Slaves of Obsession

by Anne Perry

  Breeland was coming towards them. He looked a trifle awkward, uncertain what to say now that the tension had passed. He had the guns; he was proved innocent and acquitted. Perhaps he did not even understand the chill in the air.

  Judith turned to watch, but she remained where she was.

  “Thank you for your efforts on our behalf, Mrs. Monk,” Breeland said stiffly. “I am sure you did it because you believed it to be right; nevertheless we are grateful.”

  “You are mistaken,” Hester said, meeting his eyes. “I had no idea whether it was right or not. I did it because I care for Merrit. I hoped she was innocent, and I believed it as long as I could, because I wanted to. Fortunately, I still can.”

  “That is the sort of reasoning a woman is free to have, I suppose,” he said with faint disapproval. “But it is too emotional.” A very small smile touched his lips. “I do not wish to be ungracious.” He turned to Merrit. “Perhaps you would prefer to remain some time with your mother before we return to Washington. I understand that. I can wait at least a week, then I should rejoin my regiment. I have very little reliable news of what is happening at home. At least now my honor is vindicated and England will know that the officers of the Union are upright in their dealings. I may well be sent back to purchase more arms.”

  There was a moment of silence before Merrit replied with her voice level, but it was apparent it cost her all the strength of will she possessed.

  “I am sure your honor is vindicated, Lyman, and that for you that is the most important thing that could have happened. I am happy it is. I am equally certain that you deserve it. However, I do not wish to return to Washington with you. I thank you for the offer. I am sure you do me great honor, but I do not believe we should make each other happy, therefore I cannot accept.”

  He looked as if he had not grasped what he had heard. It was incomprehensible to him that she could have changed from the girl who had adored him so completely to the young woman who now made such a considered judgment that, incredibly, amounted to a rejection.

  “You would make me very happy,” he said with a frown. “You have all the qualities any man could wish for, and what is more, you have shown them under the greatest pressure. I cannot imagine I could find any woman I should admire more than I do you.”

  Merrit drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Hester saw the resolve flicker in her face.

  “Love is more than admiration, Lyman,” Merrit said with tremendous difficulty, gasping to control her breath. “Love is caring for someone when they are wrong, as well as when they are right, protecting their weakness, guarding them until they find strength again. Love is sharing the little things, as well as the big ones.”

  He looked stunned, as if she had struck him, and he had no idea why.

  Then quite slowly he bowed and turned and walked away.

  She gave a little gulp, drew in her breath to call him back, and remained silent.

  Judith came and put her arms around her, allowing her to weep with deep, wrenching sobs that were the end of a dream, and already just a thread of relief.

  12

  MONK AND HESTER dined out on the most excellent poached fish, fresh vegetables and plum pie with cream. They walked home arm in arm along the quiet, lamp-lit streets. There was an arch of light across the sky between the rooftops, and a few windows glowed yellow.

  “We still don’t know who killed Daniel Alberton,” Hester said at last. They had both refrained from saying it all evening, but it could no longer remain a ghost between them.

  “No,” he agreed somberly, tightening his arm around her. “Except that it wasn’t Breeland, even indirectly, and it couldn’t have been Shearer. Who does that leave?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “What happened to the other five hundred guns?”

  He did not reply for several minutes, walking in silence with his head down.

  “Do you think Breeland took them too, and he lied?” she asked.

  “Why should he?”

  “The money? Perhaps what he paid wasn’t enough?”

  “Since there’s no trace of any money at all, there doesn’t seem to be any reason,” he pointed out.

  There was no response to make. Again they walked a short distance without speaking. They passed another couple and nodded politely. The woman was young and pretty, the man openly admiring of her. It made Hester feel comfortable and very safe, not from pain or loss, but at least from the agony of disillusion. She gripped Monk’s arm a little more tightly.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said with a smile. “Nothing to do with Daniel Alberton, poor man. I really want to know what happened … and to prove it.”

  He gave a little laugh, but he held her equally close.

