A Sunless Sea

by Anne Perry

  “Commissioner Appleford,” Coniston began smoothly, “I believe the tragic death of Joel Lambourn was referred from regular police inquiry, up to your command. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, it is.” Appleford was of average height, slim although running very slightly to fat around the waist. His light brown hair was thinning drastically, but he was smart and appeared very confident, as if he were here only to be helpful and clear up difficulties lesser men might find beyond them.

  “Why was it not left to the superintendent of the nearest police station? That would be Mr. Runcorn, at Blackheath, would it not?” Coniston said with every appearance of being casual.

  “Mr. Runcorn did deal with the first evidence,” Appleford replied with a slight smile. “When it was realized that the dead man was Joel Lambourn, a fine man, an excellent scientist, who had had some recent …” He hesitated, as if looking for a suitably delicate word. “Emotional distress,” he continued. “Her Majesty’s Government wished to be discreet about as much of his personal affairs as was possible, without any perversion of the law. There was no way to avoid admitting that his death was suicide, but the more immediate facts were not made public. There was no purpose to be served, and his family could be protected. It seemed a merciful thing to do for a man who had served his country so well.”

  “Indeed.” Coniston bowed his head, then looked up again. “Was anything pertinent concealed from the law? I mean was there any possible question whatever that his death might not have been self-inflicted?”

  “None at all,” Appleford replied. “He took opium, quite a heavy dose, presumably to deaden the pain, and then slit his wrists.”

  “Thank you, Commissioner.” Coniston turned to Rathbone. “Sir Oliver?”

  Rathbone knew even before he began that he would achieve nothing with Appleford. But he refused to be cowed into not trying.

  “Is it particularly painful, slitting one’s wrists?” he asked. “I mean sufficiently so that one requires opium to bear it?”

  “I have no idea!” Appleford said with a touch of sarcasm.

  “I apologize,” Rathbone said, with an equally cutting edge to his voice. “I thought you had been called upon as an expert, more so than Superintendent Runcorn. Is that not the case?”

  “I was called in to take on the responsibility of keeping the matter discreet,” Appleford snapped. “That was not within Runcorn’s power.”

  “Apparently not,” Rathbone agreed. “Yet every man and his dog seems to know that Joel Lambourn was profoundly discredited and, in despair because of it, he committed suicide in Greenwich Park. It did happen in Greenwich Park, didn’t it? Or is that where the discretion comes in?”

  Coniston stood up, exasperation clear in his face and his manner. “My lord, Sir Oliver is simply trying to embarrass the witness because he has no useful questions to ask him. May we not, in decency, leave Dr. Lambourn’s final tragedy in the little privacy it has left? It has no bearing on Zenia Gadney’s murder.”

  Rathbone swung around. “Has it not? Then it appears you have been given a great deal of information about it that I have not. Your whole prosecution rests on the fact that you believe Mrs. Lambourn killed Zenia Gadney over something to do with Dr. Lambourn.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “Are you suggesting some other connection between the two women, one of whom is a highly respected doctor’s widow in Greenwich, the other a middle-aged prostitute across the river in Limehouse?”

  “Of course he is the connection!” Coniston said with some heat. “But his life, not his death.”

  “Are they totally separate matters?” Rathbone asked incredulously.

  There were several rustles of movement in the gallery as people craned forward, afraid of missing something.

  In the jury box the members looked from side to side, and then up at the judge.

  “Yes,” Coniston said boldly. “Insofar as the professional despair that caused his suicide was completely separate from the domestic jealousy that caused his wife to murder Mrs. Gadney.” He too looked up to the judge. “My lord, the defense is seeking to muddy the case by raising issues that considerably precede Mrs. Gadney’s murder and have nothing to do with it. Mrs. Lambourn had no involvement in her husband’s work for the government; therefore it cannot have had anything to do with the murder of Zenia Gadney.”

  Rathbone rose to protest. The conclusion was totally unwarranted.

  “My lord—”

  “Your point is very well taken, Mr. Coniston,” Pendock cut across him. “Sir Oliver, if you have no relevant questions to ask Commissioner Appleford, the court excuses him, and we will proceed to the next witness. If you please, Mr. Coniston?”

