Acceptable Loss

CHAPTER

8

THE CHARGES HAD BEEN withdrawn against Rupert Cardew, and he was released from custody.

Once again the case was open.

Monk stood in the station at Wapping with the note ’Orrie had given him in his hand. It was strong evidence, but against whom? The pencil had smudged until it was only just legible, and the dirt and finger marks on that paper made it impossible to place. It could have been written by anyone.

Monk was not even certain if it was the man behind the blackmail, except who else would Parfitt have turned out for at that time of night? Anyone else he would simply have told to come at a more convenient hour. Who else but someone he knew, and trusted, would he have met alone, at night on the boat?

“Has to be,” Orme agreed. “But we aren’t going to tie it to anyone, with the note in that state. All it proves is that someone baited him to go there. And we know it was premeditated anyway, and with Cardew’s cravat.” Orme picked up the paper, turning it over in his hands. “Any idea where it came from?” he asked, squinting a little as he tried to read it, then looking up slightly at Monk.

“No,” Monk said honestly.

“Ballinger?” Orme said.

“Could be. Parfitt knew who it was from, or he wouldn’t have gone. Obviously he knew him well enough that no signature was necessary.”

Orme’s face was grim in the yellow glare of the lamplight. Outside, the wind was rising, and it was beginning to rain. It was going to be a choppy crossing on the ferry.

“Has to be the man behind the blackmail,” Orme said quietly. “We have to get it right this time.”

Monk felt a faint heat in his face, a remembrance of shame. Orme had never referred to it, but Monk had let them both down with his carelessness in the Jericho Phillips case. He had underestimated Rathbone’s skill and his dedication to the processes of the law. After all his years dealing with crime, he had still been naïve because his emotions had been so intensely involved. He must not ever make that mistake again. Rathbone was his friend, and he would feel a desperate pity for him if Ballinger were guilty, but Monk must not for an instant forget that if that were so, then Rathbone would be the enemy, and would fight with every art and skill he had to defend Arthur. He would for any client—that was his duty. But for Margaret’s father, he would go to the very edge of the abyss. Perhaps even further. Wouldn’t Monk himself, for Hester?

Orme shook his head. “We’ve got nothing except coincidence,” he said warningly. “Lot of possibles that won’t carry any weight with a jury. Maybe wouldn’t even get us to court.”

“I know,” Monk told him.

“Ballinger’s a highly respectable man,” Orme went on. “One of their own, so to speak. A solicitor. His wife and daughters’ll be in the gallery, all looking sweet and supportive, and like they believe every word he says. What we’ve got are out of the gutter, and look like it. ’Orrible Jones, with his eyes all over the place, like a horse that’s been spooked. Crumble, all quiet and sneaky. Tosh Wilkin, who’s a villain if ever I saw one. Hattie Benson, who’s a prostitute, an’ scared stiff. Looks like she’s lying, even when she isn’t.”

“All right!” Monk said sharply. “I know! We haven’t got enough.”

“We’ve got the ferryman, Stanley Willington, but he just bears out what Ballinger says himself. Picked him up at Chiswick, took him over the river, and brought him back again. And of course he has Mr. Harkness swearing to his being in Mortlake all the time between. It’s all very tidy, and hard to shake. He had time to row down as far as the boat, then back again, and catch a hansom to where Willington picked him up. And we know from Harkness that he was a strong rower, but will Harkness say that on the stand, when he understands what that means?”

“Probably not,” Monk conceded. He took the piece of paper from where Orme had left it on the desk. “We need to make enough sense of this, for certain. The man who killed Mickey Parfitt wrote this to lure him to his death. God knows, no man better deserved it.”

“I know.” Orme gave him a tight smile, understanding in his eyes, and a surprising gentleness. “We’ve still got to find him.”

MONK WENT BACK TO Chiswick to learn more about the boat and its patrons. It was late October, more than a month since Mickey Parfitt’s body had been found floating at Corney Reach. The air was much colder. The last echoes of summer were completely gone, and the leaves were falling. It had stopped raining, but there was a smell of damp in the air, and occasionally a drift of wood smoke from bonfires. The late flowers were richly bronze and purple, heavier, darker than the blue and gold of spring. The few stubble fields he passed were brazen, almost barbaric in their beauty, vividly and unmistakably waning.

It had always been Monk’s favorite season. He had flashes of memory sometimes of the great barren hills of Northumberland, where he knew he’d been born, so different from the lush easiness of the south. The earth there seemed to be all bones, no flesh, the skies unending. He would go back one day soon and see if it was still as beautiful, or if it was only the familiarity then that had made it seem so.

Now he had to follow the dirt and violence of Mickey Parfitt’s life and all the people he had known, used, cheated, and betrayed.

It was time to face the details of what had happened on the boat. Monk had been putting it off, perhaps as much for himself as for them, but he must speak to the boys himself, gently, persistently, ruthlessly. He must have the hospital matron there as a witness, so nothing rested on him alone, but this time he could not allow her to intervene. He realized how deeply he had been dreading it, why he had sent Orme instead of going himself, telling himself that Orme had children and would be better at it.

It took him two days of gentle, endlessly repeated questions, and it hurt more profoundly than he had imagined. The matron looked at him as if he had been a criminal himself, but she did not stop him more than two or three times. His assumption about Crumble had been correct: cook, companion, laundryman, gang master for cleaning chores, and jailer. Sometimes, here and there, abuser as well. The boys’ pale, blurred, and frightened faces reflected more misery than anger. They were too young to understand that it could all have been wildly and beautifully different. They might well have known hunger, cold, and exhaustion, but without the added horror. They could have had safety in sleep, been touched only in tenderness, or in the occasional, well-earned chastening. They could have been spared all their lives from the obscenity of degraded human appetite, from the sight of men who despised others because they despised themselves.

