Anne Perry - Death Of A Stranger

She was still staring at him in terrified silence.

“Miss Harcus,” he said with a tenderness that startled him, and this time he did not hesitate to touch her. It was only a small gesture, but of extraordinary understanding. “I will find out the truth,” he promised. “If there is a fraud, I’ll uncover it and prevent any further accidents. And I will do what I can to discover who murdered Nolan Baltimore.” He watched her gravely. “But unless there is fraud, and Michael Dalgarno is implicated, he would have no motive to have done such a thing. Baltimore was probably killed in some fight over money to do with prostitution, not a fortune but a few pounds some drunken pimp thought he owed. They may well have had no idea who he was. Had he a hot temper?”

The faintest shadow of a smile touched her lips, and her whole body eased its stiffness. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, he was quick-tempered. Thank you more than I can say, Mr. Monk. You have at least given me hope. I shall cling onto that until you bring me news.” Her eyes flickered down, then up again. “I must owe you further, and you have expenses from all the traveling you have done on my behalf. Would another fifteen pounds be sufficient for the moment? It… it is all I can manage.” There was a faint flush of embarrassment on her cheeks now.

“It would be quite sufficient,” he answered, taking it from her hand and putting it into his inside pocket as discreetly as possible, pulling out a handkerchief as if that were what he had reached for. He saw her flash of understanding and acknowledgment and was sufficiently thanked in that.

It was time that Monk considered more seriously the possibility that Baltimore’s death was not the prostitution scandal that the police, and everyone else, assumed, but a very personal murder simply carried out in or near the brothel in Leather Lane. If Dalgarno, or even Jarvis Baltimore, had wished to kill the older man, to do it behind the mask of his private vices was the perfect crime.

There was nothing to be gained by asking the superintendent in charge of the investigation, who would resent Monk’s interference. The poor man was being pressured more than enough by the authorities and the outraged citizens who felt morally obliged to protest. No matter what he did he would not please them. The only solution they wanted was for the whole matter to disappear without trace, and that was not a possibility. If they did not complain, they appeared to condone prostitution and the murder of a prominent citizen; if they did, then they drew even more attention to practices they all wished to be free to indulge in and deny at the same time.

Nor was there much purpose in his speaking to the constables on the beat, who were being dragooned into protecting the Farringdon Road area against everybody’s interests. If they knew who had killed Nolan Baltimore, whoever it was would have been charged already and the matter put to rest.

What Monk wanted to know was the movements of Nolan Baltimore on the night of his death, and exactly what Michael Dalgarno had known of them, and where he had been. How had they parted? What was Jarvis Baltimore’s role?

Who could know these things? The Baltimore household, family and servants; possibly the constables on the beat near the house or the offices, if either man had not gone home that evening; or street peddlers, cabdrivers, people whose daily passage took them through that area.

He began with the easiest, and possibly the most likely to tell him something of worth. She sat on a rickety box propped up near the corner of the street, a shawl around her head and a clay pipe stuck firmly between her remaining teeth. An array of cough drops and brandy balls sat in bowls and tin dishes around her, and a heap of small squares of paper was held down by a stone.

“Arternoon, sir,” she said in a soft Irish accent. “Now what can I be gettin’ yer?”

He cleared his throat. “Cough drops, if you please,” he said with a smile. “Threepence worth, I think.” He fished a threepenny piece out of his pocket and offered it to her.

She took it and ladled out a portion of sticky sweets with a tin spoon. She dropped them onto one of the pieces of paper and twisted it into a screw, then handed it up to him. She drew deeply on the pipe, but it appeared to have gone out. She fished in her pocket, but he was there before her, a packet of matches in his hand. He held it out for her.

“It’s a gentleman ye are,” she said, taking it from him, picking out a match and striking it, holding the flame to the bowl of her pipe and drawing deeply. It caught and she inhaled with profound satisfaction. She offered the matches back to him.

“Keep them,” he replied generously.

She did not argue, but her bright eyes, half hidden by wrinkles of weathered skin, were sharp with amusement. “So what are ye wantin’ then?” she said bluntly.

He smiled widely at her. He had charm when he wanted it. “You’ll be knowing that Mr. Baltimore was murdered in Leather Lane a few days ago,” he said candidly. He knew the folly of insulting her wits. Anyone who served in the street to her age was nobody’s fool.

“Sure an’ doesn’t all London know it?” she replied. Her expression betrayed her contempt of him, probably not for his morals but for his hypocrisy.

“You’ll have seen him coming and going,” he went on, nodding his head toward the Baltimore house, thirty yards away.

“Of course I have, bad cess to him,” she responded. “Not a halfpenny on a cold day, that one!” Perhaps it was a warning to him that she had no interest in helping to find his killer. An honest expression or a ploy to be paid now for help, it did not matter; either way if she told him anything he was happy to reward her for it.

“I am interested in the possibility that he was killed by someone who knew him,” he admitted. “Did you see him that evening? Any idea what time he left home, and if he was alone or with anyone?”

She looked at him steadily, weighing him up.

He looked back, wondering whether she wanted money, or if poorly handled it would offend her pride.

“It would be very agreeable to find it was nothing to do with the women in Leather Lane,” he remarked.

Real interest flashed in her eyes. “It would an’ all,” she agreed. “But even if I saw him leave, an’ others follow after him, that doesn’t mean to say they went further than the end o’ the street, now does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice. He did not even know if he was excited or afraid. He did not want Dalgarno guilty! It was only the keenness of a scent which caught his eagerness, a thread of truth at last among all the knots and ends. “But if I knew which way they went then I might be able to find the cabbie who picked them up.”

“Josiah Wardrup,” she said without a flicker. “Saw him myself, I did. Almost like he was expectin’ the old bastard.”

“How very interesting,” Monk said sincerely. “Perhaps he was? In fact, perhaps Mr. Baltimore went that way, at that time, quite regularly?”

She made a low sound of appreciation in the back of her throat. “It’s clever you are, now isn’t it?”

“Oh, now and then,” he agreed. He fished in his pocket and brought out two shillings. “I think I’ll reward myself with a few pence worth of brandy balls.”

“Sure an’ how many pence worth would that be, now?” she asked, taking the two shillings from him.

“Four,” he said unhesitatingly.

She grinned and poured him a generous four pence worth.

“Thank you. Keep the change. I’m most obliged.”

She put the clay pipe back in her mouth and drew on it with profound satisfaction. She had had a pleasant conversation, gained one and eight pence for nothing, and perhaps helped the cause of justice to get the rozzers off the backs of the poor cows who worked down the Farringdon Road way. Not bad for less than half an hour’s work.