  Rathbone sat down feeling as if he had been crushed by a weight he should have seen falling on him, and yet he had not. He had no idea where he could turn next. The ruling was unfair, and yet if he protested again he would earn Pendock’s fury without being able to prove anything in Dinah’s favor, because frankly, he did not have anything.

  He felt suddenly very close to despair.

  CHAPTER

  13

  AS THE TRIAL OF Dinah Lambourn was beginning, Hester set out on her own investigation. The whole issue of the sale of opium was one that drew her in with increasing urgency with every new piece of information she found. Because most of her nursing experience had been with soldiers suffering from appalling injuries, or from the fevers and dysentery of war, she was familiar only with the advantages of opium as a means to reduce pain.

  Her later work in the clinic on Portpool Lane had been with prostitutes. Some were as young as twelve or thirteen; but she hadn’t known of the devastation inflicted on smaller children from remedies containing opium before Dr. Winfarthing had told her.

  However, as far as Dinah Lambourn was concerned, there was no time now to justify Lambourn’s report to the government. Before anything else, they must find out who killed Zenia Gadney. To do that, they needed to learn more about Gadney than the bare facts of her life in Copenhagen Place.

  Most of the street women who came to the clinic in Portpool Lane were from within a mile or two of the clinic itself, but some with more chronic diseases had come now and again from farther away. There was usually not much Hester could do for them, but anything to ease their distress even a little was a help. Now she set out to find one woman in particular with whom she had sat up many nights, nursing her through pneumonia and back into sufficient health for her to return to the streets, until next time. That would probably be this winter when hunger, exposure, and exhaustion might well kill her.

  Gladys Middleton was nearly forty, and had been bought and sold since she was twelve, but she was still surprisingly handsome. Her hair was thick and unmarked by gray. Her skin was fading, but there were no visible blemishes, at least in candlelight. The last illness had reduced her weight, but at this point, the loss was flattering. She still had generous curves, and walked with surprising grace.

  It took Hester most of the day to find where Gladys now lived. Even after she had discovered the right lodging house, she had to wait, standing as discreetly as possible in a doorway, until Gladys returned from the public house on the corner.

  Hester followed her at almost fifty yards’ distance until Gladys went through the door, and then she went in after her. She made a couple of mistakes, having to apologize before she knocked at the right room.

  Gladys opened it cautiously. It was early to expect custom. There was still daylight outside, and a prospective client might far too easily meet someone he knew on the street. His presence here might be difficult to explain.

  “Hello, Gladys,” Hester said with a quick smile. There was no point in pretending she had come other than for a favor. Gladys knew the way of survival and would not appreciate being patronized by lies.

  Hester held up a bottle of the tonic cordial she knew was Gladys’s favorite.

  Gladys regarded it with pleasure, then suspicion. “I ain’t sayin’ as I’m not grateful, nor pleased
ter see yer, but wot d’yer want?” she said skeptically.

  “Not to stand at the door, for a start,” Hester replied, still smiling.

  Gladys backed in reluctantly.

  Hester followed her. The room was cleaner than she had expected. There were no signs of trade here, only a faint odor of sweat, and recently eaten food.

  “Thank you.” Hester sat down on the edge of one of the chairs. She kept the bottle of cordial in her hand. It should be understood that this was a bargain, not a gift.

  Gladys sat down opposite her, also on the edge of her chair, uneasily.

  “Wot d’yer want, then?” she repeated.

  “Information.”

  “I dunno nothin’.” The response was instinctive and immediate.

  “Rubbish,” Hester said briskly. “Women who know nothing don’t survive very long. Don’t lie to me, and I won’t lie to you.”

  Gladys shrugged, admitting at least a degree of defeat. “Wot are yer askin’?”

  “Did you know Zenia Gadney?” Hester replied.

  The color drained out of Gladys’s face, leaving her ashen. “Gawd! I don’t know nothin’ about that, I swear!”

  “I’m sure you don’t know anything about the murder,” Hester agreed, telling something close to the truth. “I want to know what she was like.”

  “Wot d’yer mean, wot she were like?” Gladys blinked in confusion.

