The Shifting Tide

by Anne Perry

  And then there was the other possibility, that Hodge had been killed by a member of the crew in some personal quarrel that had nothing to do with the theft.

  If he found out who Gould’s partner had been, it might be possible to prove whether he had ever come on board the Maude Idris. Gould should be able to remember his own actions, which would at least help. Tusks were difficult things to handle. He would surely know where his partner had been. One could not pass anyone on the gangway to the hold without knowing. The difficulty would be in making sure he was honest. On the other hand, he must have walked close to Hodge’s body every time he carried ivory up or went back down for more.

  Louvain would not like it; he might even try to block him, but Monk had taken care of that. He had no intention of allowing Hodge’s murderer to escape. He had never known Hodge, and might well have disliked him if he had, but that was irrelevant. The less anyone else cared, the more it mattered that he was given some kind of justice.

  Monk was sitting by the fire, getting too hot but barely noticing it, when he realized there was someone knocking on the door. It could not be Hester; she had a key. Was it a new client? He could not accept one, unless he or she was prepared to wait. He stood up and went to answer.

  The man on the step was lean, and quite smartly dressed, but his shoes were worn. His wry, intelligent face was lined with weariness, and there was a small brown-and-white terrier at his feet. Monk would be sorry to have to refuse him.

  “Mr. William Monk?” the man enquired.

  “Yes.”

  “I have a message for yer, sir. May I come in?”

  Monk was puzzled and already concerned. Who would send him a message in this fashion? “What is it?” he said a little sharply. “A message from whom?”

  “From Mrs. Monk. Can I come in?” There was an odd dignity to the man, a confidence despite his obvious lack of education.

  Monk opened the door and stepped back to allow him to walk past into the warmth, followed by the dog. Then he closed the door and swung around to face him.

  “What is it?” Now his voice was sharp, the edge of fear audible. Why would Hester send a message through a man like this? Why not a note if she was delayed and wanted to tell him? “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Sutton,” the man replied. “I’m a rat catcher. I’ve know’d Mrs. Monk awhile now—”

  “What did she say?” Monk cut across him. “Is she all right?”

  “Yeah, she’s all right,” Sutton said gravely. “Though she’s workin’ too ’ard, like most times.”

  Monk looked at him. There was nothing in the man’s face or his demeanor to ease Monk’s growing alarm.

  “Wot I got ter tell yer in’t a few moments’ worth,” Sutton went on. “So yer’d best sit down an’ listen. There in’t nothing yer can do ’ceptin’ keep yer ’ead, and then ’old yer tongue.”

  Monk suddenly found his legs were weak and he felt a rush of panic well up inside him. He was glad to sit down.

  Sutton sat in the other chair. “Thank yer,” he said as if Monk had invited him. He did not tease out the suspense. “One o’ the women wot was brought inter the clinic died today. When Miss ’Ester come ter wash ’er fer the undertaker, she seed what she really died of, which weren’t pneumonia like she thought.” He stopped, his eyes shadowed, his face intensely serious.

  Monk leapt to the conclusion that was most familiar to him. “Murdered?” He leaned forward to stand up. He should go there immediately. Helping Gould would have to wait. He could afford a few days.

  “Sit down, Mr. Monk,” Sutton said in a low, very clear voice. “The trouble in’t nothin’ ter do wi’ murder. It’s far more ’orrible than that. An’ yer gotta act right, or yer could bring down a disaster like the world in’t seen in five ’undred years.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Monk demanded. Was the man mad? He looked perfectly sane; the gravity in him was saner than in a score of men who governed the fates of businesses and societies. “What is it?”

  “Plague,” Sutton answered, his eyes fixed on Monk. “Not yer cholera or yer pox, or any o’ them diseases. It’s the real thing—the Black Death.”

  Monk could not grasp what Sutton had said. It had no reality; it was just huge words, too big to mean anything.

  “That’s why nobody’s goin’ in there, an’ nobody’s comin’ out,” Sutton went on quietly. “They gotta keep it closed, no matter wot.”

