by Anne Perry
“That’s interesting, sir,” Hooper replied. “ ’Cos if she was bringing the papers she said she was, she couldn’t have trusted Mr. Doyle.”
Most of the half-dozen men in the room twisted round to look at him. He had spoken out of turn, but he was right.
“Took her from behind?” one of the men suggested. He looked at Monk. “Was he the sort of person to trust someone else to do his dirty work—hands-on stuff? Got to trust a man a lot to give him that kind of knowledge over you.”
Hooper stared at him. Something of the inflection in his voice started a memory, but he could not place it. He looked at the man’s face and could recall nothing. He was blunt-featured, with sandy-colored hair and deep-set eyes. His nose was crooked, as if it had been broken and not properly set.
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Monk replied. “But then, I didn’t think he had anything to do with it at all, until a few days ago.”
“What happened to change your mind?” Runcorn asked.
Monk answered immediately. “I realized how ideally Doyle was placed to know exactly who could pay such a ransom. He could handle it himself, so he would know precisely how the deal was to be done. And I think Exeter saw that for the first time also. The whole case is riddled with betrayals.”
No one argued with him.
“All to do with money, or do you think there were emotional issues as well?” The man looked first at Monk, then at Hooper. He was the same man who had caught Hooper’s eye before, the man with the crooked nose. Had he worked with him at some time?
Hooper waited to see if Monk would answer. Meanwhile his mind raced. He thought of what Celia Darwin had implied about Kate’s feelings.
They were waiting for Monk to answer, the man with the crooked nose in particular.
“Are you asking if there can be a failure like that—money stolen, a beloved wife hacked to pieces, the only kidnapper we could identify murdered, and now, too, the young woman who might have known some secret about that money—and there are not profound emotions involved?” Monk could not keep the bitterness from his voice.
“Not to mention whoever in your team told the kidnappers the details of your plan on Jacob’s Island,” Runcorn said. “But was that in the name of money, fear, or the hunger for some old revenge?”
Hooper had a sudden flash of memory. It was a windy deck, sunlight bounced off the water, and the sound of sails cracked in the wind as a ship came about with the rush of water and fear. Then it was gone again. Sometime in the past he had deliberately driven it from his memory. He knew that. It was the one certainty.
He concentrated, forcing his mind to clear and answer the man. Monk must not see this in him, the confusion and fear.
“No,” he said abruptly. “We are narrowing it…”
“Hard thing to do, narrow down suspicion like that,” the man with the crooked nose replied. “Not nice to suspect the men you’ve worked with, trusted your life to, of betraying you. Big thing for a man to live with.” He never took his eyes from Hooper’s face.
For Hooper, it was as if they were the only men in the room—or on the deck! Was it him? Was it Twist? It had been twenty years since the mutiny on the Mary Grace.
There was silence around him. Was everyone staring at him, wondering why he did not answer? “Yes,” he said slowly. “And a terrible thing to suspect a man of, if he isn’t guilty. You might learn that and trust him again. But he knows you thought it of him. Will he ever trust you?”
Now all the men in the room were definitely staring at him. He was conscious of Monk above all, but of Runcorn, too.
“I guess you’re still looking,” the crooked-nosed man said. “Still, if you catch this banker fellow, perhaps he can tell you.”
“Maybe,” Runcorn said briskly. “But that’s Commander Monk’s job. It’s ours to find out who killed this poor woman and get hold of him.”
“With enough evidence to hang the bastard,” one of the other men added. “She was only a slip of a thing. Could practically lift her with one hand, when she wasn’t soaking wet. Clothes carry a woman down even faster than a man.” He had been one of those who carried her body, and his voice was choked with pity.
No one answered. This close to the river, everyone had their recollections of people drowning. The fact that she had been dead before she went in was beside the point.
