He was still down near the docks when he stepped in at a small tobacconist who also sold a few groceries and the local newspaper.
“I dunno anything about it,” the man denied vigorously as soon as Monk told him who he was. He refused to look at the picture, brushing it away with his hand.
“It’s not when she was dead!” Monk said testily. “That’s what she looked like before. She could be a local married woman.”
“Fine, ’ere,” the old man held out his hand to take the picture again. Monk gave it to him and he studied it more carefully, before passing it back. “She could, an’ all,” he agreed. “But I still don’ know ’er. Sorry. She din’ work around ’ere, married or not.”
Monk thanked him and left.
For the rest of the morning he walked miles through the gray streets, narrow and busy, all within the sight and sounds of the river. He spoke to several prostitutes but they all denied knowing the woman in the drawing. He had not expected them to admit it. They would want to avoid all contact with the police, whatever the reason, but he had hoped to see a flicker of recognition in someone’s face. All he saw, though, was resentment-and always fear.
He was inclined to believe that the dead woman was not one of their number; she was too different from them. She was at least fifteen years older than they were, perhaps more, and there was a gentleness in her face. It looked more aged by illness than coarsened by drink or life on the streets. He thought her more likely to be a married woman ill-used.
He had asked the police surgeon if she had had children, but Overstone had told him that the mutilations had been so violent he could not tell.
It was Orme who stumbled on the answer, farther inland. At a small general store just over Britannia Bridge he had found a shopkeeper who stared hard at his version of the drawing, then blinked and looked up, sad and puzzled.
“Said she looked like Zenia Gadney, from up Copenhagen Place,” Orme told Monk when they met up at one o’clock for a quick lunch at a public house.
“Was he certain?” Monk asked. Learning her name and where she lived made her death sharper, more real somehow.
“Seemed it,” Orme answered ruefully, meeting Monk’s eyes, understanding the same dread. “It’s a good picture.”
An hour later he and Monk were knocking on the doors at Copenhagen Place, which was just over a quarter of a mile from the river.
A tired woman with two children clinging to her skirts looked at the picture Monk held out for her. She pushed the stray hair out of her eyes.
“Yeah. That’s Mrs. Gadney from over the way. But yer shouldn’t be after ’er, poor thing. She in’t doin’ anyone no ’arm. Maybe she do oblige the odd gentleman now an’ again, or maybe not. But if she do, wot’s that hurtin’? In’t yer got nothin’ better ter do? Why don’t you go an’ catch that bleedin’ madman wot cut up the poor creature you found on the pier, eh?” She looked at Monk with contempt in her pale, tired face.
“Are you sure that’s Mrs. Gadney?” Monk said quietly.
She looked at him again, then saw something in his eyes, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Gawd!” she said in no more than a sigh. Her other hand instinctively reached for the younger of the children and gripped his hand. “That … that wa’n’t ’er, was it?”
“I think it may be,” Monk answered. “I’m sorry.”
The woman seized the boy and picked him up, holding him close to her. He was perhaps two. Sensing her fear, he began to cry.
“What number did she live at?” Monk persisted.
“Number fourteen,” the woman replied, nodding her head in the direction of the house opposite and to the left.
“Has she family?”
“Not as I ever saw. She were very quiet. Didn’t bother no one.”
“Who else might know more about her?”
“I dunno. Mebbe Mrs. ’Iggins up at number twenty. I seen ’em talking once or twice.”
“Do you know if she worked anywhere?”
“In’t none o’ my business. I can’t ’elp yer.” She held the child tighter and moved to close the door.
“Thank you.” Monk stepped back and he and Orme turned away. There was nothing further to ask her.
CHAPTER 2
“Sir Oliver?” the judge said inquiringly.
Oliver Rathbone rose to his feet and stepped to the center of the courtroom floor. It was almost like an arena; he was surrounded by the gallery behind him, the jury on his left in their two rows of high seats, and the judge in front in the great carved chair, mounted as if it were a throne. The witness stand was almost above him, up the steps in its own little tower.
He had stood here in major trials for most of his adult life, as one of England’s most brilliant lawyers. Usually he felt intensely about a case, whether he was acting for the defense or the prosecution. Often the battle was for a man’s life. Today he was committed to the defense because it was his job-but he was still uncertain in his own mind if the accused was guilty or not. That gave him a rare feeling of emptiness. He could put no passion into this work, no fierce care for the sake of justice. He would be no more than competent, and that was far from enough to satisfy his nature.
But very little had been going well lately. The things that mattered seemed to have slipped beyond his control ever since the Ballinger case, and all the miserable decisions that had led to the final split between his wife, Margaret, and himself.
He concentrated on the witness, making himself recall the details of his testimony and one by one attack each point that was vulnerable, forcing the man to contradict himself so the jury would think him devious and unreliable.
He succeeded. This was the last witness of the day and the court was adjourned. Rathbone rode home in a hansom cab and arrived comparatively early. It was one of those calm, still evenings of deepening winter when the storms are all yet to come. It was not cold enough for frost. As he stepped out of the cab and paid the driver, there was no bite in the air. The last of the neighbor’s chrysanthemums were still heavy with bloom, and their earthy smell was sweet as he passed them.
A year ago he would have been happy to be home with this extra time to spend. But that was before the whole business of the barges on the river with their obscene pleasures, their abuse of children, and their final descent into murder.
He and Margaret had been happy before all that-in fact increasingly so with each passing week. There had been tenderness, an understanding between them that filled all kinds of longings he had hardly acknowledged he felt earlier in his life.
Now, as he went in through the front door and the butler took his hat and coat, he felt the heavy silence in the house.
“Good evening, Sir Oliver.” The man was polite as always.
“Good evening, Ardmore,” Rathbone replied automatically. The butler, and the cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Wilton, might be the only people whose voices he would hear until he left his house again tomorrow morning. The soundlessness would grow thick and oppressive, almost like another presence in the home.
It was absurd. He was becoming maudlin. Silence had never bothered him when he was single, which had been a long enough time. In fact, back then he had found it rather pleasant after the constant noise of his chambers, or the courtroom. An occasional dinner with his friends, especially Monk and Hester, had been all the companionship he wished for-apart, of course, from visiting his father out at Primrose Hill. But just at the moment Henry Rathbone was traveling in Europe-Germany, to be precise-and he would be there until well into the new year.
Oliver would have liked to see him this evening. His father was still his dearest friend, as he had always been. But one did not visit friends with one’s own emptiness; right now, there was no interesting problem to challenge Henry with, not even any specific loss or difficulty for which to seek his comfort. Just a sense of having failed. And yet, Oliver did not know what he would have or could have done differently.