The Silent Cry (13 page)

Evan flinched as if he had seen it as Monk described. "No, of course she doesn't," he agreed, looking at Monk steadily. "But violence, theft, hunger and cold are part of life in a score of areas across London, along with filth and disease. You know that as well as I do.

St. Giles, Aldgate, Seven Dials, Bermondsey, Friar's Mount, Bluegate Fields, the Devil's Acre, and a dozen others. You didn't answer my question… was it domestic?”

"No. It was men from outside the area, well-bred, well-off men, coming into Seven Dials for a little sport." He heard the anger in his voice as he said it, and saw it mirrored in Evan's face.

"What evidence have you?" Evan asked, watching him carefully. "Any chance at all of ever finding them, let alone proving it was them, and that it was a crime, not simply the indulgence of a particularly disgusting appetite?”

Monk drew breath to say that of course he had, and then let it out in a sigh. All he had was word of mouth from women no court would believe, even if they could be persuaded to testify, and that in itself was dubious.

"I'm sorry," Evan said quietly, his face tight and bleak with regret.

"It isn't worth pressing. Even if we found them, there'd be nothing we could do. It's sickening, but you know it as well as I do.”

Monk wanted to shout, to swear over and over until he ran out of words, but it would achieve nothing, and only make his own weakness the more apparent.

Evan looked at him with understanding.

"I've got a miserable case myself.”

Monk was not interested, but friendship compelled him to pretend he was. Evan deserved at least that much of him, probably more.

"Have you? What is it?”

"Murder and assault in St. Giles. Poor devil might have been better if he'd been murdered too, instead of left beaten to within an inch of his life, and now so badly shocked or terrified he can't speak… at all.”

"St. Giles?" Monk was surprised. It was another area no better than Seven Dials, and only a few thousand yards away, if that. "Why are you bothering with it?" he asked wryly. "What chance have you of solving that either?”

Evan shrugged. "I don't know… probably not much. But I have to try, because the dead man was from Ebury Street, considerable money and social standing.”

Monk raised his eyebrows. "What the devil was he doing in St.

Giles?”

"They," Evan corrected. "So far I have very little idea. The widow doesn't know… and probably doesn't want to, poor woman. I have nothing to follow, except the obvious. He went to satisfy some appetite, either for women, or other excitement, which he couldn't at home.”

"And the one still alive?" Monk asked.

"His son. It appeared they had something of a quarrel, or at least a heated disagreement, before the son left, and then the father went after him.”

"Ugly," Monk said succinctly. He stood up. "If I get any ideas, I'll tell you. But I doubt I will.”

Evan smiled resignedly, and picked up the pen again to resume what he had been writing when Monk came in.

Monk left without looking to right or left. He did not want to bump into Runcorn. He was feeling angry and frustrated enough. The last thing he desired was a past superior with a grudge, and now all the advantages. He must return to Seven Dials, and Vida Hopgood and her women. There was going to be no help from outside. Whatever was done, it rested with him alone.

The evening after Corriden Wade had left, Hester went upstairs to see Rhys for the last time before settling him for the night. She found him lying half curled over on the bed, his face turned into the pillow, his eyes wide. With anyone else she would have talked to him, tried to learn if not directly, at least indirectly, what troubled him. But Rhys still had no way of communicating except by agreement or disagreement with whatever she asked him. She had to guess, to fumble with all the myriad possibilities, and try to frame them so he could answer, yes or no. It was such a crude instrument to try to find so subtle and terrible a pain. It was like trying to operate on living flesh using an axe.

Yet sometimes words were too precise. She did not even know what it was that hurt him at this moment. It could be fear of what the future held, or simply fear of sleep tonight, and the dreams and memories it would bring. It could be grief for his father, guilt because he was alive and his father was dead; or more deeply because his father had followed him out of the house, and perhaps if he had not, he would still be alive. Or it could be the mixture of anger and grief which afflicts someone when they have parted for the last time in a quarrel, and it is too late for all the things that remain unsaid.

It might be no more than the weariness of physical pain, and the fear of endless days stretching ahead when it would not ever stop. Would he spend the rest of his life here, locked in silence and this terrible isolation?

Or was memory returning with its terror and pain and helplessness re-lived?

She wanted to touch him. It was the most immediate form of communication. It did not need to say anything. There were no queries in it, no clumsiness of wrong guesses, simply a nearness.

But she remembered how he had snatched himself away from his mother.

She did not know him well enough, and he might consider it an intrusion, a familiarity to which she had no right, an advantage she took only because he was ill, and dependent upon her.

In the end she simply spoke her mind.

"Rhys…”

He did not move.

"Rhys… shall I stay for a while, or would you rather be alone?”

He turned very slowly and stared at her, his eyes wide and dark.

She tried to read them, to feel what emotion, what need was filling his mind and tearing at him till he could neither bear it, nor loose it in words. Forgetting her resolve, from her own need she reached out and touched him, laying her hand on his arm above the splints and bandaging.

