The Shifting Tide

ONE

“The murder doesn’t matter,” Louvain said abruptly, leaning a little over his desk towards Monk.

The two men were standing in the big office next to windows that faced the Pool of London with its forest of masts swaying on the tide against the ragged autumn sky. There were clippers and schooners from every seafaring nation on earth, barges from up and down the river, local pleasure boats, as well as tugs, ferries, and tenders.

“I have to have the ivory!” Louvain gritted the words between his teeth. “I’ve no time to wait for the police.”

Monk stared at him, trying to frame an answer. He needed this job, or he would not have come down to the Louvain Shipping Company offices prepared to undertake a task so far outside his usual area of skill. He was a brilliant detective in the city; he had proved it time and time again, both in the police force and later as a private agent of enquiry. He knew the mansions of the wealthy and the back streets of the poor. He knew the petty thieves and informers, the dealers in stolen goods and the brothel-keepers, the forgers and many of the general ruffians for hire. But the river, the “longest street in London,” with its shifting tides, its constant movement of ships, and men who spoke scores of different languages, was strange territory to him. The question beat in his mind, insistent as a pulse: Why had Clement Louvain sent for him rather than someone familiar with the docks and the water? The River Police themselves were older than Peel’s city police; in fact, they had existed for nearly three quarters of a century—since 1798. It was feasible that the River Police were too busy to give Louvain’s ivory the attention he wanted, but was that really his reason for calling in Monk?

“The murder is part of the theft,” Monk replied at last. “If we knew who killed Hodge, we’d know who took the ivory, and if we knew when, we might be a lot closer to finding it.”

Louvain’s face tightened. He was a wind-burned, slender-hipped man in his early forties, but hard-muscled like the sailors he hired to work his ships to the East African coast and back, with ivory, timber, spices, and skins. His light brown hair was thick and sprang up from his forehead. His features were broad and blunt.

“On the river at night, time makes no difference,” he said curtly. “There are light-horsemen, heavy-horsemen, night plunderers up and down all the time. Nobody’s going to inform on anyone else, least of all to the River Police. That’s why I need my own man, one with the skills I’m told you have.” His eyes swept over Monk, seeing a man reputed to have the same ruthlessness as himself, an inch or two taller, darker, with high cheekbones and a lean, powerful face. “I need that ivory back,” Louvain repeated. “It’s due for delivery, and the money is owed. Don’t look for the murderer to find the thief. That might work on shore. On the river you find the thief, and that will lead you to the murderer.”

Monk would have dearly liked to decline the case. It would have been easy enough; his lack of knowledge alone would have provided grounds for it. In fact, it was increasingly difficult to see why Louvain had sent for him rather than one of the many men who must at least know the river and the docks. There was always someone who would undertake a private commission—for a fee.

But Monk could not afford to point that out. He faced the bitter fact that he must make himself obliging to Louvain, and convince him, against the truth, that it was well within his power to find the ivory and return it to him in less time, and with greater discretion, than the River Police could or would do.

Necessity drove him, the spate of recent trivial cases which paid too little. He dared not go into debt, and since Hester had given her time to the clinic in Portpool Lane, which was wholly charitable, she added nothing to their financial situation. But a man should not expect his wife to keep herself. She asked little enough—no luxury, no vanity, only to be able to do the work she loved. Monk would have served any man to give her that. He resented Louvain because he had the power to cause him acute discomfort, but far more than that he was troubled that Louvain showed more concern about catching a thief who had robbed him of goods than a murderer who had taken Hodge’s life.

“And if we do catch him,” he said aloud, “and Hodge is buried, what evidence do we have? We will have concealed his crime for him.”

Louvain pursed his lips. “I can’t afford to have the theft known. It would ruin me. Would it serve if I swear a testimony as to exactly where I found the body, and how and when? The doctor can swear to his injuries, and you yourself can look, too. I’ll sign the document and you can have it.”

“How will you explain concealing the crime from the police?” Monk asked.

“I’ll hand them the murderer, with proof,” Louvain answered. “What more could they want?”

“And if I don’t catch him?”

Louvain looked at him with a wry, delicately twisted smile. “You will,” he said simply.

Monk could not afford to argue. Morally, it set ill with him, but in practical terms Louvain was right. He must succeed; but if he did not, then the River Police’s chances were even less.

“Tell me as much as you know,” he said.

Louvain sat down at last, easing himself into the padded round-backed chair and indicating that Monk should sit also. He fixed his gaze on Monk’s face.

“The Maude Idris put out from Zanzibar fully loaded with ebony, spices, and fourteen first-grade tusks of ivory, bound ’round the Cape of Good Hope and home. She’s a four-masted schooner with a nine-man crew: captain, mate, bosun, cook, cabin boy, and four able seamen, one per mast. That’s standard for her tonnage.” He was still watching Monk’s face. “She made fair weather most of the way, calling in for supplies and fresh water up the west coast of Africa. She reached Biscay five days ago, Spithead the day before yesterday, and tacked the last few miles upriver with the wind behind her. Dropped anchor just east of the Pool yesterday, October twentieth.”

