Anne Perry: Dark Assassin

"What happened?" she asked.

He knew what she was afraid of. She had understood why he had to accept the job in Durban 's place, both morally and financially. With Callandra gone to Vienna they could not afford the freedom or the uncertainty of taking on only private cases. Sometimes the rewards were excellent, but too often they were meager. Some cases could not be solved, or if they were, then the clients had the means to reward him only modestly. They could never plan ahead, and there was no one to whom they could turn to in a bad month, as they had before. Nor, it must be said honestly, at their ages should they need to. It was time to provide, not be provided for.

"What is it? What's wrong?" she asked when he did not answer.

"A suicide off Waterloo Bridge," he replied. "In fact, two, in a way. A young man and woman went off together, but we don't know if it was partly accidental or not."

Relief flashed across her face, then instantly pity. "I'm sorry. Were you called to it?"

"No, we were actually there. Saw it happen."

She smiled gently and touched his face with the back of her fingers, perhaps aware her hands were dusty. Had she been still occupied with housework this late in the evening to keep her mind from worrying about him?

"That's horrible," she said bleakly. "They must have been very desperate to jump into the river at this time of the year."

"They'd die whatever time it was," he replied. "The tide is very strong, and the river's filthy." To another woman he would have moderated his answer, avoided the facts of death, but she had seen more people dying and dead than he had. Police work, no matter how grim at times, hardly compared with the battlefield or the losses afterwards to gangrene and fever.

"Yes, I know that," she answered him. "But do you suppose they knew before they jumped?"

Suddenly it was immediate and painfully, agonizingly real. Mary Havilland had been a woman like Hester, warm and full of emotions, capable of laughter and pain; now she was just an empty shell with the soul fled. Nobody anymore. He put his hands on Hester's shoulders and pulled her towards him, holding her tightly, feeling her slender body yield almost as if she could soften the awkward bones and shape herself to him.

"I don't know if she meant to jump and he tried to stop her," he whispered into her hair, "or if he pushed her over and she clung on to him and took him with her, or even if she meant to. I don't know how I'm going to find out, but I will."

She held on to him for a few minutes longer, silently, then she pulled back and looked at him. "You're frozen," she said, suddenly practical. "And I don't suppose you've eaten. The kitchen is still not really finished, but I have hot soup and fresh bread, and apple pie, if you'd like it."

She was right: He was still cold from the long ride and the even colder river crossing afterwards. The butler's sandwich seemed a long time ago. He accepted. Between mouthfuls, he asked her about her day, and her progress in redecorating the house. Then he sat back, realizing how warm he was in all the ways that mattered.

"Who was she?" Hester asked.

"Mary Havilland," he replied. "Her father took his own life a couple of months ago." He saw the shadow of grief in Hester's eyes, and the tightening of her mouth. "Her sister believes that she did not recover from it," he added. "I'm sorry."

She looked away. "It's over," she said quietly. She was referring to her own father, not Havilland's. "Why did he do it?" she asked. "Was it debt, too?"

"Apparently not," he replied. "He believed there was some danger of an accident in the tunnels. They're building some of the new sewers."

"And not before time!" she said fervently. "What sort of an accident?"

"I don't know." He explained the family relationships briefly. "Argyll says his father-in-law had a terror of landslips, cave-ins and so on. He became obsessed, lost his senses a bit."

"And is that true?" she pressed, clearly still forcing herself to think only of the present case.

"I don't know." He went on to tell her about Mary's proposed engagement to Toby Argyll, and that she had broken it off, but no reason had been given, except her distress over her father's death and that she refused to believe that he had caused it himself. She could not let the matter go.

"What was it, then?" Hester asked. "Accident? Or murder?" She was being severely practical, but he saw the stiffness in her, the deliberate control, and the effort.

"I don't know. But the police investigated it. It was Runcorn's patch." He looked at her steadily with a bleak smile.

She understood why that added irony and pain to the case. More than he wished, she had seen his ambition for authority, the way he had fought with, crushed, and infuriated Runcorn in the past. She did not know the flashes of memory and shame that Monk had had since then, the realization of how he had used Runcorn in his own climb to success, before the accident that had taken his memory. There were things that it was kind for forgetfulness to cleanse from the mind.

"But you're going to find out," she said, watching him.

"Yes, I have to. She'll be buried in unhallowed ground if she meant to do it."

"I know." Tears filled Hester's eyes.

Instantly he wished he had not uttered this bit of truth. He should have lied if necessary.

Hester saw that too. "There's no such thing as unhallowed ground, really." She swallowed. "All the earth is hallowed, isn't it? It's just what people think. But some people care very much about being buried with their own, belonging even in death. See what you can find. Her sister may need to know the truth, poor woman."

The tide was high the next morning and the river, with its smells of mud and salt, dead fish and rotting wood, seemed to be lapping right at the door as Monk walked across the dockside. The wind had fallen and it was calm, the surface of the water barely rippled as it seeped higher around the pier stakes and up the stone steps that led to the quaysides and embankments. The rime of ice overnight had melted in places, but there were still patches as slippery as oiled glass.

"Morning, sir," Orme said briskly as Monk came into the station. The stove had been burning all night and the room was warm.

"Good morning, Orme," Monk replied, closing the door behind him. There were three other men there: Jones and Kelly, busily sorting through papers of one kind or another, and Clacton, standing by the stove, his clothes steaming gently.

Monk greeted them and received dutiful acknowledgment, but no more. He was still a stranger, a usurper of Durban 's place. They all knew that it was in helping Monk that Durban had contracted the terrible disease that had brought about his death, and they blamed Monk for it. That Durban had gone on the mission both because he wished to, understanding the enormity of the danger, and because he considered it his duty, was irrelevant to their anger and the sense of unfairness that lay behind it.

Monk had gone on the same mission, and he was alive. They could not excuse that. They would have chosen Monk to die, every man of them.

Kelly, a soft-spoken Irishman, small-boned and neat, handed him the reports of crime overnight. "Nothin out o' the usual, sorr," he said, meeting Monk's eyes, then looking away. "Barge ran aground at low tide, but they got it off."

"Run aground intentionally?" Monk asked.

"Yes, sorr, I'd say so. No doubt the owners'll be reportin' some o' their cargo missin'." Kelly gave a bleak smile.

"Dragging it up through the mud, at low tide?" Monk questioned. "If they worked as hard at something honest, they'd probably make more."

"Clever an' wise was never the same thing, sorr," Kelly said dryly, turning back to his work.