an invitation, although whether to do more than admire her was not certain.
And that was all that he could learn from her. Not much use to Oliver Rathbone, but he reported it just the same.
* * * * *
With Kristian Beck he fared not much better, although the interview was completely different. He met him in his own home, by choice. Mrs. Beck was little in evidence, but her cold, precise nature was stamped on the unimaginative furnishings of her house, the rigidly correct placement of everything, the sterile bookshelves where nothing was out of place, either in the rows of books themselves or in their orthodox contents. Even the flowers in the vases were carefully arranged in formal proportions and stood stiffly to attention. The whole impression was clean, orderly, and forbidding. Monk never met the woman (apparently she was out performing some good work or other), but he could imagine her as keenly as if he had. She would have hair drawn back from an exactly central parting, eyebrows without flight or imagination, flat cheekbones, and careful passionless lips.
Whatever had made Beck choose such a woman? He was exactly the opposite; his face was full of humor and emotion and as sensuous a mouth as Monk had ever seen, and yet there was nothing coarse about it, nothing self-indulgent, rather the opposite. What mischance had brought these two together? That was almost certainly something he would never know. He thought with bitter self-mockery that perhaps Beck was as poor a judge of women as he himself. Maybe he had mistaken her passionless face for one of purity and refinement, her humorlessness for intelligence, even piety.
Kristian led him to his study, a room entirely different, where his own character held sway. Books were piled on shelves, books of all sorts, novels and