by Anne Perry
Typhoid. Monk had no personal knowledge that he could recall, but he had heard the fear and the pity in other people’s voices, and saw both in the maid’s face now.
“Limehouse?” It must have been typhoid the cabby had meant, not typhus. He knew where it was, down by the river along the Reach. “Thank you.” He turned to leave. “Oh …”
“Yes sir?”
“Is there anything I could take for her, a change of clothes perhaps?”
“Well … yes sir, if you’re going that way, I’m sure it’d be appreciated. And per’aps for Miss Hester too?”
“Miss Hester?”
“Yes sir. Miss Hester went as well.”
“Of course.” He should have known she would be there. It was an admirable thing to do, and obvious, with her professional training. So why was he angry? And he was! He stood in the porch entrance while the maid went to fetch the articles and put them in a soft-sided bag for him to carry, and his body was stiff and his hands clenched almost to fists. She rushed into things without thought. Her own opinions were all that mattered. She never listened to anyone else or took advice. She was the most willful and arbitrary person he knew, vacillating where she should be firm, and dogmatic where she should be flexible. He had tried to reason with her, but she only argued. He could not count the quarrels they had had over one issue or another.
The maid returned with the bag and he took it from her smartly with a brief word of thanks. A moment later he was back in the street, striding out towards the square, where he knew there would be a hansom.
In Limehouse it did not take him long to trace the warehouse on Park Street now converted into a fever hospital. He could see the fear of it in people’s faces and the drop in the tone of voice as they spoke of it. He spent all the change he had on half a dozen hot meat pies.
He went in the wide door and up the shallow steps with the pies wrapped in newspaper under his arm and the soft-sided case in the other hand. The smells of human waste, wet wood, coal smoke and vinegar met him before he was into the main room, which must originally have been designed to accommodate bales of wool, cotton, or other similar merchandise. Now it was ill lit with tallow candles and the entire floor was covered with straw, and blankets under which he could make out the forms of at least eighty people lying in various states of exhaustion and distress.
“Yer got them buckets?”
“What?” He turned around sharply to see a woman with a tired, smut-dirtied face staring at him. She could have been any age from eighteen to forty. Her fair hair was greasy and screwed into a knot somewhere at the back of her head. Her figure was broad-chested and broad-hipped but her shoulders sagged. It was impossible to tell whether it was from habit or weariness. Her expression was almost blank. She had seen too much to invest emotion in anything but hope, or grief. A stranger who might or might not have buckets was not worth the effort. Disappointments were expected.
“ ’Ave yer got the buckets?” she repeated, her voice dropping as she knew already that the answer was negative.
“No. I came to see Lady Callandra Daviot. I’m sorry.” He let the case drop to the floor. “Do you want a hot pie?”
Her eyes widened a little.
He unrolled the newspaper and handed her one. It was still warm and the pastry was crisp. A tiny piece flaked off and fell to the floor.
She hesitated only a moment, her nostrils widening as she caught the aroma.
“Yeah. I do.” She took it and bit into it quickly before he could change his mind. She could not remember the last time she had had such a delicacy, let alone a whole one to herself.
“Is Lady Callandra here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said with her mouth full. “I’ll get ’er for yer.” She did not ask his name. Anyone who brought meat pies needed no further credentials.
He smiled in spite of himself.
A moment later Callandra came down the length of the room, also tired and dirty, but a lift in her step and a quickening in her face.
“William?” she said softly when she reached him. “What is it? Why have you come here?”
“Hot pie?” he offered.
She took it with thanks, wiping her hands briefly on her apron. Her eyes searched his, waiting for him to explain himself.
“I have a difficult case,” he answered. “Have you time to listen? It won’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes. You have to rest sometime. Come and sit down while you eat the pie.”
“Have you one for Kristian?” she asked, still having taken only a bite from the one he had given her. “And Hester? And Enid? And Mary, of course?”
“I don’t know Enid or Mary,” he answered. “But I gave one to a young woman with straight hair who expected me to have buckets.”
“Mary. Good. The poor soul has worked herself to dropping. Have you any more? If not, I’ll share this one.”
“Yes, I have.” He proffered the rolled-up newspaper. “There are another four in there.”
Callandra took them with a quick smile and carried them back up the dim room to pass them to figures Monk could recognize only with difficulty. The thin, very upright one with the square shoulders and uplifted chin was Hester. He would have known her outline anywhere. No one else held her head at quite that angle. The masculine one had to be Kristian Beck, barely average height, slim-shouldered and strong. The third looked reminiscent of someone he had seen only lately, but in the poor light and the smoke from the stoves and the smell stinging his eyes, he did not know whom.
Callandra returned, eating her own pie before it got cold. She led him into a small room to the side which presumably had once been an office when the building was used for its original purpose. Now it boasted a table piled with blankets, four bottles of gin, three unopened and one half empty, several casks of vinegar, a flagon of Hungarian wine and a candle. Two very rickety chairs were also piled with blankets. Callandra cleared them off and offered him a seat.
“What’s the gin for?” he asked. “Desperation?”
