Slaves of Obsession

by Anne Perry

  Sandy shook his head. “Ain’t seen ’im since … I dunno. Reckon not in weeks. Mebbe day afore poor Mr. Alberton got done in.” His face reflected sadness and an undisguised anger. Monk was surprised how much it pleased him. He had liked Alberton. He had not allowed himself to think about that lately, suppressing it in his concentration on solving the question of who was responsible for Alberton’s death and proving exactly how it had been accomplished.

  “What was he like?” he asked aloud. Then he realized he had not introduced himself. “My name is Monk. Mrs. Alberton has employed me to help her with regard to Mr. Alberton’s death. She believes there is much more to learn about it than we know at present, and there may be other people involved.” That was true literally, if not in its implication. He did not wish to tell them it was to clear Merrit of the charge of murder. They might well believe her guilty. If the newspapers were accurate, which was highly debatable, the general public had little doubt as to her involvement.

  “Eh! Bert! Over ’ere!” Sandy called to a third man, who had appeared at the warehouse doors. “Come an’ ’elp this gent ’ere. ’E’s workin’ fer Mrs. Alberton.”

  That was sufficient to make Bert move with alacrity. Whether they knew Judith personally or not, mention of her name ensured complete cooperation.

  “Wot yer reckon ter Shearer, then?” Sandy prompted. “ ’Ow would yer describe ’im fer someone as ’ad never met ’im an’ knew nuffink?”

  Bert considered carefully before he answered. “Clever,” he said at last. “Clever as a rat.”

  “Eye ter the best chance,” the first man added, nodding sagely.

  “Ambitious?” Monk asked.

  They all three nodded.

  “Greedy?” Monk ventured.

  “Gonna get ’is share,” Bert agreed. “Never knowed ’im ter cheat, though, ter be fair.”

  “Don’t do ter cheat, not if yer get caught at it,” Sandy added. “This sort o’ business yer’ll be lucky ter land in the clink. More like facedown in the river. But I never knowed ’im ter cheat, neither. Can’t say as I ever ’eard ’e did.”

  “Had ambitions, but not dishonest as far as you know,” Monk summed up.

  “S’right, guv. There’s another five ’undred guns was ’ere, an’ they’re gorn too. But we reckoned as ’ooever was ’ere took ’em all. You think as Shearer ’ad summink to do wif doin’ in the gaffer?” the first man asked, squinting a little at Monk. “Papers says as it were that Yankee.”

  “I’m not sure,” Monk said honestly. “Breeland got the guns, no doubt about that, but I’m not sure he actually killed Mr. Alberton.”

  “Then ’ow’d ’e get ’em?” Sandy said reasonably. “An’ if it weren’t for them guns, why’d anyone do ’im like that? That ain’t even a decent way ter kill anyone. That’s …” He searched in vain for a word.

  “Barbaric,” Monk supplied.

  “Yeah … that an’ all.”

  Bert nodded vigorously.

  “Yer reckon as Shearer ’ad summink ter do wif it?” Sandy persisted. “An’ then he scarpered, like? ’Cos nobody ’round ’ere’s seen ’im since then.”

  “Does it fit in with what you know of him?” Monk asked.

  They looked at each other, then back again. “Yeah, near enough,” Sandy agreed. “Don’ it?”

  “Yeah. If the money were right,” Bert added. “ ’Ave ter be. ’E wouldn’t do it fer nuffink. Sort o’ liked the gaffer, in ’is own way. ’Ave ter be a lot.” He bit his lip. “Still an’ all, the way it were done. I don’t see Shearer doin’ it like that. That ’ad ter be the Yankee.”

  “What about for the price of six thousand first-class rifled muskets?” Monk persisted.

  “Well—s’pose so. That’s a lot o’ money in any man’s reckonin’,” Sandy acknowledged.

  “Could he have sympathized with the Union cause?” Monk tried a last question on the subject.

  They all looked mystified.

  “Against slaving,” Monk explained. “To keep all the states of America as one country.”

