Death of a Stranger - Anne Perry [124]
He stared out of the window. The rolling countryside with its plowed fields was dark where the grain was sown but not yet through the ground, green like thrown gauze over the earth where the earlier crop had sprung. The cherry and wild plum and pear trees were mounded white with blossom, but all of them made no mark on his senses. He got out and back in again at every stop, eager to be there.
He reached Liverpool Lime Street just before dark, stiff and tired, and found himself lodgings for the night.
In the sharp chill of morning his mind was made up where to begin. Whatever pain it might bring, whatever revelations not only as to his life, but to Monk’s also, he must start with Arrol Dundas. Where had he lived? Who had been his friends, or his associates? What had been the style and the substance of his life? Monk had wanted to know these things, and at the same time dreaded it, ever since the first splinters of memory had begun to return. It was time to realize both the hopes and the fears.
The newspaper accounts had stated where Dundas had lived at the time of his arrest. It was a simple enough matter to check, and take a cab out to the elegant, tree-lined street. He sat in the hansom outside number fourteen, staring up and down at the beautiful houses, which were spacious and meticulously cared for. Maids beat carpets in the back alleyways, laughing and flirting with delivery boys, or arguing over the price of fish or fresh vegetables. Here and there a bootboy idled a few minutes, or a footman stood looking important. Monk needed no one to tell him this was an expensive neighborhood.
“This right, sir?” the cabbie asked.
“Yes. I don’t wish to go in. Just wait here,” Monk answered. He wanted to think, to let the air of the place, the sights and sounds, swirl around him and settle in his mind. Perhaps something here would rip away the veils in his mind and show him what he hoped and dreaded to see—himself as he had been, generous or greedy, blindly loyal or a betrayer. The past was closing in. Only another fact, a smell, a sound, and he would be face-to-face with it at last.
Who lived in this house now? Was there still a stained-glass window at the top of the stairs, before the flight turned up another story? Was there still a pear tree in the garden, white with spring blossom? There would be a different carpet in the withdrawing room, not red and blue anymore, probably not red curtains either.
Suddenly, with a jolt of clarity, he remembered perfectly sitting at the dining room table. The curtains were blue all along the row of windows opposite him. The chandeliers were blazing with candles, reflecting on the silver cutlery and the white linen below. He could see the patterns on the handles as if he held one right now, ornate, with a D engraved in the center. There were fish knives as well, a new invention. Before that people had eaten fish with two forks. Mrs. Dundas was extraordinarily pleased with them. He could see her face, calm and happy. She had been wearing a sort of plum color; it complimented her rather sallow skin. She was not beautiful, but there was a dignity and an individuality about her he had always liked. But it was her voice that pleased most, low and a little husky, especially when she laughed. There was pure joy in it.
There had been a dozen people around the table, all perfectly dressed, jewels glittering, faces smooth and happy, Arrol Dundas at the head, presiding over the good fellowship.
There had been money, plenty of it.
Had it been the product of fraud? Had all that elegance and charm been bought at the expense of other people’s loss? It was a thought so ugly he was surprised he could entertain it without it leaving him with a raw wound. And yet it did not. Perhaps he was too anesthetized by Katrina’s death and the