by Anne Perry
“I daresay she is frightened of Denoon,” Vespasia said, walking to the door. “My carriage is waiting.” Her voice was hoarse with emotion. “Piers is her only child. Hurry, Thomas. We may already be too late.”
He did not ask for what, but did as she requested, dreading that Enid Denoon might have taken her own life, unable to bear the shame and the grief. He should have made sure her husband was there to care for her, or at the very least a strong, capable servant—the butler, or a long-serving ladies’ maid. He had been stupid. Now he cursed himself for it. He had been so occupied with his loathing of Wetron he had not thought to see that she was coping with the initial shock.
But it was not Enid’s address Vespasia gave her coachman, it was Wetron’s, and she climbed in without waiting for Pitt to give her his hand.
“Wetron?” he exclaimed.
“Hurry!” was all she said.
The coachman obeyed, urging the horses forward. In the almost deserted morning streets, where there was no trade but domestic deliveries, they careered through the silent avenues and squares as if there were almost no one else alive.
There was no opportunity for speech and Pitt was glad of it. Thoughts raced through his mind, but they were too hectic to make sense. They pulled up and he threw the door open, swiveling to hand Vespasia out, almost catching her in her urgency to follow him. Enid’s carriage stood silently on the far side.
Together they sped across the pavement and up the steps. It was the second time this morning he had banged on a front door and had a startled servant open it to him.
They pushed past him just as the shot rung out. Vespasia gave a cry and turned to the morning room just as Wetron appeared at the door. He looked gray-faced, his hair tousled, and there was a small pistol in his hand.
“She’s insane!” he gasped, staring wildly first at Vespasia, then at Pitt. “She came at me like a…a…a mad woman! I had no choice. It’s…” He looked at the gun in his hand as if he were almost surprised to see it there. “This was hers. She was going to shoot me! Her son has been arrested. It…it unhinged her mind…poor creature.”
Vespasia pushed past him as if he had been a servant in the way, and went into the morning room, leaving the door wide open behind her.
Even from where he stood Pitt could see Enid on the floor, lying on her back, blood welling scarlet from a wound in her lower chest.
Vespasia bent to her, cradling her in her arms, oblivious to the blood now covering her also.
Pitt took the gun from Wetron. It was surprisingly small, a woman’s weapon.
Enid was still alive, just.
“She’s mad!” Wetron said again, his voice thin and high. “I had no choice!”
Vespasia looked up from where she was kneeling, her arm now around Enid’s shoulders. “Rubbish!” she said with savage, glittering triumph. “The bullet is in the carpet under her!” she shouted hoarsely. “She was lying on the floor when you shot her. You struck her and she fell and dropped the gun. You picked it up and used it in cold blood. The police surgeon will be able to prove that. You’ve made your one final mistake, Mr. Wetron. You destroyed her nephew, and her son. But she has destroyed you. It is the end of the Police Bill, and I think at last it is also the end of the Inner Circle. Voisey is dead and Edward Denoon will be ruined.”
She looked down at Enid and the tears filled her eyes. “I hope she knew what she had achieved,” she whispered, letting go of her at last. “You had better use the telephone to have someone come and take the wretched man away, Thomas. You must have people for such things. I will then tell Lord Landsborough what is lost, and what is gained.”
Pitt remembered that among all the collected things in his pocket he had a set of manacles. He took them out and locked Wetron to one of the brass posts on the magnificent club fender around the fireplace, obliging him to sit on the floor a yard from Enid’s body.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I’m…sorry.”
Vespasia looked at him, ignoring her tears. “Don’t be, my dear. This was what she chose, and I think perhaps there was no other way.”
“Thank you, Aunt Vespasia,” he said, swallowing hard, and went to obey.
BY ANNE PERRY
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
FEATURING WILLIAM MONK
The Face of a Stranger
A Dangerous Mourning
Defend and Betray
A Sudden, Fearful Death
The Sins of the Wolf
Cain His Brother
Weighed in the Balance
The Silent Cry
A Breach of Promise
The Twisted Root
Slaves of Obsession
Funeral in Blue
Death of a Stranger
The Shifting Tide
Dark Assassin
FEATURING CHARLOTTE AND THOMAS PITT
The Cater Street Hangman
Callander Square
Paragon Walk
Resurrection Row
Bluegate Fields
Rutland Place
Death in the Devil’s Acre
Cardington Crescent
Silence in Hanover Close
Bethlehem Road
Highgate Rise
Belgrave Square
Farriers’ Lane
The Hyde Park Headsman
Traitors Gate
Pentecost Alley
Ashworth Hall
Brunswick Gardens
Bedford Square
Half Moon Street
The Whitechapel Conspiracy
Southampton Row
Seven Dials
Long Spoon Lane
THE WORLD WAR I NOVELS
No Graves As Yet
Angels in the Gloom
Shoulder the Sky
THE CHRISTMAS NOVELS
A Christmas Journey
A Christmas Guest
A Christmas Visitor
Praise for
Long Spoon Lane
“One can always count on Anne Perry’s elegant Victorian mysteries.”