  “We don’t ’ave no slaving in England,” Sandy pointed out. “Least not black slaving,” he added wryly. “There’s some as thinks they got it ’ard. an’ as for the states o’ America, why should we care? Let ’em do whatever they likes, I says.”

  Bert shook his head. “I’d be agin slavery. In’t right.”

  “Me too,” the first man added. “Can’t say as Shearer gave a toss, though, not so as ter kill anyone over it, like.”

  “Do you know where Shearer lives?” Monk asked them.

  “New Church Street, just off Bermondsey Low Road,” Bert replied. “Dunno the number, but ends in a three, as I recall. About ’alfway along.”

  “Was he married?”

  “Shearer? Not likely!”

  Monk thanked them and left the yard to try New Church Street.

  It took him nearly half an hour to find where Shearer had lived, and an irate landlady who had waited three weeks with an empty property.

  “Bin ’ere near on nine year, ’e ’ad!” she said belligerently. “Then ups and goes Gawd knows where, an’ without a by-your-leave! Says nothing to nobody, an’ left all ’is rubbish ’ere fer me ter clear out. Lorst three weeks o’ rent money, I did.” Her eyes glared stonily at Monk. “You a friend o’ ’is, then?”

  “No,” Monk lied quickly. “He owes me money too.”

  She laughed abruptly. “Well, yer got no chance ’ere, ’cos I got nuffink an’ I ain’t partin’ wif the li’l I got from sellin’ ’is clothes ter the rag an’ bone, an’ I tell yer that fer nothin’.”

  “Do you think something could have happened to him?”

  Her thin eyebrows shot up.

  “That one? Not likely! Too fly by ’alf, ’im. Got a better offer an’ took it, I s’pec. Or the rozzers is after ’im.” She looked Monk up and down. “That wot you are, a rozzer?”

  “I told you, he owes me money.”

  “Yeah? Well, I never knew a rozzer wot was close kin ter the truth. But if ’e owes yer money, I reckon as ’e’s in for trouble if yer finds ’im, like. Yer look like trouble ter me.”

  Monk had an instant of recollection, as if someone else had said exactly the same to him, but it was gone before he could place it. Such jolts of memory from before the accident were becoming fewer, and he no longer actively searched for them or tried to hold them with him. What she had said was probably true. He did not forgive easily, and if someone had cheated him, he would have pursued the culprit to the last hiding place and exacted what was due. But that was a long time ago. Then his carriage had overturned, robbing him of all his past, in the summer of 1856. In the five years since he had built a new life, a new set of memories and characteristics.

  He thanked her and left. There was nothing more to be learned here. Shearer had disappeared. What mattered was where he had gone, and why. Tomorrow he would speak with dockers and bargees who would have known him. He might even find where the barge had come from that had taken the guns down the river. Then he would go on to the shipping offices Shearer would have dealt with to export Alberton’s guns, or machinery and whatever else he traded in.

  That evening he told Hester a little of what he had learned.

  “Do you think it was Shearer who actually killed Mr. Alberton?” she asked with a lift of hope in her voice.

  They were sitting at the table over a meal of cold chicken pie and fresh vegetables. He noticed that she looked a little tired.

  “Where have you been all day?” he asked.

  “Do you?” she insisted.

  “What?”

  “Do you think Shearer killed Daniel Alberton?”

  “Possibly. Where have you been?”

  “At the Small Pox Hospital at Highgate. We’re still trying to improve the quality of staff caring for the patients there, but it’s difficult. I’ve been writing letters most of the time.”

  It was on the edge of his tongue to make some remark about Floren
ce Nightingale, who was inexhaustible in her letter writing in her efforts to bring about hospital reform, but he forbore. It explained Hester’s tiredness. He had promised months ago to employ a woman to keep house, and forgotten about it.

  “It would mean Merrit was not guilty,” she said, watching him keenly. “It would explain how Breeland did it without her knowledge.”

  He smiled. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.” It was a statement.

  She hesitated only a moment. “Yes,” she admitted. “I can’t see any way he is innocent, but I really want to believe she is.”

