by Anne Perry
It was still a tangle too dense to penetrate.
In his office Monk reread all he had on the people concerned in the research for the Pharmacy Act, making a list of all of those who had come into contact with Joel Lambourn. He would have to compare this list with whatever Runcorn could find on Lambourn’s movements in the last week of his life.
But then, of course, it did not have to be direct contact. It might have been indirect, someone who mentioned a name, a fact to someone else.
Who was the person that Agatha Nisbet believed had been corrupted into selling opium and needles for the man behind the scheme? How would they find him, and if they did, would he tell them anything of use?
The other half of the problem was not yet answered, perhaps the easier half: Who knew what Lambourn had learned so that it reached the man behind the sales, the real profiteer, the one who had killed him, and then killed Zenia Gadney? What was the line of reasoning that connected them all?
Was the damning information in Lambourn’s report, or was its destruction a red herring to justify his apparent suicide? Monk knew he must look harder for it, at the very least find out exactly who had ordered its destruction, and who had carried it out.
He would ask Runcorn to put someone good on to the task of looking yet again.
The report had been handed to Barclay Herne, who had apparently told Sinden Bawtry that it was so ill prepared as to be no use for the purpose of persuading Parliament to pass the Pharmacy Act.
Who else had seen it? If no one had, then the seller of opium had to be one of those two. But would Herne have killed his brother-in-law? Both Bawtry and Herne had alibis. They had been at the Atheneum the night Lambourn died, as attested to by a dozen or more people.
The seller of opium would surely have others in his employ, including the man Agatha Nisbet said had once been good. How could Monk find him? And how soon?
Runcorn, Orme, and Taylor met at Paradise Place just before ten o’clock, all sitting around the kitchen table on the four hard-backed wooden chairs normally kept there for dining. One more chair had had to be brought along from Scuff’s bedroom, Hester creeping in to collect it without waking him.
The oven warmed the room, which smelled of fresh bread, scrubbed wood, and clean linen.
Over tea and hot buttered toast Monk told them all what Agatha Nisbet had told him, emphasizing the need to find the other man she spoke of in particular. No one said anything. He looked up and saw Hester’s eyes on him, watching, trying to judge from his face just what he thought.
“Did she tell you anything else about this man?” she asked him quietly. “Anything at all-age, experience, skills, what he does now?”
“No,” he admitted. “I think she was protecting him on purpose. It grieved her badly that he had been so corrupted.”
“Opium does that to you.” Hester’s face was bleak. “I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard a bit, seen a bit. Sometimes you have to use it for terrible wounds, and then it’s too hard to give it up, particularly if the wounds never really heal.”
Monk looked at her. Her shoulders were tense, pulling the fabric of her dress, the muscles of her neck tight, her mouth closed delicately so the pity showed like an unhealed wound of her own. He wondered how much more she had seen than he had, horror that she could never share.
He reached across the table and touched her fingers on the wooden surface, just for a moment, then pulled back.
“Do you know where to look?” he asked her. He hated doing it, but she would know that he had to, and resent it if he did less than his job, in order to spare her.
“I think so,” she answered, looking at him and not any of the others around the table, all watching her, waiting.
“I’ll go with you,” Monk said immediately. “He could be dangerous.”
“No.” She shook her head. “We haven’t time to send two people to do one job. We’ve only a few days. I have an idea of who it might be. When I saw him before, I didn’t even think of him being addicted himself. I should have.” There was anger in her voice, bitter self-criticism.
“You’re not going alone,” Monk responded without hesitation. “If he is the person who killed Lambourn and hacked Zenia Gadney to pieces, he’d do the same to you without a second thought about it. Either I come with you, or you don’t go!”
She smiled very slightly, as though some tiny element of it amused her.
“Hester!” he said sharply.
“Think of what else there is to do,” she replied. “Agatha said he was a good man once. The remnants of that will be left, if I don’t offer any threat to him.” She leaned forward a little, as if to command their attention. “We have to know who is using him. That’s whoever killed Lambourn, and Zenia Gadney-or had them killed.”
