Wiliam Monk 01 - The Face of a Stranger

bludgeon—hit a great many times. There had pretty obviously been a fight. A small
    table had been knocked over and one leg broken off, several ornaments were on the floor and one of the heavy stuffed chairs was on its back, the one he was half on." Evan was frowning at the memory, and his skin was pale. "The other rooms hadn't been touched." He moved his hands in a gesture of negation. "It was quite a while before we could get Mrs. Huggins into a sane state of mind, and then persuade her to look at the kitchen and bedroom; but eventually she did, and said they were just as she had left them the previous day."
    Monk breathed in deeply, thinking. He must say something intelligent, not some fatuous comment on the obvious. Evan was watching him, waiting. He found himself self-conscious.
    "So it would appear he had a visitor some time in the evening," he said more tentatively than he had wished. "Who quarreled with him, or else simply attacked him. There was a violent light, and Grey lost."
    "More or less," Evan agreed, straightening up again. "At least we don't have anything else to go on. We don't even know if it was a stranger, or someone he knew."
    "No sign of a forced entry?"
    "No sir. Anyway, no burglar is likely to force an entry into a house when all the lights are still on."
    "No." Monk cursed himself for an idiotic question. Was he always such a fool? There was no surprise in Evan's face. Good manners? Or fear of angering a superior not noted for tolerance? "No, of course not," he said aloud. "I suppose he wouldn't have been surprised by Grey, and then lit the lights to fool us?"
    "Unlikely sir. If he were that coolheaded, he surely would have taken some of the valuables? At least the money in Grey's wallet, which would be untraceable."
    Monk had no answer for that. He sighed and sat down behind the desk. He did not bother to invite Evan to sit also. He read the rest of the porter's statement.
    Lamb had asked exhaustively about all visitors the previous evening, if there had been any errand boys, messengers, even a stray animal. Grimwade was affronted at the very suggestion. Certainly not: errand boys were always escorted to the appropriate place, or if possible their errands taken over by Grimwade himself. No stray animal had ever tainted the buildings with its presence—dirty things, stray animals, and apt to soil the place. What did the police think he was—were they trying to insult him?
    Monk wondered what Lamb had replied. He would certainly have had a pointed answer to the man on the relative merits of stray animals and stray humans! A couple of acid retorts rose to his mind even now.
    Grimwade swore there had been two visitors and only two. He was perfectly sure no others had passed his window. The first was a lady, at about eight o'clock, and he would sooner not say upon whom she called; a question of private affairs must be treated with discretion, but she had not visited Mr. Grey, of that he was perfectly certain. Anyway, she was a very slight creature, and could not possibly have inflicted die injuries suffered by the dead man. The second visitor was a man who called upon a Mr. Yeats, a longtime resident, and Grimwade had escorted him as far as the appropriate landing himself and seen him received.
    Whoever had murdered Grey had obviously either used one of the other visitors as a decoy or else had already been in the building in some guise in which he had so far been overlooked. So much was logic.
    Monk put the paper down. They would have to question Grimwade more closely, explore even the minutest possibilities; there might be something.
    Evan sat down on the window ledge.
    Mrs. Huggins's statement was exacdy as Evan had said, if a good deal more verbose. Monk read it only because he wanted time to think.
    Afterwards he picked up the last one, the medical report. It was the one he found most unpleasant, but maybe also the most necessary. It was written in a small, precise hand, very round. It made him imagine a small doctor
    with round spectacles and very clean ringers. It did not occur to him until afterwards to wonder if he had ever known such a person, and if it was the first wisp of memory returning.
    The account was clinical in the extreme, discussing the corpse as if Joscelin Grey were a species rather than an individual, a human being full of passions and cares, hopes and humors who had been suddenly and violently cut off from life, and who must have experienced terror and extreme pain