Slaves of Obsession wm-11

by Anne Perry

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said with a smile. “Nothing to do with Daniel Alberton, poor man. I really want to know what happened … and to prove it.”

  He gave a little laugh, but he held her equally close.

  “I can’t forget the blackmail,” she went on. “I don’t believe its happening at the same time was just coincidence. That’s why he called you in. The blackmailer has never been back! Pirates don’t give up, do they?”

  “Alberton’s dead!”

  “I know that! But Casbolt isn’t! Why didn’t they pursue it with him? He also gave money and help to Gilmer.”

  They crossed the road and reached the pavement on the far side. They were still half a mile from home.

  “The ugliest answer to that is that they didn’t give up,” he replied. “We still don’t know what happened to the barge that went down the river, who took it, or what was on it. Certainly something went from Tooley Street; there are five hundred guns not accounted for … the exact amount demanded by the pirates.”

  “You think Alberton sold them after all?” she asked very quietly. It was the thought she had been trying to avoid for several days. The tension of the trial had allowed her to; now it could no longer be held away. “Why would he do that? Judith would loathe it.”

  “Presumably he never intended her to know … or Casbolt either.”

  “But why?” she insisted. “Five hundred guns … what would they be worth?”

  “About one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five pounds,” he answered. He had no need to add that that was a small fortune.

  “You looked at his company books,” she reminded him. “Could he possibly have needed that much?”

  “No. He was doing well. Up and down, of course, but overall it was very profitable.”

  “Down? You mean times when no one wanted to buy guns?” she said skeptically.

  “They dealt in other things as well, timbers and machinery particularly. But I wasn’t thinking of that. Guns were the main profit makers, but also the only bad loss.” They reached the curb. He hesitated, looked, then crossed. They were close to Fitzroy Street now. “Do you remember the Third China War you said Judith told you about the first night at the Albertons’ home?”

  “Over the ship and the French missionary?”

  “Not that one, the one after … only last year.”

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “It seems they sold some guns to the Chinese just before that, and because of the hostilities they were never paid. It wasn’t a large amount, and they made it up within a few months. But that was the only bad deal. He didn’t need to sell to pirates. Trace had paid him thirteen thousand pounds on account for the guns Breeland took, which, of course, will need to be paid back. Breeland says he paid the full price, around twenty-two thousand five hundred pounds. And there’s the ammunition as well, which would be over one thousand four hundred pounds. The profit on all that would be a fortune.” He shook his head a little. “I can’t see why he should feel compelled to sell another one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five pounds’ worth of guns to pirates.”

  “Nor can I,” she agreed. “So where are they? And who killed Alberton, and who went down the river? And for that matter, where is Walter Shearer?”

  “I don’t know,” Monk admitted. “But I intend to find out.”

  “Good,” she said softly, turning the corner into Fitzroy Street. “We have to know.”

  In the morning Monk woke early and left without disturbing Hester. The sooner he started the sooner he might find some thread that would lead to the truth. As he walked towards Tottenham Court Road past the fruit and vegetable wagons heading for the market, he wondered if perhaps he already had that thread but had failed to recognize it. He rehearsed all he knew, going over it again in his mind, detail by detail, as he rode in a hansom across the river, ready to begin again the journey down to Bugsby’s Marshes.

  This time he did the trip hastily, concentrating more on the description of the barge, any distinguishing marks or characteristics it might have had. If it had returned even part of the way, surely someone must have seen it?

  It took him all morning to get as far as Greenwich, but he learned a little about the barge. It was large and yet still so heavily laden it rode almost dangerously low in the water. One or two men who were used to working on the river had noticed it for precisely that reason. They described the dimensions very roughly, but in the dark, even had there been any other distinguishing marks, no one saw them.

  From Morden Wharf, beyond Greenwich, he went by boat back across the river and up a little to Cubitt Tower Pier and then by road again past the Blackwall entrance to West India South Dock, still asking about the barge. He stopped for a tankard of cider at the Artichoke Tavern, but no one remembered the night of the Tooley Street murders anymore. It was too long ago now.