Now, having questioned the boys, it was Monk who had dreams he could not bear. He woke in the night, his body aching and drenched in a sweat, tears on his face. He lay in the dark, staring up at the faint shadow patterns on the ceiling as the wind moved in the trees outside. He wanted to waken Hester, even if he did not tell her why, just so he would not be alone with what was in his mind. Even if he just touched her, felt the warmth of her …

But she would hurt for him. She would need him to explain it, at least a little, and how could he do that? If he gave it words, it would re-create the reality in his mind—the white faces, the frightened eyes, the small bodies shivering with memory, self-loathing, and the terror of new pain.

And she would think of Scuff. She would wonder about all the other children, and that was a burden, selfish of him to share just to lighten it a fraction for himself.

Could he tell her without weeping? Perhaps not. She could not heal his sense of horror for him. He would keep it closed inside him. She would always know it was there, because she had seen Phillips’s boat, but she did not need to hear it again and see it through his eyes. Memory was a necessary tool in life; sometimes it was a blessed thing, and sometimes it was a curse.

If he even got up, he would disturb her. He might pretend there was nothing wrong, but his need, his pain, would creep through. She would unravel it all.

He turned over, as if he were half-asleep, and lay on his other side. He would go back to sleep in some time, and, if he were lucky, the dreams would be different.

HE WOKE EXHAUSTED THE following morning, his eyes gritty and his head aching. Hester did not even ask him how he was. She looked at him, her face bleak and tender, and words would have been superfluous anyway.

She got up and went to the kitchen, raked out the ashes, and lit the stove, banking it up to get hot quickly. It was early, and she did not waken Scuff. Today was Sunday. They could stay here together, perhaps even go to church, like a regular family. Scuff liked that because everyone could see them together, see that he belonged.

She gave Monk piping hot tea and fresh toast with his favorite jam, then sat opposite him at the table. There was no sound in the kitchen, and the only light was from the gas bracket on the wall casting a yellow glow, shadows everywhere.

When he had said nothing for several minutes, she prompted him.

“Do you really want to find who killed Parfitt?” she asked quietly, pushing the toast across the table toward him.

“Yes, of course I do!” he said vehemently, then looked at her face. He knew he had to be more honest; even a half lie to her built a barrier he could not live with. “No, not entirely. Parfitt was vile, and if it was one of his victims, I’d be happy to let him go. If it was one of the boys, or even two or three of them, I don’t even know if I’ll arrest them. Even if I could prove which ones, I might not try to.”

She said nothing.

He took the toast and buttered it.

“But if it’s the man behind the whole trade, probably behind Phillips as well, then yes, I want to find him. And I want to hang him.”

Monk fished the note out of his inside pocket where he carried it, carefully, in an envelope. It was both a talisman and a weight dragging him down. He took the note out of the envelope and put it on the table between them, well away from the jam or the teapot. “This was written by a literate person, adult. It’s a strong hand, used to writing.”

She looked at him, then down at the torn piece of paper. She picked it up and read it. “But you have no idea who wrote it?”

“No. It’s good-quality paper and perfectly ordinary pencil. The envelope’s mine.”

She turned the note over in her hands. The silence seemed to stretch until he could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantel over the stove. Her shoulders were stiff; a tiny muscle clenched in her jaw was flickering.

“Hester?” His voice was quiet and yet filled the room.

She looked up at him. “The words are Latin. They’re medicines. This is part of a list of things we order regularly for the clinic.”

He stared at her. This was the last thing he had expected her to say.

“You recognize the handwriting?” he asked.

“Claudine’s,” she said. “But she could have given the list to several people.”

“Margaret,” he replied. “Isn’t she the one who keeps the money, and buys such things?”

“Yes. But so does Squeaky, sometimes.” Her voice was tight, full of grief.

He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. He knew what she was afraid of. Squeaky had kept a brothel when they’d first met him. He had seemed on the surface to have reformed his ways, under duress, perhaps, but still quite genuinely. He had even taken a kind of pleasure in his respectability. Had it all been an act to cover an even darker side? Had they been too blinded by hope and wish to look at him more closely? How big a descent was it from running a brothel for women to investing in pornography with boys?

Monk felt a little sick. He knew how much Hester had believed in all the people in the clinic, considered them friends, colleagues, people she trusted with a common passion.

“I have to ask him,” he said. “I can’t—”

“No,” she cut across his words. “I will. I won’t let him dupe me, I promise.”

“Hester …”

She stood up. “I will. Now—today.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“I know.”

He looked at her stiff, straight back, the way she walked, the very careful manner in which she picked up the plates and put them into the basin to wash, deliberately, as if in a moment’s absence of mind she might grip them so hard she would break one.

Perhaps he should let her speak to Squeaky. Then she would not feel so powerless, so incapable.

“I’ll wait outside,” he told her.

She was standing at the basin, and she turned to give him a swift look, something close to a smile. “I’ve got to leave bread out for Scuff, and butter and jam. I’ll waken him, and then I’m ready.”

SQUEAKY LOOKED UP FROM his ledger as Hester came into his room and closed the door behind her.

“You look as if you lost sixpence and found nothing,” he said dourly. “Her ladyship giving you difficulties?”

“No, not at the moment,” she replied. She took the envelope out of her pocket, and then the list as well. She put them both on the table in front of him, but kept her finger on the list, leaning forward a little so her weight was on her hand.