He did not flinch.

She smiled slightly.

He opened his mouth. His throat tightened, but no sound came. He breathed more rapidly, swallowing. He had to gasp to stop choking, but still there was no voice, no word.

She put her hand up to his lips. "It's all right. Wait a little. Give it time to heal. Is… is there something in particular you want to say?”

Nothing. His eyes were full of dread and misery.

She waited, struggling to understand.

Slowly his eyes filled with tears and he shook his head.

She brushed his dark hair from his brow. "Are you ready to go to sleep?”

He shook his head.

"Shall I find something to read to you?”

He nodded.

She went to the bookshelf. Should she even try to censor out anything which might give him pain, remind him of his condition or re-awaken memory? Might it not end in being more conspicuous by its very absence?

She picked up a translation of the Iliad. It would be full of battles and deaths, but the language would be beautiful, and it would be alive with imagery and light, epic loves, gods and goddesses, ancient cities and wine-dark seas… a world of the mind away from the alleys of St.

Giles.

She sat in the chair beside his bed and he lay still and listened to her, his eyes never leaving her face. Eleven o'clock came and went, midnight, one o'clock, and at last he fell asleep. She marked the place and closed the book, tip-toeing out and to her own room where she lay down on the bed and fell asleep herself, still fully clothed.

She awoke late and still tired, but she had slept better than any night since she came to Ebury Street. She went immediately to Rhys and found him restless, but not yet ready to wake sufficiently to take breakfast.

Downstairs she met Sylvestra who came across the hall as soon as she saw Hester, her face tense with anxiety.

"How is he? Has he spoken yet?" She closed her eyes, impatient with herself. "I'm sorry. I swore I would not ask that. Dr. Wade says I must be patient… but…" she stopped.

"Of course it is difficult," Hesterassured her. "Every day seems like a week. But we sat reading till very late last night, and he seems to have slept well. He was much more at ease.”

Some of the tension slipped out of Sylvestra's body, her shoulders lowered a little and she attempted to smile.

"Come into the dining room. I'm sure you have not breakfasted yet.

Neither have I.”

"Thank you." Hesteraccepted not only because it was a request from her employer, but because she hoped that gradually she might learn a little more about Rhys, and thus be able to be of more comfort to him. Comfort of mind was about all she could offer him, apart from helping him to eat, to stay clean and attend to his immediate personal wants. So far Dr. Wade had not permitted her to change any dressings but the most superficial, and Rhys's greatest injuries were internal where no one could reach them.

The dining room was pleasantly furnished, but like the rest of the house, in too heavy a style for Hester's taste. The table and sideboard were Elizabethan oak, solid and powerful, an immense weight of wood. The carver chairs at each end of the table had high backs and ornate arm rests. There were no mirrors, which might have given more light and impression of space. The curtains were wine and pink brocade, tied back with tasselled cords and splayed wide to show their richness, and the burgundy-coloured lining. The walls were hung with a dozen or more pictures.

But it was extremely comfortable. The chairs were padded on their seats and the fire blazed up in the inglenook hearth, filling the room with warmth.

Sylvestra did not wish to eat. She picked at a piece of toast, undecided whether to have Dundee marmalade or apricot preserves. She poured a cup of tea and sipped it before it was cool enough.

Hester wondered what kind of a man Leighton Duff had been, how they had met and what had happened in the relationship during its twenty-five or so years. What friends had Sylvestra to help her in her grief? They would all have been at the funeral, but that had been almost immediate, in the few days when Rhys had been in hospital, and before Hester had arrived. Now the formal acknowledgements of death were over and Sylvestra was left alone to face the empty days afterwards.

Apparently Dr. Wade's sister was one who was eager to call as soon as she could and he himself seemed to be more than merely a professional acquaintance.

"Have you always lived here?" Hesterasked.

"Yes," Sylvestra replied, looking up quickly as if she too were grateful for something to say, but had simply not known how to begin.

"Yes, ever since I was married.”

"It's extremely comfortable.”

"Yes…" Sylvestra answered automatically, as if it were the expected thing to observe and she did it as she had always done. It no longer had meaning. The poverty and hour to hour dangers of St. Giles were further away than the quarrels and the gods of the Iliad, because they were beyond the horizons of the imagination. Sylvestra recalled herself. "Yes, it is. I suppose I have become so accustomed to it I forget. You must have had very different experiences, Miss Latterly. I admire your courage and sense of duty in going to the Crimea. My daughter Amalia would particularly have liked to meet you. I believe you would have liked her also. She has a most enquiring mind, and the courage to follow her dreams.”

"A superb quality," Hester said sincerely. "You have many reasons to be most proud of her.”

Sylvestra smiled. "Yes… thank you, of course, thank you. Miss Latterly…”

"Yes?”

"Does Rhys remember what happened to him?”