Monk was listening intently, but the account held nothing useful to him. He was certain Louvain knew that; nevertheless they both continued to play out the charade.

“Crew was paid off,” Louvain went on. “As is usual. Been away a long time, close to half a year, one way and another. I left the bosun and three able seamen on board to keep things safe. One of them is the dead man, Hodge.” A flicker passed across his face. It could have been any emotion at all: anger, sorrow, even guilt.

“Four out of the nine stayed?” Monk confirmed it.

As if reading his thoughts, Louvain pursed his lips. “I know the river’s dangerous, especially for a ship newly come in. All the watermen will know the cargo’s still on it. Not much on the river is secret for long, but any fool could work that out. You don’t come up this far if you’re empty. You’re loading or unloading. I thought four men, armed, would be enough. I was wrong.” His face was filled with emotion, but which emotion was unreadable.

“How were they armed?” Monk asked.

“Pistols and cutlasses,” Louvain replied.

Monk frowned. “Those are close-quarter weapons. Is that all you carry?”

Louvain’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “There are four cannons on deck,” he replied guardedly. “But that’s in case of piracy at sea. You can’t fire that sort of thing on the river!” A slight flare of amusement crossed his face and vanished. “They only wanted the ivory, not the whole damn ship!”

“Was anyone else injured apart from Hodge?” Monk concealed his annoyance with an effort. It was not Louvain’s fault that he was obliged to work out of his depth.

“No,” Louvain said. “River thieves know how to come alongside and board in silence. Hodge was the only one they encountered, and they killed him without arousing anyone else.”

Monk tried to imagine the scene: the cramped spaces in the bowels of the ship, the floor shifting and tilting with the tide, the creaking of the ship’s timbers. And then would come the sudden knowledge that there were footsteps, then the terror, the violence, and finally the crippling pain as they struck.

“Who found him?” he said quietly. “And when?”

Louvain’s face was heavy, his mouth drawn tight. “The man who came to relieve him at eight o’clock.”

“Before or after he saw the ivory was missing?”

Louvain hesitated only a second. It was barely discernible, and Monk wondered if he had imagined it. “After.”

If he had said before, Monk would not have believed him. In self-preservation the man would have wanted to know what he was dealing with before he told Louvain anything. And unless he were a complete fool, he would have thought first to make sure the killer was not still on board. If he could have said he had captured him, and kept the ivory, he would have had a very different story to tell. Unless, of course, he already knew all about it and was party to it?

“Where were you when you got the message?”

Louvain looked at him stonily. “Here. It was nearly half past eight by then.”

“How long had you been here?”

“Since seven.”

“Would he know that?” He watched Louvain’s face closely. One of the ways he could judge the men left on the ship was by Louvain’s trust in them. A man in Louvain’s position could not afford to forgive even error, let alone any kind of disloyalty.

“Yes,” Louvain replied, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Any seaman would expect it. That doesn’t tell you what you think it does.”

Monk felt the heat burn up inside him. He was clawing after answers, not grasping as he usually did. This was not the right pace at which to play games of wits with Louvain. He must be either blunter or a great deal more subtle.

“All shipowners are in their offices at that hour?” he concluded aloud.

Louvain relaxed a little. “Yes. He came here and told me Hodge had been killed and the ivory stolen. I went with him immediately—” He stopped as Monk stood up.

“Can you retrace your steps, and I’ll come with you?” Monk requested.

Louvain rose smoothly. “Of course.” He said nothing else as he led Monk across the worn carpet to the heavy door, opened it and then locked it behind them, putting the key in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. As he took a heavier jacket from a coat stand, he glanced at Monk’s attire, as if to consider its adequacy, and decided it would suffice.

Monk was proud of his clothes. Even in his most financially restricted times, he had dressed well. He had a natural elegance, and pride dictated that the tailor’s bill had come before the butcher’s. But that had been when he was single. Now he might have to reverse that order, and it already weighed heavily with him. It was a kind of defeat. However, he had realized that a man involved in shipping, as Louvain was, might well have business that required them both to go on the river, so he had come with that in mind. His boots were heavy and well soled; his overcoat was easy to move in and would cut the wind.

He followed Louvain down the stairs and across the outer office, where clerks were bent over ledgers or sitting on high stools with quills in hand. The odors of ink and dust were in the air, and there was an acrid sting of smoke as he passed the iron heating stove just as someone opened it to put more coke in the top.

Outside in the roadway towards the dock, the raw-edged wind struck them immediately, making the skin smart, whipping the hair back, catching in the throat the taste of salt on the incoming tide. It was heavy with smells of fish, tar, and the sour, overbearing effluent of mud and sewage from above the waterline beyond the wharves.

