by Anne Perry
It was a sore one to Monk. His departure from the police force had been forced upon him by that final quarrel with Runcorn. The fact that he had been proved right and Runcorn wrong had helped nothing. With no livelihood anymore, he had been obliged to take up private inquiries, since detection was the only marketable skill he possessed. But he no longer had either the authority of the police force nor the facilities of its vast network and specialist abilities, as the cabby had so pertinently reminded him.
“Well, why d’yer want the poor geezer as I took, then? Wot’s ’e done? Took the funds with ’im, did ’e?” the cabby asked. “An’ if ’e did, why do you care?”
“No, he didn’t,” Monk said truthfully. “He’s missing. His wife is afraid some harm may have befallen him.”
“Likely gorn off with some tart or other, stupid sod,” the cabby said dismissively. “Gorn private then, ’ave yer? Chasin’ runaway ’usbands for women as ’ave lorst ’em.” He grinned, showing gapped teeth. “Bit of a comedown for yer, in’t it—Hinspector Monk?”
“Warmer than driving a cab!” Monk snapped, then remembered he needed the man’s goodwill. The words choked in his throat to be civil. “Sometimes,” he added between clenched jaws.
“Well now, Mr. Monk.” The cabby sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, looking at Monk maliciously. “If yer asks me, polite like, I might tell yer w’ere I took ’im. Mind I want me cup of char as well, an’ me drop o’ brandy in it. Don’t want no cheap gin. An’ I can tell the diff’rence, so don’t go fobbin’ me orff.”
“How shall I know if you’re telling me the truth?” Monk asked bluntly.
“Yer won’t,” the cabby said with satisfaction. “ ’Ceptin’ I don’t suppose as yer’ve changed all that. Don’t want yer on my tail fer ever more. Right narsty yer can be if’n yer crorssed, an’ no mistake. Best suits me if yer pays me fair an I tells yer fair.”
“Good.” Monk fished in his pocket and brought out a sixpence. “Take me to where you let him off, and I’ll get your tea and brandy at the nearest pub.”
The cabby took the sixpence as earnest of his intent, bit on it automatically to test its genuineness, then slipped it into his pocket.
“Come on then,” he said cheerfully, walking towards his horse and untying the reins as he mounted the box.
Monk stepped up into the cab and took his seat. They set off at a fast walk, then a trot.
They crossed the Blackfriars Bridge, then moved steadily eastwards through the City, then Whitechapel and into Limehouse. The streets became narrower and grimier, the brick darker, the windows smaller, and the smell of midden and pigsty more pervasive. Drains overflowed into gutters, and there had obviously been no crossing sweepers or dung carts near for weeks. In Bridge Road cattle had passed on the way to the abattoir. The smell brought back sharp memories to Monk’s mind, but of emotions, not faces or events. He remembered overwhelming anger and urgency, but not the reasons for them. He could recall his heart pounding and the smell sticking in his throat. It could have been three years ago or twenty. Past time had no meaning, nothing to relate to.
“ ’Ere y’ are!” the cabby said loudly, pulling his horse to a halt and tapping on the hatch.
Monk returned his mind to the present and climbed out. They were in a narrow, dirty street running parallel to the river in an area known as Limehouse Reach. He fished in his pocket and pulled out the fare, adding it to the sixpence he had already given.
“An’ me drink,” the cabby reminded him.
Monk added another sixpence.
“Ta,” the cabby said cheerfully. “Anyfink else as I can do for yer?”
“Ever picked up the same man before?” Monk asked.
“Couple o’ times. Why?”
“Where did you take him?”
“Once ’ere, once up west. Oh, an’ once ter someplace orff the Edgware Road, to an ’ouse. Reckon as maybe ’e lived there. Rum, innit? I mean, why do a proper sort o’ gent like that wanna come ’ere? In’t nuffin’ ’ere as anybody’d want. Even got the typhus less than ’alf a mile away.” He gestured with his mittened thumb eastwards. “An’ someone told me as they’d got the cholera in Whitechapel too, or mebbe it were Mile End. Or Blackwall, or summink.”