—New York Times Book Review
“[Readers] will appreciate the cleverly orchestrated political machinations as much as the personal agendas—both of which come fully into play when it comes to solving the mystery.”
—Booklist
“Carnage comes early in Perry’s engrossing Victorian historical…. A convincing historical backdrop with echoes of modern-day fears.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The plot of Long Spoon Lane is neatly put together and works out like a clever contraption with no loose ends.”
—Los Angeles Times
“There is much to love in Long Spoon Lane. The characters are subtly many-layered. Fans of the series, with its amazingly well-drawn historical details, know the delight of time traveling back to Victorian England…. An altogether intriguing and enjoyable mystery.”
—The Book Reporter
Read on for a preview of the new William Monk novel by Anne Perry
DARK ASSASSIN
Available in hardcover
from Ballantine Books
in April 2006
WATERLOO BRIDGE loomed in the distance as William Monk settled himself more comfortably in the bow of the police boat. There were four men, himself as senior officer, and three to man the four oars. Rowing randan, it was called. Monk sat rigid in his uniform coat. It was January and bitterly cold as he and his companions patrolled the Thames for accidents, missing craft, and stolen cargo. The wind ruffled the water and cut the skin like the edge of a knife, but he did not want anyone to see him shivering.
It was five weeks since he had accepted the position leading this section of the River Police. It was a debt of honor he already regretted profoundly, the more so with every freezing, sodden day as 1863 turned into 1864 and the winter settled ruthlessly over London and its teeming waterway.
The boat rocked in the wash of a string of barges going upriver on the incoming tide. Orme, at
the stern, steadied the boat expertly. He was a man of average height, but deceptive suppleness and strength, and a kind of grace exhibited as he managed the oar. Perhaps he had learned in his years on the water how easy it was to capsize a boat with sudden movement.
They were pulling closer to the bridge. In the gray afternoon, before the lamps were lit, they could see the traffic crossing: dark shadows of hansoms and four-wheelers. They were still too far away to hear the clip of horses’ hooves above the sound of the water. A man and woman stood on the footpath close to the railing, facing each other as if in conversation. Monk thought idly that whatever they were saying must matter to them intensely for it to hold their attention in such a bleak, exposed place. The wind tugged at the woman’s skirts. At that height, where there was no shelter, she must have been even colder than Monk was.
Orme guided the boat a little farther out into the stream. They were going downriver again, back toward the station at Wapping where they were headquartered. Six weeks ago Inspector Durban had been commander and Monk had been a private agent of enquiry. Monk still could not think of it without a tightening of the throat—a loneliness and a guilt he could not imagine would ever leave him. Each time he saw a group of River Police and one of them walked slowly with a smooth, ambling stride, a little rounded at the shoulder, he expected him to turn and he would see Durban’s face. Then memory came back, and he knew it could not be.
The bridge was only two hundred feet away now. The couple were still there against the balustrade. The man held her by the shoulders as if he would take her in his arms. Perhaps they were lovers. Of course, Monk could not hear their words—the wind tore them from the couple’s mouths—but their faces were alive with a passion that was clearer with every moment as the boat drew toward them. Monk wondered what it was: a quarrel, a last farewell, even both?
The police oarsmen were having to pull hard against the incoming tide.
Monk looked up again just in time to see the man struggling with the woman, holding her fiercely as she clung to him. Her back was to the railing, bending too far. Instinctively he wanted to call out. A few inches more and she would fall!
Orme, too, was staring up at them now.
The man grasped at the woman and she pulled away. She seemed to lose her balance and he lunged after her. Clasped together, they teetered for a desperate moment on the edge, then she pitched backward. He made a wild attempt to catch her. She flung out a hand and gripped him. But it was too late. They both plunged over the side and spun crazily, like a huge, broken-winged bird, until they hit the racing, filthy water and were carried on top of it, not even struggling, while it soaked into them, dragging them down.
Orme shouted, and the oarsmen dug their blades in deep. They threw their backs against the weight of the river, heaving, hurtling them forward.
Monk, his heart in his mouth, strained to keep the bodies in sight. They had only a hundred feet to go, and yet he knew already that it was too late. The impact of hitting the water would stun them and drive the air out of their lungs. When at last they did gasp inward, it would be the icy water laden with raw sewage, choking them, drowning them. Still, senselessly he leaned forward over the bow, shouting, “Faster, faster! There! No…there!”
They drew level, turning a little sideways. The oarsmen kept the boat steady in the current and the changing balance as Orme heaved the body of the young woman over the gunwale. Awkwardly, as gently as he could, he laid her inside. Monk could see the other body, but it was too far away to reach, and if he stretched he could tip the boat.
“Port!” he instructed, although the oarsmen were already moving to do it. He reached over carefully to the half-submerged body of the young man, whose coat was drifting out in the water, his boots dragging his legs downward. Awkwardly, straining his shoulders, Monk hauled him up over the gunwale and in, laying him on the bottom of the boat next to the young woman. He had seen many dead people before, but the sense of loss never diminished. From the victim’s pale face, smeared with dirt from the river water and plastered with hair across the brow, he appeared about thirty. He had a mustache but was otherwise clean-shaven. His clothes were well cut and of excellent quality. The hat he had been wearing on the bridge was gone.