The water slurped against the pier stakes in endless movement, rhythm broken now and then by the wash of barges laden so they sank deep. They moved slowly upriver towards London Bridge and beyond. The mewing of gulls was shrill, yet it was a sound that brought back echoes of meaning for Monk, flashes of his life in Northumberland as a boy. A carriage accident seven years before, in 1856, had robbed him of most of those many-colored fragments that build the past and form the pictures of who we are. By deduction he had pieced much of it together, and now and again windows opened suddenly and showed him whole landscapes for a moment. The cry of gulls was one of those.

Louvain was crossing the cobbles down to the wharf and striding along without looking right or left. The docks, with their vast warehouses, cranes and derricks, were all familiar to him. He was used to seeing the laborers and watermen and the small craft coming and going.

Monk followed Louvain to the end of the wharf, where the dark water swirled and slapped under the shadows, its surface spotted with scum and drifting refuse. On the far bank there was a stretch of mud below the tide line, and three children were wading in it, sunk halfway up to their knees, bent over, searching with busy, skilled hands for whatever they could find. A snatch of memory told Monk it was almost certainly for coal off the barges, fallen by chance, or deliberately pushed a piece at a time, precisely in order to be picked up by the mudlarks.

Louvain waved his arm and shouted across the water. Within moments a light boat, twelve or fourteen feet long, drew up to the steps with a single man aboard at the oars. His face was weather-beaten to the color of old wood, his gray beard little more than bristle, and his hat, jammed down over his ears, hid whatever hair he might have had. He gave a brief, half salute of recognition and waited for Louvain’s orders.

“Take us out to the Maude Idris,” Louvain told him, stepping easily down into the boat, adjusting his weight to keep his balance as it tipped and jiggled. He offered no assistance to Monk behind him, either assuming he was accustomed to boats or uninterested in whether he made a fool of himself or not.

A moment of fear rose in Monk, and embarrassment in case he did it clumsily. He stiffened, and then physical instinct told him that was wrong, and he dropped down loosely, bending his knees and adjusting with a grace that surprised both of them.

The waterman wove between the barges with practiced skill, skirting around a three-masted schooner, its canvas lashed, timbers stained and peeling from long days of tropical sun and salt wind. Monk glanced down and saw the crusting of barnacles below the waterline. The river was too murky for him to see more than a foot or so below the surface.

He looked up quickly as they passed under the shadow of a much larger ship and caught his breath with a sudden thrill as the sheer beauty of it gripped him. It towered into the air, three tremendous masts with yardarms eighty or ninety feet long and dark against the gray clouds, sails furled, rigging in fine lines like an etching on the sky. It was one of the great clippers that sailed around the world, probably racing from China to London with tea, silk, and spices of the Far East. First one to unload won the stupendous prices, second got only what was left. His imagination teemed with visions of roaring winds and seas, worlds of sky, billowing canvas, spars thrashing in a wild dance of the elements. And there would be calmer seas, flaming sunsets, clear water like glass teeming with creatures of myriad shapes, and windless days when time and space stretched into eternity.

Monk jerked himself back to the present and the loud, busy river, the cold spray off the water whipping his face. Ahead of them was a four-masted schooner lying at anchor, rolling slightly on the wake from a string of barges. She was wide beamed and quite deep of draft, an oceangoing carrier of heavy cargo, swift under full sail, easy to maneuver, and this close, the gun ports on the foredeck were plain to see. She would be neither caught nor captured easily.

Yet here in her home port she was a sitting target for two or three men creeping up over the black water by night, swarming up the sides to the deck and taking an inattentive guard by surprise.

They were almost alongside, and Louvain rose to his feet, balancing with a slight swaying of his body to the motion of the river.

“Ahoy! Maude Idris! Louvain coming aboard!”

A man appeared at the rail, looking down at them. He was broad-shouldered, short-legged, powerful. “Right sir, Mr. Louvain!” he shouted back, and a moment later a rope ladder hurtled over from the deck and uncoiled down the side. The waterman maneuvered the boat underneath it, and Louvain caught the bottom rung in his hand. He hesitated an instant, as if to question whether Monk was capable of climbing up after him. Then he changed his mind and went without turning around, hand over hand with obvious practice, reaching the top to swing over the rail and stand up on the deck, waiting for Monk to follow.

Monk steadied himself, grasped the rope ladder to hold it firm, then raised his foot as Louvain had done, putting his hand out to grip the third rung, and hoisted himself up. He hung suspended for a perilous instant, neither balanced on the boat nor on the ladder. The water churned beneath him. The schooner rolled, swinging him wide, then banging him back against the hull, bruising his knuckles. He threw his weight upwards and took the next rung, and the next, until he too went over the rail and stood up beside Louvain. They had neither of them made any sound.

