Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [114]
He walked down the street where the doctor’s house was and found with a sharp sense of satisfaction that he knew it. The particular pattern of beams and plastering was familiar. There was no need to look for the name or a number; he could remember being here before.
With excitement catching in his throat he knocked on the door. It seemed an age before it was answered by an aged man with a game leg. Monk could hear it dragging on the floor. His white hair was thinly plastered across his skull and his teeth were broken, but his face lit with pleasure as soon as his eyes focused on Monk.
“My, if it in’t Mr. Monk back again!” he said in a cracked falsetto voice. “Well bless my soul! What brings you back to these parts? We in’t ’ad no more murders! Least, not that I knows of. ’Ave we?”
“No Mr. Wraggs, I don’t think so.” Monk was elated to an absurd degree that the old man was so pleased to see him, and that he in turn could recall his name. “I’m here on a private matter, to see the doctor, if I may?”
“Ah no, sir.” Wraggs’s face fell. “You’re never poorly, are you, sir? Come in and set yourself down, then. I’ll get you a drop o’ summink!”
“No, no, Mr. Wraggs, I’m very well, thank you,” Monk said hastily. “I just want to see him as a friend, not professionally.”
“Ah, well.” The old man breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s all right then! Still, come on in just the same. Doctor’s out on a call right now, but ’e’ll be back by an’ by. Now what can I get you, Mr. Monk? You just name it, and if we got it, it’s yours.”
It would have been churlish to refuse so generous an offer. “Well, I’ll have a glass of cider, and a slice of bread and cheese, if you’ve got it,” he accepted.
“ ’Course we got it!” Wraggs said delightedly, and led the way in, hobbling lopsidedly ahead of Monk into the parlor.
Monk wondered with a silent blessing what kindness he had shown this old man that he was so welcome here, but he could not ask. He hoped profoundly it was not simply the old man’s nature that was so blithely giving, and he was glad he could not put it to the test. Instead he accepted the hospitality and sat talking with him for well over an hour until the doctor returned. Actually in that space he learned from him almost all he wished to know. Phyllis Dexter had been a very pretty woman with soft honey-brown hair and golden brown eyes, a gentle manner and a nice wit. Opinion in the town had been violently divided about her innocence or guilt. The police had felt her guilty, as had the mayor and many of the gentry. The doctor and the parson had taken her side, so had the innkeeper, who had had more than enough of Adam Dexter’s temper and sullen complaints. Wraggs was emphatic that Monk himself had pursued his enquiries night and day, bullying, exhorting, pleading with witnesses, driving himself to exhaustion, sitting up into the small hours of the morning poring over the statements and the evidence till his eyes were red.
“She owes ’er life to you, Mr. Monk, and no mistake,” Wraggs said with wide eyes. “A rare fighter you were. No woman, nor man neither, ever had a better champion in their cause, I’ll swear to that on my Bible oath, I will.”
“Where did she go to, Mr. Wraggs, when she left here?”
“Ah, that she didn’t tell no one, poor soul!” Wraggs shook his head. “An’ who can blame ’er, I ask you, after what some folk said.”
Monk’s heart sank. After the hope, the warmth of Wraggs’s welcome and the sudden sight of some better part of himself, it had all slipped away again.
“You’ve no idea?” He was horrified to hear a catch in his voice.
“No sir, none at all.” Wraggs peered at him with anxiety and sorrow in his old eyes. “Thanked you with tears, she did, an’ then just packed ’er things and went. Funny, you know, but I thought as you knew where she’d gone, ’cause I ’ad a feeling as you ’elped her go! But there, I suppose I must a’ bin wrong.”
“France—the desk sergeant in the police station