The Silent Cry Page 0,14

to bother you as little as possible, ma'am." He took his leave as the doctor was taking the decanter of brandy from the butler and pouring a little into a glass.

Outside in the street, where it was beginning to snow, he turned up his coat collar and walked briskly. He wondered what Monk would have done. Would he have thought of some brilliant and probing questions whose answers would have revealed a new line of truth to follow and unravel? Would he have felt any less crippled by pity and horror than Evan did? Had there been something obvious which his emotion had prevented him from seeing?

Surely the obvious thing was that father and son had gone whoring in St. Giles, and been careless, perhaps paid less than the asking price, perhaps been too high-handed or arrogant showing off their money and their gold watches, and some ruffian, afire with drink, had attacked them and then, like a dog at the smell of blood, run amok?

Either way, what could the widow know of it? He was right not to harry her now.

He put his head down against the east wind and increased his pace.

Chapter Two

Rhys Duff was kept in hospital for a further two days, and on the Monday, the fifth day after the attack, he was brought home, in great pain, and still without having spoken a word. Dr. Corriden Wade was to call every day, or as he progressed, every second day, but of course it would be necessary to have him professionally nursed. At the recommendation of the young policeman on the case, and having made appropriate enquiries as to her abilities, Wade agreed to the employment of one of the women who had gone out to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, a Miss Hester Latterly. She was, of necessity, used to caring for young men who had suffered near mortal injuries in combat. She was considered an excellent choice.

To Hester herself it was an agreeable change after having nursed an elderly and extremely trying lady whose problems were largely matters of temper and boredom, only slightly exacerbated by two broken toes.

She could probably have managed just as well with a competent lady's maid, but she felt more dramatic with a nurse, and impressed her friends endlessly by likening her plight to that of the war heroes Hester had nursed before her.

Hester kept a civil tongue with difficulty, and only because she required the employment in order to survive. Her father's financial ruin had meant she had no inheritance. Her elder brother Charles would always have provided for her, as men were expected to provide and care for their unmarried female relations, but such dependence would be suffocating to a woman like Hester, who had tasted an extraordinary freedom in the Crimea, and a responsibility at once both exhilarating and terrifying. She was certainly not going to spend the rest of her days in quiet domesticity being obedient and grateful to a rather unimaginative if kindly brother.

It was infinitely preferable to bite one's tongue and refrain from telling Miss Golightly she was a fool... for the space of a few weeks.

She thought as she settled herself in the hansom that was to take her to this new position that there were other very considerable advantages to her independent situation. She could make friends where and with whom she chose. Charles would not have had any objection to Lady Callandra Daviot; well, not any severe objection.

She was well bred and had been highly respectable while her army surgeon husband was alive. Now as a fairly wealthy widow, she was becoming rather less so. Indeed some might have considered her a trifle eccentric. She had made a pact with a private agent of enquiry that she would support him financially during his lean times, as long as he shared with her his more interesting cases. That was not in any sense respectable: but it was enormously diverting, at times tragic and always absorbing. Frequently it accomplished if not happiness, at least a resolution and some kind of justice.

The hansom was moving at a brisk pace through the traffic. She shivered in the cold.

And there was the agent of enquiry himself. Charles would never have approved of William Monk. How could Society possibly accept a man without a memory? He could be anyone! He could have done anything!

The possibilities were endless, and almost all of them unpleasant. Had he been a hero, an aristocrat or a gentleman, someone would