William Monk 12 - Funeral in Blue

and ran as fast as she could in the blind, clinging fog, her heart beating so violently it almost stopped her breathing, the sound of her footsteps muffled. She had no idea where she was going. She tripped over the curb of the cross street and lurched forward, almost losing her balance, flinging her arms wide to stop from pitching over.
    There was a snort beside her, a blowing of air, and she stifled a scream. She shot forward and ran straight into the side of a horse. It jerked up and backwards, and the next moment a man’s voice called out angrily.
    “Albert!” she yelled as loudly as she could.
    “Yes, Miss! Where are you?”
    “Here! I’m here!” she sobbed, scrambling back past the horse to feel for the dark bulk of the carriage and fumble to open the door. “Drive me home! If you can see your way, get me back to Grafton Street, but hurry out of here, please!”
    “Yes, Miss, don’t worry,” he said calmly. “It’ll not be this bad once we’re away from the river.”
    She collapsed inside the coach and slammed the door shut.
    They were over the bridge and climbing into clearer air before she thought to tell the coachman to go past the police station so she could leave a message for Runcorn, and return the picture with an abject apology.
     
     
    In Vienna, Monk took his leave of Ferdi over a very early breakfast, thanking him for the inestimable help he had been not only in practical terms but also for his friendship.
    “Oh, it was nothing,” Ferdi said quite casually, but his eyes never left Monk’s face, and there was a deep flush in his fair cheeks. “It was all rather important, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes,” Monk agreed. “Very important indeed.”
    “Will you . . . will you write and tell me what happens to Dr. Beck?” Ferdi asked. “I . . . I’d like to know.”
    “Yes, I will,” Monk promised, fearing already that it would be hard news, and he would have to struggle to find a way of wording it so it would not wound the boy more than it had to.
    Ferdi smiled. “Thank you. I don’t have a card, but I borrowed one of my father’s. The name is the same, so you could get in touch with me here. If you come to Vienna again . . .” He left it, suddenly self-conscious.
    “I shall write you, of course,” Monk finished for him. “And most certainly I shall call.”
    “Oh . . . good.” A smile lit Ferdi’s face, and he shot out his hand to clasp Monk’s, and then as suddenly let it go and bowed very formally, clicking his heels.
“Auf Wiedersehen,”
he said, looking at Monk through his lashes.
    “
Auf Wiedersehen,
Herr Gerhardt,” Monk replied. “Now I must hurry, or I shall miss the train!”
    Monk met Max Niemann at the railway station as arranged; half an hour later they were settled on the train as it pulled out. He was impatient to be home and to tell Hester what he had found. It was not the absolute solution he had hoped for, one which would save Beck, but it was as much as he could find, and he had run out of places to look.
    Suddenly the burden of it was almost insupportable. Elissa had betrayed another woman to her death. Max Niemann had not known it, nor had Kristian. Assuredly, Fuller Pendreigh would not have, either. The truth he brought with him would shatter all of them.
    He looked at Niemann, sitting opposite him in the carriage as they rattled and jolted, picking up speed into the dark countryside. If he knew, would he even be coming to London? What would he have paid for it not to be true? It would shatter an image he had loved and believed for years.
    And what would Kristian feel? Had he ever guessed any of it? Hanna’s love for him, her knowledge that he was of her own people, even though he did not know it himself. Elissa’s single act of unbearable destruction . . .
    Or did he know? That was the darkness greater and deeper than the night which lay beyond the carriage windows, ice-cold in the wind off the plains stretching north to the bounds of Russia. Had something happened which had told him of that awful betrayal, and had he exacted revenge for it?
    Could any of it help, except possibly Max Niemann’s testimony that Allardyce had been in the neighborhood of the studio, not on the south side of the river, as he had sworn. Would Niemann’s testimony be believed? He was a foreigner, a longtime friend of Kristian’s. Might the jury think it was no more than old loyalties that prompted him now?
    Of course, Monk would say nothing to Pendreigh or to