The William Monk Mysteries

by Anne Perry

  “It’s a good time to do that. I’ll see you here tomorrow morning.”

  Evan went home and changed his clothes before assaying on the journey to find his hard-won contacts on the fringes of the criminal underworld. His present rather respectable, trim-fitting coat and clean shirt might be taken for the garb of a confidence trickster, but far more likely the genuine clothes of a socially aspiring clerk or minor tradesman.

  When he left his lodgings an hour after speaking to Monk, he looked entirely different. His fair brown hair with its wide wave was pulled through with grease and a little dirt, his face was similarly marred, he wore an old shirt without a collar and a jacket that hung off his lean shoulders. He also had for the occasion a pair of boots he had salvaged from a beggar who had found better. They rubbed his feet, but an extra pair of socks made them adequate for walking in, and thus attired he set off for the Grinning Rat in Pudding Lane, and an evening of cider, eel pie and listening.

  There was an enormous variety of public houses in London, from the large, highly respectable ones which catered banquets for the well-bred and well-financed; through the comfortable, less ostentatious ones which served as meeting and business places for all manner of professions from lawyers and medical students, actors and would-be politicians; down through those that were embryo music halls, gathering spots for reformers and agitators and pamphleteers, street corner philosophers and working men’s movements; right down to those that were filled with gamblers, opportunists, drunkards and the fringes of the criminal world. The Grinning Rat belonged to the last order, which was why Evan had chosen it several years ago; and he was now, if not liked there, at least tolerated.

  From outside in the street he could see the lights gleaming through the windows across the dirty pavement and the gutter. Half a dozen men and several women lounged around outside the doorway, all dressed in colors so dark and drab with wear they seemed only a variation of densities in the barred light filtering out. Even when someone opened the door in a gale of laughter and a man and woman staggered down the steps, arm in arm, nothing showed but browns and duns and a flicker of dull red. The man backed away, and a woman half sitting in the gutter shouted something lewd after them. They ignored her and disappeared up Pudding Lane towards East Cheap.

  Evan ignored her likewise and went inside to the warmth and the babble and the smell of ale and sawdust and smoke. He jostled his way past a group of men playing dice and another boasting the merits of fighting dogs, a temperance believer crying his creed in vain, and an ex-pugilist, his battered face good-natured and bleary-eyed.

  “’Evening, Tom,” he said pleasantly.

  “’Evenin’,” the pugilist said benignly, knowing the face was familiar but unable to recall a name for it.

  “Seen Willie Durkins?” Evan asked casually. He saw the man’s nearly empty mug. “I’m having a pint of cider—can I get you one?”

  Tom did not hesitate but nodded cheerfully and drank the last of his ale so his mug was suitably empty.

  Evan took it, made his way to the bar and purchased two ciders, passing the time of evening with the bartender who fetched him his mug from among the many swinging on hooks above his head. Each regular customer had his own mug. Evan returned to where Tom was waiting hopefully and passed him his cider, and when Tom had drunk half of it, with a huge thirst, Evan began his unobtrusive inquiry.

  “Seen Willie?” he said again.

  “Not tonight, sir.” Tom added the “sir” by way of acknowledging the pint. He still could not think of a name. “Wot was yer wantin’ ’im fer? Mebbe I can ’elp?”

  “Want to warn him,” Evan lied, not watching Tom’s face but looking down into his mug.

  “Wot abaht?”

  “Bad business up west,” Evan answered. “Got to find somebody for it, and I know Willie.” He looked up suddenly and smiled, a lovely dazzling gesture, full of innocence and good humor. “I don’t want him put away—I’d miss him.”

  Tom gurgled his appreciation. He was not absolutely sure, but he rather thought this agreeable young fellow might be either a rozzer or someone who fed the rozzers judicious bits of information. He would not be above doing that himself, if he had any—for a reasonable consideration, of course. Nothing about ordinary thievery, which was a way of life, but about strangers on the patch, or nasty things that were likely to bring a lot of unwelcome police attention, like murders, or arson, or major forgery, which always upset important gents up in the City. It made things hard for the small business of local burglary, street robbery, petty forgery of money and legal letters or papers. It was difficult to fence stolen goods with too many police about, or sell illegal liquors. Small-time smuggling up the river suffered—and gambling, card sharping, petty fraud and confidence tricks connected with sport, bare knuckle pugilism, and of course prostitution. Had Evan asked about any of these Tom would have been affronted and told him so. The underworld conducted these types of business all the time, and no one expected to root them out.

