Wiliam Monk 01 - The Face of a Stranger

says he was charming."
    "So he was," she agreed, walking with large strides not towards the main entrance of the house but along a
    graveled path in the direction of the stables, and he had no choice but to go also or be left behind. "I do not care a great deal for charm." She looked directly at him, and he found himself wanning to her dry honesty. "Perhaps because I never possessed it," she continued. "But it always seems chameleon to me, and I cannot be sure what color the animal underneath might be really. Now will you please either return to the house, or go wherever it is you are going. I have no inclination to get any wetter than I already am, and it is going to rain again. I do not intend to stand in the stable yard talking polite nonsense that cannot possibly assist you."
    He smiled broadly and bowed his head in a small salute. Lady Callandra was the only person in Shelburne he liked instinctively.
    "Of course, ma'am; thank you for your . . ."He hesitated, not wanting to be so obvious as to say "honesty." "... time. I wish you a good day."
    She looked at him wryly and with a little nod and strode past and into the harness room calling loudly for the head groom.
    Monk walked back along the driveway again—as she had surmised, through a considerable shower—and out past the gates. He followed the road for the three miles to the village. Newly washed by rain, in the brilliant bursts of sun it was so lovely it caught a longing in him as if once it was out of his sight he would never recall it clearly enough. Here and there a coppice showed dark green, billowing over the sweep of grass and mounded against the sky, and beyond the distant stone walls wheat fields shone dark gold with the wind rippling like waves through their heavy heads.
    It took him a little short of an hour and he found the peace of it turning his mind from the temporary matter of who murdered Joscelin Grey to the deeper question as to what manner of man he himself was. Here no one knew him; at least for tonight he would be able to start anew, no previous act could mar it, or help. Perhaps he would
    learn something of the inner man, unfiltered by expectations. What did he believe, what did he truly value? What drove him from day to day—except ambition, and personal vanity?
    He stayed overnight in the village public hostelry, and asked some discreet questions of certain locals in the morning, without significantly adding to his picture of Jos-celin Grey, but he found a very considerable respect for both Grey's brothers, in their different ways. They were not liked—that was too close a relationship with men whose lives and stations were so different—but they were trusted. They fitted into expectations of their kind, small courtesies were observed, a mutual code was kept.
    Of Joscelin it was different. Affection was possible. Everyone had found him more than civil, remembering as many of the generosities as were consistent with his position as a son of the house. If some had thought or felt otherwise they were not saying so to an outsider like Monk. And he had been a soldier; a certain honor was due the dead.
    Monk enjoyed being polite, even gracious. No one was afraid of him—guarded certainly, he was still a Peeler— but there was no personal awe, and they were as keen as he to find who had murdered their hero.
    He took luncheon in the taproom with several local worthies and contrived to fall into conversation. By the door with the sunlight streaming in, with cider, apple pie and cheese, opinions began to flow fast and free. Monk became involved, and before long his tongue got the better of him, clear, sarcastic and funny. It was only afterwards as he was walking away that he realized that it was also at times unkind.
    He left in the early afternoon for the small, silent station, and took a clattering, steam-belching journey back to London.
    He arrived a little after four, and went by hansom straight to the police station.
    "Well?" Runcorn inquired with lifted eyebrows. "Did
    you manage to mollify Her Ladyship? I'm sure you conducted yourself like a gentleman?"
    Monk heard that slight edge to Runcorn's voice again, and the flavor of resentment. What for? He struggled desperately to recall any wisp of memory, even a guess as to what he might have done to occasion it. Surely not mere abrasiveness of manner? He had not been so stupid as to be positively rude to a superior? But nothing came. It mattered—it mattered acutely: Runcorn held