Funeral in Blue - Anne Perry [11]
“Where was he yesterday evening?” he continued, looking at Callandra.
Her eyes opened wide, and Hester saw the fear in them. Monk must have seen it also. She looked as if she were about to say one thing, then cleared her throat and said something else. “Please protect his reputation, William,” she pleaded. “He is Bohemian, and although his English is perfect, he is still a foreigner. And . . . they did not have the happiest of marriages. Don’t allow them to harass him or suggest some kind of guilt by innuendo.”
He did not offer her any false assurances. “Tell me something about Mrs. Beck,” he said instead. “What kind of woman was she?”
Callandra hesitated; a flicker of surprise was in her eyes, then gone again. “I’m not certain that I know a great deal,” she confessed uncomfortably. “I never met her. She didn’t involve herself with the hospital at all, and . . .” She blushed. “I don’t really know Dr. Beck socially.”
Hester looked at Monk. If he found anything odd in Callandra’s answer there was no sign of it in his expression. His face was tense, eyes concentrated upon hers. “What about her circle of friends?” he asked. “Did she entertain? What were her interests? What did she do with her time?”
Now Callandra was definitely uncomfortable. The color deepened in her face. “I’m afraid I don’t know. He speaks of her hardly at all. I . . . I gathered from something he said that she was away from home a great deal, but he did not say where. He mentioned once that she had considerable political knowledge and spoke German. But then, Kristian himself spent many years in Vienna, so perhaps that is not very surprising.”
“Was she Bohemian, too?” Monk asked quickly.
“No . . . at least I don’t think so.”
Monk stood up. “I’ll go to the police station and see what I can learn.” His voice softened. “Don’t worry yet. It may be that the artists’ model was the intended victim, and only a tragic mischance that Mrs. Beck was also there at that moment.”
She made an effort to smile. “Thank you. I . . . I know it is not easy for you to ask them.”
He shrugged very slightly, dismissing it, then put on his jacket, sliding it easily over his shoulders and pulling it straight. It was beautifully cut. Whatever his income, or lack of it, he had always dressed with elegance and a certain flair. He would pay his tailor even if he ate bread and drank water.
He turned in the doorway and gave Hester a glance from which she understood thoughts and feelings it would have taken minutes to explain, and then he was gone.
Hester bent her attention to Callandra and whatever comfort she could offer.
Monk disliked the thought of asking any favor of Runcorn even more than Callandra was aware. It was largely pride. It stung like a burn on the skin, but he could not possibly ignore either the duty, both moral and emotional, or the inner compulsion to learn the truth. The purity and the danger of knowledge had always fascinated him, even when it forced him to face things that hurt, stripped bare secrets and wounds. It was a challenge to his skill and his courage, and facing Runcorn was a price he never seriously thought too high.
He strode along Grafton Street down to Tottenham Court Road and caught a hansom for the mile or so to the police station.
During the ride he thought about what Callandra had told him. He knew Kristian Beck only slightly, but instinctively he liked him. He admired his courage and the single-mindedness of his crusade to improve medical treatment for the poor. He was gentler than Monk would have been, a man with patience and a broadness of spirit that seemed to be almost without personal ambition or hunger for praise. Monk could not have said as much for himself, and he knew it.
At the police station, he paid the driver and braced his shoulders, then walked up the steps and