by Anne Perry
The cabby blasphemed under his breath.
“And maybe his investors, or his society friends’ wives, the mothers of the girls his sons hope to marry, or of the men his daughters do,” Monk continued.
“Or’ight. Or’ight,” the cabby said. “I un’erstand yer. Wot yer wanna know? I don’ know Oo they was. I wouldn’t know ’em now if yer marched ’em in front o’ me. But then I don’ s’pose I’d know you temorrer, an’ these geezers kep’ their faces away. I jus’ thought it were ’cos they fancied they were too good ter talk ter the likes o’ me. Jus’ give orders—”
“What orders?” Monk said quickly.
“Drive ’em north an’ drop ’em in Portman Square. They said they’d walk ’ome from there. Careful sods, eh? I di’n think nothin’ of it then. They don’t even ’ave ter live near Portman Square. Could’ve got another ’ansom from there ter w’erever they lives. Could be anyplace.”
“It’s a start.”
“Go on! Even the bleedin’ rozzers couldn’t find ’em from that.”
“Maybe, but they’ve been here a dozen times or more. There’ll be a common factor somewhere, and if there is, I’ll find it,” Monk said in a low, bitter voice. “I’ll ask all the other cabbies, people on the street, and there are plenty of those. Someone saw them, someone will know. They’ll make a mistake. They will already have made one, maybe several.”
The cabby shivered, and it was only partly the snow. He looked at Monk’s face.
“Like a bleedin’ wolf, you are. I’m ruddy glad you in’t after me! Now, if you wanna go ’ome, get in me cab and get on with it. If yer plannin’ on standin’ ’ere all night, yer’ll do it wivout me, or me ’orse, poor critter.”
Monk climbed in and sat down, too cold to relax, and was jolted steadily towards Fitzroy Street and a warm bed.
The following morning he woke aching, his head throbbing. He was in a foul mood, and he had no right to be. He had a home, food, clothing and a kind of safety. He hurt only because he had slept with his body still knotted with the anger he felt over what he had heard.
He shaved and dressed, ate breakfast, and went to the police station where he used to work, before he had finally and irrevocably quarreled with Runcorn and been obliged to leave. It had not been so long ago, roughly two years. He was still remembered with clarity—and very mixed emotions. There were those who were afraid of him, still half expecting some criticism or jibe at the quality of their work, their dedication or their intelligence. Sometimes it had been just, too often it had not.
He wanted to catch John Evan before he went out on whatever case concerned him now. Evan was the one friend Monk could count on. He had come to the station after the accident. They had worked together on the Grey case, unraveling it step by step, at the same time exposing Monk’s own fears and his terrible vulnerability, and in the end the truth which could now be thought of only with a shudder, and a dark shadow of guilt. Evan knew him as well as anyone, except Hester.
That thought surprised him by its sharpness. He had not intended to allow Hester into his mind. That relationship was entirely different. Most of it had been brought about by circumstances rather than inclination. She was supremely irritating at times. Beyond her skill, her intelligence and undoubtedly her courage, there was so much that he found intensely annoying. Anyway, she was not involved in this case. He had no need to think about her now. He should find Evan. That was important and most urgent. It could happen again. Another woman could be beaten and raped, perhaps murdered this time. There was a pattern in the crimes. They had become steadily more violent. Perhaps they would not end until one of the women was dead, or more than one.
Evan saw him immediately, sitting in his small office, little more than a large cupboard, big enough for a stack of drawers and two hard-backed chairs and a tiny table for writing. Evan himself looked tired. There were shadows under his hazel eyes and his hair was longer than usual, flopping forward in a heavy, fair brown wave.
Monk came straight to the point. He knew better than to waste a policeman’s time.
“I’ve got a case in Seven Dials,” he began. “The edge of that’s your area. You might know something about it, and I might be able to help.”
“Seven Dials?” Evan’s eyebrows rose. “What is it? Who in Seven Dials calls in a private agent? For that matter, who has anything to steal?” There was no unkindness in his face, just a weary knowledge of how things were.
