Acceptable Loss: A William Monk Novel

by Anne Perry

  CHAPTER

  7

  MONK WENT ACROSS THE river on the early morning ferry. It was a cool, quiet day, barely a ripple on the water in the slack tide. Swathes of mist half veiled the ships at anchor. Strings of barges seemed to appear out of nowhere.

  He had been collecting the evidence against Rupert Cardew to present when he came to trial. It was a miserable job, and in truth he had little more taste for it than Hester had. But the more he learned, the easier it became to see Rupert as a spoiled young man whose louche style of life and ungoverned temper had finally caught up with him. In Mickey Parfitt he had met the one problem his father could not solve for him. No amount of money would have been sufficient to stop the blackmail that had clearly worked so well.

  The only inconsistency was that Parfitt was a professional at extortion. He had been thirty-seven years old, and had survived for the last ten of these by profiting one way or another from other men’s weaknesses. There had been at least one suicide among his victims, possibly more, but no one had ever attacked him before. It seemed he had judged very precisely where to draw the line in his bloodsucking, or his threats. A dead victim is bad for business, and he never forgot that—at least not until recently.

  Was that a weakness in the case, or simply a fact yet to be explained? Rathbone had not merely beaten Monk in the trial of Jericho Phillips, he had humiliated him, and later—when she had testified—Hester as well. He had done it with the knowledge of how to hurt that only a friend possesses.

  Monk still felt a tide of anger burn up in him when he remembered it. Perhaps it hurt him more on her behalf than it had Hester herself. They had never spoken of it, as if it were a wound still too painful to touch.

  This time Monk would make sure that Rupert Cardew was guilty, and that he had proved it beyond any doubt, reasonable or not; or else Monk would find the man who was guilty, and prove that.

  Of course what he wanted, far more than the poor devil who’d killed Mickey Parfitt, was the man who had set him up in business, and had found his clientele among those whose weakness for the excitement of the forbidden, the illegal, and the obscene he had fed and exploited. Monk would find and prove that, whoever it was, even if it were Arthur Ballinger himself, as Sullivan had claimed. Indeed, even were it Lord Cardew—anyone, without exception.

  The ferry reached the far side. Monk paid the fare and climbed the slippery steps up to the dock.

  He was reluctant to prosecute Rupert Cardew, but there was no possible way to avoid it. What grieved him most was that the whole thing was so utterly pointless. He would never have taken off his distinctive silk cravat, deliberately knotted it, and then strangled an unconscious man. It seemed such an unnecessary thing to do—and, Monk realized, one that would give him no emotional satisfaction. There was no bodily contact, no release of the pent-up violence. There was something cold-blooded about it. But that was the only part he did not understand. The passion to destroy Parfitt he understood perfectly.

  He reached the top of the steps as the sun came through the haze and made the dew on the stone momentarily bright. He walked quickly toward the road.

  Had Rupert really been naïve enough to think that would end the trade? Was he so spoiled, so cosseted from reality, that he believed a man like Parfitt was the power behind the business, the one who found the vulnerable patrons and then judged exactly how far to bleed each one?

  But it was the man behind Parfitt that Monk wanted, and that was what he had in mind an hour later when he called to see Oliver Rathbone. After a short wait, he was shown into Rathbone’s neat and elegant room.

  “Good morning, Monk,” Rathbone said with some surprise. “A new case?” He indicated the chair opposite his desk for Monk to sit down.

  “Thank you.” Monk accepted, leaning back as if he were relaxed, crossing his legs. “The same case.”

  Rathbone smiled, sitting also and hitching his trouser to stop it from creasing as he crossed his legs, and he too leaned back. “Since we are on opposite sides, this should prove interesting. What can I do for you?”

  “Perhaps save Cardew from the rope.”

  Rathbone’s smile vanished, a look of pain in his eyes. Monk saw it and understood. Monk was glad it was not his skill or judgment on which rested the weight of the saving or losing of a man’s life.