“It wouldn’t be sitting there unopened if it were,” she replied grimly. “Tell me about your case.”
He hesitated, uncertain how much to say about Genevieve. Perhaps he should give Callandra only facts and omit his own impressions.
“To clean things with,” she answered his question. “Alcohol is better than water, especially from the wells around here. Not the floors, of course. The vinegar’s for that. I mean plates and spoons.”
He acknowledged the explanation.
“The case …” she prompted, sitting heavily on one of the chairs, which rocked, tilted and righted itself at an angle.
He sat on the other gingerly, but it supported his weight, albeit with an alarming creak.
“A man has disappeared, a businessman, comfortably off and eminently respectable,” he began. “He seems happily married, with five children. It was his wife who came to me.”
Callandra was watching him, so far without interest.
“His wife says he has a twin brother,” Monk continued with a ghost of a smile, “who is in every way opposite. He is violent, ruthless, and lives alone, somewhere in this area.”
“Limehouse?” Callandra said in surprise. “Why here?”
“Apparently choice. He lives by his wits, and occasional gifts from Angus, the missing brother. In spite of their differences, Angus insisted on keeping in touch, although his wife says he was afraid of Caleb.”
“And it is Angus who has disappeared?”
The candle on the table flickered for a moment. It was stuck in the top of an empty bottle and the tallow ran down the side.
“Yes. His wife is deeply afraid that Caleb has murdered him. In fact, I think she is convinced of it.”
She frowned. “Did you say Caleb?” She reached out absently and righted the candle.
“Yes. Why?” he asked.
“It’s an unusual name,” she replied. “Not unknown, but not common. I heard only a few hours ago of a brutal man in this area named Caleb Stone. He
injured a youth and slashed the face of a woman.”
“The same man!” he said quickly, leaning forward a little. “The brother is Angus Stonefield, but Caleb may well have dropped the second half of his name. It fits with what Genevieve said of him.” He realized as he spoke how he had been hoping inside himself that it was not true, that perhaps her view of Caleb was exaggerated. Now in a sentence that was ended.
Callandra shook her head. “I am afraid if that is so, then you have not only a greater task ahead of you but perhaps an exceedingly difficult one. Caleb Stone may be guilty, but it will be very hard to prove. There is little love lost for him around here, but fear may hold people silent. I assume you have already inquired into the more usual explanations for the brother’s absence?”
“How delicately put,” he said with a sharp edge to his voice. He was not angry with her, only with the circumstances and his own helplessness. “You mean debt, theft or another woman?”
“Something like that …”
“I haven’t proved them impossible, simply unlikely. I traced him the last day he was seen. He came as far as Union Road, about a mile from here.”
“Oh—”
Before he could add anything further he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to see Hester standing in the doorway. Even though he had already seen her dimly in the main room, it had not prepared him for meeting her face-to-face. He had thought a dozen times exactly what he was going to say, how casual he was going to be, as if nothing had changed between them since the conclusion of the trial in Edinburgh. On reflection, that was about the best time to go back to. They could hardly pretend that had not occurred. If she referred to the Farralines, that was acceptable, although the subject might be sensitive to her, and he would respect that.
She would not mention the small room in which they had been trapped, or anything that had happened between them there. That would be so indelicate as to be inexcusable. She knew it had been occasioned by what had seemed the knowledge of certain death, and not an emotion which could be carried into their succeeding lives. To refer to it would be both clumsy and painful.
But women were peculiar where emotions were concerned, especially emotions that had anything to do with love. They were unpredictable and illogical.
How did he know that? Was that some submerged memory, or simply assumption?
Not that Hester was very feminine. He would find her more appealing if she were. She had no art to charm, or the kind of subtle flattery that is only a selection and amplification of the truth. She was much too direct … almost to the point of challenge. She had no idea when to keep her own counsel and defer to others. Intellectual women were remarkably unattractive. It was not a pleasing quality to be right all the time, most particularly in matters of logic, judgment and military history. She was at once very clever and remarkably stupid.
“Is something wrong?” Her voice interrupted his thoughts. She looked from Callandra to Monk and back again.
“Does something have to be wrong for me to come here?” he said defensively, rising to his feet.
“Here?” Her eyebrows rose. “Yes.”
“Then you’ve answered your own question, haven’t you,” he said tartly. She was quite right. No one would come to a pesthouse in the East End without a desperate reason. Apart from the physical unpleasantness of the smell, the cold, the drab, damp surroundings and the sounds of pain, it was the best way in the world to contract the disease yourself. He looked at her face. She must be exhausted. She was so pale her skin was almost gray, her hair was filthy and her clothes too thin for the barely heated room. She would not have the strength to resist illness.
She bit her lip in irritation. It always annoyed her to be verbally outmaneuvered.
“You’ve come for Callandra’s help.” Her tone was waspish. “Or mine?”
He knew that was meant sarcastically. He was also aware how often she had helped him; sometimes, as in the first occasion they had met, when he was truly desperate and his life hung in the balance. He had never been able to forget how it was her courage and her belief in him which had given him the strength to fight.