There was not a flicker in his face.

“It’s torn,” he observed. “In’t no use like that. What’re you giving it to me for? Get Claudine ter make it out again.”

“Is it Claudine’s hand?” she asked.

“Course it is! You gone blind or summink?” He squinted up at her. “You look sick. What’s wrong?” Now he was anxious, even concerned for her.

She turned the paper over.

He frowned, looking at it, reading it. “What in hell’s that?” he demanded. “It means summink, or you wouldn’t be looking at it with a face on you like a burst boot. Who’s supposed to go … Oh, jeez!”

The usual trace of color vanished from his sallow face. “It’s to do with that bleeding murder, isn’t it? You can’t think Claudine had anything to do with it? That’s just stupid. You’ve taken leave of your wits if you think she’d even know about things like that. You think she went up there and done in Mickey Parfitt? With Cardew’s necktie, and all? You think he left it behind here, and she—”

“No, Squeaky, I don’t. But did you?” Even as she said it, she thought of Hattie Benson safe downstairs in the laundry, with Claudine apparently looking after her, and Squeaky supposed to keep everyone else from going down and seeing her.

His face was full of conflicting emotions: anger, hurt, fear, and also a kind of gentleness. “No, I didn’t. I s’pose I had that coming, for my past life, and if I’d’ve known what Parfitt was, I might have. I’d also have more sense than to write him a note on paper from here!”

“Is it from here?” Hester asked.

He looked at it again. “No. We don’t spend that sort of money on paper. Even the ledger isn’t that good. But just ’cos it’s quality don’t mean Claudine had anything to do with it. She may be an odd old article, but when you get to know her, she’s solid. She’s got guts, and she don’t never tell no lies. You can’t think that of her. It’s wrong.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted.

He winced. “You thought I did it.” It was a statement. “Well, I could have. He needed doing, best at the end of a rope. And I wouldn’t help you catch whoever did do it. But it weren’t me.”

She believed him.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Tomorrow I’ll ask Claudine if she remembers writing this, and what she did with it.”

“Don’t you let her feel you think as she done it!” he warned. “It’d hurt her something terrible, and she don’t deserve that.”

In spite of herself, Hester smiled. She could remember very clearly how Claudine and Squeaky had hated each other in the beginning. She had thought him obscene, both physically and morally. He had seen her as arrogant, useless, and cold, a middle-aged woman sterile of mind and devoid of passions. It had been her crazy pursuit of Phillips’s pornographic photographs, at fearful risk to herself, that had finally changed his mind. And it was his effective, if rather quixotic, rescue of her that had changed her mind about him.

“I won’t,” she promised.

HESTER WAS IN EARLY on Monday morning, but a brief and businesslike meeting with Margaret in the pantry delayed her meeting with Claudine.

“We are rather short of laundry supplies,” Margaret warned. “I have just been down there and cautioned them to be a little less generous in their use. We cannot afford to replace them at this rate.”

“Thank you,” Hester said briefly. “Is there anything else?”

Margaret hesitated, seemingly on the edge of saying something more, then changed her mind and went out of the room. Hester heard her footsteps on the wooden floor, brisk and purposeful.

She found Claudine in the medicine room and showed her the paper, holding out only the side with the list on it.

Claudine frowned, then looked up and met Hester’s eyes. “What happened to it? I wrote it out for Margaret, and she got me all those things. That list is several weeks old.”

Hester felt bruised, suddenly tired. “How many weeks?”

“I don’t know. Four, maybe five. Why? It hardly matters,” Claudine replied.

“You’re sure you gave it to Margaret?” Hester insisted.

“Yes, of course I am.”

“She actually got all those things for you?”

“Yes. If she hadn’t, I would have written it out again. But I didn’t have to. What is this about, Hester? Is something missing?”

“No. Nothing at all. It doesn’t have to do with the clinic.”

“I don’t understand.” Claudine looked thoroughly puzzled.

Hester shook her head a little. “You don’t want to,” she said gently. “It’s the message on the other side that’s important, not this. What happened to the list after she brought you the items on it?”

“I’ve no idea. I didn’t see it again after I gave it to her.”

“You didn’t check off the items against it?” Hester suggested.

“I had the receipts from the apothecary. Those are all I need for the ledger.”

“Are you quite sure you didn’t ever see the list again?”

“Not until now. Why?”

“Thank you.” Hester gave her a tiny smile, almost more of a grimace, and went out of the room, closing the door softly.

She gave the list back to Monk.

He waited.

“It’s Claudine’s list for Margaret to shop from,” she told him. “Margaret never gave it back, because Claudine took the prices from the apothecary’s receipts.” She swallowed hard. “I wish it weren’t.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. I can’t leave it. If it’s Ballinger, I must still find him, not for Parfitt’s sake but because of the children.”

She nodded. “Oliver will defend him. He can’t refuse.” She watched Monk’s face. “We’ll have to have irrefutable proof.”

RUPERT CARDEW CLOSED THE door of the morning room behind him and stared at Monk. He still looked tired, as if the shock of arrest had not completely left him, even though he was now free. However, he was composed and courteous, and, as always, beautifully dressed.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Monk?” he asked.

Monk felt churlish, and it put him at a disadvantage.

“I apologize. What I have to ask you is extremely unpleasant, but this is a case I cannot afford to leave.”

Rupert looked surprised. “Really? You care so much that Parfitt is dead?”

“On the contrary. If that were all, I would be delighted to turn my time to something more important,” Monk admitted. “But I want to find the man behind the blackmail.”