“Not theft,” Monk replied. “Rape, and then unnecessary violence, beatings.”
Evan winced. “Domestic? Don’t suppose we can touch that. How could anybody prove it? It’s hard enough to prove rape in a decent suburban area. You know as well as I do, society tends to think that if a woman gets raped, then she must somehow have deserved it. People don’t want to think it happens to the innocent … that way it won’t happen to them.”
“Yes, of course I know that.” Monk’s temper was short and his head still throbbed. “But whether a woman deserves to be raped or not, she doesn’t deserve to be beaten, to have her teeth knocked out or her ribs broken. She doesn’t deserve to be knocked to the ground by two men at once, then punched and kicked.”
Evan flinched as if he had seen it as Monk described. “No, of course she doesn’t,” he agreed, looking at Monk steadily. “But violence, theft, hunger and cold are part of life in a score of areas across London, along with filth and disease. You know that as well as I do. St. Giles, Aldgate, Seven Dials, Bermondsey, Friar’s Mount, Bluegate Fields, the Devil’s Acre, and a dozen others. You didn’t answer my question … was it domestic?”
“No. It was men from outside the area, well-bred, well-off men, coming into Seven Dials for a little sport.” He heard the anger in his voice as he said it, and saw it mirrored in Evan’s face.
“What evidence have you?” Evan asked, watching him carefully. “Any chance at all of ever finding them, let alone proving it was them and that it was a crime, not simply the indulgence of a particularly disgusting appetite?”
Monk drew breath to say that of course he had, and then let it out in a sigh. All he had was word of mouth from women no court would believe, even if they could be persuaded to testify, and that in itself was dubious.
“I’m sorry,” Evan said quietly, his face tight and bleak with regret. “It isn’t worth pressing. Even if we found them, there’d be nothing we could do. It’s sickening, but you know it as well as I do.”
Monk wanted to shout, to swear over and over until he ran out of words, but it would achieve nothing and only make his own weakness the more apparent.
Evan looked at him with understanding.
“I’ve got a miserable case myself.”
Monk was not interested, but friendship compelled him to pretend he was. Evan deserved at least that much of him, probably more.
“Have you? What is it?”
“Murder and assault in St. Giles. Poor devil might have been better if he’d been murdered too, instead of left beaten to within an inch of his life, and now so badly shocked or terrified he can’t speak … at all.”
“St. Giles?” Monk was surprised. It was another area no better than Seven Dials, and only a few thousand yards away, if that. “Why are you bothering with it?” he asked wryly. “What chance have you of solving that either?”
Evan shrugged. “I don’t know … probably not much. But I have to try, because the dead man was from Ebury Street, considerable money and social standing.”
Monk raised his eyebrows. “What the devil was he doing in St. Giles?”
“They,” Evan corrected. “So far I have very little idea. The widow doesn’t know … and probably doesn’t want to, poor woman. I have nothing to follow, except the obvious. He went to satisfy some appetite, either for women or other excitement, which he couldn’t at home.”
“And the one still alive?” Monk asked.
“His son. It appeared they had something of a quarrel, or at least a heated disagreement, before the son left, and th
en the father went after him.”
“Ugly,” Monk said succinctly. He stood up. “If I get any ideas, I’ll tell you. But I doubt I will.”
Evan smiled resignedly and picked up the pen again to resume what he had been writing when Monk came in.
Monk left without looking to right or left. He did not want to bump into Runcorn. He was feeling angry and frustrated enough. The last thing he desired was a past superior with a grudge, and now all the advantages. He must return to Seven Dials, and to Vida Hopgood and her women. There was going to be no help from outside. Whatever was to be done, it rested with him alone.