Orme was standing, balancing easily, looking down at Monk and the young man.
“Nothing we can do for either of ’em, sir,” he said. “Drown quick going off the bridge like that. Pity,” he added softly. “Looks no more’n twenty, she does. Nice face.”
Monk sat back on the bench. “Anything to indicate who she was?” he asked.
Orme shook his head.
“If she ’ad one of ’em little bags ladies carry, it’s gone, but there’s a letter in ’er pocket addressed to Miss Mary ’Avilland o’ Charles Street. It’s postmarked already, like it’s bin sent and received, so could be it’s ’er.”
Monk leaned forward and systematically went through the pockets of the dead man, keeping his balance with less ease than Orme as the boat began the journey downstream, back toward Wapping. There was no point in putting a man ashore to look for witnesses to the quarrel, if that was what it had been. They could not identify the traffic that had been on the bridge, and on the water they themselves had seen as much as anyone. Two people quarrelling—or kissing and parting—who lost their balance and fell. There was nothing anyone could add.
Actually, as far as Monk could remember, there had been no one passing at exactly that moment. It was the hour when the dusk is not drawn in sufficiently for the lamps to be lit, but the light wanes and the grayness of the air seems to delude the eye. Things are half seen; the imagination fills in the rest, sometimes inaccurately.
Monk turned to the man’s pockets and found a leather wallet with a little money and a case carrying cards. He was apparently Toby Argyll, of Walnut Tree Walk, Lambeth. That was also south of the river, not far from the girl’s address on Charles Street off the Westminster Bridge Road. Monk read the information aloud for Orme.
The boat was moving slowly, as only two men were rowing. Orme squatted on the boards near Argyll’s body. On the shore the lamps were beginning to come on, yellow moons in the deepening haze. The wind had the breath of ice in it. It was time to trim their own riding lights, or they would be struck by barges—or the ferries going crosscurrent—carrying passengers from one bank to the other.
Monk lit the lantern and carefully moved back to where Orme had laid the woman. She lay on her back. Orme had folded her hands and smoothed the hair off her face. Her eyes were closed, her skin already gray-white, as if she had been dead longer than just the few minutes since they had seen her on the bridge.
She had a wide mouth and high cheekbones under delicately arched brows. It was a very feminine face, both strong and vulnerable, as if she had been filled with high passions in life.
“Poor creature,” Orme said softly. “S’pose we’ll never know wot made ’er do it. Mebbe ’e were breakin’ orff an engagement or somethin’.” The expression on his face was all but masked by the deepening shadows, but Monk could hear the intense pity in his voice.
Monk suddenly realized he was wet up to the armpits from having lifted the body out of the water. He was shuddering with cold and it was hard to speak without his teeth chattering. He would have given all the money in his pocket for a hot mug of tea with a lacing of rum in it. He could not remember ever being this perishingly cold on shore.
Suicide was a crime, not only against the state but in the eyes of the Church as well. If that was the coroner’s verdict, she would be buried in unhallowed ground. And there was the question of the young man’s death as well. Perhaps there was no point in arguing it, but Monk did so instinctively. “Was he trying to stop her?”
The boat was moving slowly, against the tide. The water was choppy, slapping at the wooden sides and making it difficult for two oarsmen to keep her steady.
Orme hesitated for several moments before answering. “I dunno, Mr. Monk, an’ that’s the truth. Could’
ve bin. Could’ve bin an accident both ways.” His voice dropped lower. “Or could’ve bin ’e pushed ’er. It ’appened quick.”
“Do you have an opinion?” Monk could hardly get the words out clearly, he was shaking so much.
“You’d be best on an oar, sir,” Orme said gravely. “Get the blood movin’, as it were.”
Monk accepted the suggestion. Senior officers might not be supposed to row like ordinary constables, but they were not much use frozen stiff or with pneumonia, either.
He moved to the center of the boat and took up one of the oars beside Orme. After several strokes he got into the rhythm and the boat sped forward, cutting the water more cleanly. They rowed a long way without speaking again. They passed under Blackfriars Bridge toward the Southwark Bridge, which was visible in the distance only by its lights. The wind was like a knife edge, slicing the breath almost before it reached the lungs.
Monk had accepted his current position in the River Police partly as a debt of honor. Eight years ago he had woken up in the hospital with no memory at all. Fact by fact he had assembled an identity, discovering things about himself, not all of which pleased him. At that time he was a policeman, heartily disliked by his immediate superior, Superintendent Runcorn. Their relationship had deteriorated until it became a debatable question whether Monk had resigned before or after Runcorn had dismissed him. Since the detection and solving of crime was the only profession he knew, and he was required to earn his living, he had taken up the same work privately.
But circumstances had altered in the late autumn of last year. The need for money had compelled him to accept employment with shipping magnate Clement Louvain, his first experience on the river. Subsequently he had met Inspector Durban and had become involved with the Maude Idris and its terrible cargo. Now Durban was dead, but before his death he had recommended Monk to succeed him in his place at the Wapping station.