Rupert smiled very slightly, not in amusement but in self-criticism. “Are you going to warn me that I am still vulnerable? I assure you, I know that.”

“I assumed you were aware of it, Mr. Cardew,” Monk told him. “That is not why I came.”

“Oh?” Rupert looked surprised, but not worried.

“I need to know a great deal more from you than you have told me so far,” Monk replied. “I’m sorry.” He meant the apology more than Cardew would understand, or believe.

“I don’t know anything more,” Rupert said simply. “I really have no idea who killed Parfitt. For God’s sake, man, don’t you think I’d have told you already if I did?”

“Of course, if you had realized, or thought for a moment that I would believe you. I think it was Arthur Ballinger who did it; if not personally, then by using one of Parfitt’s own men.” He saw Cardew start with surprise, and ignored it. “But I have to prove it beyond any doubt,” he continued. “If Ballinger is charged, he will be defended by Oliver Rathbone, and I know from experience that Rathbone could get even Jericho Phillips off. How hard do you imagine he is going to fight for his father-in-law?”

Rupert’s mouth tightened, and the corners went down. “I see. But I still don’t know anything.”

“You know about the trade,” Monk said grimly.

Rupert blushed. “I don’t know about his side of it.”

“I didn’t expect you to. I can deduce a good deal of that. I need to know his clients, how the blackmail was paid, the sort of amounts, and exactly what the performances were like and who attended.”

Rupert went white.

Monk ignored that also. “And I need to know about the suicide a few months ago. What led up to it?”

“I can’t tell you that!” Rupert was appalled. “That would be a … betrayal.”

“I knew you would see it that way,” Monk said quietly. “Yes. You would, in a sense, be betraying the other men who used the abuse of children for their entertainment.”

He saw Rupert wince, the shame filling his face. He had expected it. It hurt Monk to have to be so blunt, but it changed nothing. “Whereas if you don’t tell me, you will be betraying the children on that boat—and all those like them. And if you think carefully and with absolute honesty, you’ll realize you will be betraying your father, and perhaps the better part of yourself.”

Rupert shook his head slowly. “You don’t know what you’re asking …”

“Really?” Monk raised his eyebrows. “Do you think your social class are the only people who feel loyalty toward their friends, or to those to whom they are bound by promises of conspiracy, and hiding their shame? You are ashamed of it, aren’t you?”

A flame of anger lit Rupert’s eyes. “Yes, of course I am! You …” He struggled for words, and could not find them.

“And you think embarrassment and an apology are enough to make the balance even again?”

“No, I don’t! I’ll regret it the rest of my life!” Rupert was shouting now. “But I can’t undo it.”

“Remorse is excellent,” Monk said levelly. “But it isn’t enough. Nor is money. If you want any kind of redemption, then you must help me stop at least some of it from happening again.”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know who killed Parfitt!” Rupert said desperately. “It may well have been Ballinger, but I don’t know anything to help you prove it. I didn’t see him, and I wouldn’t recognize him if I had. I don’t even remember half that evening, except as a nightmare. Telling you the names of my friends who went there isn’t going to do anything except embarrass them and make me a social outcast.”

“That’s the price,” Monk replied. “And is their friendship worth that much to you?”

“Don’t be such a damn fool!” Rupert’s voice was high and angry again, touched with fear. “Everyone will despise me for ratting on friends, not just the men concerned, and their families, and their friends.”

Monk felt the resolve harden in him, like a cold, gray stone in his gut. “Then, tell me about the ‘performances.’ ” He accentuated the word. “Where did you meet? Did you all go to Chiswick separately, or together? Shared a hansom, perhaps? You wouldn’t go in your own carriages—they might be recognized—or want your coachman to know, for that matter.”

“Separately, mostly,” Rupert answered grimly. “What has that to do with Ballinger, or anything else?”

Monk ignored the question. “How do you get from the shore to Parfitt’s boat?”

“Someone rowed us. Either that revolting little man with the walleye—”

“ ’Orrible Jones?”

“If you say so. Or the other. Why?”

Monk ignored that question too. “By agreement? How did you know he wasn’t just a ferryman? How did he know who you were, and that you wanted to go to that boat and not just to the other shore? How did he know you were one of Parfitt’s clients? You could even have been police.”

“It’s not illegal,” Rupert said miserably.

“Just immoral?” Monk asked sarcastically. “That’s why you do it up there in Chiswick, miles from home, and at night on the river?”

Rupert glared at him. “I didn’t say I was proud of it, just that it isn’t anything to do with the police.”

“Actually, torturing and imprisoning children is illegal,” Monk told him.

“We didn’t do … that … to anyone!”

“You just watched other people do it!” Monk’s disgust made his voice shake, his throat straining with the force of his emotions. “And homosexuality is illegal too.”

Rupert’s face was scarlet.

“Apart from the question of legality, Mr. Cardew,” Monk went on ruthlessly, “would you like to be forced to have anal intercourse with another man, for the entertainment of a crowd of drunken lechers? Did that happen to you when you were six or seven years old, and you screamed, and bled, and that’s why—”

“Stop it!” Rupert shouted, his voice cracking. “All right! I understand. It was bestial, and I shall pay for it in shame for the rest of my life!”

“And you will also tell me who else was there,” Monk said. “Every man whose face you recognized. I can’t arrest them for it, but I can question them for information. I’m going to hang the creature behind this, and I’m going to use every perverted bastard I can find to do it.”

“You’re going to talk to them?” Rupert whispered, horrified.