He controlled the breath rasping in his lungs with an effort. “And how would they do that if no one let down the ladder for them?” he asked.

“The thieves?” Louvain said. “It must have been more than one, with an accomplice to stay in the boat, possibly hired for the job.” He glanced towards the rail again, and the water beyond. The sun was lowering already and the shadows were long, though in the gray light it was not easy to tell. “They’d climb up ropes,” he said in answer to Monk’s question. “Throw them up from below, grapple the rail. Simple enough.” A brief, hard smile curved his mouth for a moment. “Ladders are for landsmen.”

Monk looked at Louvain’s tight-muscled shoulders and effortless balance, and was quite certain that the lack of a ladder would not have stopped him, had he been intent on boarding. “Would the grapple leave any marks on the wood?” Monk said aloud.

Louvain drew in his breath sharply, then let it out again as understanding came to him. “You think the crew were in on it?”

“Were they?” Monk asked. “Do you know each one well enough to be certain?”

Louvain thought before he answered. He was weighing some judgment in his mind; his eyes reflected it, and the moment of decision. “Yes,” he said finally. He did not qualify it or add any assurances. He was not used to explaining himself; his word sufficed.

Monk looked around the deck. It was broad and open, scrubbed clean, but still it was a small space to imagine in the vastness of the ocean. The hatches were closed but not battened down. The wood was strong and in good repair, but the marks of use were clear. This was a working ship; even at a glance one could see the ingrained stains of hands on the surrounds of hatches, of feet on the tracks to and from the way down. Nothing was new, except one piece of shroud going up the foremast high into the rigging to be lost in the web above. Its pale color marked it plainly.

From the aft hatch, which was standing open, a hand appeared and then a huge body, climbing through and up. He stood well over six feet; his round head was covered in a bristle of brownish gray hair, his chin similarly. It was a coarse face, but intelligent, and it was apparent he made no move without thought. Now he walked slowly over to Louvain and stopped a little distance short of him, waiting for his orders.

“This is the ship’s bosun, Newbolt,” Louvain said. “He can tell you all he knows of the theft.”

Monk relaxed a little, deliberately. He regarded Newbolt with care: the man’s immense physical power; his callused hands; the weathered clothes; dark blue trousers worn and shapeless, but strong enough to protect him against cold or a loose rope lashing. His jacket was thick, and the front of a rough woollen sweater in fancy stitches was visible at the neck. Monk remembered it was an old seafaring habit to wear such garments, the different stitches identifying a man by family and clan even if his dead body had been in the sea for days, or weeks.

“Three of you here, and the dead man?” Monk asked him.

“Yeah.” Newbolt did not move at all, not even to nod his head. His eyes were fixed on Monk, steady, clever, unreflecting.

“And where was it you found Hodge’s body?” Monk asked.

Newbolt’s head moved fractionally to one side, a minute acknowledgment. “Bottom o’ the steps from the aft ’atchway down to the ’old.”

“What do you suppose he was doing there?” Monk asked.

“I dunno. Mebbe ’e ’eard summink,” Newbolt answered with ill-concealed insolence.

“Then why didn’t he raise the alarm?” Monk enquired. “How would he do that?”

Newbolt opened his mouth and took a deep breath, his huge chest swelling. Something in his face changed. Suddenly he was watching Monk quite differently, and with far more care.

“Shout,” he answered. “Can’t fire a gun around ’ere. Might ’it someone else.”

“You could fire it in the air,” Monk suggested.

“Well if ’e did, no one ’eard it,” Newbolt replied. “I’d guess as they crept up on ’im. Mebbe one of ’em made a noise, like, and when ’e turned ter look, another one whacked ’im over the ’ead. As ter ’is bein’ found at the bottom o’ the hatchway steps, that’d be where they threw ’im. If they’d a left ’im lyin’ on deck someone else could’ve seen ’im, an’ know’d there were summink wrong. Thieves ain’t fools. Least not all of ’em.”

It made excellent sense. It was what Monk himself would have done, and how he would have answered such an enquiry. “Thank you.” He turned to Louvain. “May I see where he was found?”

Louvain took a lantern from Newbolt and moved to the aft hatch, climbing over onto the steps, twisting his body in a single movement. He went downwards, disappearing into the dense shadows of the interior, only the space immediately around him illuminated by the flame.

Monk followed, with less grace, feeling his way rung by rung. Ahead of him floorboards and bulkheads were visible, and beyond the dark, the open maw of the hold, denser outlines of the cargo emerging as his eyes became used to the gloom. He could just make out stacks of timber lashed tight. He could imagine the destruction if it broke loose in heavy seas. In weather wild enough it could pierce the hull and the ship would sink in minutes. Even through the wrapping of oilcloth and canvas, he could smell the strange spices, but they were not strong enough to mask the mustiness of closed air and the sourness of the bilges below. His own boating experiences had been above deck, open to the wind and the seas. He had known the coast, not the ocean, and certainly not Africa, where this cargo had begun.