  “I can’t forget the blackmail,” she went on. “I don’t believe its happening at the same time was just coincidence. That’s why he called you in. The blackmailer has never been back! Pirates don’t give up, do they?”

  “Alberton’s dead!”

  “I know that! But Casbolt isn’t! Why didn’t they pursue it with him? He also gave money and help to Gilmer.”

  They crossed the road and reached the pavement on the far side. They were still half a mile from home.

  “The ugliest answer to that is that they didn’t give up,” he replied. “We still don’t know what happened to the barge that went down the river, who took it, or what was on it. Certainly something went from Tooley Street; there are five hundred guns not accounted for … the exact amount demanded by the pirates.”

  “You think Alberton sold them after all?” she asked very quietly. It was the thought she had been trying to avoid for several days. The tension of the trial had allowed her to; now it could no longer be held away. “Why would he do that? Judith would loathe it.”

  “Presumably he never intended her to know … or Casbolt either.”

  “But why?” she insisted. “Five hundred guns … what would they be worth?”

  “About one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five pounds,” he answered. He had no need to add that that was a small fortune.

  “You looked at his company books,” she reminded him. “Could he possibly have needed that much?”

  “No. He was doing well. Up and down, of course, but overall it was very profitable.”

  “Down? You mean times when no one wanted to buy guns?” she said skeptically.

  “They dealt in other things as well, timbers and machinery particularly. But I wasn’t thinking of that. Guns were the main profit makers, but also the only bad loss.” They reached the curb. He hesitated, looked, then crossed. They were close to Fitzroy Street now. “Do you remember the Third China War you said Judith told you about the first night at the Albertons’ home?”

  “Over the ship and the French missionary?”

  “Not that one, the one after … only last year.”

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “It seems they sold some guns to the Chinese just before that, and because of the hostilities they were never paid. It wasn’t a large amount, and they made it up within a few months. But that was the only bad deal. He didn’t need to sell to pirates. Trace had paid him thirteen thousand pounds on account for the guns Breeland took, which, of course, will need to be paid back. Breeland says he paid the full price, around twenty-two thousand five hundred pounds. And there’s the ammunition as well, which would be over one thousand four hundred pounds. The profit on all that would be a fortune.” He shook his head a little. “I can’t see why he should feel compelled to sell another one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five pounds’ worth of guns to pirates.”

  “Nor can I,” she agreed. “So where are they? And who killed Alberton, and who went down the river? And for that matter, where is Walter Shearer?”

  “I don’t know,” Monk admitted. “But I intend to find out.”

  “Good,” she said softly, turning the corner into Fitzroy Street. “We have to know.”

&nb
sp; In the morning Monk woke early and left without disturbing Hester. The sooner he started the sooner he might find some thread that would lead to the truth. As he walked towards Tottenham Court Road past the fruit and vegetable wagons heading for the market, he wondered if perhaps he already had that thread but had failed to recognize it. He rehearsed all he knew, going over it again in his mind, detail by detail, as he rode in a hansom across the river, ready to begin again the journey down to Bugsby’s Marshes.

  This time he did the trip hastily, concentrating more on the description of the barge, any distinguishing marks or characteristics it might have had. If it had returned even part of the way, surely someone must have seen it?

  It took him all morning to get as far as Greenwich, but he learned a little about the barge. It was large and yet still so heavily laden it rode almost dangerously low in the water. One or two men who were used to working on the river had noticed it for precisely that reason. They described the dimensions very roughly, but in the dark, even had there been any other distinguishing marks, no one saw them.

  From Morden Wharf, beyond Greenwich, he went by boat back across the river and up a little to Cubitt Tower Pier and then by road again past the Blackwall entrance to West India South Dock, still asking about the barge. He stopped for a tankard of cider at the Artichoke Tavern, but no one remembered the night of the Tooley Street murders anymore. It was too long ago now.