“If I have to. And you are going to tell me step by step what happened, every filthy act, every scream, every injury and humiliation, every terrified and weeping child that was tortured for your amusement. I’ll have nightmares too, maybe for the rest of my life, but I’m going to paint such a picture that your friends will never doubt that I know what happened, as well as if I’d been there too.” He drew in his breath. He was shaking, and his body was covered with sweat.

“And the jury will know exactly what those men were paying to hide. Perhaps they’ll wake up terrified as well, and they’ll be as passionate as I am in helping to get rid of at least some of the obscene trade. You’ll help me willingly or unwillingly, Mr. Cardew. I imagine, for your father’s sake, if nothing else, you would prefer to do it here and now, in private, while it is still a voluntary thing, and perhaps partially redeem yourself. Believe me, if you don’t and I have to force you in front of a jury, it will be a lot worse.”

Rupert stared at him, defeat in his eyes and a depth of misery that for an instant almost weakened Monk’s resolve. Then Monk thought of Scuff, the trust that was just beginning between them, and the moment of indecision vanished.

“Now,” he prompted. “Detail by detail. Make me feel as if I am there.”

Rupert began haltingly, still standing motionless in the quiet morning room with its sun-faded carpet and old books. His voice was low and strained. Frequently he stopped, and Monk had to prompt him to go on. He hated doing it; he felt as if he were beating an animal. And he knew he would feel unclean afterward, tarnished with cruelty. But he did not stop until Rupert had told him every detail of the entire hideous business. His face was mottled and stained with tears. Perhaps he would never forget this either, and not ever be the same as he had been before.

“And the man it broke?” Monk persisted. “The one who took his own life, shot himself alone in the small boat.”

“Tadley …” Rupert whispered. “He couldn’t pay.”

“Did Parfitt drive him that far on purpose? An example to others of what happens if you don’t honor your debts?”

“It wasn’t a debt!” Rupert snapped back at him. “It was extortion. I told you … I didn’t know about it until afterward. Not that I could have paid it for him if I had.”

“So, what was it, a misjudgment of Parfitt’s? Is suicide good for business, or bad?”

Rupert shot him a look of utter loathing. It stung Monk more than he would have expected, perhaps because he knew the loathing was fair.

“It is a salutary reminder to pay on time instead of letting the payments mount up,” Rupert replied coldly. “And it is bad for business. But, then, murder is worse.”

“Tell me about Tadley,” Monk instructed.

“He was a family man, but unhappy, lonely, I think. I don’t know that he particularly cared for boys. I had the feeling he wanted to experience some kind of excitement, some danger, a sense of being completely alive. I know that sounds—”

“No,” Monk cut across him. “It sounds like many people whose lives are suffocated by tedium, duty. Trying so hard to live up to what other people have expected of them that they become imprisoned inside it. Without dreams, you die.”

Rupert stared at him. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I misjudged you. I thought—”

“I know.” Monk smiled bleakly. “You thought I had no devils inside, no idea of what they are even. You’re wrong.”

Rupert nodded, almost close to a smile.

Monk bit his lip. “Now tell me the names of the other men who went to the boat.”

Rupert stared at him, but the anger had gone from his face.

“Please,” Monk added.

Rupert gave him a list, and Monk wrote it in his notebook.

“Thank you,” Monk said when it was finished. “I’ll get him this time.” Perhaps it was a dangerous thing to say, almost a promise, but he risked saying it, and committing himself. It felt good.

MONK DECIDED TO RETRACE Ballinger’s footsteps on the night of Parfitt’s death. He should duplicate all the conditions as closely as possible.

The first part of his journey did not really matter. It was the return that counted. Nevertheless he went to the street outside Ballinger’s house, at the time in the evening when Ballinger said he had left.

Of course one thing he could not duplicate was the daylight. In September it would have been dusk later, and the weather would have been milder. But he did not think that would substantially alter the time. If anything, Ballinger would have found it easier, and therefore faster.

Monk caught a hansom without more than a few minutes’ wait, and settled himself for the long journey to Chiswick. It was tedious, and his mind wandered over all he had learned so far, juggling the pieces to try to make a picture that would hold against the assaults of doubt and reason. It was still all too tenuous, too full of other possible explanations.

He reached Chiswick cold and irritable, his legs cramped from sitting still. He paid the cabby and walked down across the street onto the dockside. It was fully dark now, with a gusty wind blowing off the water. This far upriver it did not smell of salt, but rather of weed and mud.

The clouds raced past, and for a few moments the moon showed, about half full, gleaming briefly on the water. There was a ferry twenty yards away. A couple of young men were sitting in it, and the sound of their laughter, happy and more than a little drunk, drifted across the distance between them.

Monk waited until they docked, then walked down and asked the ferryman to take him across. At the far side he thanked the man, paid, and walked up to the road to look for a hansom. That took rather longer, but even so he was in Mortlake by the time Ballinger had said he’d arrived at Harkness’s house.

Now he had more than two hours to wait until Harkness had said Ballinger had left. He spent it walking along the waterfront with a lantern, looking at the boats pulled up in slipways, at the moorings, judging how long it would take to get any of them waterborne, and how wet he might get doing it.

He looked ahead and saw the sign for the Bull’s Head swinging gently in the wind, creaking a little. He decided to go in and have a sandwich and a pint of ale.

Monk asked the landlord casually about hiring boats just to row a bit up and down the water, not really fishing, just being by himself and forgetting the city and its life and its noise. The man seemed to find that odd, but he told Monk of half a dozen different people who might be happy to oblige him.

Monk thanked him and left. He found one light, fast boat he could hire for a couple of shillings, and promised to return it before morning. If they thought he was eccentric, no one said so.