  “You did!” Monk said instantly.

  “I kept away from Miss ’Ester an’ the woman wot nursed the dead one, an’ I in’t comin’ out again arter this.”

  “I’m still going in,” Monk insisted. Hester was there without him. She was facing something worse than any human nightmare. How could he possibly stay out here, safe, doing nothing? “She’ll need help. Anyway, how could you stop people from leaving? I mean, the sheer practicality? You have to tell the authorities! Get doctors—”

  “There in’t nothin’ a doctor can do fer the Black Death.” Sutton sat almost motionless. His face was impassive, beyond emotion. It was as if the horror of it had drained everything out of him. “If it takes yer, it takes yer, an’ if it leaves yer, it leaves yer. In’t no use tellin’ the authorities. In’t nothin’ they can do. An’ wot d’yer think’d ’appen then, eh?”

  The hideousness of it was very slowly becoming real. In his mind, Monk could see exactly what this strange, composed man was saying. “How will you stop people from leaving?” he asked.

  “Dogs,” Sutton said with a slight movement of his shoulders. “I got friends with pit bulls. They’re guardin’ all the outsides. I ’ope nobody runs fer it, but so ’elp me, they’ll set the dogs on ’em if they do. Better one torn ter bits than lettin’ ’er spread it over all the land, all over the world, mebbe.”

  “What if they tell people?”

  “We told ’em it’s cholera an’ they don’ know different.”

  Monk tried not to think of what his own words meant. “I must still go and help. I can’t leave her alone there. I won’t.”

  “Yer gotter . . .” Sutton began.

  “I won’t come out again!”

  Sutton’s face softened. “I know yer won’t. Not as I’d let yer, any road. But yer can be more ’elp out ’ere. There’s things as need doin’.”

  “Getting food, coal, medicine. I know that. Anyone can do those things—”

  “Course they can,” Sutton agreed. “An’ I’ll see as they do. But in’t yer thought where the plague come from? Where’d that poor woman get it, then?”

  Monk felt the sweat break out on his skin.

  “We gotter find out,” Sutton said wearily. “An’ there in’t nobody else as can do that without settin’ the ’ole o’ London on fire wi’ terror. She come from somewhere, poor creature. Where’d she get it, eh? ’Oo else ’as it? Ye’re a man as knows ’ow ter ask questions, an’ get answers as other people can’t. Miss ’Ester says as yer the cleverest man, an’ the cussedest, as she ever met. She right?”

  Monk buried his head in his hands, his mind whirling, ideas beating against him, bruising in their violence. Hester was alone in the clinic with the most terrible disease ever known to man. He would never see her again. He could do nothing to help her. He could not even remember now what were the last words they had said to each other! Did she know how much he loved her, as his wife, his friend, the one person without whom he had no purpose and no joy, the one whose belief in him made everything matter, whose approval was a reward in itself, whose happiness created his?

  And the whole of Europe could be decimated with disease. Corpses everywhere, the land itself rotting. History books told how the whole world had changed. The old way of life had perished and a new order had been made—it had had to be.

  “Is she right?” Sutton asked again.

  Monk lifted his head. Did Sutton know that in those words he had made it impossible for Monk to refuse? Yes, almost certainly he did.

  “Yes,” he ans
wered. “What do you know about the woman who died?”

  “ ’Er name were Ruth Clark, an’ she were brung in by a shipowner called Louvain. ’e said she were the mistress of a friend of ’is, which is mebbe true an’ mebbe not.”

  “Louvain?” Monk’s body froze, his mind whirling.

  “Yeah.” Sutton stood up. “I ’ave ter go. I can’t see yer again. Yer just gotta do yer best.” He seemed about to add something, but could not think of words to convey it.

  “I know,” Monk said quickly. “Tell Hester . . .”

  “Don’t matter now,” Sutton replied simply. “If she don’t know it, words in’t gonna ’elp. Find where it come from. An’ do it soft, like—very, very soft.”