Monk clenched his teeth and breathed out slowly. “What if it’s this man who killed them?” he asked, wishing he did not have to.
He saw the sudden awareness leap in her eyes.
It was actually Runcorn who said what she must have been thinking.
“That’ll be why there was no bottle or vial where Lambourn was found,” he said unhappily. “He didn’t drink the opium, it was put into him with one of those needles. And of course whoever killed him took that away with them. He wouldn’t want anyone to know of it. There can’t be so many people have them.”
“Still doesn’t change that we have to know who killed Zenia Gadney.” Orme spoke for the first time. “I’ve been back and forward around the Limehouse Pier. No one admits to seeing her there that evening, except with a woman. If she met a man, doctor or not, someone paid by Herne or Bawtry, then it was afterward.” He looked at Runcorn, then at Monk. “I suppose you’ve thought that it could be that Dinah Lambourn did kill them both, nothing to do with jealousy or rage, but because someone paid her to, because of the opium?”
No one answered. The thought was impossible to rule out, but neither did anyone want to accept it.
It was Runcorn who broke the silence in the end.
“I’ve talked to everyone in the Lambourn house,” he said. “I’ve got a fairly good list of where Dr. Lambourn went in his last week, but it’s only what we already expected.” He pulled two sheets of paper out of his pocket and laid them down in the middle of the table.
Monk glanced at them, but he could see in Runcorn’s face that there was more.
“I tried to piece together his last day,” Runcorn went on. “Whoever killed him planned it very carefully, very believably.”
One by one around the table they nodded agreement. No one mentioned Dinah, but the very absence of her name hung between them.
“Who did he see that day?” Monk asked. He knew before Runcorn spoke that the answer would not be so easy. It was written in the confusion in Runcorn’s eyes.
“Dr. Winfarthing,” Runcorn replied, “in the morning. Just tradesmen in Deptford in the afternoon. He came home for an early dinner, then worked in his study before going for a short walk with Mrs. Lambourn in the evening. They both went to bed at about ten. No one saw him alive again. He was found the next morning by the man walking his dog up on One Tree Hill.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Hester said unhappily. “There’s nothing in a day like that to make him kill himself that night. It wasn’t even the day he heard about the report being rejected, was it?” She looked from Monk to Runcorn, and then back again.
“No,” Runcorn replied. “They told him three days earlier. The idea was that it took him that long to steel himself to do it. Or perhaps he thought they would change their minds, or he’d find some other facts. Winfarthing said he was still determined to fight when he saw him that morning.”
“We’re back to Dinah Lambourn,” Orme pointed out.
“No one contacted him?” Monk asked Runcorn. “No one called, left a message, a letter? Could there have been something in the post?”
“I asked the butler that,” Runcorn replied. “He said Dr. Lambourn looked at the post when he c
ame home at about five o’clock. There was nothing but the ordinary tradesmen’s bills. No personal letters.”
“He went to bed?” Hester asked, puzzled. “Are you sure? Could he have gone out again when Dinah went upstairs?” Her voice dropped a little.
“The butler said they both went up. He spoke to Lambourn and Lambourn answered him. But he could have read awhile, I suppose, and come down again,” Runcorn replied.
Taylor looked embarrassed. “Unless he really did take his own life?” He bit his lip. “Are we certain she isn’t innocent of killing him, but lying to restore some dignity to his name? Nobody wants to admit, even to themselves, that somebody they love did that. She’d want her daughters to think it was murder, wouldn’t she? Women’ll do most things to protect their children.”
Hester looked at Taylor, then at Monk. Monk could see in her face that she believed it possible.
Runcorn was stubborn. “Either someone came to see him, or he went out to see someone,” he said flatly.
“On One Tree Hill?” Monk asked. “It’s close to a mile from Lower Park Street, and uphill. Who would he meet in the middle of the night?”
“Someone he trusted,” Runcorn replied. “Someone he didn’t want to be seen with, or who didn’t want to be seen with him.”