He walked back up toward Harkness’s house and reached it a few moments before the earliest he could leave and still be following Ballinger’s path. He stared around. There was no one in sight, but he had not expected anyone. A witness would have been a stroke of luck too far!

Some moments later he walked briskly back downriver toward the Bull’s Head. The wind was sharper from the west and carrying the smell of rain with it. He imagined the marshes and the fields beyond, damp earth turned by the plow. Past that, woods with heavy leaves falling, berries turning red, the pungency of wood smoke, crows in high nests for the winter.

He found the boat he had hired, and after only a few moments’ fumbling, he got it down the slip and into the water. He reached for the oars, fit them into the oarlocks, and pulled away from the shore out into the stream.

After a few more strokes he settled to row down the river to Corney Reach. Tonight, the tide was against him. It had turned while he was in the Bull’s Head and was now coming in. He must check what it had been on the night of Parfitt’s death. It would make a difference, but perhaps little enough—unless high or low water had occurred during the time Ballinger had actually killed Parfitt, which was unlikely. But it was a detail to be sure of, so absolutely nothing caught him by surprise. Anyway, since he had to row back up to Mortlake, the tide would be with him one way, and against him the other.

It was a pleasant sensation to feel the power of the boat sliding through the water. It was silent here apart from the bow wave’s whisper, and the rattle of the oarlocks as the oars turned. Now and then a small night bird called from the trees along the shore. Once, far in the distance, a dog barked.

He saw the dark hull of Parfitt’s boat before he expected to. He had lost all sense of time. He pulled over to it and rested on his oars. He imagined himself going up on deck. How long would it take to climb the ropes up the sides? An estimate?

But Rathbone would ask him. It would destroy the validity of the whole experiment if he had to admit that he had not actually done it. Damn!

He bent to the oar again and pulled the boat closer. What if there were no ropes there anymore? Then he would have to do the whole thing over again, when the ropes had been replaced.

He was right up to the boat now. He could see almost nothing. There was one riding light, simply to avoid the boat being struck in the dark. ’Orrie must have been keeping it burning. It shed no more than a glimmer onto the deck, and nothing at all on the steep sides.

Monk put out his hand and met wooden boards, overlapping. Carefully he pulled himself along, the boat moving jerkily under him. It was three yards before he found the ropes and tied the boat’s painter to one of them. Awkwardly, skinning his knuckles, he climbed up and hauled himself onto the deck.

He stood there for several moments, trying to judge how long it would take to strike someone, then loop the cravat around their neck and tighten it until they choked to death, then finally put them over the side, into a boat or straight into the water. He mimicked hurling overboard the branch that had been used to strike Parfitt as well, and remembered that it might have been even more difficult climbing up with that slung over his back. He would have to allow for that.

But since Parfitt had been expecting Ballinger, perhaps he had let down a rope ladder. There was one inside the boat; there would have to be for the guests to climb aboard in their expensive clothes and boots. No one would be amused by falling into the water, and most certainly no one would want to be soaked, chilled, and smelling of river mud all night.

He must also check that Ballinger had no injury or muscular disability that would make it impossible for him to climb. Rathbone could, and would, nicely catch him out if that were so. He smiled grimly, imagining describing all this to the jury, and then having Rathbone produce some doctor who would swear that Ballinger couldn’t lift his arms above his shoulders.

He heard an owl hoot on the farther bank, and a small animal slipped into the water with only the faintest sound. He saw the ripple of its movement more than he heard it.

It was time to go back over the side and row back to Mortlake, then find a hansom back to the far side of the Chiswick crossing.

When he finally stood on the dockside, waiting for the ferry back, it was less than five minutes later than Ballinger had done so, as the ferryman had confirmed for him, on the night of Parfitt’s murder.

Monk had a ridiculous sense of exhilaration for the small victory that it was. He had proved that it was possible, that’s all. But he had not proved that it was so.

THE NEXT DAY HE went to see Winchester, the lawyer certain to prosecute the case against Ballinger, were it to be brought to court.

“Ah! So you’re Monk.” He was a tall man, maybe an inch or so taller than Monk himself, broad-shouldered with a mane of straight black hair liberally threaded with gray. He had a somewhat hawkish face with a long nose and intensely dark eyes. The most remarkable aspect of him was the humor in his features, the readiness for wit, which seemed to be always just beneath the surface.

“Winchester,” he introduced himself. “Sit down.” He gestured toward a well-worn, comfortable-looking leather chair. He himself half sat on the edge of the desk.

“Tell me your evidence,” he invited.

Monk detailed it meticulously, and only what he could prove.

“Good,” Winchester said, pursing his lips. “I can see that you’re remembering the last time you faced Oliver Rathbone, and got mauled.” He said it without apology, a rueful amusement in his eyes. “We need to do better this time.”

“I intend to,” Monk assured him. He told him detail by detail how he had copied Ballinger’s trip up to Mortlake, exactly as he had sworn to, leaving time to kill Parfitt, and then back again.

Winchester did not laugh, but his eyes betrayed that inside he was highly amused.

“Ballinger was an excellent oarsman in his youth,” Monk went on. “But of course you will need to find testimony that he is still perfectly capable of rowing the distances now, and of climbing up the rope ladder at the side of Parfitt’s boat.”

“Thank you,” Winchester said wryly. “I had thought of that.”

Monk did not apologize.

“And I have a great deal of evidence as to exactly what trade Parfitt carried on,” Monk added. He recounted that as well, hating the words, even more the pictures they conjured in his mind.