Several answers flashed through his head, most of them offensive. In the end, largely for Callandra’s sake, he settled for the truth, or close to it.
“I have a case which seems to fade out two streets away,” he said, looking at her coldly. “But since the man I am trying to trace was the brother of a well-known local character, and presumably on his way to see him, I thought you might be of assistance.”
Whatever other thoughts were in her mind—and she looked both irritable and unhappy beneath the weariness—she chose to acknowledge the interest.
“Who is the local character? We haven’t had much time for conversation, but we could ask.” She sat down on the chair he had vacated, not bothering to rearrange her skirts.
“Caleb Stone, or Stonefield. I don’t suppose—” He stopped. He had been about to say that she would know nothing of him, but the changed expression in her face made it perfectly obvious that she did know, and that it was ill. “What?” he demanded.
“Only that he is violent,” she replied. “Callandra will already have told you that. We were discussing it last night. Who are you looking for?”
“Angus Stonefield, who is his brother.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s disappeared,” he said tartly. It was absurd to allow her to make him feel so uncomfortable, almost guilty, as if he were denying part of himself. And it was not so. He liked and admired many of her qualities, but there were others which he deplored and which were a constant source of annoyance to him. And he had always been perfectly frank about it, as indeed so had she. There were certain debts of honor between them, on both sides, but that was all. And for heaven’s sake, that was all she wished also. But perhaps part of that obligation was to tell her of the dangers she faced spending her time in a pesthouse like this.
“Is he wanted for something?” she said, interrupting his thoughts.
His temper broke. “Of course he’s wanted,” he said. “His wife wants him, his children, his employees want him. That’s an idiotic question!”
The color washed up her pale cheeks as she sat hunched a little with cold, her shoulders rigid.
“I had meant was he required by the law,” she said icily. “I had temporarily forgotten that you also chase after errant husbands for their wives’ sakes.”
“He is not errant,” he responded with equal venom. “The poor devil is almost certainly dead. And I would do that for anybody … his wife is out of her mind with grief and worry. She has every bit as much right to be pitied as any of your unfortunates here.” He jabbed angrily with his finger towards the great hall filled with its straw and blankets, although even as he said it, pity of a far harsher sort twisted inside him for its occupants. Not many of them would live through it, and he knew that. He was angry with Hester, not with them.
“If her husband is dead, William, there is nothing you can do to help her except find proof of it,” Callandra interposed calmly. “Even if Caleb killed him, you may never find evidence of that. What will the police require to accept death? Do they have to see a corpse?”
“Not if we can find witnesses adequate to assume death,” he replied. “They know perfectly well that the tide may carry bodies out and they are never seen again.” He faced Callandra, ignoring Hester. The dim lights, the smells of tallow, gin, vinegar and damp stone permeating through everything, were sickening. And through it all the consciousness of illness was making him even more tense. He was not afraid in his brain. He would despise that in himself. Callandra and Hester were here day and night. But his body knew it, and all his instinct told him to go, quickly, before it could reach out and touch him. Hester’s courage awoke emotions in him he did not want. They were painful, contradictory and frightening. And he loathed her for making him vulnerable.
“If we learn anything, we shall let you know,” Callandra pro
mised, rising to her feet with something of an effort. “I am afraid Caleb Stone’s reputation makes your theories more than possible. I’m sorry.”
Monk had not said all he intended. He would like to have spent longer in her company, but this was not the time. He thanked her a little stiffly, nodded to Hester but could think of nothing he wanted to say. He took his leave, feeling as if he had left something undone that would matter to him later. He had found none of the easing of his mind that he had hoped.
On leaving the warehouse, Monk steeled himself to go to the River Police at the Thames Police Station by Wapping Stairs, and ask if they had recovered any bodies in the last five days which might answer the description of Angus Stonefield.
The sergeant looked at him patiently. As always, Monk did not recognize him but had no knowledge of whether the man knew him or not. More than once he had realized he was familiar, and disliked. At first he had been at a loss as to why. Gradually he had learned his own quick brain and hard tongue had earned the fear of men less gifted, less able to defend themselves or retaliate with words. It had not been pleasant.
Now he regarded the sergeant steadily, hiding his own misgivings behind a steady, unblinking gaze.
“Description?” the sergeant said with a sigh. If he had ever seen Monk before he did not seem to remember it. Of course, Monk would have been in uniform then. That might make all the difference. Monk would not remind him.
“About my height,” he replied quietly. “Dark hair, strong features, green eyes. His clothes would be good quality, well cut, expensive cloth.”
The sergeant blinked. “Relative, sir?” A quiet flicker of sympathy crossed his blunt face, and Monk realized with a start how close the description was to his own, except for the color of the eyes. And yet he did not look like the picture Enid Ravensbrook had drawn. There was a rakishness in that face which set it at odds with what both Genevieve and Arbuthnot had said of Angus Stonefield, but not of his brother Caleb. Had Enid unintentionally caught more of the spirit of Caleb? Or was Angus not the sedate man his family and employees supposed? Had he a secret other life?