“There.” Louvain lowered the lantern until the light shone on the ledge nearer the steps down onto the floor of the hold. It was clear enough to see the marks of blood.

Monk took the lantern from Louvain and bent to look more closely. The stains were smears, not the still-damp pools he would have expected if a man dead of a lethal head wound had either been killed here or placed here within moments of being struck. He looked up. “What was he wearing on his head?” he asked.

Louvain’s face was upward lit, giving it an eerie, masklike quality that accentuated his surprise at the question. “A . . . a hat, I think,” he answered.

“What kind?”

“Why? What has that to do with who killed him or where my ivory is?” There was tension in his voice.

“If a man is hit over the head hard enough to kill him, there’s usually a lot of blood,” Monk replied, standing up to face Louvain levelly. “Even when you nick your skin shaving.”

Comprehension flared in Louvain’s eyes. “A woollen hat,” he answered. “It gets very cold on deck at night. Air off the river eats into your bones.” He drew in his breath. “But I think you’re right. He was probably killed up there.” He glanced upwards towards the ladder and the darkening square of sky through the hatchway. “As Newbolt said, they’d have thrown him down here to stop the chance of his being seen by a passing boat and the alarm raised.”

Monk turned back towards the hold, lifting the lantern higher to see the space more clearly. “How do you unload the timber?” he asked. “Is there a main hatch which comes off?”

“Yes, but it has nothing to do with this. It’s locked fast.”

“Could that be why they took the ivory? Because it could be carried up the steps and out of this hatchway?”

“Possibly. But so could the spices.”

“What does a tusk weigh?”

“Depends—eighty or ninety pounds. A man could carry them, one at a time. You’re thinking a chance thief?”

“Opportunist,” Monk replied. “Why? What did you think?”

Louvain weighed his answer carefully. “There’s a lot of theft on the river, everything from piracy to the mudlarks, and people know when a ship comes in and has to be at anchor before she can find a wharf to unload. It can be weeks, if you’re unlucky—or don’t know the right people.”

Monk was surprised. “Weeks? Wouldn’t some cargoes rot?”

Louvain’s face was sardonic. “Of course. Shipping is not an easy business, Mr. Monk. The stakes are high; you can win a fortune, or lose one. No errors are forgiven, and no mercy is asked or expected. It’s like the sea. Only a fool fights with it. You learn its rules and, if you want to survive, you obey them.”

Monk believed him. He needed to know more about crime on the river, but he could not afford to expose his ignorance in front of Louvain. He loathed being obliged to court a job and equivocate about his own abilities.

“Could anyone assume you would be anchored here for several days before being able to unload?” he asked.

“Yes. That’s the only reason I can put off my buyers,” Louvain answered. “You’ve got no more than eight or nine days at the outside to find my ivory and get it back, whether you get the thief or not. We can prove his guilt later.”

Monk raised his eyebrows. “Of murder? Wasn’t Hodge your man?”

Louvain’s face hardened, his eyes as cold and hollow as a winter sky. “How I deal with my men is not your concern, Monk, and you’d be advised to remember it. I’ll pay you fairly, or better, and I expect the job done my way. If you catch the man who murdered Hodge, so much the better, but I’m concerned with feeding the living, not revenging the dead. You can take your evidence to the River Police. They’ll hang whoever’s responsible. I assume that is what you want?”

A sharp retort rose to Monk’s tongue, but he bit it back, and merely agreed. “Where is Hodge’s body now?” he asked instead.

“At the morgue,” Louvain answered. “I have made arrangements for his burial. He died in my service.” His mouth formed a thin line, as if the knowledge caused him pain. Monk found it the first comforting thing he had seen in Louvain. He no longer feared that Hodge’s killer would escape any kind of accounting. It might be river justice, so the burden upon Monk to make sure he had the right man was even greater, but perhaps he should have expected that. He was dealing with men of the sea, where judgments had to be right the first time because there was no mercy, and no appeal.

“I need to see him,” Monk said. He made it an order rather than a suggestion. Louvain would have no respect for a man he could dominate, and Monk could neither afford his contempt nor stomach it.

Wordlessly, Louvain took the lantern from Monk and turned to begin the climb up the ladder again through the hatch and out onto the deck. Monk followed him. Up on deck the wind was harder, like a whetted knife edge as the tide came in. The heavy gray skies made it close to darkness already, and there was a smell of rain in the air. The wash from a string of barges made the ship strain a little at the anchor and set the boat rocking where it was waiting for them, the waterman steadying it with his oars.

Newbolt was waiting for them, his arms folded over his barrel chest, swaying to keep his balance.

