William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

get precise evidence, sir. Good enough for a jury.”
    But three days later when Evan and Jeavis stood in front of Runcorn’s desk in his office, the precise evidence amounted to very little indeed.
    “So what have you?” Runcorn leaned back in his chair, his long face somber and critical. “Come on, Jeavis! A nurse gets strangled in a hospital. It’s not as if anyone could walk in unnoticed. The girl must have friends, enemies, people she’d quarreled with.” He tapped his finger on thedesk. “Who are they? Where were they when she was killed? Who saw her last before she was found? What about this Dr. Beck? A foreigner, you said? What’s he like?”
    Jeavis stood up to attention, hands at his side.
    “Quiet sort o’ chap,” he answered, his features carefully composed into lines of respect. “Smug, bit of a foreign accent, but speaks English well enough, in fact too well, if you know what I mean, sir? Seems good at his job, but Sir Herbert Stanhope, the chief surgeon, doesn’t seem to like him a lot.” He blinked. “At least that’s what I sense, although of course he didn’t exactly say so.”
    “Never mind Sir Herbert.” Runcorn dismissed it with a brush of his hand. “What about the dead woman? Did she get on with this Dr. Beck?” Again his finger tapped the table. “Could there be an affair there? Was she nice-looking? What were her morals? Loose? I hear nurses are pretty easy.”
    Evan opened his mouth to object and Jeavis kicked him sharply below the level of the desktop where Runcorn would not see him.
    Evan gasped.
    Runcorn turned to him, his eyes narrowing.
    “Yes? Come on, man. Don’t just stand there!”
    “No sir. No one spoke ill of Miss Barrymore’s morals, sir. On the contrary, they said she seemed uninterested in such things.”
    “Not normal, eh?” Runcorn pulled his long face into an expression of distaste. “Can’t say that surprises me a great deal. What normal woman would want to go off to a foreign battlefield and take up such an occupation?”
    It flashed into Evan’s mind that if she had shown interest in men, Runcorn would have said she was loose principled and immoral. Monk would have pointed that out, and asked what Runcorn would have considered right. He stared at Jeavis beside him, then across at Runcorn’s thoughtful face, his brows drawn down above his long narrow nose.
    “What should we take for normal, sir?” Evan let thewords out before his better judgment prevailed, almost as if it were someone else speaking.
    Runcorn’s head jerked up. “What?”
    Evan stood firm, his jaw tightening. “I was thinking, sir, that if she didn’t show any interest in men, she was not normal, and if she did she was of loose morals. What, to your mind, would be right—sir?”
    “What is right, Evan,” Runcorn said between his teeth, the blood rising up his cheeks, “is for a young woman to conduct herself like a lady: seemly, modest, and gentle, not to chase after a man, but to let him know in a subtle and genteel way that she admires him and might not find his attentions unwelcome. That is what is normal, Mr. Evan, and what is right. You are a vicar’s son. How is it that I should have to tell you that?”
    “Perhaps if anybody’s attentions had been welcome, she’d have let him know it,” Evan suggested, ignoring the last question and keeping his eyes wide open, his expression innocent.
    Runcorn was thrown off balance. He had never known exactly what to make of Evan. He looked so mild and inoffensive with his long nose and hazel eyes, but seemed always to be on the brink of amusement, and Runcorn was never comfortable with it, because he did not know what was funny.
    “Do you know something, Sergeant, that you haven’t told us?” he said tartly.
    “No sir!” Evan replied, standing even more upright.
    Jeavis shifted his weight to the other foot. “She did have a visitor that morning, sir, a Mr. Taunton.”
    “Did she?” Runcorn’s eyebrows rose and he jerked forward in his chair. “Well, man! What do we know about this Mr. Taunton? Why didn’t you tell me about this in the first place, Jeavis?”
    “Because he is a very respectable gentleman,” Jeavis defended himself, keeping his temper with difficulty. “And he came and went again inside ten minutes or so, an’ at leastone of the other nurses thinks she saw Barrymore alive after Mr. Taunton left.”
    “Oh.” Runcorn’s face fell. “Well, make sure of it. He might have come back again.