  “I’m sorry,” Monk apologized. It was probably inappropriate, but for a moment they were not adversaries. They felt the same pity, and revulsion, at the thought of hanging. “I have no wish to prosecute him at all,” he went on. “When I first found Parfitt’s body, I considered not even looking for whoever killed him, after I’d seen the boat and the boys kept there. But when the cravat turned up, I had no choice.”

  Rathbone’s face was bleak. “I know that. What is it you want, Monk?”

  “The man behind it. Don’t you?”

  “Of course. But I have no idea who that is.” He met Monk’s eyes directly, without a flicker. Was he remembering the night when Sullivan had killed Phillips so hideously, and then himself, after he had said that the man behind it all was Arthur Ballinger? Why had he pointed to Ballinger? Had it been anger, ignorance, madness, while the balance of his mind turned? Had it been revenge for something quite different? Or the truth?

  Rathbone could not afford to think that the man was Margaret’s father. The price of that would be devastating, yet nor could he afford to ignore it. Monk did not want to do this either, but he also could not look away, for Cardew, and, more important to him, for Scuff.

  “No …” Monk said slowly. “But if the right pressure were put upon Cardew, then he might give enough information for us to find out.”

  “Why should he?” Rathbone asked, his voice tight and careful. “Surely by doing that he would automatically be admitting to the most powerful motive for killing Parfitt. I know that you believe you can prove that he did kill Parfitt, but he swears he did not.”

  “And you believe him?” Monk said. “Actually, there is no point in your assuming that, even if you are right. It is what the jury believes that matters. If he will give us a record of every payment he made to Parfitt, dates and amounts, we might be able to trace it through Parfitt’s books. If it comes out in the open in court, it could shake other things loose.”

  “And hang Cardew for certain,” Rathbone said quietly. “His own society will never forgive him for frequenting a boat like that, whether he killed the bastard who ran it or not.” His mouth pulled into a delicately bitter smile. “Apart from anything else, it would betray the fact that men of his social and financial class were the chief clients, and enablers of creatures like Parfitt. And while that is true, making it public is another thing altogether.”

  “I know that,” Monk conceded. “But his revulsion when he learned the real nature of the business, but was still bled dry, will earn him some sympathy. That is your job, not protecting the reputations of others like him. I know no evidence that his story on that account is anything but the truth.”

  Rathbone put his elbows on the desk, and his fingertips very gently together. “You are offering me life in prison in exchange for full admission, with details you can prove, of his visit to the boat, the nature of what went on there, and his payment of blackmail money to Parfitt? And all this is in the hope that it will somehow lead you to the man behind it?”

  There was no point in arguing the shadings of meaning. “Yes.”

  “I’ll ask him, but I’m not sure if I can recommend it is in his interest. God, what a mess!”

  Monk did not answer him.

  MONK WORKED ON THE river the rest of the day. There had been a large theft of spices from an East Indiaman in the Pool of London, and it took him until nearly midnight to trace the goods and arrest at least half the men involved in the crime. By quarter to one, a new moon in a mackerel sky made the river ghostly. Ships were riding at anchor, sails furled, like a gently stirring lace fretwork against the light, beautiful and totally without color. There was only a faint murmur of
water and the sharp smell of salt in the air.

  Monk stepped off the ferry at Princes Stairs and walked slowly up the hill to home.

  Hester had left the light on in the parlor, but it was only when he stepped in to turn the gas off that he saw she was curled up in the large armchair, sound asleep.

  His first thought was clear. She’d been waiting for him, or she would have been in bed. Was Scuff ill? No, of course not. If he were, she would have been with him. He remembered how many nights she had spent in the chair beside Scuff’s bed when he had been injured hunting the assassin in the sewers.

  He bent down and spoke her name softly, not to startle her.

  “Hester.”

  She opened her eyes and sat up, smiling, pushing her hair back off her face where it had fallen out of its pins. “He didn’t do it,” she said with intense pleasure.

  Monk was confused and too tired to think. “Who didn’t?”

  “Rupert Cardew.” She stood up, so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her and smell her skin and her hair, clean cotton and, very faintly, soap. “I’m sorry,” she went on. “I know that leaves the case open and you have to go back and start again. But I’m just so glad it wasn’t Rupert.”