“I don’t know,” Monk replied. “It wants explaining. I don’t suppose you saw which way he went?”
The cabby grinned. “Wondered if yer’d think o’ that. Yeah, ’e went that way.” He jerked his thumb again.
“ ’Long there t’wards the Isle o’ Dogs.”
“Thank you.” Monk closed the conversation and set out along the road the cabby had indicated.
“If ’e went in there yer won’t never find ’im!” the cabby called out. “Poor sod,” he added under his breath.
Monk feared he was right, but he did not turn or alter his stride. It was going to be difficult to trace Angus, except that dressed as he was he would have stood out from the regular inhabitants, just as Monk did now. But he was unlikely to have stopped to purchase anything in the various shops that were spaced sporadically along the street. There were no newspaper vendors. People in Limehouse Reach had no spare money for such luxuries, even supposing they could read. They learned of such events that interested them by word of mouth, or from the running patterers, men whose trade was to put into endless doggerel whatever bulletin or gossip they heard and relay it in a kind of one-man musical sideshow from place to place, collecting a few coppers from appreciative listeners. Here and there billboards were posted for the few who were literate, but no one stood about selling. Even peddlers went farther west, where custom was more likely.
He went into a grocer’s shop selling tea, dried beans, flour, molasses and candles. It was dark and smelled of dust, tallow and camphor. He produced the drawing of Angus and received a blank stare of incomprehension. He also tried an apothecary, a pawnbroker, a rag and bone merchant and an ironmonger, all with similar results. They stared at Monk’s expensive clothes, his warm, well-cut overcoat and polished boots which kept out the wet, and knew he was alien. Children in layers of rags, some of them barefoot, faces gap-toothed and dirty, followed him, begging for money, alternately whistling and catcalling. He gave what pennies he had, but when he asked after Caleb Stonefield, they fell silent and ran away.
On Union Road, which sloped down towards the river with pavement so narrow he could hardly stand on it, its cobbles chipped and uneven, simply because he knew nothing else to do, he tried a cobbler who made new shoes from old.
“Have you ever seen this man, dressed in a good coat and high hat, maybe carrying an umbrella?” he asked flatly.
The cobbler, a narrow-chested little man with a wheeze, took the paper in one hand and squinted at it.
“Looks a bit like Caleb Stone ter me. And I only seen ’im a couple o’ times, an’ that were a couple too many. But it in’t a face as yer’d forget. ’Cept this gent looks sane enough, and real tidy. Dressed like a toff, yer said?”
Monk felt a leap of excitement in spite of all common sense telling him otherwise.
“Yes,” he said quickly. “That’s only a drawing. Forget Caleb Stonefield—”
“Stone,” the cobbler corrected.
“Sorry, Stone.” Monk brushed it aside. “This man is related to him, so there will be a resemblance. Have you ever seen him? Specifically, did you see him four days ago? He probably passed this way.”
“Dressed like a toff, an’ with an ’at an’ all?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t ’ave no ’at as I recall, but yeah, I reckon as I saw ’im.”
Monk sighed with relief. He must not overpraise the man or he might be tempted to embroider the truth.
“Thank you,” he said as gravely as he could, squashing the elation rising inside him. “I’m obliged to you.” He fished in his pocket and brought out threepence, the price of a pint of ale. “Remember me at the pub,” he offered.
The cobbler hesitated only a second. “I’ll do that, guv,” he agree
d, and shot out a strong, misshapen and callused hand before Monk could change his mind.
“Which way did he go?” Monk asked the final question.
“West,” the cobbler replied instantly. “T’ ward the South Dock.”
Monk had already turned the handle of the door to leave when another question occurred to him, perhaps the most obvious of all.
“Where does Caleb Stone live?”
The cobbler turned pale under the layer of grime on his face.
“I dunno, mister, an’ I’m real ’appy ter keep it that way. An’ if yer’d any sense yer’d not ask neither. W’ere some folks is concerned, iggerance is a blessin’.”