“Right!” Runcorn recalled their attention. “Question, everyone: Did she go in this side of the river or the other? Speak to ferrymen, anyone else on the river around dusk. You know the regular passengers crossing that sort of time. Find them and see if anyone saw anything at all. Bargees, lighter-men—bit late for them to be out, but try. Ask and see what they can tell you. She was supposed to keep her appointment at half-past seven. She probably left the north bank about seven, if she came that way. Cabdrivers? Peddlers? Dockworkers? Ferrymen, whether they carried her or saw her when someone else did. Get started!”
“Yes, sir,” half a dozen men replied, and they left, some of them giving orders as they went.
Runcorn turned to Monk, his face suddenly gentle with pity. “I’m going to see what else the police surgeon can tell me. There may be something about the way she died that will tell us more about who killed her. Bruises come up after death—that kind of thing. You need to follow Doyle and find whatever kind of a man you need to tell you what money he took, and how. This kidnap seems to be more of a bloody mess than any other I’ve seen. Believe me, Exeter might be a decent enough man, and I daresay you like him—”
“That’s got nothing to do with it!” Monk said a little irritably. “What happened to him shouldn’t happen to anybody! I don’t need to ask you how you’d feel if it was your wife! You’d be as gutted as I would be if it was Hester.”
Runcorn went pale, as if even the thought was a blow so hard he did not know what to do with it.
Hooper wondered if that was what was gnawing at Monk: the knowledge of how fragile happiness was. One sharp cut with a knife, one slip of a foot on wet stones, and it could be gone. It almost took your courage away to grasp at it at all. Much safer not to care so much. But that was not a choice for some. Not for Monk. Hooper thought it was not for him either. To be afraid to care was to deny life itself.
“Hooper!”
Hooper straightened up. “Yes, sir?”
“Go and see what you can find out about Doyle,” Monk told him. “Where was he last night? Where does—did—Bella Franken live? Could he have gone there yesterday evening and followed her to the ferry? Anyone see him today? What time did he get in to the bank this morning, if he was there? Any sign that he was out last night? Anything at all?”
“Yes, sir.” Hooper was glad to accept any duty that took him away from the Greenwich Police Station and Runcorn’s men. And he wanted to find whoever had killed Bella Franken every bit as much as Monk himself. Even though he had not met her, he felt her courage and her vulnerability.
* * *
—
HOOPER’S FIRST DUTY WAS to go to the bank and inform Doyle of Bella’s death. Possibly she had family outside the city. He would have to find that out, because they would need to be told as well. That was always the worst part of any death, worse even than finding the body. One could find ways of dealing with horror or grief of one’s own; it was other people’s grief for which there was no answer.
He took the ferry back across the river again and then a hansom cab to Nicholson’s Bank. He walked in at the rear door. They were not busy yet, and he approached a young clerk who was carrying a pile of ledgers. “My name is Sergeant Hooper, and I require to speak to Mr. Doyle,” he said quietly. “It is regarding a matter of tragedy, and I need to see him immediately. Will you please take me to him? I’m sure he is busy with clients’ affairs, but this will not wait.”
The young clerk drew breath to argue, but looking at Hooper’s face, th
e words died on his lips. “Yes, sir. If you will come this way…” He led him to the manager’s office. He knocked on the door, and as soon as it was answered, rather peremptorily, the clerk went in.
“There is a policeman here to see you, sir, and he says it’s regarding a tragedy that cannot wait.” He opened the door wider for Hooper to pass him.
Doyle looked annoyed but calm enough. “Good morning. What may I do for you?” He looked beyond Hooper and told the clerk, in peril of his job, not to repeat what he had heard, and to close the door behind him. “Now, tell me, Mr….?”
“Sergeant Hooper, sir.”
“All right, Sergeant Hooper, what is this tragedy you have to tell me?”
Hooper had weighed his approach in his mind on the way here. He had decided not to conceal his own reactions. He wished Doyle, innocent or guilty, to feel the full import of the facts. If he was innocent, he would be horrified. If he was not, he would be afraid. The heat of emotion often betrays the would-be liar.
