The face of a stranger

by Anne Perry

  They followed Jake through another alley and then another, up a flight of stairs that threatened to give way beneath them with each step, and at the top at last Jake stopped, his voice hushed as if the despair had reached even him. He spoke as one does in the presence of death.

  "One more lot o' steps, Mr. Monk, from 'ere, an' Blind Tommy's be'ind ver door on yer right."

  "Thank you. I'll give you your guinea when I've seen him, if he can help.''

  Jake's face split in a grin.

  “I already got it, Mr. Monk.'' He held up a bright coin. "Fink I fergot 'ow ter do it, did yer? I used ter be a fine wirer, I did, w'en I were younger." He laughed and slipped it into his pocket. "I were taught by the best kids-man in ve business. I'll be seein' yer, Mr. Monk; yer owes me anuvver, if yer gets vem fieves."

  Monk smiled in spite of himself. The man was a pickpocket, but he had been taught by one of those who make their own living by teaching children to steal for them, and taking the profits in return for the child's keep. It was an apprenticeship in survival. Perhaps his only alternative had been starvation, like the child they had passed. Only the quick-fingered, the strong and the lucky reached adulthood. Monk could not afford to indulge in judgment, and he was too torn with pity and anger to try.

  "It's yours, Jack, if I get them," he promised, then started up the last flight and Evan followed. At the top he opened the door without knocking.

  Blind Tommy must have been expecting him. He was a dapper little man, about five feet tall with a sharp, ugly face, and dressed in a manner he himself would have described as "flash." He was apparently no more than shortsighted because he saw Monk immediately and knew who he was.

  " 'Evenin', Mr. Monk. I 'ears as yer lookin' fer a screever, a partic'lar one, like?"

  "That's right, Tommy. I want one who made some fake-ments for two rampsmen who robbed a house in Mecklenburg Square. Went in pretending to be Peelers."

  Tommy's face lit up with amusement.

  "I like that," he admitted. "It's a smart lay, vat is."

  "Providing you don't get caught."

  "Wot's it worf?" Tommy's eyes narrowed.

  "It's murder, Tommy. Whoever did it'll be topped, and whoever helps them stands a good chance of getting the boat."

  "Oh Gawd!" Tommy's face paled visibly. "I 'an't no fancy for Horstralia. Boats don't suit me at all, vey don't. Men wasn't meant ter go orf all over like vat! In't nat'ral. An' 'orrible stories IVe 'eard about vem parts." He shivered dramatically. "Full o' savages an' creatures wot weren't never made by no Christian Gawd. Fings wif dozens 'o legs, an' fings wi' no legs at all. Ugh!" He rolled his eyes. "Right 'eathen place, it is."

  "Then don't run any risk of being sent there," Monk advised without any sympathy. "Find me this screever."

  "Are yer sure it's murder?" Tommy was still not entirely convinced. Monk wondered how much it was a matter of loyalties, and how much simply a weighing of one advantage against another.

  "Of course I'm sure!" he said with a low, level voice. He knew the threat was implicit in it. "Murder and robbery. Silver and jade stolen. Know anything about a jade dancing lady, pink jade, about six inches high?"

  Tommy was defensive, a thin, nasal quality of fear in his tone.

  "Fencin's not my life, guv. Don't do none o' vat—don't yer try an'hike vat on me."

  "The screever?" Monk said flatly.

  "Yeah, well I'll take yer. Anyfink in it fer me?" Hope seldom died. If the fearful reality of the rookery did not kill it, Monk certainly could not.

  "If it's the right man," he grunted.

  Tommy took them through another labyrinth of alleys and stairways, but Monk wondered how much distance they had actually covered. He had a strong feeling it was more to lose their sense of direction than to travel above a few hundred yards. Eventually they stopped at another large door, and after a sharp knock, Blind Tommy disappeared and the door swung open in front of them.

  The room inside was bright and smelled of burning.

  Monk stepped in, then looked up involuntarily and saw glass skylights. He saw down the walls where there were large windows as well. Of course—light for a forger's careful pen.

  The man inside turned to look at the intruders. He was squat, with powerful shoulders and large spatulate hands. His face was pale-skinned but ingrained with the dirt of years, and his colorless hair stuck to his head in thin spikes.