“I see. Thank you anyway.” Monk smiled at him briefly, then turned and went out into the cold street and the stench of salt tide, raw sewage and overloaded drains.
He tried for the rest of the day, but by five o’clock it was dark, bitterly cold with a rime of ice forming on the slimy cobbles of the footpaths, and he had achieved nothing further. It was not safe to remain here alone and unarmed. He walked rapidly, head down and collar up, back towards the West India Dock Road and regular street lamps and a hansom back home again. He was stupid to have come here in good clothes. He’d never get the smell out of them. Another hole in his memory! He should have thought of that before he set out! It was not only the gaping voids in his life—an entire childhood, youth and early manhood which were a mystery to him, his triumphs and failures, his loves, if there had been any which were of lasting value—it was the stupid little pieces of practical knowledge he had forgotten, the mistakes which were like splinters under the skin every day.
The cabby had been almost correct in his information about the fever in Limehouse. It was not the respiratory disease of typhus, but the intestinal typhoid, which raged through the tenements and rookeries, carried from one inadequate and overflowing midden to the next.
Hester Latterly had been a nurse serving with Florence Nightingale in the Scutari hospital in the Crimea and on the battlefield. She was more than used to disease, cold, filth and the sight of suffering. She could not count the deaths she had seen from injury or fever. But still the plight of the poor and the sick in Limehouse touched her, until the only way she could bear it and shut out the nightmares was to work with her close friend and Monk’s patroness, Lady Callandra Daviot, and Dr. Kristian Beck to do all she could, both to relieve the distress in whatever small way was possible and to fight for some alleviation of the conditions which made these diseases endemic.
On the day that Monk was searching the streets for someone who had seen Angus Stonefield, Hester was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor of a warehouse which Enid Ravensbrook, another woman of wealth and compassion, had obtained, at least temporarily, so that it might be used as a fever hospital after the order of the military hospital in Scutari. Hester had a feeling that the water she was using was as full of infection as any of the patients, but she had added plenty of vinegar and hoped it might serve the purpose. Dr. Beck had also obtained half a dozen open braziers in which they were going to burn tobacco leaves, a practice much followed in the navy to fumigate between decks and help to fight against yellow fever. Callandra had purchased several bottles of gin, which were firmly locked in the medicine cabinet and which could be used to clean pans, cups and any instruments. Since they had no others who were nurses by trade, there was a diminished chance of it being drunk.
Hester had just finished the last yard of floor and stood up, easing her back from its stiffness by bending back and forth a few times, when Callandra came in. She was a broad-hipped woman well into middle-age. Her hair was habitually untidy, but today it had exceeded even its usual wildness. It poked and looped in every direction, several of its pins threatening to fall out completely. Even in her youth she could not have been thought beautiful, but there was such intelligence and humor in her face it had a unique charm.
“Finished?” she asked cheerfully. “Excellent. I’m afraid we’re going to need every foot of space we can find. And, of course, blankets.” She surveyed the room for a moment, then proceeded to pace the floor out carefully, measuring precisely how many people might lie on it without touching each other. “I would like to get pallets,” she went on, her back to Hester. “And pans or buckets of some type. Typhoid is such a beastly disease. So much waste to dispose of, and heaven only knows how we are going to do that.” She was now at the far end of the space and almost inaudible to Hester. She turned and started to pace the width. “There isn’t a midden or a cesspit within miles of here that isn’t overflowing already.”
“Has Dr. Beck spoken to the local council of authority yet?” Hester asked, picking up her bucket and going over to the window to tip it out. There were no drains, and the water was full of vinegar anyway, so it would be more likely to improve the gutters than harm them.