  But there were things one did not do. It was foolish, and very inconsiderate to those who had their living to make with as little disturbance as possible.

  “Wot bad business is that, sir?”

  “Murder,” Evan replied seriously. “Very important man’s daughter, stabbed in her own bedroom, by a burglar. Stupid—”

  “I never ’eard.” Tom was indignant. “W’en was that, then? Nobody said!”

  “Last night,” Evan answered, drinking more of his cider. Somewhere over to their left there was a roar of laughter and someone shouted the odds against a certain horse winning a race.

  “I never ’eard,” Tom repeated dolefully. “Wot ’e want ter go an’ do that fer? Stupid, I calls it. W’y kill a lady? Knock ’er one, if yer ’ave ter, like if she wakes up and starts ter ’oller. But it’s a daft geezer wot makes enough row ter wake people anyway.”

  “And stabbing.” Evan shook his head. “Why couldn’t he hit her, as you said. Needn’t have killed her. Now half the top police in the West End will be all over the place!” A total exaggeration, at least so far, but it served his purpose. “More cider?”

  Again Tom indicated his reply by shoving his mug over wordlessly, and Evan rose to oblige.

  “Willie wouldn’t do anything like that,” Tom said when Evan returned. “’E in’t stupid.”

  “If I thought he had I wouldn’t want to warn him,” Evan answered. “I’d let him swing.”

  “Yeah,” Tom agreed gloomily. “But w’en, eh? Not before the crushers ’as bin all over the place, an’ everybody’s bin upset and business ruined for all sorts!”

  “Exactly.” Evan hid his face in his mug. “So where’s Willie?”

  This time Tom did not equivocate. “Mincing Lane,” he said dourly. “If’n yer wait there an hour or so ’e’ll come by the pie stand there some time ternight. An’ I daresay if’n yer tells ’im abaht this ’e’ll be grateful, like.” He knew Evan, whoever he was, would want something in return. That was the way of life.

  “Thank you.” Evan left his mug half empty; Tom would be only too pleased to finish it for him. “I daresay I’ll try that. G’night.”

  “G’night.” Tom appropriated the half mug before any over-zealous barman could remove it.

  Evan went out into the rapidly chilling evening and walked briskly, collar turned up, looking neither to right nor left, until he turned into Mincing Lane and past the groups of idlers huddled in doorways. He found the eel pie seller with his barrow, a thin man with a stovepipe hat askew on his head, an apron around his waist, and a delicious smell issuing from the inside of containers balanced in front of him.

  Evan bought a pie and ate it with enjoyment, the hot pastry crunching and flaking and the eel flesh delicate on his tongue.

  “Seen Willie Durkins?” he said presently.

  “Not ternight.” The man was careful: it did not do to give information for nothing, and without knowing to whom.

  Evan had no idea whether to believe him
or not, but he had no better plan, and he settled back in the shadows, chilly and bored, and waited. A street patterer came by, singing a ballad about a current scandal involving a clergyman who had seduced a schoolmistress and then abandoned her and her child. Evan recalled the case in the sensational press a few months ago, but this version was much more colorful, and in less than fifteen minutes the patterer, and the eel stand, had collected a dozen or more customers, all of whom bought pies and stood around to listen. For which service the patterer got his supper free—and a good audience.

  A narrow man with a cheerful face came out of the gloom to the south and bought himself a pie, which he ate with evident enjoyment, then bought a second and treated a scruffy child to it with evident pleasure.

  “Good night then, Tosher?” the pie man asked knowingly.

  “Best this month,” Tosher replied. “Found a gold watch! Don’t get many o’ them.”

  The pie man laughed. “Some flash gent’ll be cursin’ ’is luck!” He grinned. “Shame-eh?”

  “Oh, terrible shame,” Tosher agreed with a chuckle.

  Evan knew enough of street life to understand. “Tosher” was the name for men who searched the sewers for lost articles. As far as he was concerned, they, and the mudlarks along the river, were more than welcome to what they found; it was hard won enough.

  Other people came and went: costers, off duty at last; a cab driver; a couple of boatmen up from the river steps; a prostitute; and then, when Evan was stiff with cold and lack of movement and about to give up, Willie Durkins.