4
The evening after Corriden Wade had left, Hester went upstairs to see Rhys for the last time before settling him for the night. She found him lying half curled over on the bed, his face turned into the pillow, his eyes wide. If he had been anyone else she would have talked to him, tried to learn—if not directly, at least indirectly—what troubled him. But Rhys still had no way of communicating except by agreement or disagreement with whatever she asked him. She had to guess, to fumble with all the myriad possibilities, and try to frame her questions so he could answer yes or no. It was such a crude instrument to try to find so subtle and terrible a pain. It was like trying to operate on living flesh using an ax.
Yet sometimes words were too precise. She did not even know what it was that hurt him at this moment. It could be fear of what the future held, or simply fear of sleep that night and the dreams and memories it would bring. It could be grief for his father, guilt because he was alive and his father was dead—or, more deeply, because his father had followed him out of the house, and perhaps if he had not he would still be alive. Or it could be the mixture of anger and grief which afflicts someone who has parted with a loved one for the last time in a quarrel and it is too late for all the things that remain unsaid.
It might be no more than the weariness of physical pain and the fear of endless days stretching ahead when it would not ever stop. Would he spend the rest of his life there, locked in silence and this terrible isolation?
Or was memory returning with its terror and pain and helplessness relived?
She wanted to touch him. It was the most immediate form of communication. It did not need to say anything. There were no queries in it, no clumsiness of wrong guesses, simply a nearness.
But she remembered how he had snatched himself away from his mother. She did not know him well enough, and he might consider it an intrusion, a familiarity to which she had no right, an advantage she took only because he was ill and dependent upon her.
In the end she simply spoke her mind.
“Rhys …”
He did not move.
“Rhys … shall I stay for a while, or would you rather be alone?”
He turned very slowly and stared at her, his eyes wide and dark.
She tried to read them, to feel what emotion, what need, was filling his mind and tearing at him till he could neither bear it nor loose it in words. Forgetting her resolve, from her own need she reached out and touched him, laying her hand on his arm above the splints and bandaging.
He did not flinch.
She smiled slightly.
He opened his mouth. His throat tightened, but no sound came. He breathed more rapidly, swallowing. He had to gasp to stop choking, but still there was no voice, no word.
She put her hand up to his lips. “It’s all right. Wait a little. Give it time to heal. Is … is there something in particular you want to say?”
Nothing. His eyes were full of dread and misery.
She waited, struggling to understand.
Slowly his eyes filled with tears and he shook his head.
She brushed his dark hair from his brow. “Are you ready to go to sleep?”
He shook his head.
“Shall I find something to read to you?”
He nodded.
She went to the bookshelf. Should she even try to censor out anything which might give him pain, remind him of his condition or reawaken memory? Might it not end in being more conspicuous by its very absence?
She picked up a translation of the Iliad. It would be full of battles and deaths, but the language would be beautiful, and it would be alive with imagery and light, epic loves, gods and goddesses, ancient cities and wine-dark seas … a world of the mind away from the alleys of St. Giles.
She sat in the chair beside his bed and he lay still and listened to her, his eyes never leaving her face. Eleven o’clock came and went, midnight, one o’clock, and at last he fell asleep. She marked the place and closed the book, tiptoeing out and to her own room, where she lay down on the bed and fell asleep herself, still fully clothed.
She awoke late and still tired, but she had slept better than any night since she came to Ebury Street. She went immediately to Rhys and found him restless but not yet ready to wake sufficiently to take breakfast.
Downstairs she met Sylvestra, who came across the hall as soon as she saw Hester, her face tense with anxiety.
“How is he? Has he spoken yet?” She closed her eyes, impatient with herself. “I’m sorry. I swore I would not ask that. Dr. Wade says I must be patient … but …” She stopped.
“Of course it is difficult,” Hester assured her. “Every day seems like a week. But we sat reading till very late last night, and he seems to have slept well. He was much more at ease.”
Some of the tension slipped out of Sylvestra’s body; her shoulders lowered a little and she attempted to smile.
“Come into the dining room. I’m sure you have not breakfasted yet. Neither have I.”
