by Anne Perry
“Oliver!” Hester said in disbelief.
Rathbone looked questioningly from one to another of them, then solely at Margaret.
“Come in,” Margaret invited him. “Have breakfast with us. It’s perfectly all right.” Then she smiled hugely as well. “We’ve beaten it!”
He did not hesitate an instant; he strode in and took her in his arms, hugging her just as all the others had, in a bewilderment of happiness.
Finally he turned to Hester. “You haven’t been home for over a week. I’ll take you now.” It was not a question.
She smiled at him, shaking her head. “Thank you, Oliver, but—”
“No,” he cut across her. “Margaret will stay here now; you must go home. Even if you don’t think you deserve it, Monk does.”
“I’ll go home,” she said meekly. “I’ll just go with Sutton, if you don’t mind.”
He hesitated only an instant. “Of course I don’t mind,” he replied. “Mr. Sutton deserves that honor.”
So Hester walked home beside Sutton, pulling the rat cart, smiling all the way. Snoot sat upright in the front, quivering with excitement at all the new sights and smells, and the infinite possibility of ratting ahead of him.
Sutton put down the cart in Fitzroy Street and turned to Hester.
“Thank you,” she said with profound sincerity. “That is far too small a word for what I feel, but I don’t know any large enough.” She offered him her hand.
He took it a little awkwardly. “Yer don’t need ter thank me, Miss ’Ester. We done well together.”
“Yes we did.” She shook his hand, then let it go and turned to walk up to the step. She would have to knock, or look for her key. She had thought Rathbone had said Monk was home, but perhaps she only wanted to believe that. How absurd it would be if he were not!
The door opened, as if Monk had been watching for her. He stood just inside the hall looking thin and ashen-faced, his eyes shining with joy so intense he could not speak.
Rathbone had planned this—she knew it now—but there was no time even to think of him. She walked straight into Monk’s arms and clung to him so fiercely she must have bruised his body. She felt him shudder, holding on to her with such passion he could scarcely breathe, his tears wetting her face.
It was the rat catcher who softly closed the door, leaving them alone.
FOURTEEN
Monk stood in the bedroom in the wan morning light looking at Hester still sleeping. He wanted to stay, simply to be as close to her as he could. He would like to wait until she woke, however long it was, and light the fire downstairs, regardless of expense. He would make the room warm for her, bring her whatever she wanted, tea, toast, go out in the rain and buy whatever else she would like and bring it back for her. Then when she was ready, talk about everything, tell her all that had mattered to him, and learn more than the few bare facts she had told him of her time in Portpool Lane. He wanted to hear the details, how she had felt in all the victories and the pain, so he could be closer to her.
Before that he had one more idea to pursue. He knew nothing about any of the missing crewmen except Hodge. He was apparently the only one married. It was perhaps intrusive to go to his widow now, but it was just possible that Hodge might have told her something about one of the missing men: a woman, a place, anything at all to help find them.
He went downstairs and cleaned out the grate, clumsily. It was not a job he was accustomed to doing, and at the end he found himself with rather more cleaning up to do than he had expected. Then he laid a new fire and lit it. When it was drawing nicely, he damped it down so it would last. He filled the coal buckets to the top and wrote a note for Hester, saying simply that he loved her. At any other time he would have thought it ridiculous, but today it was the most natural thing to do. He only became self-conscious after he had propped it up on the table and had gone as far as the door, coat collar turned up. He smiled for a moment, then went out into the wind and sleet.
He had no idea of Hodge’s widow’s address; Louvain’s office was the obvious place to ask. However, the surgeon or the morgue attendant might know, and he would far rather ask them. He had too much other business to address with Louvain: the death of his sisters, the whereabouts of his missing crew, and his own black rage with him for deliberately sending Ruth Clark to Hester, knowing she had plague, and to use it to manipulate Monk. He dared not even think of that; the raw emotion it woke in him robbed him of reason, of any kind of judgment. He wanted to beat Louvain with his own hands until he was a bloody pulp and too helpless even to ask for mercy. And that blind rage frightened him; it woke old memories of another rage which had ended in murder, and only by the grace of God had he not been guilty.