“I’m very sorry to tell you, sir, but one of your employees was attacked and murdered last night.”
Doyle made one or two attempts to speak, but the color drained out of his face so completely that Hooper feared the man might have an attack of some sort. He half rose to his feet, in case Doyle lost consciousness and slipped to the floor.
“Miss…Miss…Franken is not in yet this morning,” Doyle gasped.
So, he knew who it was! Deduction? Or more than that? “She’s usually here by this time?” Hooper asked.
“What? Oh, yes. She is very…punctual…diligent…reliable…” Doyle seemed to want to add more, but he was gasping. He looked everywhere but at Hooper. “Very…For God’s sake, what happened? Where was she found? Not in…anywhere…where?”
“Where were you thinking she might be found, Mr. Doyle?” Hooper asked.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Did you think her death had something to do with Mrs. Exeter’s murder?”
“No!” Doyle was appalled. “She…she was a pleasant young woman, a bit opinionated…but for the love of heaven, man, she’s dead!”
“And if she were not dead, would you think her connected to Mrs. Exeter’s kidnap in some way?”
“No…of course not. She was an employee!”
“So where did you expect her to be found?” Hooper pressed.
“I don’t care to…” Doyle colored with embarrassment. It was clear to Hooper that his assumption had been that the circumstances of Bella Franken’s death were in some way compromising.
“Say?” Hooper finished for him. “Why not? Are you seeking to protect her reputation rather than help us find who killed her? She was killed, Mr. Doyle. Murdered—with a man’s hands around her neck…her throat…”
“Stop it! If she was found with some wretched man’s hands around her neck, then you know the answer, don’t you!” Doyle protested. “There is no need to exercise your cruelty on me. I had nothing to do with it. I knew absolutely nothing of her private life. If she had a lover, or whatever, I knew nothing. I always thought her rather bookish, not a particularly attractive quality in a young woman. I think the ability to add and subtract with accuracy excellent in a ledger clerk, not a…a companion.” He straightened his collar and cravat and sat a little more upright in his chair. “So, you have the matter settled, and you have informed me. Thank you. I will tell the staff about it a good deal less brutally than you have told me. I suppose the newspapers will get hold of this? They love scandal. I shall have to think of how to deal with this. I appreciate your telling me. That is all I have to say.”
Hooper smiled very slightly. “I have not come merely as a courtesy to inform you, Mr. Doyle. I need to ask you a good many questions. And it seems you have taken too much meaning from what I said as to the manner of her death. She was strangled and her neck broken, but whoever did it was not there when we found her. She was thrown into the river, like rubbish. It was Commander Monk who saw her and, with a ferryman’s help, pulled her out.” He watched Doyle’s face intently, saw the newly returned color ebb out again, and anger mixed with fear.
“What…what was she doing in the river?” Doyle demanded. “And what was Monk doing? How did he come to be there? I think I have a right to know.”
Hooper made a decision. “Yes, sir, perhaps you do. If Miss Franken has no family in the area, then as her employer, you are, in a sense, her guardian. She was quite young, and seemingly alone. You appear to assume some moral turpitude on her part…”
“No! No, not at all!” Doyle protested, shifting his position in the chair uncomfortably. “But you said she was alone in the street at night, and she had been murdered.”
“Yes,” Hooper agreed. “She had made an appointment to see Mr. Monk early yesterday evening, and he was at the right place at the right time, but she was not. He saw her body in the water and pulled her out, at some risk to his own life. But she was far beyond help, poor soul.” He waited.
Doyle could not resist. “What…what was she going to see Monk about? Did she tell him?”
“Yes, some irregularity in the bookkeeping, I believe. She thought it might help us find out who was behind Mrs. Exeter’s kidnap and murder.”
