The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [98]
“Well, I know of no way in which I can help you,” Baird said at last. “I have little to do with the financial side of the business. I work with the paper and the binding. Quinlan works with the print itself. Kenneth does the accounting. When Alastair is here, he makes the major decisions: which clients to accept, new business, that sort of thing.”
“And Mrs. McIvor? I understand she is also concerned in the management. I have heard she is most gifted.”
“Yes.” His expression was beyond Monk’s ability to read; it could have been pride, or resentment, or even humor. A dozen thoughts flashed across Baird’s face, and were equally quickly gone. “Yes,” he repeated. “She has a remarkable acumen. Alastair very often takes her advice, both in business decisions and technical ones. Or to be more accurate, it is Quinlan who takes her advice on matters of print style, typeface and so on.”
“So Mr. Fyffe has nothing to do with the accounting?”
“Quinlan? No, nothing at all.” He said it with regret, and then savage self-mockery the instant after.
Monk found himself more deeply confused about him. How could a man of such emotion, self-perception and sense of irony be in love with Eilish, who seemed to have nothing to offer except physical beauty? It was so shallow, so short-lived. Even the loveliest thing on earth grows tedious if there is no art of companionship, no laughter, wit, imagination, power to love in return, even at times to provoke, to criticize, to lift by struggle, quarrel and change.
The thought brought Hester back to his mind with sharpness like a shooting pain.
“Then I had better look into it,” he said with a curtness totally unwarranted by the conversation.
Baird looked reluctant.
“That would be better than sending in auditors,” Monk went on.
It was a threat, and Baird recognized it as such.
“Oh certainly,” he said too quickly. “By all means. That would be expensive, and make people anxious that we have cause to think there is something wrong. Yes, you look into it by all means, Mr. Monk.”
Monk smiled, or perhaps it was more of a grimace. So Baird was quite happy that Monk could find nothing wrong in the books, or if he did, it was not Baird who had put it there. And yet he was afraid. For what?
“Thank you,” he accepted, and turned to go back out into the corridor again as Baird rose from his desk.
He spent all the rest of the day at the Farraline printing company, and found nothing whatever that furthered his cause. If the books had been tampered with, he had not the requisite skill to find the evidence of it. Tired, his head aching and his temper extremely short, he left at half past five and went back to his lodgings in the Grassmarket, to find a letter from Rathbone awaiting him. It was devoid of good news, simply informing him of his own progress, which was woefully little.
Monk spent over three hours of that evening standing in Ainslie Place, growing colder and more wretched, hoping Eilish would make another sortie to wherever it was she visited, somewhere beyond Kings Stables Road. But midnight came and went, and no one stirred from number seventeen.
The following night he took up the same position, by now sunk into an icy gloom. And at a little after midnight he was rewarded by seeing a shadowy figure emerge, cross the open area of the center, pass within ten feet of where he stood motionless, his body trembling with cold and excitement, and once again walk rapidly along Glenfinlas Street, past Charlotte Square towards the crossroads.
He moved after her, keeping thirty yards’ distance between them except close to junctions where she might turn and he lose sight of her. And this time he also looked back over his shoulder at regular intervals. He had no intention of being struck from behind again, and ending up senseless on