“And he didn’t expect to go far,” Hester added. “You said he didn’t take a jacket, and it was October.”
“Someone he trusted,” Monk said gently. “Perhaps someone who could get close enough to him to put a needle in his vein and do whatever you have to do to get the opium in.”
“That’s like poor Mrs. Gadney,” Orme said. “She was killed by someone she trusted, or she wouldn’t have been standing out on the pier with them, alone in the dark.”
“Certainly not a prospective client,” Monk said with conviction. “Not out in the open like that.”
“No,” Orme cut in. “I asked more carefully this time. No one ever actually saw her with a man apart from Lambourn at any time. They assumed. The newspapers said she turned to prostitution, but there’s no proof.” He leaned forward across the table, his voice assured. “What if she was there with someone she knew, someone she didn’t fear at all-just like Lambourn?”
“The same person?” Monk said what he knew they were all thinking. “Who would Zenia know that Lambourn also knew?”
“Someone respectable,” Runcorn said slowly. “Someone Lambourn trusted, and someone she would never suspect of hurting her. Maybe …” He thought for a moment. “Maybe someone who said they were Lambourn’s solicitor, or a friend.”
“A doctor,” Hester said very slowly. “Or a member of the family.”
“Or his wife,” Orme said sadly.
No one argued.
“Now we’ve got until the day after Boxing Day to prove it,” Runcorn said, looking from one to the other of them. “If Sir Oliver can make the trial last that long.”
CHAPTER 20
Rathbone lay awake a good deal of that night, his mind in turmoil. Monk had sent him regular notes to keep him aware of what he had discovered. But as yet there was no proof that could be presented in court.
Dinah’s only defense was that she believed her husband had been murdered because he discovered something that would ruin the reputation of someone, someone who would commit murder rather than be exposed. And she, in turn, was willing to risk her own life on the gallows in order to force the police and the court to find the truth.
When should Rathbone tell that to the jury? If he told them too soon it would have lost its power by the time he summed up. If he waited too long it would look like a desperate, last-minute invention.
He stared up at the ceiling, eyes wide open in the total darkness, and felt as if he had lost control of the case. He must get it back. Even if he was actually working on trust that Dinah was innocent, and hope that Monk would find a thread of proof that he could unravel, he could not let Coniston know that. Above all he must not let the jury see it.
Monk’s note had spoken quite clearly of an opium addiction far more profound than even that of those who smoked it, one where the substance was injected directly into the bloodstream through a vein. Someone was deliberately introducing people to it, in a time of their weakness because of physical or emotional agony, and then when they were dependent, exploiting that desperation.
It was an evil of almost limitless proportion, but it was not technically a crime in the eyes of the law. Monk had acknowledged that himself. So why kill Lambourn? What had he discovered that he must die for?
Rathbone had to guess the answer, and guess correctly. Then he could hope to spin out the trial until Monk found the beginning of proof. Rathbone would have built up the foundations of a case, and would have to add only the final piece that tied it all together and name the man behind the murders of both Lambourn and Zenia Gadney.
Would he be able to do that? He fell asleep at last with only the outline of a plan in his mind.
When the trial resumed in the morning, Rathbone looked across at Sorley Coniston and saw the smooth pleasure in his face. As things were now, he could hardly lose.
Rathbone must begin to take control of the pace and the temper of the evidence now. The end of the week was Christmas. As it stood, the best verdict he could hope for was reasonable doubt, and looking across the room to the twelve men in the jury box, he could not see even one doubter among them. They sat motionless, grim-faced, as if steeling themselves to answer levelly that they were prepared to condemn a woman to death for what they believed she had done.
Rathbone had no other suspect even to suggest to them, but he had to create one. In his own mind it was a nameless, faceless assassin employed by someone guilty of wanting to destroy Lambourn’s credibility and see his report buried. Repeated like that, it sounded as desperate to Rathbone as it would to anyone else. He must give this person reality, ambitions, fear of loss, greed-evil.