  He went increasingly despondently to the Blackwall Stairs, where he had a long conversation with a waterman who was busy splicing a rope, working with gnarled fingers and a skill at weaving and pulling with the iron spike which in its way was as beautiful as a woman making lace. It pleased Monk to watch, bringing back some faint memory of a long-distant past, an age of childhood by northern beaches, the smell of salt and the music of Northumbrian voices, a time he could not fully recall anymore, except like bright patches of sunlight on a dark landscape.

  “A big barge,” the waterman said thoughtfully. “Yeah, I ’member the Tooley Street murders. Bad thing, that. Pity they in’t got ’oo done it. But then I don’t like guns neither. Guns are fer soldiers an’ armies an’ the like. Only bring trouble anywhere else.”

  “The ones for the Union army seem to have gone by train to Liverpool,” Monk replied. Not that it mattered now, and certainly not to the waterman.

  “Yeah.” The man wove the unraveled end of the rope into the main length and took out his knife to tidy off the last threads. “Mebbe.”

  “They did,” Monk assured him.

  “You see ’em?” The waterman raised his eyebrows.

  “No … but they got there … to Washington, I mean.”

  The waterman made no comment.

  “But there were others,” Monk went on, narrowing his eyes against the sunlight off the river. They were directly across from the gray-brown stretch of Bugsby’s Marshes and the curve of Blackwall Point, beyond which he could not see. “Something came down on that barge. What I don’t know is where those boxes went, and where the barge went to after it was unloaded.”

  “There’s plenty of illegal stuff goes back and forward around ’ere,” the waterman ventured. “Small stuff, mostly, and farther down towards the Estuary, ’specially beyond the Woolwich Arsenal an’ the docks on this side. Down Gallion’s Reach, or Barking Way and on.”

  “It couldn’t have got that far in the time,” Monk replied.

  “Mebbe it waited somewhere?” The waterman finished his work and surveyed it carefully. He was apparently satisfied, because he set it down and put away his knife and hook. “Margaret Ness, or Cross Ness, p’raps?”

  “Any way I could find out?”

  “Not as I can think of. You could try askin’, if there’s anybody ’round. Wanter go?”

  Monk had nothing else left to try. He accepted, climbing into the boat with practiced balance and sitting easily in the stern.

  Out on the water the air was cooler and the faint breeze on the moving tide carried the smell of salt and fish and mud banks.

  “Go down towards the Blackwall Point,” Monk directed. “Do you think there’s enough cover there to conceal a seagoing ship, one big enough to cross the Atlantic?”

  “Well now, that’s a good question,” the waterman said thoughtfully. “Depends where, like.”

  “Why? What difference does it make?” Monk asked.

  “Well, some places a ship’d stand out like a sore thumb. See it a mile off, masts’d be plain as day. Other places there’s the odd wreck, f
or example, an’ ’oo’d notice an extra spar or two? For a while, leastways.”

  Monk sat forward eagerly. “Then go past all the places. Let’s see what the draft is and where a ship could lie up,” he urged.

  The waterman obeyed, leaning his weight against the oars and digging them deep. “Not that it’ll prove anything, mind,” he warned. “ ’Less, o’ course, yer find someone ’as seen it. It’s going back, now. Must be two months or more.”

  “I’ll try,” Monk insisted.

  “Right.” The waterman heaved hard and they picked up speed, even against the tide.

  They moved around the wide curve of the Blackwall Reach as far as the Point, Monk staring at the muddy shore with its low reeds, and here and there the occasional driftwood floating, old mooring posts sticking above the tide like rotted teeth. Mudflats shone in the low sun, patches of green weed, and now and then part of a wreck settling lower and lower into the mire.

  Beyond the Blackwall Point were the remains of two or three ancient barges. It was difficult to tell what they had been originally; too little was visible now. It might have been one barge, broken by tides and currents, or it might have been two. Other odd planks and boards had drifted up and stuck at angles in the mud. It was a dismal sight, the falling and decaying of what had once been gracious and useful.