  "Well?" he demanded irritably. When he spoke Monk saw his teeth were short and black; Monk fancied he could smell the stale odor of them, even from where he stood.

  "You wrote police identification papers for two men, purporting to come from the Lye Street station." He made a statement, not a question. "I don't want you for it; I want the men. It's a case of murder, so you'd do well to stay on the right side of it."

  The man leered, his thin lips stretching wide in some private amusement. "You Monk?"

  "And if I am?" He was surprised the man had heard of him. Was his reputation so wide? Apparently it was.

  "Your case they walked inter, was it?" The man's mirth bubbled over in a silent chuckle, shaking his mass of flesh.

  "It's my case now," Monk replied. He did not want to tell the man the robbery and the murder were separate; the threat of hanging was too useful.

  "Wotcher want?" the man asked. His voice was hoarse, as if from too much shouting or laughter, yet it was hard imagining him doing either.

  "Who are they?" Monk pressed.

  "Now Mr. Monk, 'ow should I know?" His massive shoulders were still twitching. "Do I ask people's names?"

  "Probably not, but you know who they are. Don't pretend to be stupid; it doesn't suit you."

  "I know some people," he conceded in little more than a whisper. " 'Course I do; but not every muck snipe 'oo tries 'is 'and at thievin'."

  "Muck snipe?" Monk looked at him with derision. "Since when did you hand out fekements for nothing? You don't do favors for down-and-outs. They paid you, or someone did. If they didn't pay you themselves, tell me who did; that'll do."

  The man's narrow eyes widened a fraction. "Oh clever, Mr. Monk, very clever." He clapped his broad, powerful hands together in soundless applause.

  "So who paid you?"

  "My business is confidential, Mr. Monk. Lose it all if I starts putting the down on people wot comes ter me. It was a moneylender, that's all I'll tell yer."

  "Not much call for a screever in Australia." Monk looked at the man's subtle, sensitive fingers. "Hard labor—bad climate."

  "Put me on the boat, would yer?" The man's lip curled. "Yer'd 'ave ter catch me first, and yer know as well as I do yer'd never find me." The smile on his face did not alter even a fraction. "An' yer'd be a fool ter look; 'orrible fings 'appen ter a Peeler as gets caught in ver rookeries, if ve word goes aht."

  “And horrible things happen to a screever who informs on his clients—if the word goes out," Monk added immediately. "Horrible things—like broken fingers. And what use is a screever without his fingers?"

  The man stared at him, suddenly hatred undisguised in his heavy eyes.

  "An' w'y should the word go out, Mr. Monk, seein' as 'ow I aven't told yer nuffink?"

  In the doorway Evan moved uncomfortably. Monk ignored him.

  "Because I shall put it out," he replied, "that you have."

  "But you ain't got no one fer yer robbery." The hoarse whisper was level again, the amusement creeping back.

  "I'll find someone."

  "Takes time, Mr. Monk; and 'ow are yer goin' ter do it if I don't tell yer?"

  "You are leaping to conclusions, screever," Monk said ruthlessly. "It doesn't have to be the right ones; anyone will do. By the time the word gets back I have the wrong people, it'll be too late to save your fingers. Broken fingers heal hard, and they ache for years, so I'm told."

  The man called him something obscene.

  "Quite." Monk looked at him with disgust. "So who paid you?"

  The man glared at him, hate hot in his face.

 
"Who paid you?" Monk leaned forward a little.

  "Josiah Wigtight, moneylender," the man spat out. "Find 'im in Gun Lane, Whitechapel. Now get out!"

  "Moneylender. What sort of people does he lend money to?"

  "The sort o' people wot can pay 'im back, o' course, fool!"

  "Thank you." Monk smiled and straightened up. "Thank you, screever; your business is secure. You have told us nothing."

  The screever swore at him again, but Monk was out of the door and hurrying down the rickety stairs, Evan, anxious and doubtful, at his heel, but Monk offered him no explanation, and did not meet his questioning look.

  It was too late to try the moneylender that day, and all he could think of was to get out of the rookeries in one piece before someone stabbed one of them for his clothes, poor as they were, or merely because they were strangers.