So instead he set out to look for the attendant at the morgue. He was walking along the Embankment when he heard a scampering of feet. The next moment Scuff’s voice was demanding to know what was the matter with him.
“In’t yer talkin’ ter me no more?”
Monk stopped, taken aback at how pleased he was to see him. “I was thinking,” he excused himself.
“Think that ’ard an’ you’ll walk straight inter the river,” Scuff said disgustedly. “Wot yer lookin’ fer now?”
Monk smiled at him. “How about a hot pie? Then I need to find where the widow of the man from the ship lives, the one who was killed.”
“Wot fell down the ’ole an broke ’is ’ead?” Scuff asked. “ ’Odge?”
“Yes.”
“ ’Ow yer gonna do that?”
“Ask the man at the morgue, where she came to see the body.”
Scuff gave an exaggerated shudder. “ ’e won’t tell yer. In’t none o’ yer business. But we could ask Crow. ’E’d find out for yer!” Now he was eager.
“Do you think so?”
“Yeah! C’mon. We’ll get a pie, eh?” Scuff looked acutely hopeful.
Monk did as was expected of him, with pleasure. Three quarters of an hour later they were walking back along the street towards the river, the wind in their faces. Crow was concocting a vivid and rather unlikely story in order to obtain the necessary information from the morgue attendant. He did not once ask Monk why he wanted it. He seemed to consider it some kind of professional courtesy.
They reached the morgue, and Monk and Scuff remained outside while Crow went in. He emerged fifteen minutes later, black hair flying in the wind, and a smile of triumph showing brilliant teeth. “Got it!” he said, waving a piece of paper in his hand.
Monk thanked him, took the paper and read it, then put it in his pocket.
“Now what?” Crow asked with interest.
“Now I treat you to the best pie I can afford and a hot cup of tea, then I go about my business and leave you to go about yours,” Monk replied with a smile.
“You’re almighty pleased with yourself,” Crow said suspiciously.
“Only half,” Monk replied with sudden honesty. “I’ve still got the rest to do. Do you want that pie or not?”
He treated them handsomely, but refused to allow either of them to go with him. Scuff objected strongly, insisting that Monk was not safe on his own and unquestionably needed someone to advise him and watch his back. While Monk reluctantly agreed with him, nevertheless he still would not allow him to come. With a show of suffering fortitude, Scuff finally resigned himself to going with Crow instead, just this once.
It took Monk little more than an hour to find the right small brick house. It was in the middle of a long row of exactly similar houses built back to back near the docks in Rotherhithe. When he knocked on the door she opened it and he recognized her immediately, as much for her resemblance to Newbolt as for his memory of her at the morgue.
“Yeah?” she said suspiciously. He knew she was trying to remember where she had seen him before.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hodge,” he said respectfully. “I am hoping that you can help me—”
“Can’t ’elp no one,” she replied without hesitation, beginning to close the door.
&n
bsp; “I should not be ungrateful for it.” He forced himself to smile at her. She was graceless and abrupt, but she must also be frightened, and whatever her relationship with her husband had been, she must still be raw from his loss and the implied disgrace that he had died of his own drunken carelessness. “I regret your loss, Mrs. Hodge,” he added quite genuinely. “It is a terrible thing when a husband or wife dies. I don’t think anyone else can comprehend it.”
“You lost someone?” she said with surprise.
“No, but I am fortunate. I very nearly did, and only late yesterday evening did I learn that she was all right.”
“Wot d’yer want?” she asked reluctantly. “I s’pose you’d better come in, but don’t get in my way! I in’t got all mornin’. Some of us ’as gotter work.” She pulled the door wider and turned to allow him to follow her into the small kitchen at the back. Seemingly it was the only warm room in the house. The black stove was burning and it gave off considerable heat—and a smell of soot and smoke that caught in his throat and made his eyes water. She seemed oblivious to it.