  “He told you that?” he asked. “I’m surprised they let you in to see him. Did his father take you?”

  A look of disgust flickered across her face. “William, for heaven’s sake! I’m not a complete simpleton. No, I haven’t been to see him, nor would I expect him to say anything different.” She smoothed her skirts without much effect; they were creased beyond any help but a flat iron. “With help from Crow, I found a prostitute Rupert visited earlier that day, and she admits that she stole his cravat and gave it to someone else, but she’s terrified to say who. But if Rupert didn’t have it, then he couldn’t have used it to strangle Mickey Parfitt, and that’s the only real evidence against him. All the rest just bears that up. He never denied having been on the boat, or having been blackmailed for it. But so have many other people.”

  She had just broken his case against Cardew. He should have been disconcerted, even angry, but instead he felt an absurd sense of relief.

  She saw it in his eyes and put her arms around his neck, pulling his head down gently and kissing him.

  MONK WOKE LATE, AND Hester was already up. It was a moment or two before he remembered what Hester had told him about the cravat. When it came back, he leaped out of bed, washed, shaved, and dressed as fast as he could. He had a new idea forming in his mind, and he had to draw the pieces of it together, prove them one by one.

  He ate the most perfunctory breakfast, and left the house with only a brief word to Scuff and a quick moment of meeting Hester’s eyes, touching her cheek, and then going out of the door.

  As he crossed the river again, in the rhythmic movement of the ferry, his mind was absorbed in what this new revelation meant. He had no doubt of what Hester had said, but later he would go and see this young woman and make certain that she had not been influenced to swear she’d taken the cravat. Her testimony might have to stand up in court. Was it conceivable that Lord Cardew had hired someone to find her and had possibly even paid her to come up with such a lie? He did not believe it, but it was necessary that he be thorough. If they ever found anyone else to accuse, that person would no doubt hire a barrister to defend him who was something like as clever as Oliver Rathbone. The question would be asked.

  But Monk would put it off until he had explored other possibilities. Orme had gone over Parfitt’s financial records, such as they were, and had found nothing to suggest that Parfitt had withheld any of the proceeds from the man who had given him the boat. If he had, then it was well hidden, and certainly not spent on his own pleasure. He lived no more comfortably than could be accounted for by the obvious takings of the boat’s trade, without the blackmail. Whoever was behind it had had no apparent motive to get rid of Parfitt. He would only have to be replaced with someone just like him.

  Did he already have someone in mind? A friend, a relative, a creditor to whom he owed some favor?

  That was the man Monk wanted to catch so intensely that he could taste it like a bitter flavor in his mouth. Was it Ballinger? Or was it even possible that Ballinger was another victim, like Sullivan had been, except turned to recruit more victims, perhaps as the price of his own survival? A dangerous tactic. Ballinger was not a man whose flaws one could manipulate.

  Before anything else, Monk needed to know as much as possible of the facts. Where had Ballinger been on the night of Parfitt’s death?

  Hester had told him of the ferryman rowing a man resembling Ballinger across the river and then later bringing him back. It would not be difficult to ascertain if it had been Ballinger. If he had been visiting a friend, he would have no occasion to deny it.

  “CERTAINLY,” BALLINGER SAID WITH a smile when Monk visited him in his offices in the city. “Bertie Harkness.” He sat at ease behind a large desk. The room was unostentatiously comfortable. Bookcases lined two walls, filled in a disorderly manner with dark leather-bound volumes, clearly there for use, not ornament. There were old hunting prints on the walls, personal mementoes on sills, a portrait of his wife in a silver frame, a bronze bust of Julius Caesar, a pair of pearl-handled opera glasses.

  “Known each other for years,” Ballinger continued. “In fact, far longer than I care to remember. I drop by for a late supper and a little conversation every now and again.” He looked puzzled. “Why does this concern you, Inspector? I find it impossible to believe that you suspect Harkness of anything.” His eyebrows rose. “Or is it me you suspect?” He said it with faint amusement, but his eyes were unnervingly direct.