  “I understand.” Monk rose to his feet also, surprised that the room did not sway around him. He followed Sutton and his dog to the door. “Good-bye!”

  Sutton went out into the street, rain drifting in the lamplight and glistening on the pavement. “Good night,” he replied, then turned and walked with a peculiar ease, almost a grace of step, into the darkness, the dog still at his heels.

  Monk closed the door and went back into the room. It seemed airless and unnaturally silent. He sat down very slowly. His body was shaking. He must control his thoughts. Thought was the only way of keeping command of himself.

  Ruth Clark had died of plague. Clement Louvain had brought her to the clinic. Where from? Who was she? He had said she was the cast-off mistress of a friend. Was that true? Was she his own mistress? He knew she was ill, but had he any idea with what?

  Where had she contracted a disease like that? Not in London. The Maude Idris had just come back from Africa. Had she come on it? Was that how the plague had got here? Did Louvain know that, or guess? And he had taken her to Hester!

  For a moment red fury swept over Monk so it almost blinded him. His body trembled and his nails dug into the flesh of his hands till they drew blood.

  He must control himself! He had no idea whether Louvain had known what was wrong with her. Why should he? The woman was sick. That was all Hester had known, and Hester was a nurse who had cared for her day and night.

  He started to walk back and forth. Should he go to Louvain and tell him? Should he at least tell him that Ruth was dead? If Louvain had known she had the plague, he would be expecting it. Would he panic now? Might he cause the very terror they were afraid of? But then if he had not known, and she had been his mistress, would he be distressed? Hardly, or he would have gotten a nurse in to care for her, not sent her to a clinic for street women to be looked after by strangers. Far better to keep her death silent. Let him find out in time.

  Then another thought struck him. What if Gould had been telling the exact truth, and Hodge had been dead, without a mark on him except the slight bruises of a fall, and his head had been beaten in afterwards, because he had died of plague? Was it not a murder, but the concealment of a death which could end up killing half the world?

  Half the world? Wasn’t that a ridiculous exaggeration? Nightmare, hysteria rather than reality? What did the history books say?

  Back in 1348 England had been a rural community, ignorant and isolated compared with today. If people traveled at all it was by foot or on horseback. Knowledge of medicine was rudimentary and filled with superstition.

  He strode back and forth, trying to picture it. He could not make himself sit down or concentrate his mind in linear reasoning. It had been a barbarous time. Who had been on the throne? One of the Plantagenet kings, long before the Renaissance. It was a hundred and fifty years before they had even learned that the world was round!

  There were still forests over England, with wild animals. Nobody would have conceived of such a thing as a train. They burned witches at the stake.

  And yet the plague had spread like a stench on the wind! How much farther would it spread now, when a man could ride from the south coast of England all the way to Scotland in a day? London was the largest city in the world, crammed cheek by jowl with close to five million people. He had heard someone say recently that there were more Scots in London than in Edinburgh! And more Irish than in Dublin, and more Roman Catholics than in Rome!

  London would become a wasteland of the dead and dying, disease spreading ever outward until it polluted the whole country. It needed only one ship leaving the shores with a sick man, and it would destroy Europe as well.

  He had only one choice. He had no power to investigate Hodge’s death or to question anyone. He must find Durban and tell him the whole truth. There was time to pay the price of that afterwards. All that mattered now was to trace the disease, and anyone who might carry it.

  He slept fitfully and woke confused and heavy-headed, wondering what was wrong. Then the hideousness of the memory returned, filling him like darkness till he hardly knew how to bear it. He lay frozen, as if time were suspended, until finally intelligence told him the only way to survive was to do something. Action would drive the horror back and leave free a fraction of his mind in which he could live, at least until exhaustion made him too weak to resist.

  He dressed quickly with as many clothes as he could, knowing that he would almost certainly spend most of the day on the river. Then he went out and bought hot tea and a sandwich from a street peddler.

  He had turned over a dozen different ways to tell Durban the truth, but there was no good way to say any of this, and it hardly mattered how he expressed it. All personal needs and cares vanished in the enormity of this new, terrible truth that swallowed everything else.