Callandra reached the far side and lost count. She had loved Kristian Beck since before the wretched business at the Royal Free Hospital the previous summer. Hester was aware of it, but it was something they never discussed. It was too delicate, and too painful. The depth of Kristian’s feeling in return only added to the poignancy of the situation. Callandra was a widow, but Kristian’s wife was still alive. She had long ceased to care for him, if indeed she ever had in the manner he longed for, but she clung to her rights and all the status and the comfort they afforded. To Callandra he could give nothing but an intense friendship, humor, warmth, admiration, and shared passions for causes in which they both believed with ardor and dedication.
Even the mention of his name could still jar her concentration, so vulnerable was she even now. She turned and began to pace back, beginning to count the width again.
Hester looked out of the window to make sure no one was passing beneath, then emptied the bucket.
“I think we could get about ninety people in here,” Callandra announced. Then her face pinched. “I wish to God I could think that was all we should need. We have forty-seven cases already, not counting seventeen dead and another thirteen too ill to move. I’ll be surprised if they live the night.” Her voice rose. “I feel so helpless! It’s like fighting the incoming tide with a mop and bucket!”
The door opened behind Hester and a striking-looking woman came in, a bottle of gin under one arm and another in each hand. It was Enid Ravensbrook.
“I suppose it’s better than nothing,” she said with a tight smile. “I’ve sent Mary out to get some clean straw. She can try the ostler at the end of the lane. His mother’s one of the victims. He’ll do what he can.” She set the gin down on the floor. “I don’t know what to do about the well. I’ve pumped the water, but it smells like next-door’s pigsty.”
“Probably with good reason,” Hester said, tightening her lips. “There’s a well in Phoebe Street that smells all right, but it’ll be an awful nuisance to carry water over. And we’re desperately short of buckets.”
“We’ll have to borrow them,” Enid said resolutely. “If every family spared us one, we’d quickly have sufficient for all purposes.”
“They haven’t got them,” Hester pointed out, setting her bucket, scrubbing brush and cloth away tidily. “Most families around here have only one pan between them anyway.”
“One pan for what?” Enid pressed. “Perhaps they can use their night bucket for scrubbing the floor as well?”
“One pan for everything,” Hester explained. “The same one for scrubbing the floor, for bathing the baby, for waste at night, and for cooking in.”
“Oh God!” Enid stood still, then blushed, robbed of speech for an instant. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I suppose I’m still very ignorant. I’ll go out and buy some.” She turned on her heel and was about to leave when she almost bumped into Kristian Beck coming in. His face was set in anger, his cheeks burned with color which had nothing to do with the cold outside, and his beautiful mouth was set in a tight line. There was no need to ask if he had met with success or failure with the local authority.
“Nothing?” she said softly, no criticism in her voice.
“Nothing,” he conceded. Even in the single word there was a trace of some European accent, very slight, only an extra preciseness which marked English as not his mother tongue. His voice was rich and very deep, and at the moment expressive of his utter contempt. “They have a hundred prevarications, but they all amount to the same thing. They don’t care enough!”
“What excuses?” Enid demanded. “What could there possibly be? People are dying, scores of people, and it could be hundreds before it’s over. It’s monstrous!”
Hester had spent nearly two years as an army nurse. She was used to the workings of the institutional mind. No local authority could be worse than military command, or in her opinion more stubborn or totally fossilized in its thinking. Callandra’s late husband had been an army surgeon; she too was familiar with ritual and the almost insuperable force of precedent.
“Money,” Kristian said with disgust. He looked up and down at the length of the now-scrubbed warehouse with satisfaction. It was cold and bare, but it was clean. “To build proper drains would add at least a penny to the rates, and none of them want that,” he added.
“But don’t they understand …” Enid began.
“Only a penny …” Callandra snorted.
“At least half of the members are shopkeepers,” Kristian explained with weary patience. “A penny on the rates will hurt their business.”
“Half shopkeepers?” Hester screwed up her face. “That’s ridiculous! Why so many of one occupation? Where are the builders, the cobblers or bakers, or ordinary people?”
“Working,” Kristian said simply. “You cannot sit on the council unless you have money, and time to spare. Ordinary men are at their jobs; they cannot afford not to be.”
Hester drew in breath to argue.