"I don't know. Usually people do, but not always. I have a friend who had an accident and was struck on the head. He has only the vaguest flashes of his life before that day. At times a sight or a sound, a smell, will recall something to him, but only fragments. He has to piece it together as well as he can, and leave the rest. He has re-created a good life for himself." She abandoned the pretence of eating. "But Rhys was not struck on the head. He knows he's home, he knows you. It is simply that night he may not recall, and perhaps that is best. There are some memories we cannot bear. To forget is nature's way of helping us to keep our sanity. It is a way for the mind to heal, when natural forgetting would be impossible.”

Sylvestra stared at her plate. "The police are going to try to make him remember. They need to know who attacked him, and who murdered my husband." She looked up. "What if he can't bear to remember, Miss Latterly? What if they force him, show him evidence, bring a witness or whatever, and make him relive it? Will it break his mind? Can't you stop that? Isn't there a way we can protect him? There has to be!”

"Yes, of course," Hester said before she really thought. Her mind was filled with memories of Rhys trying desperately to speak, of his eyes wide with horror, of his sweat-soaked body as he struggled in nightmare, rigid with terror, his throat contracted in a silent scream as pain ripped through him, and no one heard, no one came. "He is far too ill to be harassed, and I am sure Dr. Wade will tell them so.

Anyway, since he cannot speak or write, there is little he can do except to indicate yes or no. They will have to solve this case by other means.”

"I don't know how!" Sylvestra's voice rose in desperation. "I cannot help them. All they asked me were useless questions about what Leighton was wearing and when he went out. None of that is going to achieve anything!”

"What would help?" Hester poured her cold tea into the slop basin and reached for the pot, tactfully offering it to Sylvestra as well. At her nod, she refilled both cups.

"I wish I knew," Sylvestra said almost under her breath. "I've racked my brain to think what Leighton would have been doing in a place like that, and all I can imagine is that he went after Rhys. He was… he was very angry when he left home, far angrier than I told that young man from the police. It seems so disloyal to discuss family quarrels with strangers.”

Hester knew she meant not so much strangers as people from a different social order, as she must consider Evan to be. She would not know his father was a minister of the church, and he had chosen police work from a sense of dedication to justice, not because it was his natural place in society.

"Of course," she agreed. "It is painful to admit, even to oneself, of a quarrel which cannot now be repaired. One has to set it amid the rest of the relationship, and see it as merely a part, only by mischance the last part. It was probably far less important than it seems. Had Mr. Duff lived they would surely have made up their differences." She did not leave it exactly a question.

Sylvestra sipped her fresh tea. "They were quite unlike each other.

Rhys is the youngest. Leighton said I indulged him. Perhaps I did? I… I felt I understood him so well." Her face puckered with hurt.

"Now it looks as if I didn't understand him at all. And my failure may have cost my husband his life…" Her fingers gripped the cup so tightly Hester was afraid she would break it and spill the hot liquid over herself, even cut her hands on the shards.

"Don't torture yourself with that, when you don't know if it is true!” she urged. "Perhaps you can think of something which may help the police learn why they went to St. Giles. It may stem from something that happened some time before that evening. It is a fearful place.

They must have had a very compelling reason. Could it have been on someone else's account? A friend in trouble?”

Sylvestra looked up at her quickly, her eyes bright. "That would make some sense of it, wouldn't it?”

"Yes. Who are Rhys's friends? Who might he care about sufficiently to go to such a place to help them? Perhaps they had borrowed money. It can happen… a gambling debt they dared not tell their family about, or a girl of dubious reputation.”

Sylvestra smiled, it was full of fear, but there was self-mastery in it also. "That sounds like Rhys himself, I'm afraid. He tended to find respectable young ladies rather boring. That was the principal reason he quarrelled with his father. He felt it unfair that Constance and Amalia were able to travel to India to have all manner of exotic experiences, and he was required to remain at home and study, and marry well and then go into the family business.”

"What was Mr. Duffs business?" Hester felt considerable sympathy with Rhys. All his will and passion, all his dreams seemed to lie in the Middle East, and he was required to remain in London while his elder sisters had the adventures not only of the mind, but of the body as well.

"He was in law," Sylvestra replied. "Conveyancing, property. He was the senior partner. He had offices in Birmingham and Manchesteras well as the City.”

Highly respectable, Hester thought, but hardly the stuff of dreams. At least the family would presumably still have some means. Finance would not be an additional cause for anxiety. She imagined Rhys had been expected to go up to university, and then follow in his father's footsteps in the company, probably a junior partnership to begin with, leading to rapid promotion. His whole future was built ahead of him, and rigidly defined. Naturally it required that he make at the very least a suitable marriage, at best a fortunate one. She could feel the net drawing tight, as if it had been around herself. It was a life tens of thousands would have been only too grateful for.

She tried to imagine Leighton Duff, and his hopes for his son, his anger and frustration that Rhys was ungrateful, blind to his good fortune.

"He must have been a very talented man," she said, again to fill the silence.