"Have you never heard of a good screever?"
"Forged?" Evan said wearily. "I suppose Grimwade wouldn't have known the difference."
"If the screever were good enough, I daresay we wouldn't either." Monk pulled a sour expression. Some forgeries of testimonials, letters, bills of sale were good enough to deceive even those they were purported to come from. At the upper end, it was a highly skilled and lucrative trade, at the lower no more than a makeshift way of buying a little time, or fooling the hasty or illiterate.
"Who were they?" Evan went past Monk and stared around the wreckage. "And what on earth did they want here?"
Monk's eyes went to the shelves where the ornaments had been.
"There was a silver sugar scuttle up there," he said as he pointed. "See if it's on the floor under any of that paper." He turned slowly. "And there were a couple of pieces of jade on that table. There were two snuffboxes in that alcove; one of them had an inlaid lid. And try the sideboard; there should be silver in the second drawer."
"What an incredible memory you have; I never noticed them." Evan was impressed and his admiration was obvious in his luminous eyes before he knelt down and began carefully to look under the mess, not moving it except to raise it sufficiently to explore beneath.
Monk was startled himself. He could not remember having looked in such detail at trivialities. Surely he had gone straight to the marks of the struggle, the bloodstains, the disarranged furniture, the bruised paint and the crooked pictures on the walls? He had no recollection now of even noticing the sideboard drawer, and yet his mind's eye could see silver, laid out neatly in green-baize-lined fittings.
Had it been in some other place? Was he confusing this room with another, an elegant sideboard somewhere in his past, belonging to someone else? Perhaps Imogen Latterly?
But he must dismiss Imogen from his mind-however easily, with whatever bitter fragrance, she returned. She was a dream, a creation of his own memories and hungers. He could never have known her well enough to feel anything but a charm, a sense of her distress, her courage in righting it, the strength of her loyalty.
He forced himself to think of the present; Evan searching in the sideboard, the remark on his memory.
"Training," he replied laconically, although he didn't understand it himself. "You'll develop it. It might not be the second drawer, better look in all of them."
Evan obeyed, and Monk turned back to the pile on the floor and began to pick his way through the mess, looking for something to tell him its purpose, or give any clue as to who could have caused it.
"There's nothing here." Evan closed the drawer, his mouth turned down in a grimace of disgust. "But this is the right place; it's all slotted for them to fit in, and lined with cloth. They went to a lot of trouble for a dozen settings of silver. I suppose they expected to get more. Where did you say the jade was?"
"There." Monk stepped over a pile of papers and cushions to an empty shelf, then wondered with a sense of unease how he knew, when he could have noticed it.
He bent and searched the floor carefully, replacing everything as he found it. Evan was watching him.
"No jade?" he asked.
"No, it's gone." Monk straightened up, his back stiff. "But I find it hard to believe ordinary thieves would go to the trouble, and the expense, of forging police identification papers just for a few pieces of silver and a jade ornament, and I think a couple of snuffboxes." He looked around. "They couldn't take much more without being noticed. Grimwade would certainly have been suspicious if they had taken anything like furniture or pictures."
“Well, I suppose the silver and the jade are worth something?"
"Not much, after the fence has taken his cut." Monk looked at the heap of wreckage on the floor and imagined the frenzy and the noise of such a search. "Hardly worth the risk," he said thoughtfully. "Much easier to have burgled a place in which the police have no interest. No, they wanted something else; the silver and the jade were a bonus. Anyway, what professional thief leaves a chaos like this behind him?"
"You mean it was Shelburne?" Evan's voice was half an octave higher with sheer disbelief.
Monk did not know what he meant.
"I can't think what Shelburne could want," he said, staring around the room again, his mind's eye seeing it as it had been before. "Even if he left something here that belonged to him, there are a dozen reasons he could invent if we'd asked him, with Joscelin dead and not able to argue. He could have left it here, whatever it was, any time, or lent it to Joscelin; or Joscelin could simply have taken it." He stared around the ceiling at the elaborate plaster work of acanthus leaves. "And I can't imagine him employing a couple of men to forge police papers and come here to ransack the place. No, it can't have been Shelburne."
"Then who?"
Monk was frightened because suddenly there was no rationality in it at all. Everything that had seemed to fit ten minutes ago was now senseless, like puzzle parts of two quite different pictures. At the same time he was almost elated-if it were not Shelburne, if it were someone who knew forgers and thieves, then perhaps there was no society scandal or blackmail at all.
"I don't know," he answered Evan with sudden new firmness. "But there's no need to tiptoe in this one to find out. Nobody will lose us our jobs if we ask embarrassing questions of a few screevers, or bribe a nose, or even press a fence a little hard."
Evan's face relaxed into a slow smile and his eyes lit up. Monk guessed that perhaps he had had little taste so far of the color of the underworld, and as yet it still held the glamour of mystery. He would find its tones dark; gray of misery, black of long-used pain and habitual fear; its humor quick and bitter, gallows laughter.
He looked at Evan's keen face, its soft, sensitive lines. He could not explain to him; words are only names for what you already know-and what could Evan know that would prepare him for the hive of human waste that teemed in the shadows of Whitechapel, St. Giles, Bluegate Fields, Seven Dials, or the Devil's Acre? Monk had known hardship himself in childhood; he could remember hunger now-it was coming back to him-and cold, shoes that leaked, clothes that let through the bitter northeast wind, plenty of meals of bread and gravy. He remembered faintly the pain of chilblains, angry itching fire when at last you warmed a little; Beth with chapped lips and white, numb ringers.
But they were not unhappy memories; behind all the small pains there had always been a sense of well-being, a knowledge of eventual safety. They were always clean: clean clothes, however few and however old, clean table, smell of flour and fish, salt wind in the spring and summer when the windows were open.
It was sharper in his mind now; he could recall whole scenes, taste and touch, and always the whine of the wind and the cry of gulls. They had all gone to church on Sundays; he could not bring back everything that had been said, but he could think of snatches of music, solemn and full of the satisfaction of people who believe what they sing, and know they sing it well.
His mother had taught him all his values: honesty, labor and learning. He knew even without her words that she believed it. It was a good memory, and he was more grateful for its return than for any other. It brought with it identity. He could not clearly picture his mother's face; each time he tried it blurred and melted into Beth's, as he had seen her only a few weeks ago, smiling, confident of herself. Perhaps they were not unalike.
Evan was waiting for him, eyes still bright with anticipation of seeing at last the real skill of detection, delving into the heartland of crime.
"Yes." Monk recalled himself. "We shall be free there to pursue as we wish." And no satisfaction for Runcorn, he thought, but he did not add it aloud.
He went back to the door and Evan followed him. There was no point in tidying anything; better to leave it as it was-even that mess might yield a clue, some time.