  He went increasingly despondently to the Blackwall Stairs, where he had a long conversation with a waterman who was busy splicing a rope, working with gnarled fingers and a skill at weaving and pulling with the iron spike which in its way was as beautiful as a woman making lace. It pleased Monk to watch, bringing back some faint memory of a long-distant past, an age of childhood by northern beaches, the smell of salt and the music of Northumbrian voices, a time he could not fully recall anymore, except like bright patches of sunlight on a dark landscape.

  “A big barge,” the waterman said thoughtfully. “Yeah, I ’member the Tooley Street murders. Bad thing, that. Pity they in’t got ’oo done it. But then I don’t like guns neither. Guns are fer soldiers an’ armies an’ the like. Only bring trouble anywhere else.”

  “The ones for the Union army seem to have gone by train to Liverpool,” Monk replied. Not that it mattered now, and certainly not to the waterman.

  “Yeah.” The man wove the unraveled end of the rope into the main length and took out his knife to tidy off the last threads. “Mebbe.”

  “They did,” Monk assured him.

  “You see ’em?” The waterman raised his eyebrows.

  “No … but they got there … to Washington, I mean.”

  The waterman made no comment.

  “But there were others,” Monk went on, narrowing his eyes against the sunlight off the river. They were directly across from the gray-brown stretch of Bugsby’s Marshes and the curve of Blackwall Point, beyond which he could not see. “Something came down on that barge. What I don’t know is where those boxes went, and where the barge went to after it was unloaded.”

  “There’s plenty of illegal stuff goes back and forward around ’ere,” the waterman ventured. “Small stuff, mostly, and farther down towards the Estuary, ’specially beyond the Woolwich Arsenal an’ the docks on this side. Down Gallion’s Reach, or Barking Way and on.”

  “It couldn’t have got that far in the time,” Monk replied.

  “Mebbe it waited somewhere?” The waterman finished his work and surveyed it carefully. He was apparently satisfied, because he set it down and put away his knife and hook. “Margaret Ness, or Cross Ness, p’raps?”

  “Any way I could find out?”

  “Not as I can think of. You could try askin’, if there’s anybody ’round. Wanter go?”

  Monk had nothing else left to try. He accepted, climbing into the boat with practiced balance and sitting easily in the stern.

  Out on the water the air was cooler and the faint breeze on the moving tide carried the smell of salt and fish and mud banks.

  “Go down towards the Blackwall Point,” Monk directed. “Do you think there’s enough cover there to conceal a seagoing ship, one big enough to cross the Atlantic?”

  “Well now, that’s a good question,” the waterman said thoughtfully. “Depends where, like.”

  “Why? What difference does it make?” Monk asked.

  “Well, some places a ship’d stand out like a sore thumb. See it a mile off, masts’d be plain as day. Other places there’s the odd wreck, for example, an’ ’oo’d notice an extra spar or two? For a while, leastways.”

  Monk sat forward eagerly. “Then go past all the places. Let’s see what the draft is and where a ship could lie up,” he urged.

  The waterman obeyed, leaning his weight against the oars and digging them deep. “Not that it’ll prove anything, mind,” he warned. “ ’Less, o’ course, yer find someone ’as seen it. It’s going back, now. Must be two months or more.”

  “I’ll try,” Monk insisted.

  “Right.” The waterman heaved hard and they picked up speed, even against the tide.

  They moved around the wide curve of the Blackwall Reach as far as the Point, Monk staring at the muddy shore with its low reeds, and here and there the occasional driftwood floating, old mooring posts sticking above the tide like rotted teeth. Mudflats shone in the low sun, patches of green weed, and now and then part of a wreck settling lower and lower into the mire.

  Beyond the Blackwall Point were the remains of two or three ancient barges. It was difficult to tell what they had been originally; too little was visible now. It might have been one barge, broken by tides and currents, or it might have been two. Other odd planks and boards had drifted up and stuck at angles in the mud. It was a dismal sight, the falling and decaying of what had once been gracious and useful.

  The waterman rested on his oars, his face creased in a frown.

