Slaves of Obsession (35 page)

Monk went to bed early. He was tired, but far more than that he wished to avoid speaking with Hester. He had shut himself out, and he did not know how to deal with it.

In the morning he woke early and left Hester still asleep. At least he thought she was. He was not certain. He wrote a hasty note telling her he had gone to the river again to pursue the matter of the guns, the money, and anything he could learn about the company who dealt with the pirates, then he left. He would find something to eat, if he felt like it, somewhere on the road. There were plenty of peddlers around with sandwiches and pies. The general mass of working people had no facilities to cook, and ate in the street. He did not want to risk Hester’s waking and finding him in the kitchen, because he would have to give some explanation, or openly avoid it, and he was not ready to face so much inward pain.

From the very moment he awoke in the hospital his past had been an unknown land which carried too many areas of darkness, too many ugly surprises. He should have had the sense, the self-restraint, to have guarded his feelings more. He had known then that marriage was not for him. Love and its vulnerabilities were for those with uncomplicated lives, who knew themselves and whose darkest recesses of the soul were only the ordinary envies and petty acts of retreat that affected everyone.

He had not been prepared for someone like Hester, who forced from him emotions he could not stifle or control, and in the end could not even deny.

He should have found the strength to! Or at least the sense of self-preservation.

Too late now. The wound was there, wide open.

He went out of the house, closing the front door softly, and walked as quickly as he could along Fitzroy Street and into Tottenham Court Road. He had no choice but to examine the blackmail issue more closely. His revulsion against the idea was no excuse; in fact, it impelled him to do all he could to test it against the facts, and if possible disprove it.

It was too early to obtain permission to examine Alberton’s
finances. Rathbone would not be at his offices in Vere Street at this hour. However, Monk could write a note asking for the necessary authority, and leave it for him.

Then he would pursue Baskin and Company, who had been named as the intermediary for the pirates’ guns.

The river was busy in the early morning. Tides waited on no man’s convenience, and already dockers, ferrymen, bargees and stokers were busy. He saw coal backers, bent double under their heavy sacks, keeping a precarious balance as they climbed out of the deep holds. Men shouted to one another, and the cries of gulls circling low in hope of fish, the clatter of chains and metal on metal, were loud in the air above the ever-present surge and slap of water.

“Never ’eard of it, guv,” the first man answered cheerfully when Monk asked for the company. “In’t now’ere ’round ’ere. Eh! Jim! Yer ever ’eard o’ Baskin and Company?”

“Not ’round ’ere,” Jim replied. “Sorry, mate!”

And so it continued down as far as Limehouse and around the curve of the Isle of Dogs, and again across the river at Rotherhithe. He had been certain the ferrymen would know if anyone did, but even the three he asked had never heard either name.

By midafternoon he gave up and went back to Vere Street to see if Rathbone had obtained the necessary permission to go through Daniel Alberton’s accounts.

“There’s no difficulty,” Rathbone said with a frown. He received Monk in his office, looking cool and immaculate as always. Monk, who had been traipsing up and down the dockside all day, was aware of the contrast between them. Rathbone had no shadows in his past that mattered. His smooth, almost arrogant manner came from the fact that he knew himself, better than most men. He was so supremely confident in who he was he felt no need to impress others. It was a quality Monk admired and envied. He had come to understand himself well enough to know that his own moments of cruelty came from self-doubt, his need to show others his importance.

He recalled himself to the present. “Good!”

“What do you expect to find?” Rathbone was looking curious and a trifle anxious.

“Nothing,” Monk replied. “But I need to be certain.”

Rathbone leaned back in his chair. “Why didn’t you ask me to look?”

Monk smiled thinly. “Because you may not want to know the answer.”

Humor flashed for an instant in Rathbone’s eyes. “Oh! Then you had better go alone. Just don’t leave me walking into an ambush in court.”

“I won’t,” Monk promised. “I still think Shearer is the one who actually committed the murders.”

Rathbone’s eyebrows rose. “Alone?”

“No. I think it would have taken more than one, even holding a gun. They were tied up before they were shot. But he could have hired help anywhere. He certainly lived and worked where he would be able to find plenty of men willing to kill a man, for a reasonable price. The price of those guns would be enough to buy nine decent-sized houses. A small percent of the profit would give him sufficient to obtain all kinds of assistance.”

Rathbone’s fastidious face expressed his distaste.

“And I suppose we have no idea where Shearer is now?”

“None at all. Could be anywhere, here or in Europe. Or America, for that matter, except it’s not the best place to be, unless he has designs on making more money in the armaments business.” He debated with himself whether to mention the whole blackmail affair, and his failure to find any trace of Baskin and Company, and decided against it for the moment. It might be easier for Rathbone if he did not know.

“He could well do that,” Rathbone said thoughtfully, leaning back and placing his fingertips together, elbows on the arms of his chair. “He might have bought more guns somewhere with the money from Breeland, if what Breeland says is true. There’s a very murky area in arms dealing, and he would be in a position to know more about it than most.”

It was a thought which had not occurred to Monk; he was annoyed with himself for it. His preoccupation with the
past, and its destruction into the present, was costing him the sharp edge of his skill. But it was second nature to conceal it from Rathbone.

“That’s another reason I need to see Alberton’s books,” he said.

Rathbone frowned. “I don’t like this, Monk. I think perhaps I had better know what you find. I can’t afford to be taken by surprise, however much I may dislike what it shows. No one has accused Alberton of anything yet, but I know the prosecution is going to use Horatio Deverill. He’s an ambitious bounder, and they didn’t nickname him ’Devil’ for nothing. He’s unpredictable, no loyalties, few prejudices.”