  Monk made himself look surprised. “Of what? You might have some sympathy with whoever killed Mickey Parfitt. Many people might have, myself included. But I don’t think you would lie to protect him.” He gave a slight shrug. “Unless he were a member of your own family, for example. But I have no reason whatever to suspect that.”

  Ballinger still appeared puzzled. Monk looked at his hands on the leather inlaid surface of the desk. They were motionless, deliberately held still.

  Monk smiled. “I have an idea as to the time you crossed the river, by ferry …” He saw a very faint smile lift the corners of Ballinger’s mouth, and in that instant Monk knew that in spite of Ballinger’s affectation to the contrary, he was not surprised. “Naturally, we questioned anyone that we knew would be in the area,” Monk went on almost expressionlessly. “Such as ferrymen. It is always possible that any witness might have seen something that would later have meaning for them.”

  “I did not see Rupert Cardew,” Ballinger replied, studying Monk’s face. “At least not so far as I know. I observed a few other people on the river; some of them looked to be young men, no doubt about private pleasures. I could not responsibly identify any of them. I’m sorry.”

  “Even so,” Monk persisted. “If you could tell me the time, as closely as you know it, and exactly what you did see, it might help.”

  Ballinger hesitated, as if still puzzled as to its importance.

  “Even if it merely confirms someone else’s story,” Monk added. “Or proves it false.”

  “I couldn’t identify anyone,” Ballinger said, and gave a slight gesture of helplessness. “Apart from the ferryman, of course, Stanley Willington.”

  “Of course,” Monk agreed. “But if you saw one person, or two, it could help. Or if you saw no one, at a time someone claimed to be there …” He allowed it to hang in the air, self-explanatory.

  “Yes … I see. Let me think.” Ballinger’s eyes never left Monk’s, as if it were a kind of duel to which neither of them would admit. “I took a hansom as far as Chiswick. I think I arrived there about nine. There were still a number of people around, although it was dark. I saw them as figures on the quayside, talking, laughing. I smelled smoke—cigars. I recall that. It is a highly recognizable aroma. And it suggests gentlemen.”

  Monk nodded. It
was a clever observation, and he acknowledged it.

  “I waited about ten minutes for a ferry. I preferred to have Stanley. He entertains me.” The description was good, and it matched Willington’s own account, as no doubt Ballinger knew it would.

  Ballinger continued. All of it was in accordance with what Monk already knew, but it served the purpose he intended. He would check on it, not only with the men on the river, all the way up to Mortlake, a distance of nearly a mile and a half, but with Bertie Harkness, whose address Ballinger also offered.

  “Thank you,” Monk said when he was finished and standing by the door. “It may help us catch someone in a lie.”

  “I admit, I don’t see the purpose,” Ballinger replied. “Was I misinformed that you have evidence sufficient to bring Rupert Cardew to trial?”

  Monk smiled, perhaps a little wolfishly, memory harsh in his mind. “He is defended by Oliver Rathbone,” he replied, “so I need every scrap of evidence I can find. There must be no surprises, no loopholes. I’m sure you understand.”

  Ballinger inhaled deeply, then let out a sigh, and smiled back. “Of course,” he agreed, not bothering to conceal the pleasure in his eyes.

  ———

  MONK SPENT ANOTHER COMPLETE day checking on all the accounts he had from ’Orrie Jones, Crumble, Tosh, and various other people on the river who had serviced the boat, before he finally called on Bertram Harkness.

  Harkness was a portly man in his early sixties, roughly Ballinger’s own age. He had a military bearing, although he professed no retired rank and made no mention of service. His hair was short and graying, as was his bristling mustache.

  He received Monk in the study of his house, a room lined with books, drawings, and a curious mixture of exotic seashells and miniature bronzes of guns, mostly Napoleonic cannons.

  “I don’t know what you think I can tell you,” he said rather abruptly. “I was reasonably near the river that night, but I saw nothing and heard nothing. I had a late supper with Arthur Ballinger, whom I have known for years. Since our school days, actually. He often drops by. Been a bit out of it since my injury. Took a bad fall from my horse.” He tapped his right thigh. “Good of Ballinger. Keeps me up with the news I can’t get from the papers, you know?”