“Thank you,” Monk said to Louvain. He looked at Newbolt. “Was there a change of watch during the night?” he asked.

“Yes. Atkinson was on midnight to four, Hodge from four till eight,” Newbolt replied. “Then me.”

“And no one came on deck before eight in the morning, when you found Hodge?” Monk let his surprise show, and a degree of contempt, as if he considered Newbolt incompetent.

“ ’Course they was on deck!” Newbolt growled. “Nobody went down the ’old, so they din’t find ’Odge’s body.” His eyes were level and angry, the way a man’s eyes are if he has been unjustly accused—or is lying.

Monk smiled, showing his teeth a little. “What time?”

“Just arter six,” Newbolt replied, but his face betrayed his understanding. “Yeah . . . the thieves came arter four an’ afore six, an’ that’s cuttin’ it fine.”

“Why wouldn’t they come between midnight and four?” Monk asked him, temporarily ignoring Louvain. “Wouldn’t you . . . if you were a thief?”

Newbolt stiffened, his big body motionless. “What are you sayin’, mister? Exact!”

Monk did not flinch or move his eyes even a fraction. “That either we have the facts wrong or we have a most unusual thief who either chooses, or is obliged, to carry out his robberies on the river in the last couple of hours before dawn, rather than the middle of the night watch. Do you disagree with that?”

“No . . .” Newbolt admitted reluctantly. “Mebbe ’e’d tried other ships an’ either the watch were too spry or they din’t ’ave nothin’ as ’e wanted or could move easy. We was ’is last chance for the night.”

“Perhaps,” Monk agreed. “Or could he have picked Hodge’s watch for some reason?”

Newbolt understood immediately. “Yer sayin’ as ’Odge were in on it? Yer wrong, mister. ’Odge were a good man. I know’d ’im fer years. An’ if ’e were in on it, ’ow come the poor sod got ’is ’ead bashed? Don’t sound ter me like a bargain even a fool’d make!” He sneered at Monk, showing strong, yellowish teeth.

“No, it wouldn’t be Hodge’s arrangement,” Monk agreed.

The dull color rose up Newbolt’s face. “Well it bloody in’t mine, yer son of a bitch! ’Odge is family ter me! I know’d ’im twenty years, an’ ’e’s married ter me sister!”

Monk felt a stab of regret. He had not even thought of personal loss until this moment. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly.

Newbolt nodded.

Monk considered the information. It was possible all of it was true, some of it, or very little. Atkinson might have been in collusion with the thieves, and been caught by Hodge at any time from midnight until four, or possibly even later. Monk turned to Louvain. “Get me Atkinson,” he requested.

Atkinson was a tall, lean man. The scar that ran from his brow across his cheek to his chin showed livid through the stubble of his beard. He moved easily with a feline sort of grace and he regarded Monk with faint suspicion. He looked to Louvain for orders.

Louvain nodded to him.

“What time did Hodge come to relieve you from watch?” Monk asked, although he knew the answer was of little use because he would have no idea if it was the truth or not.

“ ’Bout ’alf past three,” Atkinson replied. “ ’e couldn’t sleep, an’ I were ’appy enough ter let ’im do my last ’alf hour. I went away ter me bed.”

“Describe the scene you left,” Monk requested.

Atkinson was surprised. “Nothin’ ter tell. All quiet. Weren’t nob’dy on deck but me an’ ’Odge. Nob’dy near on the water neither, least not that I could see. ’Course anyone could be there wi’out ridin’ lights, if they was daft enough.”

“Did Hodge say anything to you? How did he look, sound?”

Newbolt was watching him, his eyes angry.

“Same as any time,” Atkinson answered. “Much as you’d be if yer’d come out o’ yer bed at ’alf past three in the mornin’ ter stand on a freezin’ deck an’ watch the tide rise and fall.”

“Sleepy? Angry? Bored?” Monk pressed.

“ ’e weren’t angry, but yeah, ’e looked rough, poor sod.”

“Thank you.” Monk turned to Louvain. “May I see Hodge’s body now, please?”

“Of course, if you think there’s any point,” Louvain said with frayed patience. He walked over to the rail and shouted for the lighter to come back, and waited while it did so. He swung over the rail, grasped the ropes of the ladder, nodded at Newbolt, then disappeared down.

Monk went after him, a great deal more carefully, scraping his knuckles again on the way and bruising his fingers as he was bumped against the ship’s hull by the movement of the water.

Once down in the boat he sat, and he and Louvain were rowed wordlessly back to the wharf.

At the top of the steps, a shorter distance with the turned tide racing in, the wind was keener and edged with rain turning to sleet.