  The waterman rested on his oars, his face creased in a frown.

  “What is it?” Monk asked. “Isn’t this too shallow a lane for an oceangoing ship? It would have to stand far out, or risk going aground. It can’t have been here. What about farther down?”

  The waterman did not answer, seemingly lost in contemplation of the shore.

  Monk grew impatient. “What about farther down?” he repeated. “It’s too shallow here.”

  “Yeah,” the waterman agreed. “Just tryin’ ter ’member summink. There’s summink I seen ’ere, ’round about that time. Can’t think on what.”

  “A ship?” Monk said doubtfully. It was more of a denial than a question.

  A yard-long board drifted past them towards the shore, submerged an inch or two below the surface of the water, one end jagged.

  “What kind of a thing?” Monk said impatiently.

  Another piece of flotsam bumped against the boat.

  “More wrecks than that,” the waterman answered, gesturing towards the shore. “Looks different. But why would anyone go an’ move a wreck from ’ere? Ain’t worth nothin’ now. Wood’s too rotten even ter burn. Ain’t good for nothin’ ’cept gettin’ in the way.”

  “Another …” Monk started, then as his eye caught the jetsam drifting away, an extraordinary thought occurred to him-daring, outrageous, almost unprovable, but which would explain everything.

  “Is there anybody else who would know?” His voice was surprisingly hoarse when he spoke, urgency making it raw.

  The waterman looked at him with amazement, catching the sharp edge of emotion without understanding it.

  “I could ask. Ol’ Jeremiah Spatts might a’ seen summink. Not much as gets by ’im. ’E lives over t’other side, but ’e’s always up an’ down. Mind yer’ll ’ave ter be careful ’ow yer asks. ’E’s no time fer the law.”

  “You ask him.” Monk fished in his pocket and pulled out two half crowns and held them in his open palm. “Get me a careful, honest answer.”

  “I’ll do that,” the waterman agreed. “Don’ need yer money, jus’ wanner know what yer guessed. Tell me the story.”

  Monk told him, and gave him the half crowns anyway.

  That evening Monk called upon Philo Trace, and fortunately found him in his lodgings. He did not ask him why he was still in London, whether it was in the hope of purchasing guns for the Confederacy or only because he was loath to leave because of his feelings for Judith Alberton. The trial was over; he had no legal or moral duty to remain.

  He recalled Trace’s having mentioned diving in the Confederate navy, and he needed to speak to him about it now, urgently.

  “Diving!” Trace said in disbelief. “Where? What for?”

  Explaining his reasons, and briefly what he had seen, Monk told him why.

  “You can’t go alone,” Trace agreed the moment Monk was finished. “It’s dangerous. I’ll come with you. We’ll have to get suits. Have you ever dived before?”

  “No, but I’ll have to learn as I do it,” Monk answered, realizing how brash it sounded even as he spoke. But he had no alternative. He could not send anyone else, and the look in Trace’s eyes betrayed that he knew that. He did not argue.

  “Then I’d better explain some of the dangers and sensations you may feel, for your own safety,” he warned. “There must be divers somewhere along the river, for salvage at least, and to mend wharfs and so on.”

  “There are,” Monk agreed. “The waterman told me. I’ve already made enquiries. We can hire equipment and men to assist us from Messrs. Heinke. They are submarine engineers in Great Portland Street.”

  “Good.” Trace nodded. “Then I’m ready when you wish.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Certainly.”

  Monk had told Hester of the idea that had come to him on the river, and of his plan to take Philo Trace and dive beneath the Thames at Blackwall Point. Of course she had asked him about it in minute detail, and he answered only with assurances of his safety, and generalities as to how that was going to be assured, and what he expected to find.

  The next afternoon just before two o’clock he left, saying he would meet with Philo Trace and the men from Messrs. Heinke at the river, and would return either when he had discovered something or when the rising tide made further work impossible. She was obliged to be content with that. There was no possibility whatever of her accompanying him. She knew from the look on his face that pressing the issue would gain her nothing at all.

