Anne Perry - A Sunless Sea

“I regret to tell you that she is dead,” he answered.

“I’m sorry.” It was a quiet murmur, but conveyed a feeling that went far deeper than mere good manners would require.

“But you said you didn’t know her,” he responded, already a chill touching him.

“What has that to do with it?” She lifted her chin a little. “I am still sorry that she is dead. Why do you come here? Limehouse is miles away, and the other side of the river. I know nothing about it.”

“I believe your husband knew her.”

Her grief almost slipped out of control. “My husband is dead, Mr. Monk,” she said huskily. “And I have never met Mrs.… Gadney.”

“I know your husband is dead, Mrs. Lambourn, and I am deeply sorry for that.” He wanted to express condolences for what he was about to add to her grief, but it seemed shallow in the circumstances. “Those I spoke to said he was a remarkably fine man,” he went on. “However, it seems that he knew Mrs. Gadney quite well, and over a long period of time.”

She had to clear her throat before she could force herself to speak. Her slender white hands were locked around each other in her lap.

“What are you implying, Mr. Monk? When did this Mrs. Gadney die, and how? It must’ve been serious; if you came here despite the fact that you knew my husband has been dead for some little time?”

“It appears that your husband met with Mrs. Gadney in Limehouse at least once a month,” he replied. He watched her face for shock, disgust, defensiveness, but he saw only grief that he was certain of. There were other emotions there as well, but he could not read them.

“When did she die, and of what cause?” she asked very quietly.

“Nearly a week ago. She was murdered.”

Her eyes widened. “Murdered?” She could hardly say the word. Her tongue stumbled and there was horror in her eyes.

“Yes.” He felt brutal. “You may have heard word of it, by the papers. There was a woman killed and her body mutilated, near Limehouse Pier.”

“No. I had not heard.” Dinah Lambourn was now so pale he was afraid she might faint.

“Would you like me to ring for your maid, Mrs. Lambourn?” he offered. “She could bring water, perhaps smelling salts. I am afraid I have brought very ugly news for you. I’m sorry.”

“I shall … be all right.” She forced herself to sit more upright, but it was clearly an effort. Her voice wavered. “Please say whatever it is you have to say.”

“You did not know her?” Monk asked again.

She evaded the answer. “Do you know who did this thing?” she asked instead.

“No, not yet.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “But you think I can help you?”

“Possibly. So far Dr. Lambourn seems to have been her only friend. And judging by the patterns of her expenditure in the local shops, she seems to have had money each time after he visited her. Quite often she paid her bills then.” He left the implication in the air.

“I see.” Mrs. Lambourn folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them. She had long fingers with elegant nails. Her skin was unblemished.

“Tell me something about Dr. Lambourn,” he requested. He wanted to keep her talking to make some judgment about what kind of woman she was. He still was not sure whether he believed that she had not known Zenia Gadney. And was she still so numb with grief that she had no curiosity about the other woman who had held so much of her husband’s loyalty and attention-not to mention his money?

She spoke quietly, as if remembering for herself rather than informing Monk. He had the sudden, complete conviction that she did not expect to be believed. She never once looked up at him in any attempt to persuade.

“He was a gentle man,” she began, struggling to find the words at once large enough and precise enough to convey what she saw in her own mind. “He never lost his temper with me, or with our daughters, even when they were young, and noisy.” She smiled briefly, but it vanished as she controlled her emotions with an obvious effort. “He was patient with people who were genuinely not very clever. And compared with him, that was very many. But he couldn’t abide liars. He was quite stern with the girls if they lied to him.” She shook her head slightly. “It only happened about twice. They loved him very much.”

Outside in the street a carriage passed, the sound of it barely penetrating the quiet room.

Monk allowed a few moments before prompting her to continue.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized again. “I still keep expecting to hear his step. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I know he’s dead. Every inch of my body knows it, every thought in my mind is filled with it. And yet when I go to sleep I forget, and in the morning I wake up, and for a second it is as if he hasn’t gone. Then I remember again.”

Monk tried to imagine what his own house would be like if Hester never returned. It was unbearable, and he forced the idea out of his mind. His job was to learn who had killed Zenia Gadney. There was nothing he could do to change the fact of the suicide of Joel Lambourn. How did anyone deal with such a painful tragedy, find the answers that allowed them to continue on? Daily life must seem absurd and completely meaningless after such a thing. He supposed having children both hurt and helped. You would force yourself to keep going, for their sakes, even if the sight of them was a reminder of what you had lost.

But what about at night when you lay alone in the bed you had shared, and the house was silent? What could you think of then that allowed you live with pain?

“Mrs. Lambourn, please go on.”

She sighed. “Joel was very clever; in fact, he was brilliant. He worked for the government on various kinds of medical research.”

“What was his latest work?” Monk was not really interested; he just wanted to keep her talking.

“Opium,” she replied without hesitation. “He was passionately angry about the harm it is doing, when it isn’t labeled properly. And he said that happens almost all of the time. He had an enormous amount of facts and figures on the number dead because of it. He used to sit in his study and go over and over them, weighing every story against the evidence, checking to make sure he was always correct and exact.”

“To what purpose?” In spite of himself Monk was now curious.

For the first time she looked up at him. “Thousands of people die of opium poisoning, Mr. Monk, among them many children. Do you know what a ‘penny twist’ is?”

“Of course I do. A small dose of opium powder you can buy at a corner shop or apothecary.” He thought back to Mr. Clawson and his general hardware shop with all its remedies, and his fierce defense of Zenia Gadney.

“How much is in a dose?” Dinah Lambourn asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Monk admitted.

“Neither has the man who sells it, or the woman who buys it to give to her child, or to take herself for her headache, or a stomachache, or because she can’t sleep.” She gave a little gesture of helplessness with her beautiful hands. “Neither have I, for that matter. That is what Joel was concerned about. He knew of thousands of cases over the whole country where this lack of knowledge led to death. Especially children. That was only part of his work, but that was what he did.”

Monk was still trying to imagine the man who had gone to Limehouse to visit Zenia Gadney, who paid her every month. So far, the picture was so incomplete and contradictory as to be almost meaningless. And why had he taken his own life? So far that made no sense, either.

“Was he a successful man, financially?” he asked, feeling as if he were poking at an open wound.

“Of course,” she said, as if the question were a little foolish. “He was brilliant.”