William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

and too well. The generation between them had not affected their friendship in the slightest. It had been Hester, rather than anyone her own age or social class, who had watched Callandra’s heartbreaking love for Kristian Beck, and understood it. It had been Hester and Monk to whom she had turned when Kristian had been accused of murder, and not only because of Monk’s skill, but because they were friends who would not mock her loyalty or intrude upon her grief.
    Hester could not deceive her. “We are struggling to make ends meet in the clinic,” she answered. “Victims of our success, I suppose.” However deep their friendship, she would not tell her that for Monk work had been poor of late. He could do so if he wished; for her to do it would be a betrayal.
    Callandra immediately turned her concentration to the subject.
    “Raising funds is always difficult,” she agreed. “Particularly when it is not a charity one feels comfortable boasting about. It’s one thing to tell everyone at the dinner table that you have just given to doctors or missionaries scattered across the Empire. It can stop conversation utterly to say you are trying to save the local prostitutes.”
    Hester could not help laughing, and even Monk smiled.
    “Do you still have that excellent Margaret Ballinger with you?” Callandra asked hopefully.
    “Oh, yes,” Hester said with enthusiasm.
    “Good.” Callandra lifted up her hand as if she should have had an umbrella in it, then remembered that she had left it somewhere. “I can give her some reliable names for raising contributions. You had better not be the one to ask.” A smile of profound affection softened her face. “I know you too well to delude myself that you would be tactful. One refusal, and you would render such an opinion as to make all future approaches impossible.”
    “Thank you,” Hester said with mock decorum, but there was something in Callandra’s words which disturbed her. Why did Callandra not offer to ask them herself? In the past she had not been hesitant, and she could surely see in Hester’s face that she was already busier than she could manage with comfort.
    Callandra was still standing in the middle of the room as though too excited to sit. Now she was searching in her reticule for something, but since it was more voluminous than most, and obviously over-full and in no sort of order at all, she was having difficulty. She gave up. “Have you a piece of paper, William? Perhaps you would write them down for me?”
    “Of course,” he agreed, but he glanced at Hester rapidly, and away again before he moved to obey.
    Hester was on the edge of asking what it was that had brought Callandra, unannounced, and was so clearly momentous to her that all her usual care was scattered to oblivion. But to do so might be intrusive. She was a dear friend, but that did not destroy her right to privacy.
    Monk brought the pen and paper, and an inkwell, setting them on the table for Callandra. She sat down at last and wrote the names and addresses herself, and then after a moment’s thought, with a flourish added what sums she thought they could comfortably contribute. She held the list up in the air and waved it for the ink to dry, since Monk had brought no blotting paper, then she handed it to Hester. “Don’t lose it,” she commanded. “I may not be able to replace it for you.”
    Monk stiffened.
    Hester looked up at him slowly, hardly breathing.
    Callandra’s eyes were bright. It was with happiness and tears, as if she were on the edge of some tremendous step and she was clinging to the last moments of the familiar, because it too was dear to her and she could not let go without pain.
    “I am going to Vienna,” she said with only the slightest tremor in her voice. “To live there.”
    “Vienna!” Hester repeated the word as if it were close to incomprehensible, and yet it made the most devastating sense. Vienna was the original home of Kristian Beck, before he had left with his wife to come to London. Then he had met Callandra, his wife had been murdered, and grief and shattering revelations had followed. Perhaps as difficult as those of his dead wife’s character had been the discovery of Kristian’s own origins, turning upside down everything he had previously believed. But was Callandra going to Vienna because Kristian had decided to return? What was his part in her decision? Hester was already dry-mouthed with fear that Callandra would be hurt yet