A Sunless Sea (14 page)

Hester nodded, and left him a quarter of an hour later with their plans made and agreed.

S
HE BEGAN THAT DAY
, walking the busy streets of the Rotherhithe area in the sharp winter sun. She was close to the river and she could smell the salt and fish odors on the wind, and hear the cry of the gulls. Occasionally as she turned north she saw the light on the water, glinting sharp between the rows of houses, or the dark lines of masts and spars against the sky.

She asked at small grocery shops, apothecaries, and tobacconists, and was surprised at the number of people who sold some preparation that contained an unspecified amount of opium. Of course she herself had used it at the clinic in Portpool Lane, but they had bought it in pure form and given it out very carefully measured, and as sparingly as
possible. She would not have argued with anyone that it was not only the best remedy for pain, but in most cases the only one.

She began to ask the shopkeepers for advice as to how much to take, and how often. She inquired whether age or weight of the patient made any difference, and what other circumstances might alter its effect. Was there anything that would make it dangerous, such as taking other medicines at the same time, or having certain illnesses?

“Look, lady, either take it or don’t,” one busy man said to her exasperatedly, glancing at the queue of customers behind her. “Please yerself, just don’t stand ’ere arguing wi’ me. I in’t got time. Now do yer want it or not?”

“No thank you,” she replied, and went out of the cramped shop, past several strings of onions, dried herbs, and bins of flour, wheat, and oatmeal.

She did not need to spend a second day walking up and down the streets and calling at every likely shop. If it was so easy to buy opium in Rotherhithe, it would be the same anywhere else in London, and probably in every other city and town in England.

S
HE DID NOT MENTION
her activities to Monk when he came home late in the evening, having spent most of the day on the river dealing with thefts, and the murder of a sailor during a brawl. It was one of those senseless, drunken arguments that got out of hand. Abuse had been shouted, tempers high and out of control. The next moment a broken bottle had slashed a man’s artery and he had bled to death before anyone could gather their wits and even think of helping him. The guilty man had run, and it had taken Monk and three of his officers most of the afternoon to catch him and arrest him without any further injury.

It had been late when he joined Orme, still searching for the “Limehouse Butcher,” as the newspapers were calling him.

H
ESTER WENT IN TO
the clinic in the morning, but only to ask the help of Squeaky Robinson, the reformed bookkeeper who had owned
the buildings of the clinic when they had been one of the most profitable brothels in the area. A clever trick of Oliver Rathbone’s had manipulated Squeaky into saving himself from prison by giving the buildings to charity. Highly aggrieved, Squeaky had been suddenly made homeless, and with careful supervision and no trust at all, he had been permitted to remain in residence and manage the property in its new function.

Over the years since then he and Hester had come to respect each other, and now—at least in certain areas—Squeaky was both liked and trusted. This was a circumstance he enjoyed very much, to his own confusion. He would have denied it indignantly had anyone suggested such a thing.

Hester walked into the office where Squeaky had his files and ledgers. He was sitting at the desk looking almost like a clerk. Lack of anxiety and now regular nights had filled out some of the hollows in his face, but he was still long-nosed, slightly gap-toothed, and his hair was as straggly as always.

“Morning, Miss Hester,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t worry about money, we’re not doing bad.”

“Good morning, Squeaky.” She sat down in the chair opposite him. “It isn’t about money today. I need information about someone. Not here—in Limehouse. Who should I go and ask?”

“You shouldn’t,” he said instantly. “I know you. It’s about that poor cow as was found on the pier, isn’t it? Don’t even go looking. A lunatic like that is trouble you don’t need.”

Hester had expected an argument and was prepared.

“She lived in the area,” she told him conversationally, as if he had asked. “Someone must have known her apart from Dr. Lambourn. If she worked the streets at all, the other women would at least have known something about her. They won’t tell the police, but they’ll talk to each other.”