He looked around without having intended to. There was a stone sink, but no drain. That would be in the yard at the back, with the privy. Water would be collected from the nearest well or standing pump. There were wooden bins for flour or oats, several strings of onions hanging from the ceiling, and a sack of potatoes leaning against the wall, with two turnips and a large white cabbage beside it.
Two scuttles were nearly full of coal, and on the wall were hanging three very handsome copper pans.
She saw his glance. “I in’t sellin’ ’em,” she said tartly. “Wot is it yer want?”
“I was simply admiring your pans,” he told her. “It’s information I’m looking for.”
“I don’t grass!” It was a flat statement. “An’ before yer ask, they wasn’t stole. Me bruvver give ’em to me back in August. ’e bought ’em fair, at a shop up west. Could prove it!”
“I don’t doubt you, Mrs. Hodge,” he answered her. “Do you have several brothers?”
“Just the one. Why?”
“I suppose one like that is more than most people have,” he said, evading the answer. “The information I wanted has to do with the other men your husband served with on the Maude Idris. I wondered if you knew where any of them lived?”
“Lived?” she said in amazement. “ ’Ow the ’ell should I know? You think wi’ three kids I got time ter go around visitin’?”
“Only if they were close, a street or two away.”
“Maybe they are, but I dunno,” she replied. “Is that all?”
“Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
She frowned. “Why d’yer wanna know?”
He created the best lie he could think of. “Actually, it was the captain I wanted to find, but I’ll just have to keep looking. Thank you for your courtesy.”
She shrugged, not knowing how to reply.
He excused himself and went out into the street, his mind racing. He had the beginning of an idea, a wild, terrible possibility that explained everything.
He was bitterly cold by the time he crossed the river to the north bank again at Wapping Stairs and the River Police station. He found Durban looking tired and pale, sitting at his desk with a mug of hot tea in his hands.
He regarded Monk curiously, seeing the relief in him and not knowing what it was.
Monk walked across to the chair opposite him and sat down. “It’s all right at the clinic,” he said, unable to keep the emotion out of his voice. “No new cases in days, and it’s three weeks now since Hodge’s death. Hester came home last night.”
Durban smiled, a sweet, gentle expression. “I’m glad.” He stood up and walked over to the window, away from Monk.
“I know we haven’t finished with Louvain,” Monk conceded. “What he did to the people in the clinic was inhuman. So many died, and it could have been all of them. And if they hadn’t been prepared to sacrifice their own lives to stay there, the devastation could have been to all London, all England, and God only knows what beyond.”
Durban pursed his lips. “I think he knew who he was dealing with,” he answered. “Mrs. Monk’s reputation is not unknown. It was the best gamble he had, other than to kill Ruth Clark and bury her somewhere. I’m not surprised he couldn’t bring himself to do that, if she was actually his own mistress.” His voice dropped. “He wouldn’t be sure she had plague then; it was only a danger. She might simply have had pneumonia.”
“She wasn’t his mistress,” Monk replied. “She was his sister; her real name was Charity Bradshaw. She and her husband were coming back from Africa. He died at sea.”
Durban’s eyes widened. “I’m not surprised Louvain wanted her cared for, but he should have told Mrs. Monk what the illness could be. Although I daresay he believed she’d refuse her if she knew.”
“You think Clement Louvain, the hard man of the river, couldn’t kill his own sister if she carried the plague?” Monk asked, his voice grating with the dreadful irony of the idea now in his mind.
Durban blinked; his eyes were pink-rimmed with exhaustion. “Could you?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you have to try every last thing you could to save her?”
Monk brushed his hands over his face. For all his joy at Hester’s return, he too was physically drained. “If she was going to spread the disease, I don’t know. But Mercy Louvain went there to help in the clinic as a volunteer.”
“To nurse her sister?” Durban’s face was gentle, his eyes shining. “What sublime devotion.”
