William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

smiled.
    “Seems to me like a woman who would have fought,” he said with a little shake of his head. “Tall, too. Not weakly, by all accounts. Mind, some of the other nurses are built like cart horses.” He looked at Monk with bland, challenging amusement. “Seems she had a tongue as sharp as one o’ the surgeon’s knives and didn’t spare them if she thought they slacked in their duty. A very different sort of woman, Nurse Barrymore.” Then he added under his breath, “Thank God.”
    “But good enough at her job to be justified in her comments,” Monk said thoughtfully. “Or they’d have got rid of her, don’t you think?” He avoided looking at Evan.
    “Oh yes,” Jeavis agreed without hesitation. “She seems to have been that, all right. Don’t think anyone would have put up with her otherwise. At least, not those that disliked her. And to be fair, that wasn’t everyone. Seems she was something of a heroine to some. And Sir Herbert speaks well enough of her.”
    A nurse with a pile of clean sheets approached and they moved aside for her.
    “What about Beck?” Monk asked when she had gone.
    “Oh, him too. But then, if he killed her, he’s hardly going to tell us that he couldn’t abide her, is he?”
    “What do other people say?”
    “Well now, Mr. Monk, I wouldn’t want to rob you of your livelihood by doing your work for you, now would I?” Jeavis said, looking Monk straight in the eyes. “If I did that, how could you go to Lady Callandra and expect to be paid?” And with a smile he glanced meaningfully at Evan and walked away down the corridor.
    Evan looked at Monk and shrugged, then followed dutifully. Jeavis had already stopped a dozen yards away and was waiting for him.
    Monk had little else to do here. He had no authority to question anyone, and he resisted the temptation to find Hester. Any unnecessary association with him might lessen her ability to question people without arousing suspicion and destroy her usefulness.
    He had the geography of the place firmly in his mind. There was nothing more to learn standing here.
    He was on his way out again, irritated and short-tempered, when he saw Callandra crossing the foyer. She looked tired and her hair was even more unruly than usual. The characteristic humor had left her face and there was an air of anxiety about her quite out of her customary spirit.
    She was almost up to Monk before she looked at himclearly enough to recognize him, then her expression changed, but he could see the deliberate effort it cost her.
    Was it simply the death of a nurse, one as outstanding as Prudence Barrymore, which grieved her so deeply? Was it the haste with which it had followed on the heels of the tragedy of Julia Penrose and her sister? Again he had that appallingly helpless feeling of caring for someone, admiring her and being truly grateful, and totally unable to help her pain. It was like the past all over again, his mentor who had helped him on his first arrival in London, and the tragedy that had struck him down and begun Monk’s career in the police. And now, as then, he could do nothing. It was another emotion from the past crowding the present and tearing at him with all its old power.
    “Hello William.” Callandra greeted him politely enough, but there was no pleasure in her voice, no lift at all. “Are you looking for me?” There was a flicker of anxiety as she said it, as if she feared his answer.
    He longed to be able to comfort her, but he knew without words that whatever distressed her so deeply was private and she would speak of it without prompting if ever she wished him to know. The kindest thing he could do now would be to pretend he had not noticed.
    “Actually I was hoping to see Evan alone,” he said ruefully. “But I ran into Jeavis straightaway. I’m on my way out now. I wish I knew more about Prudence Barrymore. Many people have told me their views of her, and yet I feel I am still missing something essential. Hester remembers her, you know….”
    Callandra’s face tightened, but she said nothing.
    A student doctor strode past, looking harassed.
    “And I went to see Miss Nightingale. She spoke of Prudence very highly. And of Hester too.”
    Callandra smiled a trifle wanly.
    “Did you learn anything new?”
    “Nothing that throws any light on why she might have been killed. It seems she was an excellent nurse, even brilliant. Her father did not exaggerate her abilities, or her dedicationto medicine. But I