The Silent Cry (20 page)

"You believe Mr. Duff followed Rhys into St. Giles, and they were both attacked as a result of something that happened because they were there?”

"Don't you? It seems a tragically apparent explanation.”

"You don't believe Mr. Duff would have gone alone otherwise? You knew him well, I believe?”

"Very well!" Kynaston said decisively. "I am perfectly certain he would not! Why in heaven's name should he? He had everything to lose, and nothing of any conceivable value to gain." He smiled very slightly, a fleeting, bitter humour, swallowed instantly in the reality of loss. "I hope you catch whoever is responsible, sir, but I have no sensible hope that you will. If Rhys had a liaison with some woman of the area, or something worse," his mouth twisted very slightly in distaste, 'then I doubt you will discover it now. Those involved will hardly come forward, and I imagine the denizens of that world will protect their own, rather than ally with the forces of law.”

What he said was true. Evan had to admit it. He thanked him and rose to take his leave. He would speak to Dr. Corriden Wade, but he did not expect to learn much from him that would be of any value.

Wade was tired at the end of a long and harrowing day when he allowed Evan into his library. There were dark shadows under his eyes and he walked across the room ahead of Evan as if his back and legs hurt him.

"Of course I will tell you what I can, Sergeant," he said, turning and settling in one of the comfortable chairs by the embers of the fire, and gesturing towards the other for Evan. "But I fear it will not be anything you do not already know. And I cannot permit you to question Rhys Duff. He is in a very poor state of health, and any distress, which you cannot help but cause him, could precipitate a crisis. I cannot tell what injuries may have been caused to his inner organs by the treatment he received.”

"I understand," Evan replied quickly. The memory returned to him with sharp pity of Rhys lying in the alley, of his own horror when he had realised he was still alive, still capable of immeasurable pain. Nor could he ever rid his mind of the horror in Rhys's eyes when he had regained his senses and first tried to speak, and found he could not.

"I had no intention of asking to see him. I hoped you might tell me more about both Rhys and his father. It may help to learn what happened.”

Wade sighed. "Presumably they were attacked, robbed and beaten by thieves," he said unhappily, sadness and gravity equal in his face.

"Does it matter now why they went to St. Giles? Have you the least real hope of catching whoever it was, or of proving anything? I have little experience of St. Giles in particular, but I spent several years in the Navy. I have seen some rough areas, places where there is desperate poverty, where disease and death are commonplace, and a child is fortunate to reach its sixth birthday, and more fortunate still to reach manhood. Few have an honest trade which earns them sufficient to live. Fewer still can read or write. This is then a way of life.

Violence is easy, the first resort, not the last.”

He was looking at Evan intently, his dark eyes narrowed. "I would have thought you were familiar with such places also, but perhaps you are too young. Were you born in the city, Sergeant?”

"No, in the country…”

Wade smiled. He had excellent teeth. "Then perhaps you still have something to learn about the human battle for survival, and how men turn upon each other when there is too little space, too little food, too little air, and no hope or strength of belief to change it. Despair breeds rage, Mr. Evan, and a desire to retaliate against a world in which there is no apparent justice. It is to be expected.”

"I do expect it, sir," Evan replied. "And I would have imagined a man of Mr. Leighton Duffs intelligence and experience of the world to have expected it also, indeed to have foreseen it.”

Wade stared at him. He looked extremely tired. There was little colour in his face and his body slumped as though he had no strength left, and his muscles hurt him.

"I imagine he knew it as well as we do," he said bleakly. "He must have gone in after Rhys. You have only seen Rhys as he is now, Mr.

Evan, a victim of violence, a man confused and in pain, and extremely frightened." He pushed out his lower lip. "He is not always so.

Before this… incident… he was a young man of considerable bravado and appetite, and with much of youth's belief in its own superiority, invincibility, and insensitivity to the feelings of others. He had the average capacity to be cruel, and to enjoy a certain power." His mouth tightened. "I make no judgements, and God knows, I would cure him of all of this if I could, but it is not impossible he was involved with a woman of that area, and exercised certain desires without regard to their consequences upon others. She may have belonged to someone else. He may even have been rougher than was acceptable. Perhaps she had family who…" He did not bother to finish, it was unnecessary.