  He recognized Evan after only a brief glance, and his round face became careful.

  “’Allo, Mr. Evan. Wot you want, then? This in’t your patch.”

  Evan did not bother to lie; it would serve no purpose and evidence bad faith.

  “Last night’s murder up west, in Queen Anne Street.”

  “Wot murder was that?” Willie was confused, and it showed in his guarded expression, narrowed eyes, a trifle squinting in the streetlight over the pie stall.

  “Sir Basil Moidore’s daughter, stabbed in her own bedroom—by a burglar.”

  “Go on—Basil Moidore, eh?” Willie looked dubious. “’E must be worth a mint, but ’is ’ouse’d be crawlin’ with servants! Wot cracksman ’d do that? It’s fair stupid! Damn fool!”

  “Best get it sorted.” Evan pushed out his lip and shook his head a little.

  “Dunno nuffin’,” Willie denied out of habit.

  “Maybe. But you know the house thieves who work that area,” Evan argued.

  “It wouldn’t be one o’ them,” Willie said quickly.

  Evan pulled a face. “And of course they wouldn’t know a stranger on the patch,” he said sarcastically.

  Willie squinted at him, considering. Evan looked gullible; his was a dreamer’s face; it should have belonged to a gentleman, not a sergeant in the rozzers. Nothing like Monk; now there was someone not to mess about with, an ambitious man with a devious mind and a hard tongue. You knew from the set of his bones and the gray eyes that never wavered that it would be dangerous to play games with him.

  “Sir Basil Moidore’s daughter,” Evan said almost to himself. “They’ll hang someone—have to. Shake up a lot of people before they find the right man—if it becomes necessary.”

  “O’right!” Willie said grudgingly. “O’right! Chinese Paddy was up there last night. ’E din’t do nothin’—din’t ’ave the chance, so yer can’t bust ’im. Clean as a w’istle, ’e is. But ask ’im. If ’e can’t ’elp yer, then no one can. Now let me be—yer’ll gimme a bad name, ’anging ’round ‘ere wi’ the likes o’ you.”

  “Where do I find Chinese Paddy?” Evan caught hold of the man’s arm, fingers hard till Willie squeaked.

  “Leggo o’ me! Wanna break me arm?”

  Evan tightened his grip.

  “Dark ’Ouse Lane, Billingsgate—termorrer mornin’, w’en the market opens. Yer’ll know ’im easy, ’e’s got black ‘air like a chimney brush, an’ eyes like a Chinaman. Now le’ go o’ me!”

  Evan obliged, and in a minute Willie disappeared down Mincing Lane towards the river and the ferry steps.

  Evan went straight home to his rooms, washed off the worst surface dirt in a bowl of tepid water, and slipped into bed.

  At five in the morning he rose again, put on the same clothes and crept out of the house and took a series of public omnibuses to Billingsgate, and by quarter past six in the dawn light he was in the crush of costers’ barrows, fishmongers’ high carts and dray wagons at the entrance to Dark House Lane itself. It was so narrow that the houses reared up like cliff walls on either side, the advertisement boards for fresh ice actually stretching across from one side to the other. Along both sides were stacked mountains of fresh, wet, slithering fish of every description, piled on benches, and behind them stood the salesmen crying their wares, white aprons gleaming like the fish bellies, and white hats pale against the dark stones behind them.

  A fish porter with a basket full of haddock on his head could barely squeeze past the double row of shoppers crowding the thin passageway down the middle. At the far end Evan could just see the tangled rigging of oyster boats on the water and the occasional red worsted cap of a sailor.

  The smell was overpowering; red herrings, every kind of white fish from sprats to turbot, lobsters, whelks, and over all a salty, seaweedy odor as if one were actually on a beach. It brought back a sudden jolt of childhood excursions to the sea, the coldness of the water and the sight of a crab running sideways across the sand.