Everyone came to order for Judge Pendock. Coniston rose to his feet and called his final witness. Rathbone had been advised who it was, as the law required, but he had no defense against what he knew the man would say. He had been hoping Coniston would not think to look for him, but considering Amity Herne’s knowledge, and her loathing of Dinah Lambourn, it was to be expected.
Rathbone had managed to raise just a shadow of doubt as to whether Lambourn had taken his own life or whether, in view of the absence of a weapon or anything in which to dilute or drink the opium, there had been someone else present. No one had yet suggested the use of a syringe.
The new witness swore as to his name and occupation, and to tell the truth.
“Mr. Blakelock,” Coniston began, “you are a registrar of births, deaths, and marriages?”
“Yes, sir,” Blakelock answered. He was a handsome man, prematurely gray but otherwise wearing his years well.
“Did you register the marriage, eighteen years ago, of Dr. Joel Lambourn?”
“I did.”
“To whom?” Coniston asked.
There was no interest in the courtroom. Only Rathbone sat stiff, his eyes on the jury.
“Zenia Gadney,” Blakelock replied.
“Zenia Gadney?” Coniston repeated, his voice ringing out, high and sharp, as if the answer astonished him.
Even Pendock jolted forward, his jaw slack.
In the jury box there was a ripple of amazement. One man gasped and all but choked.
Coniston waited for the full impact to sink in, and then with a very slight smile he continued.
“And was that marriage dissolved, sir?”
“No,” Blakelock answered.
Coniston shrugged and made a wide, helpless gesture with his hands. “Then who is Dinah Lambourn, the mother of his children, and with whom he has lived for the last fifteen years, until his death?”
“I presume ‘his mistress’ would be the most appropriate term,” Blakelock replied.
“Then when Lambourn died, Zenia … Lambourn would be his widow, not the accused?” Coni
ston went on.
“Yes.”
“And so heir to his estate?” Coniston added.
Rathbone rose to his feet. “My lord, that is an assumption that Mr. Blakelock is not qualified to make, and indeed it is an error. If you wish it, I can call Dr. Lambourn’s solicitor, who will tell you that his estate is left to his daughters, Adah and Marianne. There was a small bequest, an annuity, to Zenia Gadney. It would amount to approximately the same amount as he gave her when he was alive.”
Pendock glared at him. “You were aware of this, Sir Oliver?”
“I was aware of the provisions of the will, my lord. It seemed a fairly obvious inquiry to make,” Rathbone answered.
Pendock drew in his breath to add something further, and then changed his mind. It would have been improper to ask what Dinah had confided in Rathbone, and the jury would draw their own conclusions anyway.
Coniston realized as much; he certainly had no need to win such minor skirmishes as this. “I apologize, my lord,” he said with a slight smile. “It was an assumption, and as my learned friend has pointed out, in this case, unjustified. Perhaps for the defense, he will call someone to prove that the accused was aware that her children would inherit? Then her very natural fear of being left destitute by her husband’s suicide would be set aside, leaving only the motive of an equally natural jealousy.”
Rathbone allowed a look of incredulity to cross his face.
“Is the prosecution suggesting that the accused was jealous of the woman she so obviously supplanted in Dr. Lambourn’s affections?” he asked. “Or perhaps that Zenia Gadney was so jealous, after all these years, that she attacked Dinah Lambourn? In which case the mutilation is repellent and unnecessary, but the blow that caused Mrs. Gadney’s death may very well be considered self-defense!”
“This is preposterous!” Coniston said with disbelief, but no apparent ill humor. “My lord-”
Pendock held up his hand. “Enough, Mr. Coniston. I can see for myself the absurdity of it.” He glared at Rathbone. “Sir Oliver, I will not have this grave and very terrible trial turned into a farce. The accused went to seek the victim where she lived. Whatever happened after she found her ended in the victim’s death by violence, and then her hideous mutilation. These facts are beyond dispute. Is that the end of your case for the prosecution, Mr. Coniston?”