  Was she playing for time, or did she really not understand? Hester put her hand lightly on the cordial bottle. “This stuff is quite good for your health,” she remarked.

  “Well, it in’t goin’ ter cure a slit throat!” Gladys said huskily. “Or yer guts torn out an’ tied around yer waist, is it!”

  “Why should anyone do that to you?” Hester raised her eyebrows. “Anyway, her throat wasn’t slit. She was hit on the back of her head. She wouldn’t have known anything that happened after that, poor soul. You didn’t have an affair with Dr. Lambourn, did you?”

  Gladys was startled. “Course I din’t! ’E weren’t like that. All ’e wanted were ter know ’ow easy it were ter buy opium, an’ if I knew wot was in the stuff I got ter ’elp me sleep, or when I got a bellyache.”

  “And did you?” Hester tried to keep some of the eagerness out of her voice. She could not afford to have Gladys sense how much she needed the information. “Did you know what was in it, and how much to take? Or how long before you could take more?”

  “I know it works, I don’t need ter know nothin’ else, do I!” Gladys retorted.

  “Is that what he asked you?”

  “ ’E weren’t askin’ me, ’e were askin’ them wot ’as kids. I were just there.”

  “Did you know Zenia Gadney?” Hester went back to her first question.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “What was she like?”

  “Yer said that already. Wot kind o’ thing d’yer want ter know?” Gladys shook her head. “She were older’n me, quiet, not much ter look at, but clean. It’s all on wot yer like, in’t it? Some folk like ’em ordinary, but willin’ ter do anything, if yer get me meanin’? Like their wives, but easier.”

  “Yes, I understand you. Is that what Zenia was like? Actually, she’s not much like Mrs. Lambourn at all.”

  “Wot’s Mrs. Lambourn like, then?” Gladys was curious.

  Hester remembered what Monk had said, and the effect she appeared to have had on him. “Handsome, very striking indeed,” she replied. “Tall and dark, with very fine eyes.”

  Gladys shook her head, completely bewildered. “Well, Zenia weren’t nothin’ like that. She were as dull as a mouse, all browny-gray and quiet. In fact, she were a real bore, but nice, like, if yer know wot I mean? Din’t talk down at nobody. Din’t lose ’er temper nor tell lies about yer. Nor she din’t steal nothin’.”

  Hester was puzzled as well. “How did you come to know her?”

  Gladys rolled her eyes at Hester’s stupidity. “ ’Eard about ’er ’cos she got wot we all want, din’t she? One real nice gent wot only needed ter see ’er once a month, treated ’er like she were a lady, an’ paid all ’er bills. If that ’appened ter me, I’d reckon as I’d died an’ gone ter ’eaven. ’Ow’d she do it, that’s wot I’d like ter know. It weren’t ’cos she knew ’ow ter make a man laugh, or feel as if ’e were the most interestin’ man as she ever met, or the ’andsomest, neither.”

  “Did Dr. Lambourn love her, do you think?” Hester asked. “Was she especially gentle, or kind?”

  Gladys shrugged. “ ’Ow’d I know? I reckon as she must ’ave been willin’ ter do some real strange things fer ’im. All I can think. An’ ’e looked as decent as yer like, jus’ straightforward. Goes ter show, yer never know wot’s be’ind them ordinary faces.”

  It was a possibility Hester had already thought of, distasteful as it was. She had never even met Dinah Lambourn. Why did it trouble her so much that she might have deeply loved a man with deviant tastes? Perhaps it was her own imagination of how she would feel were she to discover such a thing of Monk.

  If it were so, would she want to kill the woman who had catered to him, as Dinah was accused of having killed Zenia? Possibly. Not as violently, as brutally, but kill her? It was strange and disturbing that murder was something that she could even imagine.

  Now the whole situation looked different—sad, ugly, and unimaginably painful.

  “Do you think Zenia loved him?” she asked Gladys. Was that a question that even made sense to the woman? Gladys lived, worked, and thought only to survive. Love was a luxury she would probably never be able to afford. Perhaps she had not even allowed herself to dream of it. In a hundred different disguises, that was probably true of millions of women of all ranks, from servant to aristocrat. Children would have much to do with it; neither Hester nor Gladys would have children, but Hester had love. She was perfectly sure of that.