  He said good-night briefly and watched Evan hesitate, then reply in his quiet voice and turn away in the darkness, an elegant figure, oddly young in the gaslight.

  Back at Mrs. Worley's, he ate a hot meal, grateful for it, at once savoring each mouthful and hating it because he could not dismiss from his mind all those who would count it victory merely to have survived the day and eaten enough to sustain life.

  None of it was strange to him, as it obviously had been to Evan. He must have been to such places many times before. He had behaved instinctively, altering his stance,

  knowing how to melt into the background, not to look like a stranger, least of all a figure of authority. The beggars, the sick, the hopeless moved him to excruciating pity, and a deep, abiding anger—but no surprise.

  And his mercilessness with the screever had come without calculation, his natural reaction. He knew the rookeries and their denizens. He might even have survived in them himself.

  Only afterwards, when the plate was empty, did he lean back in the chair and think of the case.

  A moneylender made sense. Joscelin Grey might well have borrowed money when he lost his small possessions in the affair with Latterly, and his family would not help. Had the moneylender meant to injure him a little, to frighten repayment from him, and warn other tardy borrowers, and when Grey had fought back it had gone too far? It was possible. And Yeats's visitor had been a moneylender's ruffian. Yeats and Grimwade had both said he was a big man, lean and strong, as far as they could tell under his clothes.

  What a baptism for Evan. He had said nothing about it afterwards. He had not even asked if Monk would really have arrested people he knew to be innocent and then spread the word the screever had betrayed them.

  Monk flinched as he remembered what he had said; but it had simply been what instinct directed. It was a streak of ruthlessness in himself he had been unaware of; and it would have shocked him in anyone else. Was that really what he was like? Surely it was only a threat, and he would never have carried it out? Or would he? He remembered the anger that had welled up inside him at the mention of moneylenders, parasites of the desperate poor who clung to respectability, to a few precious standards. Sometimes a man's honesty was his only real possession, his only source of pride and identity in the anonymous, wretched, teeming multitude.

  What had Evan thought of him? He cared; it was a miserable thought that Evan would be disillusioned, finding

  his methods as ugly as the crime he fought, not understanding he was using words, only words.

  Or did Evan know him better than he knew himself? Evan would know his past. Perhaps in the past the words had been a warning, and reality had followed.

  And what would Imogen Latterly have felt? It was a preposterous dream. The rookeries were as foreign to her as the planets in the sky. She would be sick, disgusted even to see them, let alone to have passed through them and dealt with their occupants. If she had seen him threaten the screever, standing in the filthy room, she would not permit him to enter her house again.

  He sat staring up at the ceiling, full of anger and pain. It was cold comfort to him that tomorrow he would find the usurer who might have killed Joscelin Grey. He hated the world he had to deal with; he wanted to belong to the clean, gracious world where he could speak as an equal with people like the Latterlys; Charles would not patronize him, he could converse with Imogen Latterly as a friend, and quarrel with Hester without the hindrance of social inferiority. That would be a delicate pleasure. He would dearly like to put that opinionated young woman in her place.

  But purely because he hated the rookeries so fiercely, he could not ignore them. He had seen them, known their squalor and their desperation, and they would not go away.

  Well at least he could turn his anger to some purpose; he would find the violent, greedy man who had paid to have Joscelin Grey beaten to death. Then he could face Grey in peace in his imagination—and Runcorn would be defeated.

  10

  Monk sent Evan to try pawnshops for the pink jade, and then himself went to look for Josiah Wigtight. He had no trouble finding the address. It was half a mile east of Whitechapel off the Mile End Road. The building was narrow and almost lost between a seedy lawyer's office and a sweatshop where in dim light and heavy, breathless air women worked eighteen hours a day sewing shirts for a handful of pence. Some felt driven to walk the street at night also, for the extra dreadfully and easily earned silver coins that meant food and rent. A few were wives or daughters of the poor, the drunken or the inadequate; many were women who had in the past been in domestic service, and had lost their "character" one way or another—for impertinence, dishonesty, loose morals, or because a mistress found them "uppity," or a master had taken advantage of them and been discovered, and in a number of cases they had become with child, and thus not only unemployable but a disgrace and an affront.