“She went there to nurse her,” Monk replied. “But she killed her rather than let her leave carrying the plague with her.”
Durban stared at him in growing horror. He started to speak, then stopped, still incredulous. “Oh God!” he said at last. “I wish you hadn’t told me!”
“You can’t do anything,” Monk said, looking up at him. “If you could, I wouldn’t have said it. She’s dead, too.”
“Plague?” The word was a whisper, said with fierce, hurting pity; it seemed to be torn from somewhere deep inside him as if all his passion were in it.
Monk nodded. “They buried her properly.”
Durban turned his back to Monk, staring out of the small window, the cold light picking out the gray in his hair.
Now was the time Monk had to speak, no matter how preposterous, even if Durban thought him insane.
“I went to see Mrs. Hodge today.”
Durban was puzzled. “What for? Did you think she would know anything about the crew?” He smiled very slightly, hardly a movement of the lips. “Did you think I hadn’t thought of that?”
Monk was momentarily embarrassed, but the idea in him overrode everything else. “I’m sorry. Did you see the copper saucepans in the kitchen?”
“I didn’t go, Orme did.” Durban was frowning. “What about them? What does it matter? I can’t afford to care about petty theft now.” Again the fraction of a smile touched his mouth and disappeared.
“They weren’t stolen, so far as I know,” Monk answered. “She saw me looking at them and said her brother gave them to her.”
“I’m too tired to play games, Monk,” Durban said wearily. He looked gray-faced, close to collapse.
“I’m sorry,” Monk said quickly, and he meant it. He liked Durban as much as anyone he had known in years, more instinctively than he did Oliver Rathbone. “She told me she has only one brother and he gave them to her in August. She said she could prove that.”
Durban blinked, frowning harder. “She can’t! He was off the coast of Africa in August. Are you saying the Maude Idris was here then? Or that Newbolt wasn’t on her?”
“Not exactly either,” Monk said very quietly. “We checked the names of the crew.”
“Of course.”
“But not their appearances.”
Durban steadied himself, leaning back against the sill. “For God’s sake, what are you saying?” But the hideousness of it was already in his eyes
. He shook his head. “But they’re still there—on the ship!”
“You told your men to keep them there because it was typhoid,” Monk reminded him. “Maybe Louvain told them the same, or close enough?”
Durban rubbed his hand over his face like a man trying to dispel a nightmare. “Then we’d better find out. Can you use a pistol?”
“Of course,” Monk replied, with no idea whether he could or not.
Durban straightened up. “I’ll get Orme and half a dozen men, but I’m the only one going below.” He stared very levelly at Monk, his eyes seeming to look into his brain. “That is an order.” He did not elaborate but walked past him and through the outside office, calling for Orme as he went.
He gave his orders concisely and with a clarity no man could misunderstand, like a commander going into a last battle.
The rain had cleared away and the water was bright and choppy with a knife-edge wind blowing from the west when they rowed out.
Monk sat in the stern of the boat, cradling his loaded gun as they plied between the ships and the Maude Idris came clearly into view.
Durban sat in the bow, a little apart. He glanced at each of his men, then gave a barely discernible nod as they drew alongside and he stood up, balancing easily even in the pitching boat. He hailed the ship, and Newbolt’s head appeared over the railing.
“River Police!” Durban called out. “Coming aboard.”
Newbolt hesitated, then disappeared. The next moment the rope ladder came pitching over, uncurling to fall almost in Durban’s hands. He caught it and climbed up—it seemed to Monk, watching from below—less agilely than before.
Two of the River Police went up after him, Orme and another man, guns tucked in their belts, and lastly Monk, leaving only the oarsman in the boat. Monk climbed over the rail onto the deck where three River Police faced Newbolt and Atkinson. There was no sound except the whine of the wind in the rigging and the slap of water against the hull below them.
“What d’yer want this time?” Newbolt asked, staring sullenly at Durban. “None of us killed ’Odge, and none of us ’elped anyone take the bleedin’ ivory.”