Now all the light was gone from Winchester’s face, and he looked almost bruised. His anger was palpable. “I’ll call whoever I believe may help the case,” he said grimly. “I cannot promise to spare anyone. I hope you haven’t made any guarantees, because I will not keep them.”

“I haven’t.”

“Not to your wife? Or Margaret Rathbone?”

“Not to anyone.”

“Cardew? Are you prepared to crucify Cardew, if it’s unavoidable?”

Wordlessly Monk passed him a copy of the list of names Rupert had given him, including Tadley, with a note of his suicide.

Winchester read it, his mouth pulled tight and crooked with revulsion. “Thank you. That cannot have been easy.”

“I don’t intend to spare anyone either,” Monk told him.

“For the love of heaven, take good care of Hattie Benson!” Winchester said grimly. “She is the one thing preventing them from blaming it all on Cardew. The only question I have to ask you is, are you certain in your own mind that it was Ballinger? Could it not have been a business rivalry—pure greed on the part of Tosh Wilkin, for example? He’s a particularly nasty piece of work. All Rathbone has to do is raise a reasonable doubt.”

Monk realized that Winchester was watching him extremely closely. Memory rose up in him, hot and powerful, of having lost the trial against Jericho Phillips, and how ashamed he had been, how naked he had felt as the entire courtroom had stared at him and his failure, his mistakes.

“No, I’m not certain,” he said. “I believe it was Ballinger, because Sullivan said so before he died. It had to be someone of Ballinger’s social standing to see the weakness of men like Sullivan, pander to it, and feed it until it was out of control, and then blackmail them for it. Tosh Wilkin hasn’t the imagination or the connections to do that. And if he were the one taking the blackmail money, I don’t believe he would have the self-control not to spend it. And that he hasn’t done.”

“But could he have killed Parfitt, on Ballinger’s instructions?” Winchester insisted.

“He could have. I don’t believe Ballinger, a master at blackmail, would give such power over himself into the hands of a man like Tosh, who would certainly use it.”

Winchester’s long fingers touched the list that Monk had given him. “What about someone on this list? They would have much to gain if Parfitt were dead. The end of paying blackmail has been motive for more than one murder. The jury wouldn’t have much difficulty believing that. Reasonable doubt—more than reasonable.”

“You don’t bite the hand that feeds your addiction,” Monk replied. “Then you have to find a new supplier, and where would you do that? And why?”

Winchester nodded slowly. “You’d better be right, Monk. And don’t imagine Ballinger won’t fight you in every way he can think of. He won’t go down easily. Rathbone will fight for him, and you don’t need me to tell you he’s a very clever man, and far more ruthless than his charming manner would lead you to believe.”

“I know.”

“Yes, of course you do. But don’t allow yourself to forget it simply because you believe Ballinger is guilty and therefore you are fighting a just cause.”

Monk looked steadily at Winchester’s curious long-nosed face, with its subtle wit, and wondered if Ballinger had already started to fight, and whether Winchester knew it.

“It will be personal,” Winchester warned. “Your reputation—perhaps your wife’s?”

Monk felt his muscles clench. “I know.”

“Are you prepared for it? He may call her to the stand, with reference to Rupert Cardew.”

“Yes. She will be prepared this time.”

Winchester offered his hand. “Then, we’ll get him, Mr. Monk. Deo volente.”

Monk rose to his feet. “Yes—God willing,” he echoed, and took Winchester’s outstretched hand.

WINCHESTER’S MENTION OF HATTIE Benson sent Monk straight to the clinic at Portpool Lane, just to assure himself that she was still safe and well, and that her courage had not failed her.

He was met in the outer hallway by a grim-looking Squeaky Robinson.

“She isn’t here,” Squeaky said flatly.

Monk’s stomach lurched, and he found it hard to catch his breath. “What happened? Where is she?”

“No need to look like I hit you,” Squeaky said reproachfully. “She’s gone to help buy some more surgical stuff. Dunno where, ’cos she had to look for it. Heard of some doctor what was selling old stuff.”

“I’m not looking for Hester!” Monk said, almost choking in relief. “I want the young woman I brought here a week or so back. Where is she?”

Squeaky looked Monk up and down, from his shiny leather boots to his elegant coat wet on the shoulders, and then he sighed. “Down in the laundry washing sheets like she should be. I ain’t bringing her up here, ’cos I’m told not to, so you’d better go down there and find her!” Thus dismissing Monk, he sat down to study his figures again.

Monk thanked him, a trifle sarcastically, and went along the narrow passage and down a couple of flights of steps, through the kitchen, and into the laundry beyond. A lean, dark young woman with freckles was poking a wooden pole into the huge copper, moving the sheets around. The pot was belching steam, and the air was thick with it.

“Where’s Hattie?” Monk asked.

“Dunno,” the young woman replied without turning away from the task.

Monk took a pace toward her and spoke more sharply. “That won’t do! If you want to stay here and be looked after, you’ll tell me where she is!”

She stopped poking and let the long pole slip onto the floor. She turned and looked at him indignantly, her hair damp, streaked onto her face, her skin pink. “I dunno where she is, an’ yer can call me everything you want, an’ I still dunno. She were s’posed ter be ’ere, ’cos it were ’er turn ter ’elp, an’ she in’t! So you go an’ bleedin’ find ’er!”

Monk turned on his heel and strode out of the room, taking the steps up again two at a time. Back in the scullery he found a young woman with a red face, peeling potatoes. He could smell the sharp astringency of onions, and there were strings of them hanging from the ceiling beams.

“Have you seen Hattie Benson?” he demanded.

She turned to look at him, startled by his voice. “No, I in’t seen ’er since—I dunno—yesterday. Yer tried the laundry? That’s where she is most times.”