  Inside, the office was dim behind drawn blinds and smelled of polish, dust and ancient leather. A black-dressed clerk sat at a high stool in the first room. He looked up as Monk came in.

  "Good morning, sir; may we be of assistance to you?"

  His voice was soft, like mud. "Perhaps you have a little problem?" He rubbed his hands together as though the cold bothered him, although it was summer. "A temporary problem, of course?" He smiled at his own hypocrisy.

  "I hope so." Monk smiled back.

  The man was skilled at his job. He regarded Monk with caution. His expression had not the nervousness he was accustomed to; if anything it was a little wolfish. Monk realized he had been clumsy. Surely in the past he must have been more skilled, more attuned to the nuances of judgment?

  "That rather depends on you," he added to encourage the man, and allay any suspicion he might unwittingly have aroused.

  "Indeed," the clerk agreed. "That's what we're in business for: to help gentlemen with a temporary embarrassment of funds. Of course there are conditions, you understand?" He fished out a clean sheet of paper and held his pen ready. "If I could just have the details, sir?"

  "My problem is not a shortage of funds," Monk replied with the faintest smile. He hated moneylenders; he hated the relish with which they plied their revolting trade. "At least not pressing enough to come to you. I have a matter of business to discuss with Mr. Wigtight."

  "Quite." The man nodded with a smirk of understanding. "Quite so. All matters of business are referred to Mr. Wigtight, ultimately, Mr.—er?" He raised his eyebrows.

  “I do not want to borrow any money,'' Monk said rather more tartly. "Tell Mr. Wigtight it is about something he has mislaid, and very badly wishes to have returned to him."

  "Mislaid?" The man screwed up his pallid face. "Mislaid? What are you talking about, sir? Mr. Wigtight does not mislay things." He snifled in offended disapproval.

  Monk leaned forward and put both hands on the counter, and the man was obliged to face him.

  "Are you going to show me to Mr. Wigtight?" Monk

  said very clearly. "Or do I take my information elsewhere?" He did not want to tell the man who he was, or Wigtight would be forewarned, and he needed the slight advantage of surprise.

  "Ah—" Th
e man made up his mind rapidly. "Ah— yes; yes sir. I'll take you to Mr. Wigtight, sir. If you'll come this way." He closed his ledger with a snap and slid it into a drawer. With one eye still on Monk he took a key from his waistcoat pocket and locked the drawer, then straightened up. "Yes sir, this way."

  The inner office of Josiah Wigtight was quite a different affair from the drab attempt at anonymous respectability of the entrance. It was frankly lush, everything chosen for comfort, almost hedonism. The big armchairs were covered in velvet and the cushions were deep in both color and texture; the carpet muffled sound and the gas lamps hissing softly on the walls were mantled in rose-colored glass which shed a glow over the room, obscuring outlines and dulling glare. The curtains were heavy and drawn in folds to keep out the intrusion and the reality of daylight. It was not a matter of taste, not even of vulgarity, but purely the uses of pleasure. After a moment or two the effect was curiously soporific. Immediately Monk's respect for Wigtight rose. It was clever.

  "Ah." Wigtight breathed out deeply. He was a portly man, swelling out like a giant toad behind his desk, wide mouth split into a smile that died long before it reached his bulbous eyes. "Ah," he repeated. "A matter of business somewhat delicate, Mr.—er?"

  "Somewhat," Monk agreed. He decided not to sit down in the soft, dark chair; he was almost afraid it would swallow him, like a mire, smother his judgment. He felt he would be at a disadvantage in it and not able to move if he should need to.

  "Sit down, sit down!" Wigtight waved. "Let us talk about it. I'm sure some accommodation can be arrived at."

  "I hope so." Monk perched on the arm of the chair. It

  was uncomfortable, but in this room he preferred to be uncomfortable.

  "You are temporarily embarrassed?" Wigtight began. "You wish to take advantage of an excellent investment? You have expectations of a relative, in poor health, who favors you—"

  "Thank you, I have employment which is quite sufficient for my needs."

  "You are a fortunate man." There was no belief in his smooth, expressionless voice; he had heard every lie and excuse human ingenuity could come up with.