Death of a Stranger (17 page)

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.

Monk took until the next day to find Josiah Wardrup, but with only a moderate amount of pressure the cabbie admitted that he had picked up Nolan Baltimore on that corner at least once a week for the last two or three years and taken him to the corner of Theobald’s Road and Gray’s Inn Road, which was a mere stone’s throw from Leather Lane.

Monk was not sure if it was what he wanted to hear. It looked extraordinarily like a regular indulgence, but then insofar as it was regular, it would have been simple enough for anyone wishing him harm to have learned his pattern and followed him.

But if Wardrup had seen anyone else he was not saying so. He looked at Monk with blank innocence and demanded his suitable appreciation. And no, he had no idea where Mr. Baltimore went from the corner. He always stood there and waited until Wardrup had left, which caused him some wry amusement. What did anyone imagine a gentleman did in such an area?

The only fact Monk would glean of any interest was that on every occasion it had been the same corner. The times varied, the nights of the week, but never the place.

And yet the brothel in Leather Lane where his body was found denied all knowledge of him. They said that not only had he not been there for business that night, he had never been.

Monk was alternately cajoling and threatening, but not one woman changed her words, and in spite of general opinion of their honesty, and the fact that Baltimore had undoubtedly been found there, he found to his surprise that he believed them. Of course he was also aware that he was far from the first person to have asked, and they had had more than enough time to compare stories with each other and determine a united front.

Still, Abel Smith’s dubious and far from attractive establishment was not the sort of place one expected a man of Baltimore’s wealth to frequent. But tastes were individual; some men liked dirt, others danger. Yet he knew of none who liked disease-except of course those already infected.

At the end of two days he was little wiser.

He turned his attention to Dalgarno, surprised how much he dreaded what he would find. And the search itself was not easy. Dalgarno was a man who seemed to do a great many things alone. It was not difficult to establish what time he had left the offices of Baltimore and Sons. A few enquiries of the desk elicited that information, but it was of little use. Dalgarno had left at six o’clock, five hours before Baltimore had been picked up by a hansom and taken to the corner of the Gray’s Inn Road.

A newsboy had seen someone who was almost certainly Dalgarno go into the Baltimore house, and half an hour later Jarvis Baltimore go in also, but he had left the street before eight, and no one that Monk could question knew anything further. The Baltimore servants would know, but he had no authority to speak to them and could think of no excuse. Even if he could have, Baltimore could have been killed at any time after midnight and before dawn. No enquiry showed one way or the other whether Dalgarno had been in his rooms all night. Exit and entry were easy, and there was no postman or other servant to see.

He spoke to the gingerbread seller on the corner fifty yards away, a small, spare man who looked as if he could profit from a thick slice of his own wares and a hot cup of tea. He had seen Dalgarno returning home at about half past nine in the evening of Baltimore’s death. Dalgarno had been walking rapidly, his face set in a mask of fury, his hat jammed hard on his head, and he had passed without a word. However, the gingerbread seller had packed up shortly after that and gone home, so he had no idea whether Dalgarno had gone out again or not.

The constable on night duty might know. He patrolled this way now and then. But he gave Monk a lopsided grin and half a wink. He did have a certain acquaintance who frequented these streets on less-open business; give him a few days and he would make enquiries.

Monk gave him half a crown, and promised him another seven to make up a sovereign, if he would do as he suggested. Only Monk would need more than a word secondhand; if there were anything, he must speak to the witness himself. What anybody else’s business was in the street would remain unknown, and unquestioned.

The constable thought for a moment or two, then agreed. Monk thanked him, said he would be back in three or four days, and took his leave.

It was about three in the afternoon, cold and gusty, gray with coming rain. He could do no more about Dalgarno and Baltimore’s death for now. It was probably exactly what it looked to be, and everyone assumed. He could no longer put off the search he had known from the beginning he would have to make. He must go back to Arrol Dundas’s trial and see if the details would shake loose his memory at last, and he could remember what he had known then, the fraud, how it was discovered, and above all his own part in it.

He did not know where the trial had been, but all deaths were recorded and the files held here in London. He knew sufficient details to find the file, and it would tell him the place. He would go back there tonight and face his own past, pry open the lid of his nightmares and let them loose.

First he must go home, wash, eat, change his clothes, and pack a case, ready to go wherever it proved to be.

He had expected Hester to be out, either working at the house in Coldbath Square or raising more money to pay the rent and keep it supplied with food and medicines. He presumed it because he wished it so, to avoid the confrontation of his own emotions. He was aware that it was a kind of cowardice, and was ashamed of it, but he imagined what her feelings would be if she were forced to face the truth that he was so much less than she believed, and that was a pain he was not ready for. It would be so violent as to disable the concentration and intelligence he must bring to bear if he was to keep his promise to Katrina Harcus and prevent any new rail disaster.

Even that was an evasion. It was for himself that he would do it. It was his own compulsion never to allow such a thing to happen again. He must do that before he could bear to face the original which lay somewhere in his memory, fragmented, imperfect, but undeniable.

He opened the door and went inside, ready to do no more than change clothing, pack, have a cup of tea and a slice of bread with whatever cold meat he could find. He would leave a note for her to explain his absence. Instead he almost ran into her as she came out of the kitchen, smiling, ready to walk into his arms. But he saw the uncertainty in her eyes that told of her sensitivity to his aloneness, the withdrawal of the old honesty between them. She was hurt, and hiding it for his sake.

He hesitated, hating the lie and fearing the truth. It must only be seconds, less than that, or it was too long. He had to make the decision now! It was instinctive. He went forward and put his arms around her, holding her too closely, feeling her body yield and cling onto him in return. This at least was honest. He had never loved her more, all that she was, the courage, the generosity of spirit, the fierceness to protect, and her own vulnerability which she thought so hidden, and which was in reality so obvious.

He pressed his cheek into the softness of her hair, moving his lips gently, but he did not speak. At least without words he had not deliberately misled her. In a moment or two he would tell her he was going away again, and perhaps even why, but for a while let it simply be the truth of touch, without complication. He would remember that afterwards, keep it in his mind, and deeper than that-in the unspoken memory of the body.

It was late when he reached the public records office. All he knew was the year of Dundas’s death, not the date. It could take him some time to find the record, since he was not certain of the place either. But at least it was an uncommon name. If he had still been with the police he would have demanded that the office remain open for him to search for as long as he required. As a private person he could ask nothing.

He simply requested the records section he wanted, and when he was conducted to it, sat on a high stool, straining his eyes to read the pages and pages of spidery writing.