Louvain put up his collar and hunched his shoulders. “I’ll pay you a pound a day, plus any reasonable expenses,” he stated. “You have ten days to find my ivory. I’ll give you twenty pound extra if you do.” His tone made it plain he would not accept negotiation. But then a police constable started at just under a pound a week. Louvain was offering seven times as much, plus a reward at the end if Monk was successful. It was a lot of money, far too much to refuse. Even failure was paid at a better rate than most jobs, although the penalty afterwards to his reputation might be dear. But he also could not afford to think of the future if there were no present.

He nodded. “I’ll report to you when I have progress, or need more information.”

“You’ll report to me in three days regardless,” Louvain replied. “Now come see Hodge.” He swiveled on his foot and marched along the wharf all the way to the street without looking back. As Monk caught up with him they crossed together, picking their way between the rumbling wagons. It was almost dark, and street lamps made ragged islands as the mist blew in and the cobbles glistened underfoot.

Monk was glad to be inside again, even though it was the morgue, with its smell of carbolic and death. The attendant was still there; perhaps this close to the river there was always someone present. He was an elderly man with a scrubbed, pink face and a cheerful expression. He recognized Louvain immediately.

“Evenin’ sir. You’ll be after Mr. ’Odge. ’is widder’s ’ere, poor soul. In’t no use in yer waitin’. She could be ’ere some time. I reckon as she’s makin’ ’er peace, like.”

“Thank you,” Louvain acknowledged. “Mr. Monk is with me.” And without waiting for the attendant to show him, he led the way to the room where a large, rawboned woman with gray hair and fine, pale skin was standing silently, her hands folded in front of her, staring at the body of a man lying on a bench.

He was covered up to the neck with a sheet, which was stained and a little thin at the edges. His face had the lividity of death, and the strangely shrunken absent look of a shell no longer inhabited by its spirit. He must have been large in life—the frame was there, the bones—but he seemed small now. It took a force of imagination to think of him as having been able to move and speak, to have will, even passion.

The woman looked briefly at Louvain, then at Monk.

Monk spoke to her first. “I am sorry for your grief, Mrs. Hodge. My name is William Monk. Mr. Louvain has hired me to find out who killed your husband, and to see that he answers for it.”

She looked at him with leaden eyes. “Mebbe,” she answered. “Don’t make much difference ter me, nor me kids. Don’t pay the rent nor put food in our mouths. Still, I s’pose ’e should swing.” She turned back to the motionless form on the table. “Stupid sod!” she said with sudden fury. “But ’e weren’t all bad. Brought me a piece o’ wood back from Africa last time, all carved like an animal. Pretty. I never ’ocked it afore. S’pose I’ll ’ave ter now.” She glanced at the corpse. “Yer stupid sod!” she repeated helplessly.

Monk’s anger at the thief stopped being a matter of law, or some inanimate sense of justice, and suddenly became hate, and deeply personal. Hodge was past injury, but this woman was not, nor her children. But there was nothing useful for him to say, nothing that would help now, and he could give her no assistance in her poverty.

He looked instead at the dead man. He had thick hair, and the back of his head rested on the table. Monk reached across and lifted the head very slightly, feeling underneath for the extent of the injury. He had seen no blood on the top of the steps to the hold, and none on the deck. Scalp wounds bled.

His fingers found the soft, broken skull under the hair. It had been an extremely hard blow. Something heavy and wide had been used, and by a person either of a good height or else standing slightly above. He looked at the attendant. “You cleaned him up, washed away the blood?”

“A bit,” the attendant answered from the doorway. “There wasn’t much. Just made ’im presentable, like.” There was nothing in his face to indicate whether he knew if the man was a victim of murder or accident. There were probably many of the latter on ships, and especially on the docks, where heavy loads were moved and sometimes came loose.

“Not much blood?” Monk questioned.

“He had a woollen hat on,” Louvain explained again. “I’m afraid it must have been lost when we were carrying him here. I can describe it for you, if you think it matters.”

“There was no blood on deck,” Monk pointed out. “And very little where he was found. It might have been helpful, but it’s probably not important. I’ve seen all I need to.” He thanked Mrs. Hodge again, then went out ahead of Louvain, back to the outside room. “I want the attendant’s testimony in writing, and yours.”

A brief smile flickered across Louvain’s face, some oblique, inner humor he would not share. “I’ve not forgotten. You’ll get your pieces of paper. Dawson!” he called to the attendant. “Mr. Monk would like our testaments of Hodge’s death on paper to help him in his work. Would you be good enough, please?”

Dawson looked slightly taken aback, but he produced paper, pen, and ink. He and Louvain both wrote their statements, signed, witnessed by each other, and Monk put them in his pocket.

“Did you learn anything?” Louvain asked when they were on the pavement. The rain had now eased off and the wind slackened, allowing the mist to drift up off the water, wreathing the lamps and obscuring the roofs of some of the buildings nearby.

Someone was lying. That was what Monk had learned. Hodge had not been struck on deck and then carried below by a single thief. There was no blood on deck, no trail across the boards. Either Hodge had not died there, or there were more than two thieves, one from the boat and two on deck, or at least one of the crew had been involved. He decided not to say that much to Louvain.