  But then many women believed they had love. Maybe even Dinah Lambourn.

  She looked at Gladys again. She was sitting with her brow furrowed, a look of deep concentration on her face.

  Hester waited.

  Gladys looked up at last. “Mebbe. Don’t really matter,” she said slowly. “It were terrible wot ’appened to ’er. I don’t care wot she done, that weren’t right.”

  Hester was not sure what to say. “Did she do something so bad?” she asked. She was afraid she would drive Gladys back into silence, but she was increasingly conscious that the other woman knew more than she had said.

  “That’s it,” Gladys bit her lip. “She were kind o’ secretive, sometimes a bit la-di-da, like she were better’n the rest of us, but she were kind, in ’er own way. She acted like she’d come down in the world, but I thought that mebbe she ’ad. Something she said once. Tillie Biggs were drunk ’alf out of ’er mind. Lyin’ in the gutter like it were the only place left for ’er. Couldn’t fall out of it, likely. An’ Zenia were the only one wot ’ad time ter pick ’er up. Rest of us said the stupid cow brought it on ’erself, but Zenia wouldn’t ’ave it. Said we all brought things on ourselves, don’t mean we didn’t need ’elpin’.”

  “What did she do?” Hester felt a tightening in her throat, the beginning of an emotion she could not control.

  Gladys made a small, sad gesture. “ ’Eaved ’er up an’ dragged ’er into an alley doorway where it were dry, an’ nobody’d fall over ’er. Propped ’er up there, an’ left ’er. In’t nothin’ else yer can do. She knew that.” She stopped, struggling with whether to say more.

  Hester did not know whether to encourage her or not. She drew in her breath to speak, then changed her mind.

  “Reckon as maybe she’d fallen in a few gullies ’erself,” Gladys said quietly. “She told me once that she’d bin married. Mebbe ’e left ’er ’cos o’ the drink. Or she left ’im. Dunno.” She shook her head. “But she weren’t one o’ us, like from round ’ere.”

  “Where did she come from, do you know?” Hester asked gently. Gladys’s answers had made Zenia far too real: a woman wi
th dreams and sudden kindnesses, capable of feeling grief and pain.

  “She never said. She were an odd one. Liked flowers. I mean she knew ’ow ter grow ’em, wot kind o’ soil they liked, that sort o’ thing, ’cos she used ter talk about it sometimes. Wot month they was out, an’ the like. Don’ get no flowers round ’ere. She used ter stand on the pier sometimes an’ look over the water, like mebbe she were from south o’ the river.” She shrugged. “Could a’ bin just ter be by ’erself, like; think a bit. Dream as yer could get on one o’ them boats an’ go somewhere. I think that, sometimes.”

  Again Hester waited before she broke the moment.

  Gladys looked up at her and smiled a little self-consciously. “Daft, eh?”

  “No,” Hester replied. “We all need to dream of things, now and then. Who else knew her? What was Dr. Lambourn like? Did she ever talk about him?”

  “No. But then I reckoned as she knew ’e were worth keepin’ for ’erself, like. Couldn’t share nothin’. Weren’t enough to go round.”

  “Jealous?” Hester said quickly.

  “Course we was, but Gawd, we wouldn’t do that ter nobody! Wot the bleedin’ ’ell d’yer think we are?” Gladys was indignant, even hurt.

  “I didn’t think so,” Hester retracted. She really did not know what to ask next. Since finding Gladys and talking to her, she began to believe that perhaps Dinah had lost her sanity, temporarily, and maybe it was she, after all, who had ripped Zenia apart. Could an otherwise normal woman feel so betrayed that she would indulge the darkest, bloodiest side of her nature? Had the wounds been so deep—failure, self-disgust, hatred—that they drove her beyond sanity?

  It no longer seemed unimaginable.

  She changed the subject. “The shopkeeper said Mrs. Lambourn came to Limehouse looking for opium. Dr. Lambourn did, too, didn’t he? Asking questions, I mean.”

  “I ’eard. ’E never asked me, but ’ow would I know anything?”