Evan frowned, searching his way through crowding possibilities.

"Dr. Wade, are you saying that you have observed a streak of cruelty or violence in Rhys Duff before this incident?”

Wade hesitated. "No, Sergeant, I am not," he said finally. "I am saying that I knew Leighton Duff for close to twenty years, and I cannot conceive of any reason why he should go to an area like St.

Giles, except to try to reason with his son, and prevent him from committing some act of folly from which he could not extricate himself.

In the light of what has happened, I can only believe that he was right.”

"Did he speak to you of such fears, Dr. Wade?”

"You must know, Sergeant, that I cannot answer you." Wade's voice was grave and heavy, but there was no anger in it. "I understand that it is your duty to ask. You must understand that it is my duty to refuse to answer.”

"Yes," Evan agreed with a sigh. "Yes, of course I do. I do not think I need to trouble you further, at least not tonight. Thank you for your time.”

"You are welcome, Sergeant.”

Evan stood up and went to the door.

"Sergeant!”

He turned. "Yes, sir?”

"I think your case may be insoluble. Please try to consider Mrs. Duffs feelings as much as you can. Do not pursue tragic and sordid details of her son's life which cannot help you, and which she will have to live with, as well as with her grief. I cannot promise you that Rhys will recover. He may not.”

"Do you mean his speech, or his life?”

"Both.”

"I see. Thank you for your kindness. Goodnight, Dr. Wade.”

"Goodnight, Sergeant.”

Evan left with a deep grief inside him. He went out into the dark street. The fog had descended since he had gone inside, and now he could barely see four or five yards in front of him. The gas lamps were no more than blurs in the gloom before and behind him. Beyond that it was a dense wall. The sound of traffic was muffled, wheels almost silent, hooves a dull sound on stone, eaten by the fog as soon as they touched. Carriage lamps lurched towards him, passed and disappeared.

He walked with his collar up and his hat pulled forward over his brow.

The air was wet and clung to his skin, smelling of soot. He thought of the people of St. Giles on a night like this, the ones huddled together, a dozen to a room, cold and hungry. And he thought of those outside in doorways, without even shelter.

What had happened to Rhys Duff? Why had he thrown away everything he had, warmth, home, love, opportunity of achievement, respect of his father, to chase after some appetite which would end in destroying him?

He thought of his own youth, of his mother's kitchen full of herbs and vegetables and the smell of baking. There was always soup on the stove all winter long. His sisters were noisy, laughing, quarrelling, gossiping. Their pretty clothes were all over the place, their dolls, and later their books and letters, paint brushes and embroidery.

He had sat for hours in his father's study, talking about all manner of things with him, mostly ideas, values, old stories of love and adventure, courage, sacrifice and reward. How would his father have explained this? What meaning and hope could he find in it? How could he equate it with the God he preached every Sunday in the church amid its great trees and humble gravestones where the village had buried its dead for seven hundred years, and laid flowers on quiet graves?

He felt no anger, no bitterness, only confusion.

The following morning he met Shotts back in the alley in St. Giles and started over again in the search for witnesses, evidence, anything which would lead to the truth. He could not disown the possibility that Sylvestra Duff had had some part in her husband's death. It was an ugly thought, but now it had entered his mind, he saw more that upheld it, at least sufficiently to warrant its investigation.

Was it that knowledge which had horrified Rhys so much he could not speak? Was it at the core of his apparent chill now towards his mother? Was that burden the one which tormented him, and kept him silent?

Who was the man? Was he implicated, or merely the unknowing motive?

Was it Corriden Wade, and did Rhys know that?

Or was it, as the doctor had implied, Rhys's own weakness which had taken him to St. Giles, and his father, in desperation for him, had followed, interrupted him, and been killed for his trouble?

Which led to the other dreadful question: what hand had Rhys in his father's death? A witness… or more?

"Have you got those pictures?" he asked Shotts.