Doyle swallowed. “How on earth could the words of a ledger clerk like Miss Franken be taken seriously on such a subject? You seem to be suggesting that Mr. Exeter himself was doing something other than paying an exorbitant amount to save his wife’s life. The young woman is…was…light-minded, hysterical, if you like.”
“Was she?” Hooper felt his body stiffen in anger at Doyle’s attitude to someone who had risked her life, and lost it, seeking the truth. “It seems to me as if she was highly perceptive. Still, when we see the books, we will be able to tell. I merely wanted to let you know that, unfortunately, she gave her life to find the proof and could only hand it over in her death. Thank goodness it was Monk who pulled her out of the water, not someone who did not appreciate what the papers meant. I’m sorry to be the bringer of such news.” He looked rather critically at Doyle. “Should I ask your clerk to bring you a cup of tea, perhaps? Or maybe you have a little brandy somewhere available.”
“Get out!” Doyle said between his teeth.
* * *
—
HOOPER SPENT THE AFTERNOON tracing Doyle’s movements. He was a widower who still lived in the house he had shared with his wife. He had two adult children, both of whom lived in other parts of the country. He kept a full household staff and occasionally entertained those men and their wives that he had befriended when his own wife was alive.
He dined at his club at least twice a week. It was a pleasant gentlemen’s club; not aristocratic, but a place to display one’s respectability and increasing wealth. The chief steward could swear to Doyle’s presence at the time the kidnapper, Lister, had been killed. He had been involved in a game of cards that had lasted several hours. Doyle had not been there on the night of the kidnap, nor the night following the attempted ransom that had ended in murder. He had not been there on the previous night when Bella Franken had been killed, either.
Doyle’s butler was loyal and discreet, but he could hardly rely on the rest of the staff lying effectively. They were too confused, contradicting each other without realizing it. In the end, Hooper did not know who to believe. They were partly motivated by loyalty, but partly also by the fear of losing jobs they needed, without letters of recommendation and character, as a result of being disloyal.
Hooper told Monk this before he left for the evening, too tired to think about it clearly.
He was about halfway home before he remembered Celia Darwin implying, rather obliquely, that Kate was not as happy as one might suppose. What did she mean by that? Did she know something personal and was only being discreet in not mentioning it? He remembered her face very clearly as she said it. He could see it in his mind, as i
f they had only just parted. She had an expression almost of embarrassment. There was the faintest possible flush in her cheeks. She had fair skin, a little too colorless for some tastes. Hooper found it pure, like a canvas upon which anything could be painted.
Was there something more about Kate that would explain, at least in part, the circumstances around her death?
He wished he could go and ask Celia what she had meant. He even hesitated in his step. Could she really tell him anything? And would she? He thought—in fact he was certain—that she would keep other people’s secrets even more fervently than she would keep her own.
Would she judge the weight of it in hindsight, now that Kate was dead?
Secrets brought Twist’s face back to his mind, bright as if in direct sunlight, just as he had seen it, for an instant, in Runcorn’s police station. Except now that person called himself Fisk. Surely that kind of glittering sunlight happened only at sea, where the mirror surface of the water magnified it and repeated it a thousand times? Tropical sea. The answer was there in his mind.
The only question was, was it him at the station, or was it only someone who was reminiscent of him? He quickened his step again. He did not want to see Celia Darwin right now. She woke ideas in him of things he could not have, and they were better untouched.
Even so, he went. It was late, an unsuitable time to call. He knew all that, but he went anyway.
The maid must have been off duty, perhaps in her own bedroom, because it was Celia herself who answered the door, opening it guardedly, then almost with relief when she saw it was Hooper.
“Come in, Mr. Hooper.” She stood back to allow him to pass her before closing the door again and slipping the bolt home. It was habit rather than forethought; she seemed scarcely aware of doing it. She stood in the hallway, facing him. “What has happened? You look very grave.”
“I am afraid there has been another death.” How could he explain why he had come to see her, this late in the evening? “I…we have to—”