  It was a sharp, glittering day, just above freezing but feeling far colder because of the wind that scythed in off the shifting, brilliant surface of the water. Gulls wheeled overhead, flashing white against the sky, and the incoming tide slurped on the wood of piers and the wet stone of steps.

  The river was busy this morning. Everywhere Monk looked there were men lifting, wheeling, staggering under the weight of sacks and bales. Their shouts were carried by the wind and blown away. Canvas flapped loose and banged against boards. In the clear air he could see as far as the river bends in both directions, and every mast, spar, and line of rigging was sharp as an etching on the sky. Only in the distance above the city was there a thin pall of smoke.

  Durban was not at the police station. The sergeant informed Monk that he was already out on the water, probably south, but he didn’t know.

  Monk thanked him and went out immediately. There was nothing to do but find a boat and go to look for him. He could not afford to wait.

  A few minutes later he was down by the water again, scanning the river urgently for a ferry willing to take him on a search. At first he barely noticed the voice calling him, and only when his sleeve was plucked did he turn.

  “Y’all right, then?” Scuff said in an elaborately casual manner, but his eyes were screwed up and there was an edge of anxiety to his tone.

  Monk forced himself to be gentler than he felt. “Yes. The man with the ivory was very happy.”

  “Paid yer?” Scuff asked for the true measure of success.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then why d’yer look like ’e din’t?” Now there was real concern in his face.

  “It’s not money. Someone who might be sick. Do you know Mr. Durban of the River Police?” Monk asked.

  “ ’im wi’ the gray ’air, walks like a sailor? Course I do. Why?”

  “I need to speak to him, urgently.”

  “I’ll find ’im for yer.” Scuff put two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, then walked over to the edge and repeated it. Within two minutes there was a boat at the steps. After a hurried conversation Scuff scrambled in and beckoned for Monk to follow.

  Monk did not want the child with him. What he had to do was going to be awkward and unpleasant, possibly even dangerous. And he certainly could not afford to have Scuff learn the truth.

  “C’mon then!” Scuff said sharply, his face wrinkled in puzzlement. “Y’in’t gonner find ’im standin’ there!”
>
  Monk dropped down into the boat. “Thank you,” he said politely, but his voice was rough, as if he were trembling. “I don’t need you to come. Go back to your own work.” He was uncertain whether to offer him money or not; he might see it as an insult to friendship.

  Scuff pulled a face. “If yer ’aven’t noticed, the tide’s up. Like I said, yer shouldn’t be out by yerself, yer in’t fit!” He sat down in the stern, a self-appointed guardian for someone he obviously felt to be in need of one.

  “Word is ’e’s gorn down Debtford Creek way,” the boatman said pleasantly. “Bin a bit o’ trouble that way yesterday. Yer wanna go or not?”

  Monk accepted. If he put Scuff ashore against his will he would lose the boatman’s respect, possibly even his cooperation. “Yes. As quick as you can, please.”

  They pulled out onto the main stream of traffic and went south along Limehouse Reach, weaving in and out of strings of barges, moored ships waiting to unload their cargoes, and a few still seeking anchorage.

  It took them nearly three quarters of an hour, but finally Monk recognized Durban’s figure on the quayside above a flight of steps near Debtford Creek. Then he saw the police boat on the water just below, with two men at the oars and Orme standing in the stern.

  “Over there!” Monk told his own boatman. The raw edge to his voice gave it all the urgency he needed. “How much?”

  “A shilling,” the boatman replied instantly.

  Monk fished a shilling and threepence out of his pocket, and as soon as they pulled in to the steps he passed it over and stood up. Scuff stood up also. “No!” Monk swung around, all but losing his balance. “I’ll be all right now.”

  “Yer might need me!” Scuff argued. “I can do things.”

  There was no time to explain, or be gentle. “I know. I’ll find you when I have something for you to do. For now, keep out of the rozzers’ way!”

  Scuff sank back reluctantly and Monk leapt for the step and went on up without looking back.