Wiliam Monk 01 - The Face of a Stranger

in the few minutes that were being examined so unemotionally.
    The body had been looked at a little after nine thirty a.m. It was that of a man in his early thirties, of slender build but well nourished, and not apparently suffering from any illness or disability apart from a fairly recent wound in the upper part of the right leg, which might have caused him to limp. The doctor judged it to be a shallow wound, such as he had seen in many ex-soldiers, and to be five or six months old. The body had been dead between eight and twelve hours; he could not be more precise than that.
    The cause of death was obvious for anyone to see: a succession of violent and powerful blows about the head and shoulders with some long, thin instrument. A heavy cane or stick seemed the most likely.
    Monk put down the report, sobered by the details of death. The bare language, shorn of all emotion, perversely brought the very feeling of it closer. His imagination saw it sharply, even smelled it, conjuring up the sour odor and the buzz of flies. Had he dealt with many murders? He could hardly ask.
    "Very unpleasant," he said without looking up at Evan.
    "Very," Evan agreed, nodding. "Newspapers made rather a lot of it at the time. Been going on at us for not having found the murderer. Apart from the fact that it's made a lot of people nervous, Mecklenburg Square is a pretty good area, and if one isn't safe there, where is one safe? Added to that, Joscelin Grey was a well-liked, pretty harmless young ex-officer, and of extremely good family.
    He served in the Crimea and was invalided out. He had rather a good record, saw the Charge of the Light Brigade, badly wounded at Sebastopol." Evan's face pinched a little with a mixture of embarrassment and perhaps pity. “A lot of people feel his country has let him down, so to speak, first by allowing this to happen to him, and then by not even catching the man who did it." He looked across at Monk, apologizing for the injustice, and because he understood it. "I know that's unfair, but a spot of crusading sells newspapers; always helps to have a cause, you know! And of course the running patterers have composed a lot of songs about it—returning hero and all that!"
    Monk's mouth turned down at the corners.
    "Have they been hitting hard?"
    "Rather," Evan admitted with a little shrug. "And we haven't a blind thing to go on. WeVe been over and over every bit of evidence there is, and there's simply nothing to connect him to anyone. Any ruffian could have come in from the street if he dodged the porter. Nobody saw or heard anything useful, and we are right where we started." He got up gloomily and came over to the table.
    "I suppose you'd better see the physical evidence, not that there is much. And then I daresay you'd like to see the flat, at least get a feeling for the scene?"
    Monk stood up also.
    "Yes I would. You never know, something might suggest itself." Although he could imagine nothing. If Lamb had not succeeded, and this keen, delicate young junior, what was he going to find? He felt failure begin to circle around him, dark and enclosing. Had Runcorn given him this knowing he would fail? Was it a discreet and efficient way of getting rid of him without being seen to be callous? How did he even know for sure that Runcorn was not an old enemy? Had he done him some wrong long ago? The possibility was cold and real. The shadowy outline of himself that had appeared so far was devoid of any quick acts of compassion, any sudden gentlenesses or warmth to seize hold of and to like. He was discovering himself as a
    stranger might, and what he saw so far did not excite his admiration. He liked Evan far more than he liked himself.
    He had imagined he had hidden his complete loss of memory, but perhaps it was obvious, perhaps Runcorn had seen it and taken this chance to even some old score? God, how he wished he knew what kind of man he was, had been. Who loved him, who hated him—and who had what cause? Had he ever loved a woman, or any woman loved him? He did not even know that!
    Evan was walking quickly ahead of him, his long legs carrying him at a surprisingly fast pace. Everything in Monk wanted to trust him, and yet he was almost paralyzed by his ignorance. Every foothold he trod on dissolved into quicksand under his weight. He knew nothing. Everything was surmise, constantly shifting guesses.
    He behaved automatically, having nothing but instinct and ingrained habit to rely on.
    The physical