“What is there to know?” Squeaky said reasonably. He looked her up and down and shook his head. “She was a tart, knocking on a bit and just about past it. Her steady bloke topped hisself, Gawd knows why, so she were broke, and she got careless. What else is there to know?”

“Maybe why he went to her in the first place?” she suggested.

“Now that’s something you really don’t want to know,” he said sharply. “If he were bent enough that he had to go all the way from Greenwich over the river to Limehouse to get whatever it was he wanted, then it’s something no lady needs to know about, nurse in the army or not.” He frowned. “Which does make you wonder why she wasn’t fly enough to deal with some bleeding lunatic what wants to cut her up, don’t it? I mean you’d think she’d smell he was a bad ’un and leave him alone, not go clarting off onto the pier with him. She got real, real careless. Damn stupid place to go fornicating, anyway! But that still don’t matter to you.”

“Or she was desperate,” she said quietly. “Who do I ask, Squeaky?”

He sighed with exasperation. “I told yer! Leave it alone. Yer can’t help her, poor cow. What’s Mr. Monk going to do if you go and get yerself cut up, eh? For that matter, what are we all going to do? Sometimes I think you haven’t got the wits of a tuppenny rabbit!”

She smiled at him, ignoring the insult. “Then come with me, Squeaky.”

He sighed heavily and put away everything on his desk with more care than necessary. Then he followed her out of the door into the hallway, and then the street.

He grumbled all the way to the omnibus, and when they got off on Commercial Road in Limehouse he stayed so close to her she all but tripped over him half a dozen times. But, walking along the narrow, dank, rain-chilled backstreets, she was very pleased to have his presence.

“Told yer,” he said after the fifth person they had spoken to had, like all the others, denied ever having seen or heard of Zenia Gadney. “They’re all too scared to say anything. Want to pretend they never heard of her.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hester retorted sharply. “They worked in the same streets. They have to have heard of her. And what do they think I want to know for, except to help catch the man?”

They continued for several more hours, but all they could learn of Zenia Gadney was what Monk already knew. She had been a quiet woman, well spoken. If you listened to her, she did not sound like the local prostitutes, or even like the shopkeepers, laundresses, and slightly more respectable housewives. No one they spoke to owned to particularly
liking or disliking her. Certainly none of the prostitutes considered her a threat.

“ ’Er?” one coarse-faced blond woman said indignantly. “Too old, fer a start. I’m not sayin’ as she were downright ugly or nothin’. In fact, not bad, if yer took the time ter look, but dull. Dull as a bucket o’ mud, if yer know wot I mean?” She put her hands on her hips. “Got no fight in ’er, an’ no fun. A man wants yer ter more’n just stand there! If yer ain’t got looks, yer gotta ’ave something else, ain’t yer?” She looked Hester up and down, making her judgment. “Ye’re too skinny by ’alf, but yer’ve got fire. Yer might make enough ter get by.”

“Thank you,” Hester said drily. “If I need to fall back on it, it’d better be soon.”

The woman’s face split into a wide grin. “Ye’re right about that, love. Yer in’t got too many years left ter ’ang around.”

“Did she use opium much?” Hester asked suddenly.

The woman was startled. “ ’Ow the ’ell do I know? But if she did, what of it? P’raps she’d got pains. ’Aven’t we all? She don’ sell it, if that’s wot yer mean. Quiet, she was. I ’eard someone say she read books. If yer want the truth, I think she were all right once, an’ she fell on ’ard times. I’d say ’er ’usband died, or went ter jail. Left ’er ’igh an’ dry. Got by the best way she could, poor cow. Until some bleedin’ madman got to ’er. If the rozzers were any good at all, they’d ’ave ’anged the bastard by now.”

Squeaky nodded as if he understood perfectly.

Hester glared at him, and he smiled back, showing crooked teeth, several of them dark with decay.

“Well, even if you ain’t got nothin’ ter do,” the woman went on, “I ’ave.” And without adding anything more, she swirled her skirt and walked away, swaying invitingly.