  “What is it?” Monk asked. “Isn’t this too shallow a lane for an oceangoing ship? It would have to stand far out, or risk going aground. It can’t have been here. What about farther down?”

  The waterman did not answer, seemingly lost in contemplation of the shore.

  Monk grew impatient. “What about farther down?” he repeated. “It’s too shallow here.”

  “Yeah,” the waterman agreed. “Just tryin’ ter ’member summink. There’s summink I seen ’ere, ’round about that time. Can’t think on what.”

  “A ship?” Monk said doubtfully. It was more of a denial than a question.

  A yard-long board drifted past them towards the shore, submerged an inch or two below the surface of the water, one end jagged.

  “What kind of a thing?” Monk said impatiently.

  Another piece of flotsam bumped against the boat.

  “More wrecks than that,” the waterman answered, gesturing towards the shore. “Looks different. But why would anyone go an’ move a wreck from ’ere? Ain’t worth nothin’ now. Wood’s too rotten even ter burn. Ain’t good for nothin’ ’cept gettin’ in the way.”

  “Another …” Monk started, then as his eye caught the jetsam drifting away, an extraordinary thought occurred to him—daring, outrageous, almost unprovable, but which would explain everything.

  “Is there anybody else who would know?” His voice was surprisingly hoarse when he spoke, urgency making it raw.

  The waterman looked at him with amazement, catching the sharp edge of emotion without understanding it.

  “I could ask. Ol’ Jeremiah Spatts might a’ seen summink. Not much as gets by ’im. ’E lives over t’other side, but ’e’s always up an’ down. Mind yer’ll ’ave ter be careful ’ow yer asks. ’E’s no time fer the law.”

  “You ask him.” Monk fished in his pocket and pulled out two half crowns and held them in his open palm. “Get me a careful, honest answer.”

  “I’ll do that,” the waterman agreed. “Don’ need yer money, jus’ wanner know what yer guessed. Tell me the story.”

  Monk to
ld him, and gave him the half crowns anyway.

  That evening Monk called upon Philo Trace, and fortunately found him in his lodgings. He did not ask him why he was still in London, whether it was in the hope of purchasing guns for the Confederacy or only because he was loath to leave because of his feelings for Judith Alberton. The trial was over; he had no legal or moral duty to remain.

  He recalled Trace’s having mentioned diving in the Confederate navy, and he needed to speak to him about it now, urgently.

  “Diving!” Trace said in disbelief. “Where? What for?”

  Explaining his reasons, and briefly what he had seen, Monk told him why.

  “You can’t go alone,” Trace agreed the moment Monk was finished. “It’s dangerous. I’ll come with you. We’ll have to get suits. Have you ever dived before?”

  “No, but I’ll have to learn as I do it,” Monk answered, realizing how brash it sounded even as he spoke. But he had no alternative. He could not send anyone else, and the look in Trace’s eyes betrayed that he knew that. He did not argue.

  “Then I’d better explain some of the dangers and sensations you may feel, for your own safety,” he warned. “There must be divers somewhere along the river, for salvage at least, and to mend wharfs and so on.”

  “There are,” Monk agreed. “The waterman told me. I’ve already made enquiries. We can hire equipment and men to assist us from Messrs. Heinke. They are submarine engineers in Great Portland Street.”

  “Good.” Trace nodded. “Then I’m ready when you wish.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Certainly.”

  Monk had told Hester of the idea that had come to him on the river, and of his plan to take Philo Trace and dive beneath the Thames at Blackwall Point. Of course she had asked him about it in minute detail, and he answered only with assurances of his safety, and generalities as to how that was going to be assured, and what he expected to find.

  The next afternoon just before two o’clock he left, saying he would meet with Philo Trace and the men from Messrs. Heinke at the river, and would return either when he had discovered something or when the rising tide made further work impossible. She was obliged to be content with that. There was no possibility whatever of her accompanying him. She knew from the look on his face that pressing the issue would gain her nothing at all.