Cain His Brother - Anne Perry [117]
“You are brilliant, sir!” Monk said enthusiastically. “Quite brilliant! Why did I not think of that myself? Once you see it, it is as obvious as daylight. Thank God for one man with brains.”
The clerk blushed furiously and was quite unable to frame any reply.
“What can you tell me about him?” Monk demanded, picking up the spectacles, polishing them and handing them back. “Where was he living? What was the cause of his death? How old a man was he? What family had he? What, precisely, was his position?”
“Good gracious!” The clerk blinked at him like an owl, his spectacles in his hand. “Well … well, I can certainly find out for you, sir. Yes, yes indeed. May I inquire why it is you must know? Is he perhaps a relative?”
“I believe he may be a relative of someone of the utmost importance to me,” Monk replied truthfully, if deviously. “Someone who holds my very life in their hands. Yes, please tell me everything you can about the late Reverend Buckingham, and his family. I shall wait here.”
“Ah—well—I may be … yes, of course.” He sneezed again and apologized. “To be sure.” And he scurried off about his task.
Monk paced the floor until the clerk returned some twenty-five minutes later, pink-faced and brimming with triumph.
“He died some eight years ago, sir, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1851.” He frowned. “The cause of death was listed as chill, rather unspecific. He was not an elderly man, indeed only in his fifty-sixth year, and apparently had been in good health until that time.”
“His family!” Monk said urgently. “Did he have children?”
“Why yes, yes he did. And he left a widow, a Mary Ann.”
“Names of the children!” Monk demanded. “What were their names? What were their ages?”
“My goodness, sir, don’t distress yourself so! Yes, there were children, indeed there were. One son named Octavian, which is curious, since apparently he was the eldest—”
“Curious?”
“Yes sir. Clergymen often have large families, and Octavian means eighth, you know.…”
“Daughters! Did he have daughters?”
“Yes, yes he did. Eldest named Julia, second named Septima. Poor man really cannot count! Quite amusing … yes! Yes! I am coming to the rest. Another son named Marcus … all very Roman. Perhaps it was an interest of his, a hobby. Yes! And a last daughter named Drusilla—ah!” This last gasp was because Monk had again clapped him on the back and driven the air out of his lungs. “I take it that is the lady whom you are seeking?”
“Yes, yes. I think it is. Now—the living. What was his position, and where?”
“Wymondham, sir. It is only a small village.”
“Was he simply the parson?” It did not seem to fit what he had seen of Drusilla. Could it be no more than an extraordinary coincidence, and after all, have no meaning?
“No sir,” the clerk replied with growing enthusiasm himself. “I believe he had an attachment to the Norwich Cathedral, or he had had in the recent past. A distinguished scholar, so my informant tells me.”
“Ah—thank you.” Hope surged back up again. “Is there anything else you know? About the family, for example? The widow? The daughters? In what circumstances do they find themselves now?”
The clerk’s face fell.
“I’m sorry, sir, I have no idea. I daresay you would have to travel to Norfolk for that.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you. I am enormously obliged to you.” And indeed he was. He raced out of the building and flung himself into the first vacant hansom that passed, shouting to the driver to take him to the police station, where he could find John Evan and tell him what he now knew.
But he was obliged to wait nearly three hours before Evan returned from the case he was on, by which time it was long after dark and had begun to rain. They sat together in the coffee shop, warming themselves with hands around hot mugs, sipping slowly at the steaming liquid, a babble of noise around them and constant movement as people came and went.
“Buckingham!” Evan said with surprise. “I don’t recall the name.”
“But there must be a case concerning