“Doesn’t his ambition curb his indiscretion?” Monk asked skeptically.

Rathbone’s mouth turned down at the corners. “No. He’s got no chance of a seat in the Lords, and he knows it. His hunger is for fame, to shock, to be noticed. He’s good-looking, and a certain kind of woman finds him attractive.” A quiver of humor touched his lips. “The sort whose lives are comfortable and a trifle boring,” he continued. “And who think danger would give them the excitement their rank and money shield them from. I imagine you are familiar with the type?”

“Do you?” Then, like a wave of heat inside him, Monk knew why Rathbone had smiled. Monk himself carried that sort of danger, and he knew it and had used it often enough. It was a hint of the reckless, the unknown, even a suggestion of pain, another reality they wanted to touch but not be trapped in. Boredom held its own kind of destruction.

He stood up. “Then we had better know everything we can, good or bad,” he said tersely. “If I see anything I don’t understand, I’ll send you a message, and you can find me an accounts clerk.”

“Monk …”

“Only if I need one,” Monk said from the door. He did not intend to tell Rathbone about his merchant banking days, and that he knew very well how to read a balance sheet, and what
to look for if he suspected embezzlement or any other kind of dishonesty. He wanted to block the whole of the past, most especially to do with Arrol Dundas, from his mind.

Monk examined the books of Alberton’s business far into the night. Alberton and Casbolt had dealt in a number of commodities, mostly to considerable profit. Casbolt had been extremely knowledgeable as to where to obtain goods at the best price, and Alberton had known where to sell them to the best advantage. They had left a good deal of the shipping to Shearer, and had paid him well for his services. Read in detail, the movement of money showed a trust among the three men stretching back nearly twenty years.

Even with the skills he half remembered and which came back with startling clarity as he read, added, subtracted, Monk found nothing that was less than completely honest.

But he also had no doubt whatever, when he finally closed the last ledger at twenty-five minutes to one, that the guns the pirates’ agents had demanded through blackmail would be worth roughly £1,875. The guns unaccounted for from the warehouse after Alberton’s death and the robbery had not been paid for through the books. There had been no money in Alberton’s possession at the time of his death, and nothing concealed in the warehouse. If money had changed hands at all, it had gone with whoever had left Tooley Street that night, or else Breeland had passed it to Shearer at the Euston Square station, as he had said.

Tomorrow he would go back and speak to Breeland.

When Hester awoke she found Monk’s note. It left her with an increasing sense of loss. She was almost grateful that the trial of Merrit and Breeland loomed so close; it left her less time to torture herself with questions and fears as to what had changed between them.

Thoughts had flickered darkly across her mind that perhaps he regretted the commitment of marriage, that he felt trapped, closed in by the expectations, the constant companionship, the limits to his personal freedom.

But the change in him had been so sudden it made little sense. There had been no hint of it before; indeed, the opposite was true. Finding Mrs. Patrick had been a stroke of good fortune. It freed Hester to pursue her interest in medical reform without neglecting domestic duties. And Mrs. Patrick was undeniably a better cook.

She forced it from her mind and dressed in soft gray, one of her favorite colors, then set out to call upon Judith Alberton. She was not exactly sure what she wished to ask her, or even what she hoped to learn, but Judith was the only person who knew what had happened to her brother and his family, and Hester still had the feeling that the blackmail attempt was at the heart of the murders, whether it had been brought about by Shearer, or by Breeland, or even possibly by Trace, although that was a thought she hoped profoundly was not true. She had liked Philo Trace. The fact that he was from the South, and his people countenanced the keeping of slaves, was an accident of birth and culture. It had nothing to do with the charm of the man or the pleasure she felt in his company. The conflict of morality was something she sensed he was already facing within himself. Perhaps that was because she wished to believe it, but until forced to do otherwise by evidence, she would suppose it to be so.

It might be coincidence that the murders and the theft had followed so soon after the blackmail, for which the price of silence had been guns, but she did not think so. There was a connection, if she could find it.

Judith seemed pleased to see her. Naturally she was not receiving social calls and was wearing full mourning for her husband, but she was perfectly composed and whatever grief she felt was masked by a dignity and warmth which immediately drew Hester’s admiration—and made her task more difficult and seem more intrusive.

Nevertheless, only the truth would serve, and Merrit’s situation was desperate. The trial was due to start at the beginning of the following week.

“How nice of you to call, Mrs. Monk,” Judith welcomed her. “Please tell me what news you have.…”

Hester hated lies, but she knew from many years of nursing that sometimes half-truths were necessary, for a period at least. Some truths were better unknown altogether. The ability to fight the battle was what was needed, and without the death of hope.

“I have never believed Merrit was involved,” she answered, following Judith into a small room which opened onto the garden and was decorated in greens and white, and at the present moment was filled with the morning sun. “But I am afraid it seems unavoidable that Mr. Breeland was, even if not directly.”

Judith stared at her, no anxiety in her eyes, only confusion.

“If not Mr. Breeland, then who?”

“It seems most likely it was Shearer. I’m sorry.” She did not know why she apologized, only that she regretted that Alberton should have been betrayed by someone he had trusted so long, and so closely. It added to the pain.

“Shearer?” Judith questioned. “Are you sure? He’s a hard man, but Daniel always said he was completely loyal.”

“Have you seen him since Mr. Alberton’s death?”

“No. But then I have only met him once or twice anyway. He hardly ever came to the house.” She did not need to add that they were not social acquaintances.

“No one else has seen him since then either,” Hester told her. “Surely if he were innocent he would be here to help, to continue to work in the business and to offer all the support he could? Would he not be as anxious as we are to catch whoever is responsible?”