  He relaxed a little. “You should start looking for someone to come in every day, even if it’s only for a few hours.”

  She thought about it for several minutes, watching his face, trying to judge if he was being overgenerous.

  He could read her thoughts as if they were written in front of him.

  “Look for someone,” he repeated. “Maybe three days a week, long enough to clean and do some cooking.”

  “Yes,” she accepted. “Yes, I will.” She looked at him very levelly, a smile beginning in her eyes.

  He felt remarkably pleased, as if he had given her the best gift imaginable, and perhaps it was, because his real gift was time to devote to what she was good at, time to use the skills she possessed in abundance, instead of laboring to develop those she would never find natural. He smiled back, more and more broadly.

  She knew his thoughts too. She bit her lip. “I can cook!” she said quickly. “Moderately.”

  He did not argue; he just grinned.

  In the morning he began on the river, speaking to dockers and bargees yet again, this time not about the movement of the guns but about Shearer. It took him till early afternoon to find anyone who knew Shearer and was willing to talk about him, but all he could say reinforced what Monk had already heard from the men at the warehouse. Shearer was hard, ambitious, competent, but to all outward appearances loyal to Daniel Alberton. He was not spoken of with liking, but there was a definite respect in the men’s faces and in the tone of their voices.

  It left Monk further confused. The picture of Shearer that emerged did not sit easily with the facts. He walked along the street almost unconscious of the passing traffic, the heavily laden wagons, the men shouting to one another, the cranes rising and lowering, the jostling crowds of masts as the tide jiggled the boats, the occasional gull wheeling overhead.

  Shearer had disappeared, that seemed unarguable. The guns had gone to America, as had Breeland and Merrit. Alberton and the two guards were dead, murdered.

  The barge with the guns had gone down the river towards Bugsby’s Marshes, and was untraceable after that. Breeland and Merrit seemed to have traveled by train to Liverpool, but the only train in which they could have gone had left before the murders, and thus before the guns had left the warehouse.

  It seemed Shearer’s involvement was the only fact which could link all three things together and make any kind of sense of them.

  Someone must know more of Shearer, and might even know of the ship which had come up the Thames as far as Bugsby’s Marshes and loaded the guns and then weighed anchor and gone out to sea again. Was it a British ship or an American one?

  Perhaps what he had already learned would be enough to raise reasonable doubt as to Merrit’s guilt, if there were no prejudice and jurors were able to disregard their emotions. But it would certainly not be sufficient to clear her name. There would always be those who would believe her guilty, simply that it had not been proved. She had got away with it. That was only a little better than hanging, a kind of life in limbo. Although if she returned to America with Breeland, perhaps England’s opinion of her would matter less.

  But was it also enough to save Breeland from the rope, against the hatred there was for him, the conviction in the public’s mind that he was guilty? And would he inevitably drag her down with him?

  Not that it made any difference to what Monk had to do. Probabilities of a verdict one way or the other were Rathbone’s business, although he was certain Rathbone would want to know the truth as much as he did. Someone had bound up three men and shot them through the head. He needed to know who that someone was, beyond any doubt at all, reasonable or not.

  He went into the nearest shipping office and asked to speak to the clerks.

  “Shearer?” A young man in a tight jacket repeated the name. “Oh, yes, very good fellow. Agent for Mr. Alberton.” He sucked in his breath. “Terrible business, that. Awful. Thank goodness they got the man who did it. Kidnapped the daughter too, by all accounts.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue.

  “When did you last see Shearer?” Monk asked.

  The clerk thought for a few minutes. “Doesn’t deal with us a lot,” he replied. “Certainly I haven’t seen him for a couple of months or more. I expect he’s very busy, what with poor Mr. Alberton gone. Don’t know what’s going to happen to the business. Good reputation, but won’t be the same without Mr. Alberton himself. Very reliable, he was. Knew a lot about shipping, and trade too. Knew who had what, and always paid a fair price, but nobody’s fool. Can’t replace that, even though Mr. Casbolt is brilliant at the buying, so I hear. Terrible shame.”