“Possibilities,” he answered. “I’ll start again in the morning.”

“Report to me in three days, regardless of what you have,” Louvain reminded him. “Before, if you have the ivory, of course. I’ll pay you five pounds extra for every day short of ten that you recover it.”

“Good,” Monk said levelly, but he felt the money slip out of his grasp as he walked forward in the darkness and wondered how far he would have to go to find an omnibus back towards his home. He should not spend money on hansoms anymore.

It was nearly seven o’clock by the time he alighted from the final leg of his journey, with the two pounds that Louvain had given him still unbroken. He was in Tottenham Court Road with only a hundred yards or so to walk. The mist had settled, obscuring the distances. There were the smells of soot from the chimneys and of the horse manure which had not yet been cleared, but he knew the way almost to the step. It would be warm once he was inside.

There would be food prepared if Hester was in. He tried not to hope too fiercely that she was. Her work at the clinic was of intense importance to her. Before they had met seven years ago, she had nursed in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale. On her return to England she had worked occasionally in hospitals, but her independence on the battlefield had made her intolerant of being reduced to cleaning, stoking fires, and rolling bandages. Her temper had cost her more than one position.

As a private nurse caring for individual cases, Hester had been far more successful. More recently she had turned her attention to helping prostitutes who were injured and homeless in the course of their trade. Hester had first set up the clinic almost in the shadow of the Coldbath Prison—then, in a stroke of brilliant opportunism, moved it to a large house nearby in Portpool Lane. Monk’s only objection was that the very urgency of the need for such a place meant that Hester spent many late hours there.

He reached the front door and slipped his key into the lock. Inside the lights were on, only dimly, but it must mean she was at home. She would never have left them to burn otherwise.

He walked through quickly, a surge of pleasure welling up inside him. It was far more than simply the warmth of being protected from the wind and enclosed by his own home, or even knowing that a long, comfortable night lay ahead of him.

She was in the sitting room, which was always tidy, always heated because it was the room in which he saw clients. It was Hester, years before they were married, who had insisted it be so. It was she who had placed the chairs on either side of the fireplace and put the bowl with flowers on the table.

Now she dropped her book and stood up, her face full of pleasure. She came straight to him, expecting him to put his arms around her and to kiss her. The sheer certainty of it was almost as sweet to him as the act itself. He held her closely, kissing her mouth, her cheek, her closed eyes. Her hair was untidy. She smelled faintly of carbolic from the clinic. No matter how much she scrubbed, it never entirely went away. She was a little too thin to be womanly. He had always thought it was something he did not like, and yet he would not have changed her gangling grace or her fierce, tender emotion for the most beautiful woman he had ever seen or dreamed. The reality was always better, sharper, more surprising. In loving her, he had discovered a fire and delicacy within himself that he had not known existed. She infuriated him at times, exasperated him, excited him, but never, ever bored him. Above all—more precious than anything else—in her presence he could not be lonely.

“The shipowner gave me the job,” he told her, still with his arms around her. “His name is Louvain. He’s lost a cargo of ivory, and the thieves murdered the night watchman to get it.”

She pulled back to look at his face. “So why doesn’t he call in the River Police? Is it even legal not to?”

He saw the anxiety in her eyes. He understood it uncomfortably well.

“He needs the ivory back more quickly than they’ll be able to get it,” he explained. “There are thefts up and down the river all the time.”

“And murders?” she asked. There was no criticism in her, but there was fear. Did she know how narrow their finances were now? The bills were paid for this week, but what about next week, and the one after?

She loved the clinic. It would be a defeat of all they had tried to do if she had to give it up in order to earn money as a paid nurse again. The clinic would not survive without her. She was not only the one reliable person there with any medical experience; she had the will and the courage behind the whole venture.

They had managed through the harder, earlier times with the financial help of Lady Callandra Daviot, who had been a friend to Hester for years, and to both of them since long before their marriage. But Monk was loath to go back to Lady Callandra now—when she was no longer actively involved in his cases, and certainly could not help in this one—simply to ask her for money he knew perfectly well he would not be able to repay. And could Hester ever accept that either?

He touched his fingers gently to her hair. “Yes, of course, murders,” he answered. “And accidental deaths, which is what the authorities seem to be assuming this one is so far. Louvain has not told them otherwise. When I catch the thief and can prove his guilt, then I can prove the murder as well. I have signed statements from Louvain and the morgue attendant.” He hated the thought of working secretly from the River Police. He was not a lover of authority, nor did he take orders with ease or grace, but he was a policeman by training, and even if he despised some of them for lack of imagination or intelligence, he still respected the concept of an organized force, both to prevent and to detect crime.

“I’m hungry,” he said with a smile. “What is there to eat?”