  Monk found the entire experience of diving extraordinary-and terrifying. He met Trace at the wharf where they were to be fitted out with all they would need for the proposed venture. Until this point Monk had been concentrating on what he expected to find on the bottom of the river, and what he would learn from it, if they were successful. Now, suddenly, the reality of what he was going to do overwhelmed him.

  “Are you all right?” Trace asked, his face shadowed with anxiety.

  They were side by side on the vast wooden timbers of the wharf, the gray-brown water opaque, twenty feet below them, sucking and sliding gently, smelling of salt, mud and that peculiar sour odor of receding tide which left behind it the refuse of the teeming life on either side of it. It was so turgid with scraped-up silt it could have been a foot deep, or a mile. Anything more than a foot beneath the surface was already invisible. It was just before ebb tide turned to flood, the best time for diving, when the currents are least powerful and the visibility of the incoming salt water offered almost a foot of sight.

  Monk found himself shivering.

  “Right, sir!” a thin man with grizzled hair said cheerfully. “Let’s be ’avin’ yer.” He eyed Monk up and down with moderate approval. “Not too fat, anyway. Like ’em leaner, but you’ll do.”

  Monk stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “Fat divers in’t no good,” the man said, whistling between his teeth. “Can’t take the pressure down deep. Their ’ealth goes an’ they’re finished. Off with yer clothes, then. No time ter stand abaht!”

  “What?”

  “Off with yer clothes,” the man repeated patiently. “Yer don’t think yer was goin’ down dressed up like that, did yer? ’Oo’d yer think yer’ll see down there, then? The flippin’ Queen?”

  Another man had arrived ready to assist, and Monk looked across and saw that Trace was also being undressed and redressed by a cheerful man who was wearing a thick sweater in spite of the warm August morning.

  Obediently he stripped off his outer clothes, leaving only his underwear. He was handed two pairs of long, white woolen stockings, then a thick shirt of the same material, then flannel knee breeches which had the effec
t of keeping the other garments together. They were suffocatingly hot. He had little time to imagine the ludicrous figure he must cut, but seeing Trace he knew he would appear much the same.

  His dresser produced a cap of red wool and placed it on his head, adjusting it as carefully as if it had been an object of high fashion.

  A string of barges moved past them, men staring interestedly, wondering what was happening, what they would be looking for, or if it was only a matter of shoring up a falling wall or broken pier stake.

  “Watch yerself!” Monk’s dresser warned. “Keep that straight, just like I put it! Get yer air ’ose blocked up an’ we’ll be pulling yer up dead, an’ all! Now yer’d best be gettin’ down them steps onter the barge. No need ter put the rest o’ yer suit on yet. It’s mortal ’eavy, specially w’en yer in’t used ter it. Watch yerself!” This last was directed to Monk when he took a step in his stockinged feet perilously close to an upstanding nail.

  Trace followed after him down the long ladder to the low boat which was bumping up against the wharf. It was already occupied by a wonderful array of pumps, wheels, coils of rubber hose and ropes.

  Normally, Monk would have kept his balance easily in the faintly rocking boat, but he was tense and uncharacteristically awkward. It flashed into his mind to wonder what they would think of him if they found nothing. And who would pay him for this expedition?

  Trace was looking grim, but his fine features were composed. At least outwardly he felt no misgivings. Had he believed Monk’s extraordinary story?

  The three men who had dressed them and helped so far put their backs against the oars and pulled away from the wharf, then began to swing wide and go downstream with the outgoing tide, towards Bugsby’s Marshes and beyond. No one spoke. There was no sound but the creak of the oars in the oarlocks and the splash and dip of the water.

  The sky was half overcast from the smoke of thousands of chimneys in the dock areas on the north side. Masts and cranes showed black against the haze. Ahead of them lay the ugly flats of the marshes. He had already told them as nearly as he could where they wished to begin the search. It was only approximate, and he became increasingly aware of just how huge the area was as they approached the Point, and the wreck he had seen on his earlier trip.