“Yes, I have. Where else?” He controlled his rising fear with difficulty. His heart was pounding, his breath ragged already. He was being absurd; she was probably making beds, or rolling bandages, or any of a dozen other tasks.

The woman shrugged. “I dunno.”

Without bothering to press her, since she was clearly useless, he left the scullery and tried the medicine storage room, the linen closets, and then all the bedrooms one by one. He went from the far end of the three old houses joined together by a warren of passages and interlocking rooms, which had once been Squeaky Robinson’s brothel and was now the clinic. Nowhere did he find Hattie Benson, or anyone who had seen her in the last three hours, now three and a half, nearly four. The fear inside him was close to panic.

Hester was not here, nor was Margaret. And he was not sure if he would have asked Margaret, even if she were. He did the next best thing after that and looked for Claudine.

He found her in the medicine room. She was becoming quite proficient in nursing. Hester had said she was intelligent and, more important, deeply interested. Her long, unhappy marriage had eroded her self-belief to an almost crippling level. Curiously, it was her adventure where she had finally seen Arthur Ballinger outside the shops selling pornographic photographs, and from which Squeaky Robinson had eventually rescued her, that had liberated her from that.

Now she stood carefully measuring what was left in the various jars and bottles, and writing it down in a notebook. She was standing straight, and there was a slight smile on her face. She turned as she heard Monk’s footsteps stop. It needed only a glance at his face for her to realize his distress.

“What’s happened?” she asked immediately, putting down the bottle she was holding and closing the notebook. “What is it?”

“Hattie Benson’s gone,” Monk replied. “I’ve been from one end of the building to the other, and asked everybody. No one has seen her since about nine this morning.”

Claudine did not reply for several moments, but it was not because she was dumbfounded. She was clearly calculating what to do next.

“We must think,” she said. “She knew not to go anywhere outside. She would not have run errands for anyone, even a few yards. She was quite clever enough to be frightened. There are no doors to the outside here where a stranger could come in unseen. Have you spoken to Squeaky?”

“Yes. He didn’t see her leave, and he’s been at the front all morning, at least since she was last seen,” he replied. “I’ve got—”

“I know,” she agreed calmly, her voice reassuring.

He looked at her pleasant face. It was far from beautiful, but full of strength and—at this moment—a quiet courage.

“Then, she went out at the back,” he said more steadily. “That means she did it deliberately. She tricked someone into leaving her alone. Why? What on earth would make her do that? Did someone here threaten her? Who have you had in since she came?”

“An old woman upstairs with a fever,” Claudine replied. “She’s delirious and probably dying. And a young woman with a stab wound and a broken collarbone. All others were just in and out.”

He stared at her.

“One of us?” she said with a catch in her voice. She seemed about to add something else, then changed her mind.

He knew from her face that she was thinking of Margaret, and trying to deny it to herself. He was thinking the same. There had to be some more complex explanation, but just at the moment it did not matter.

“I’ve got to see if I can find her,” Monk said, although he had no idea where to begin. Should he even tell Hester? There was nothing she could do, except run into danger herself.

“Where will you look?” Claudine asked him.

“I don’t know. If she was alone, or escaped from whoever she went with, she’ll probably go back to the places she knows. All I can do is ask.”

“Can I help?”

“No … thank you. Just … don’t tell Hester … yet.”

“I won’t have to,” Claudine said grimly. “She’ll know.”

Monk left without adding anything more. Once outside in Portpool Lane he walked as rapidly as he could, not even aware of the rain. He would like to have run but it was pointless, and he needed his strength. He could not stop until he found Hattie.

He asked questions of street peddlers, a seller of matches, another with bootlaces, one with hot chocolate and ham sandwiches. The sandwich man had seen a young woman with pale skin and very fair hair, in company with a woman a little older, brown-haired, going down Leather Lane toward High Holborn, at almost half past nine. They had been on foot, and hurrying.

It was confusing. Was that Hattie or not? With a woman? Who? It was the best lead he had. Standing in the traffic, people passing him by, the rattle of wheels and clip of hooves on the road, the spray of dirty water from the gutters soaking his legs, he was overwhelmed with the uselessness of it. It might have been Hattie, or equally easily it might not. And she could have been going anywhere in London.

There was no point in waiting here. He might as well see if anyone else had seen them. He could think as he walked. He might realize something that had eluded him so far.

But he did not, and in the late afternoon as it was growing dusk, he knew nothing more than half a dozen sightings, which might have been Hattie or any other fair-haired young woman. He decided to take a hansom and go out to Chiswick. At least there she was known, and any sighting would be real. It was just possible she had become homesick and gone back to the one place where she had friends, and which was familiar to her. She might feel safer there, even if in fact she was not.

The ride seemed interminable. Every dark street looked like every other. Lamps were lit, glaring eyes in the increasing gloom. Everything was full of shadows. The moving carriage lamps were yellow, and there was the hiss of wheels on the wet cobbles even though the rain had stopped.

Finally Monk reached the Chiswick mall on the edge of the river opposite the Eyot. He leaped out of the hansom, paid the driver, and strode over toward the lights moving down by the stretch of mud and stones left by the low tide. He could hear voices. If it was the police, he would ask for their help.

As he reached the steps, his stomach was churning, his breath tight in his chest, throat aching.

One of the men held his lantern higher, and Monk could see that there were four of them, grim, wet, feet and ankles caked with river mud. There was a woman’s body on the stones, and the yellow light shone on her face, and on the pale blond hair that was almost silver.

Monk knew it was Hattie, even before he was close enough to see her features.