“Thank you.” Hester accepted not only because it was a request from her employer but because she hoped that gradually she might learn a little more about Rhys, and thus be able to be of more comfort to him. Comfort of mind was about all she could offer him, apart from helping him to eat, to stay clean and attend to his immediate personal wants. So far Dr. Wade had not permitted her to change any dressings but the most superficial, and Rhys’s greatest injuries were internal, where no one could reach them.
The dining room was pleasantly furnished, but like the rest of the house, in too heavy a style for Hester’s taste. The table and sideboard were Elizabethan oak, solid and powerful, an immense weight of wood. The carved chairs at each end of the table had high backs and ornate armrests. There were no mirrors, which might have given more light and impression of space. The curtains were wine-and-pink brocade, tied back with tasseled cords and splayed wide to show their richness and the burgundy-colored lining. The walls were hung with a dozen or more pictures.
But the room was extremely comfortable. The chairs were padded on their seats and the fire blazed up in the inglenook hearth, filling the room with warmth.
Sylvestra did not wish to eat. She picked at a piece of toast, undecided whether to have Dundee marmalade or apricot preserves. She poured a cup of tea and sipped it before it was cool enough.
Hester wondered what kind of a man Leighton Duff had been, how they had met and what had happened in the relationship during its twenty-five or so years. What friends had Sylvestra to help her in her grief? They would all have been at the funeral, but that had been almost immediate, in the few days when Rhys had been in the hospital and before Hester had arrived. Now the formal acknowledgments of death were over and Sylvestra was left alone to face the empty days afterwards.
Apparently Dr. Wade’s sister was one who was eager to call as soon as she could and he himself seemed to be more than merely a professional acquaintance.
“Have you always lived here?” Hester asked.
“Yes,” Sylvestra replied, looking up quickly as if she too were grateful for something to say but had simply not known how to begin. “Yes, ever since I was married.”
“It’s extremely comfortable.”
“Yes …” Sylvestra answered automatically, as if it were the expected thing to say and she did it as she had always done. It no longer had meaning. The poverty and hour-to-hour dangers
of St. Giles were farther away than the quarrels and the gods of the Iliad, because they were beyond the horizons of the imagination. Sylvestra recalled herself. “Yes it is. I suppose I have become so accustomed to it I forget. You must have had very different experiences, Miss Latterly. I admire your courage and sense of duty in going to the Crimea. My daughter Amalia would particularly have liked to meet you. I believe you would have liked her also. She has a most enquiring mind, and the courage to follow her dreams.”
“A superb quality,” Hester said sincerely. “You have many reasons to be most proud of her.”
Sylvestra smiled. “Yes … thank you, of course, thank you. Miss Latterly …”
“Yes?”
“Does Rhys remember what happened to him?”
“I don’t know. Usually people do, but not always. I have a friend who had an accident and was struck on the head. He has only the vaguest flashes of his life before that day. At times a sight or a sound, a smell, will recall something to him, but only fragments. He has to piece it together as well as he can and leave the rest. He has re-created a good life for himself.” She abandoned the pretense of eating. “But Rhys was not struck on the head. He knows he’s home, he knows you. It is simply that night he may not recall, and perhaps that is best. There are some memories we cannot bear. To forget is nature’s way of helping us keep our sanity. It is a way for the mind to heal, when natural forgetting would be impossible.”
Sylvestra stared at her plate. “The police are going to try to make him remember. They need to know who attacked him and who murdered my husband.” She looked up. “What if he can’t bear to remember, Miss Latterly? What if they force him, show him evidence, bring a witness or whatever, and make him relive it? Will it break his mind? Can’t you stop that? Isn’t there a way we can protect him? There has to be!”
“Yes, of course,” Hester said before she really thought. Her mind was filled with memories of Rhys trying desperately to speak, of his eyes wide with horror, of his sweat-soaked body as he struggled in nightmare, rigid with terror, his throat contracted in a silent scream and pain ripping through him, and no one heard, no one came. “He is far too ill to be harassed, and I am sure Dr. Wade will tell them so. Anyway, since he cannot speak or write, there is little he can do except to indicate yes or no. They will have to solve this case by other means.”
