The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [101]
But he had no time to pursue it further. Evan was back, his features screwed up in anxiety.
“It was Runcorn!” Monk leaped to the conclusion, suddenly frightened, like a man faced with physical violence.
Evan shook his head.
“No. It was two men I don’t recognize at all from Grimwade’s description. But he said they were from the police, and he saw their papers before he let them in.”
“Papers?” Monk repeated. There was no point in asking what the men had looked like; he could not remember the men of his own division, let alone those from any other.
“Yes.” Evan was obviously still anxious. “He said they had police identification papers, like ours.”
“Did he see if they were from our station?”
“Yes sir, they were.” His face puckered. “But I can’t think who they could be. Anyway, why on earth would Runcorn send anyone else? What for?”
“I suppose it would be too much to ask that they gave names?”
“I’m afraid Grimwade didn’t notice.”
Monk turned around and went back up the stairs, more worried than he wished Evan to see. On the landing he put the key Grimwade had given him into the lock and swung Grey’s door open. The small hallway was just as before, and it gave him an unpleasant jar of familiarity, a sense of foreboding for what was beyond.
Evan was immediately behind him. His face was pale and his eyes shadowed, but Monk knew that his oppression stemmed from Runcorn, and the two men who had been here before them, not any sensitivity to the violence still lingering in the air.
There was no purpose in hesitating anymore. He opened the second door.
There was a long sigh from behind him almost at his shoulder as Evan let out his breath in amazement.
The room was in wild disorder; the desk had been tipped over and all its contents flung into the far corner—by the look of them, the papers a sheet at a time. The chairs were on their sides, one upside down, the seats had been taken out, the stuffed sofa ripped open with a knife. All the pictures lay on the floor, backs levered out.
“Oh my God.” Evan was stupefied.
“Not the police, I think,” Monk said quietly.
“But they had papers,” Evan protested. “Grimwade actually read them.”
“Have you never heard of a good screever?”
“Forged?” Evan said wearily. “I suppose Grimwade wouldn’t have known the difference.”
“If the screever were good enough, I daresay we wouldn’t either.” Monk pulled a sour expression. Some forgeries of testimonials, letters, bills of sale were good enough to deceive even those they were purported to come from. At the upper end, it was a highly skilled and lucrative trade, at the lower no more than a makeshift way of buying a little time, or fooling the hasty or illiterate.
“Who were they?” Evan went past Monk and stared around the wreckage. “And what on earth did they want here?”
Monk’s eyes went to the shelves where the ornaments had been.
“There was a silver sugar scuttle up there,” he said as he pointed. “See if it’s on the floor under any of that paper.” He turned slowly. “And there were a couple of pieces of jade on that table. There were two snuffboxes in that alcove; one of them had an inlaid lid. And try the sideboard; there should be silver in the second drawer.”
“What an incredible memory you have; I never noticed them.” Evan was impressed and his admiration was obvious in his luminous eyes before he knelt down and began carefully to look under the mess, not moving it except to raise it sufficiently to explore beneath.
Monk was startled himself. He could not remember having looked in such detail at trivialities. Surely he had gone straight to the marks of the struggle, the bloodstains, the disarranged furniture, the bruised paint and the crooked pictures on the walls? He had no recollection now of even