"What? Oh yeah!" Shotts took out of his pocket two drawings, one of Rhys, as close as the artist could estimate, removing the present bruises; the other of Leighton Duff, necessarily poorer, less accurate, made from a portrait in the hall. But they were sufficient to give a very lively impression of how each man must have appeared in life.

"Have you found nothing more?" Evan pressed. "Pedlars, street traders or cabbies? Someone must have seen them!”

Shotts bit his lip. "Nobody wants ter 'ave seen 'em," he said candidly.

"What about women?" Evan went on. "If they were here for women, someone must know them!”

"Not for sure," Shotts argued. "Quick fumble in an alley or a doorway.

"Oo cares about faces?”

Evan shivered. It was bitterly cold, and he felt it eating inside him as well as numbing his face, his hands and his feet. It was beginning to rain again, and the broken eaves were dripping steadily. The gutters overflowed.

"Would have thought women would be careful about familiarity in the street these days. I hear there have been several bad rapes of dolly mops and amateur prostitutes lately," he remarked.

"Yeah," Shotts said with a frown. "I 'card that too. But it's over Seven Dials way, not 'ere.”

"Who did you hear it from?" Evan asked.

There was a moment's silence.

"What?”

"Who did you hear it from?" Evan repeated.

"Oh… runnin' patterer," Shotts said casually. "One of 'is stories, I know some o' them tales is 'alf nonsense, but I reckoned as there was a grain o' truth in it.”

"Yes…" Evan agreed. "Unfortunately there is. Is that all you found?”

"Yeah. Least about the father. Got a few likely visits o' the son, women 'oo think they 'adim. But none's fer sure. They don't take no notice o' faces, even if they see 'em. "Ow many young men dyer suppose there are 'oo are tall, a bit on the thin side, an' wi' dark 'air?”

"Not so many who come from Ebury Street to take their pleasures in St.

Giles," Evan answered drily.

Shotts did not say anything further. Together they trudged from one wretched bawdy house to another with the pictures, asking questions, pressing, wheedling, sometimes threatening. Evan learned a considerable respect for Shotts' skills. He seemed to know instinctively how to treat each person in order to obtain the most cooperation from them. He knew surprisingly many, some with what looked like a quite genuine camaraderie. A few jokes were exchanged.

He asked after children by name, and was answered as if his concern were believed.

"I hadn't realised you knew the area so well," Evan mentioned as they stopped and bought pies from a pedlar on the corner of a main thoroughfare. They were hot and pungent with onions. As long as he did not think too hard as to what the other contents might be, they were most enjoyable. They provided a little highly welcome warmth inside as the day became even colder and the fine rain turned to sleet.

"Me job," Shotts replied, biting into the pasty and not looking at Evan. "Couldn't do it proper if I din' know the streets, an' the people.”

He seemed reluctant to talk about it, possibly he was unused to praise and his modesty made him uncomfortable. Evan did not pursue it.

They continued on their fruitless quest. Everything was negative or uncertain. No one recognised Leighton Duff, they were adamant in that, but half a dozen thought perhaps they had seen Rhys, then again perhaps not. No one mentioned the violence in Seven Dials. It could have been another world.

They also tried the regular street pedlars, beggars the occasional pawnbroker or innkeeper. Two beggars had seen someone answering Rhys's description on half a dozen occasions, they thought… possibly.

It was the running patterer, a thin, light-boned man with straggly black hair and wide blue eyes, who gave the answer which most surprised and disturbed Evan. When he had been shown the pictures, he was quite certain he had seen Leighton Duff once before, on the very outskirts of St. Giles, alone and apparently looking for someone, but he had not spoken to him. He had seen him talking to a woman he knew to be a prostitute. He appeared to be asking her something, and when she had denied it, he had walked away and left her. The patterer was certain of it. He answered without a moment's hesitation, and looked for no reward. He was also certain he had seen Rhys on several occasions.

"How do you know it was this man?" Evan said doubtfully, trying to keep a sense of victory at last from overtaking him. Not that it was much of a victory. It was indication, not proof of anything, and even then only what he had assumed. "There must be lots of young men hanging around in the shadows in an area like this.”