Wiliam Monk 01 - The Face of a Stranger

happened." She took a deep breath. "I am not sure if it helps, indeed in some ways it is harder, but we feel . . . less cut off. I know Edward is dead and it cannot matter to him anymore; it isn't reasonable, but I feel closer to him, however it hurts."
    She looked at him with a curious need to be understood.
    Perhaps she had explained precisely this to other people, and they had tried to dissuade her, not realizing that for her, being excluded from her son's suffering was not a kindness but an added loss.
    "Of course," he agreed quietly. His own situation was utterly different, yet any knowledge would surely be better than this uncertainty. "The imagination conjures so many things, and one feels the pain of them all, until one knows."
    Her eyes widened in surprise. "You understand? So many friends have tried to persuade me into acceptance, but it gnaws away at the back of my mind, a sort of dreadful doubt. I read the newspapers sometimes"—she blushed—"when my husband is out of the house. But I don't know what to believe of them. Their accounts are—" She sighed, crumpling her handkerchief in her lap, her fingers clinging around it. "Well, they are sometimes a little softened so as not to distress us, or make us feel critical of those in command. And they are sometimes at variance with each other."
    "I don't doubt it." He felt an unreasonable anger for the confusion of this woman, and all the silent multitude like her, grieving for their dead and being told that the truth was too harsh for them. Perhaps it was, perhaps many could not have borne it, but they had not been consulted, simply told; as their sons had been told to fight. For what? He had no idea. He had looked at many newspapers in the last few weeks, trying to learn, and he still had only the dimmest notion—something to do with the Turkish Empire and the balance of power.
    "Joscelin used to speak to us so—so carefully," she went on softly, watching his face. "He told us a great deal about how he felt, and Edward must have felt the same. I had had no idea it was so very dreadful. One just doesn't know, sitting here in England—" She stared at him anxiously. "It wasn't very glorious, you know—not really. So many men dead, not because the enemy killed them, but from the cold and the disease. He told us about the hospital at Scutari. He was there, you know; with a wound in his leg. He suffered quite appallingly. He told us about seeing men freezing to death in the winter. I had not known the Crimea was cold like that. I suppose it was because it was east from here, and I always think of the East as being hot. He said it was hot in the summer, and dry. Then with winter there was endless rain and snow, and winds that all but cut the flesh. And the disease.'' Her face pinched. "I thanked God that if Edward had to die, at least it was quickly, of a bullet, or a sword, not cholera. Yes, Joscelin was a great comfort to me, even though I wept as I hadn't done before; not only for Edward, but for all the others, and for the women like me, who lost sons and husbands. Do you understand, Mr. Monk?"
    "Yes," he said quickly. "Yes I do. I'm very sorry I have to distress you now by speaking of Major Grey's death. But we must find whoever killed him."
    She shuddered.
    "How could anyone be so vile? What evil gets into a man that he could beat another to death like that? A fight I deplore, but I can understand it; but to go on, to mutilate a man after he is dead! The newspapers say it was dreadful. Of course my husband does not know I read them—having known the poor man, I felt I had to. Do you understand it, Mr. Monk?"
    "No, I don't. In all the crimes I have investigated, I have not seen one like this." He did not know if it was true, but he felt it. "He must have been hated with a passion hard to conceive."
    "I cannot imagine it, such a violence of feeling." She closed her eyes and shook her head fractionally. "Such a wish to destroy, to—to disfigure. Poor Joscelin, to have been the victim of such a—a creature. It would frighten me even to think someone could feel such an intensity of hatred for me, even if I were quite sure they could not touch me, and I were innocent of its cause. I wonder if poor Joscelin knew?''
    It was a thought that had not occurred to Monk before—
    had Joscelin Grey had any idea that his killer hated him? Had he known, but merely thought him impotent to act?
    "He cannot have feared him," he said aloud. "Or he would hardly have