  “I can’t find anybody who has seen Shearer since Mr. Alberton’s death,” Monk told him.

  The clerk looked surprised. “Well, I never. Knew he thought the world of Mr. Alberton, but didn’t think he’d go off like that. Thought he’d stay around to look after the business best he could, for the widow’s sake, poor woman. Goes to show, you never know, do you?”

  “No. Who did Shearer deal with mostly, if not you?”

  “Pocock and Aldridge, up on the West India Dock Road. Big place. Ask anyone.”

  Monk thanked him and left. It was some distance to the West India docks, so he took the first hansom he saw and arrived twenty-five minutes later. He paid the driver and alighted, then turned towards the building, and suddenly he knew exactly what it would be like inside, as if he had visited it frequently and this were only one more routine call.

  It was unnerving. He had no idea why he would have come here, or when. It was no time he could recall since the accident. He strode across the pavement, almost bumping into a thin man in gray, and without apologizing, he went up the few steps and pulled the door open.

  Inside was completely strange to him, not as he had seen it in his mind’s eye at all. The proportions were more or less the same, but there was a desk where he had not seen it, the walls were the wrong color, and the floor, which had been the most individual feature, tiled in gray-and-white marble, was now wooden.

  He stopped abruptly, confused.

  “Mornin’, sir. Can I ’elp yer?” the man behind the desk asked.

  Monk collected himself with difficulty. He found he was fumbling for words, trying to bring himself back to the present.

  “Yes … I need to speak to …” The name Taunton came into his mind, but he had no idea from where.

  “Yes, sir? ’Oo was it yer wanted?” the man asked helpfully.

  “Do you have a Mr. Taunton here?”

  “Yes, sir. Would that be the elder Mr. Taunton or the younger?”

  Monk had no idea. But he must answer. He went with instinct rather than sense.

  “The elder.”

  “Yes, sir. What name shall I say?”

  “Monk. William Monk.”

  “Right, sir. If yer’d care ter wait, sir, I’ll tell ’im.”

  The message came back within minutes, and Monk was directed up a stair that curved graciously onto a landing. He could not remember what the man in the hall had said, but he had no hesitation in turning left and walking to the end of the corridor. This was familiar, a little smaller than he recalled, but he even knew the feel of the handle when he touched it, recalled the catch as the door stuck before it swung wide.

  The man inside the comfortable room was standing. There was surprise in his face, and unease in the angles of his body. He was a little ol
der than Monk, perhaps fifty. His hair was receding, auburn in color, his cheeks ruddy. Monk knew that Mr. Taunton the younger was his half brother, not his son, a taller, darker man with a sallow complexion.

  “Well, well,” Taunton said nervously. “After all these years! What brings you here, Monk? Thought I’d seen the last of you.” He looked puzzled, as if Monk’s appearance confused him. He could not help staring, first at Monk’s face, then at his clothes, even his boots.

  Monk realized that Taunton was older than he had expected. He could not recall him with a full head of hair, but the gray in it was new, the lines in his face, a certain coarsening of features. He had no idea how long it had been since they had last met, or what the circumstances were. Was it to do with police work, or even before that? That would make it twenty years or more, well into the past that Monk had lost completely, not even patched together from fragments learned here and there, people he had come across in investigations since the accident.

  He could not afford to trust that Taunton was a friend; he could not assume that of anyone. The little he knew of his life showed he had earned more fear than love. There might be all manner of old debts left unpaid, his and others’. This was a time when he wished fiercely that he knew himself better, knew who were his enemies, and why, knew their weaknesses. He was without armor, without weapons.

  He searched Taunton’s face, and saw no warmth in it. The expression was guarded, careful, but already there was a beginning of pleasure, as if he had seen a vulnerability in Monk, and it pleased him.

  Monk racked his mind for something to say that would not betray his ignorance.

  “The place has changed.” He played for time, hoping Taunton would let slip some information, so at least he would know how long ago they had last met, perhaps even the mood, whether their enmity was open or concealed. Because with every passing second he was more and more certain that it was enmity.