H
ESTER RETURNED TO SEE
Dr. Winfarthing and found him sitting hunched up in his office, his expression one of deep gloom. He barely managed a smile as he hauled himself out of his chair to welcome her.

“What did you find?” she said without preamble.

“Barely scratched the surface,” he answered. “But enough to know there’s a devil of a lot going on underneath. This is a rats’ nest, girl.
Hundreds of rats in it, including some very big, fat ones with sharp teeth. Lot of money in opium. I asked enough to get some idea of how they bring the raw stuff into the country, which I suppose we all know, if we thought about it. They cut it with God knows what. But it goes back a lot further than that. Back to the Opium Wars in China, ’39 to ’42, then ’56 to ’60. There’s a whole lot of that you don’t want to know about. Lot of death, lot of cheating, lot of profit.”

She sat down at last. “I know some people eat opium whom you wouldn’t necessarily expect to. Artists and writers we admire.”

He shook his head, his lips pursed. “It isn’t the eating of it that’s the big, ugly thing you’re going to uncover, girl. It’s the nice, respectable fortunes that were built on deceit, and the deaths of a lot of soldiers sent in to fight a filthy war, not for honor but for money. And God knows how many Chinese. Tens of thousands of them. Nobody’s going to like you for showing them that. It’s all right for foreign savages to behave like savages, but we don’t want to hear that we did it—that Englishmen were without honor.”

“Those of us with any knowledge of history already know it,” Hester said very quietly. Even though she meant it, it was still painful to admit. Perhaps that, as much as the senseless death, was what infuriated her still about the Crimea.

He nodded. “Those of us who’ve seen it, and had to try to clear it up, not the rest. Did you ever meet anyone else who wanted to learn about it anymore, because as sure as hell’s on fire, I didn’t.”

“Is that what was in Dr. Lambourn’s report?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s what would be in mine, if I made one. Some of the things we did out there would shame the devil.” He glared at her, angry because he was afraid for her. “Leave it alone, Hester. You can’t save Lambourn, God rest him. And it didn’t have anything to do with this poor woman’s death. She’s just one more incidental victim.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him bleakly.

“Don’t thank me!” he roared. “Just tell me you’ll leave it alone!”

“I never make promises I don’t mean to keep,” she answered. “Well, hardly ever. And not to people I like.”

He groaned, but knew her too well to argue.

T
HE NEWSPAPERS WERE STILL
writing black headlines about the murder of Zenia Gadney and the police failure to solve the crime. Monk walked briskly past one paperboy after another, ignoring them as much as it was possible. But he could not close his ears to the singsong voices calling out the headlines in an attempt to lure people into buying the whole paper.

“ ‘Terrible murder in Limehouse still unsolved,’ ” one gap-toothed boy cried out, thrusting the paper at Monk. “ ‘Police doing nothing!’ ”

Monk shook his head and walked on, increasing his pace. He and his men were doing everything he could think of. Orme was busy in the Limehouse area. Others were questioning lightermen and dockworkers, anyone regularly on the water, asking if they had noticed anything strange, or someone acting in an unusual manner. Nothing had been revealed so far. No one else in Copenhagen Place or its surrounding streets admitted knowing Zenia Gadney. To them she was an interloper, someone who disturbed the safe ordinariness of their lives and brought police questioning them. Worse than that, by being so viciously murdered, she had frightened away prospective customers. Who wanted to look for a prostitute with the police hanging around? If there were a madman on the loose, it was wiser to curb your appetites, or satisfy
them elsewhere. It was only a ferry crossing to Deptford and Rotherhithe, or there was always the possibility of going west to Wapping, or east to the Isle of Dogs.

For the prostitutes there was nowhere else. Every street corner or stretch of pavement already belonged to someone. Interlopers were run off, as a strange dog is driven from the territory of another pack.