  But this was utterly different. All around him was not the soft slurp of the waves but the cacophony of a hundred voices: “Ye-o-o! Ye-o-o! ’Ere’s yer fine Yarmouth bloaters! Whiting! Turbot—all alive! Beautiful lobsters! Fine cock crabs—alive O! Splendid skate—alive—all cheap! Best in the market! Fresh ’addock! Nice glass o’ peppermint this cold morning! Ha’penny a glass! ’Ere yer are, sir! Currant and meat puddings, a ha’penny each! ’Ere ma’am! Smelt! Finny ’addock! Plaice—all alive O. Whelks—mussels—now or never! Shrimps! Eels! Flounder! Winkles! Waterproof capes—a shilling apiece! Keep out the wet!”

  And a news vendor cried out: “I sell food for the mind! Come an’ read all abaht it! Terrible murder in Queen Anne Street! Lord’s daughter stabbed ter death in ’er bed!”

  Evan pushed his way slowly through the crowd of costers, fishmongers and housewives till he saw a brawny fish seller with a distinctly Oriental appearance.

  “Are you Chinese Paddy?” he asked as discreetly as he could above the babble and still be heard.

  “Sure I am. Will you be wantin’ some nice fresh cod, now? Best in the market!”

  “I want some information. It’ll cost you nothing, and I’m prepared to pay for it—if it’s right,” Evan replied, standing very upright and looking at the fish as if he were considering buying it.

  “And why would I be selling information at a fish market, mister? What is it you want to know—times o’ the tides, is it?” Chinese Paddy raised his straight black eyebrows sarcastically. “I don’t know you—”

  “Metropolitan police,” Evan said quietly. “Your name was given me by a very reliable fellow I know—down in Pudding Lane. Now do I have to do this in an unpleasant fashion, or can we trade like gentlemen, and you can stay here selling your fish when I leave and go about my business?” He said it courteously, but just once he looked up and met Chinese Paddy’s eyes in a hard, straight stare.

  Paddy hesitated.

  “The alternative is I arrest you and take you to Mr. Monk and he can ask you again.” Evan knew Monk’s reputation, even though Monk himself was still learning it.

  Paddy made his decision.

  “What is it you’re wanting to know?”

  “The murder in Queen Anne Street. You were up there last night-”

  “’Ere—fresh fish—fine cod!” Paddy called out. “So I was,” he went on in a quiet, hard tone. “But I never stole nuffin’, an’ I sure as death and the bail
iffs never killed that woman!” Ignoring Evan for a moment, he sold three large cod to a woman and took a shilling and sixpence.

  “I know that,” Evan agreed. “But I want to know what you saw!”

  “A bleedin’ rozzer goin’ up ’Arley Street an’ down Wimpole Street every twenty minutes reg’lar,” Paddy replied, looking one moment at his fish, and the next at the crowd as it passed. “You’re ruinin’ me trade, mister! People is wonderin’ why you don’t buy!”

  “What else?” Evan pressed. “The sooner you tell me, the sooner I’ll buy a fish and be gone.”

  “A quack coming to the third ’ouse up on ’Arley Street, an’ a maid out on the tiles with ’er follower. The place was like bleedin’ Piccadilly! I never got a chance to do anything.”

  “Which house did you come for?” Evan asked, picking up a fish and examining it.

  “Corner o’ Queen Anne Street and Wimpole Street, south-west corner.”

  “And where were you waiting, exactly?” Evan felt a curious prickle of apprehension, a kind of excitement and horror at once. “And what time?”

  “’Alf the ruddy night!” Paddy said indignantly. “From ten o’clock till near four. Welbeck Street end o’ Queen Anne Street. That way I could see the ’ole length o’ Queen Anne Street right down to Chandos Street. Bit of a party goin’ on t’other end-footmen all over the place.”

  “Why didn’t you pack up and go somewhere else? Why stick around there all night if it was so busy?”

  “’Ere, fresh cod—all alive—best in the market!” Paddy called over Evan’s head. “Ere missus! Right it is—that’ll be one and eight pence—there y’are.” His voice dropped again. “Because I ’ad the layout of a good place, o’ course—an’ I don’t go in unprepared. I in’t a bleedin’ amacher. I kept thinkin’ they’d go. But that perishin’ maid was ’alf the night in the areaway like a damn cat. No morals at all.”

  “So who came and went up Queen Anne Street?” Evan could hardly keep the anticipation out of his voice. Whoever killed Octavia Haslett had not passed the footmen and coachmen at the other end, nor climbed over from the mews—he must have come this way, and if Chinese Paddy was telling the truth, he must have seen him. A thin shiver of excitement rippled through Evan.