Long Spoon Lane (45 page)
Authors: Anne Perry
“Thank you.” Monk drank the tea and felt some resemblance of life return to his body, warmth working slowly from the inside outward.
“Accident?” Sergeant Palmer asked, looking at the bodies now lying on the floor, faces decently covered with spare coats.
“Don’t know yet,” Monk replied. “Came off Waterloo Bridge right in front of us, but we can’t be sure how it happened.”
Palmer frowned, puzzled. He had his doubts about Monk’s competence anyway, and this indecision went toward confirming them.
Orme finished his tea. “Went off together,” he said, looking at Palmer expressionlessly. “ ’Ard to tell if ’e were trying to save ’er, or could’ve pushed ’er. Know what killed ’em all right, poor souls. ’It the water ’ard, like they always do. But I daresay as we’ll never know for certain why.”
Palmer waited for Monk to say something. The room was suddenly silent. The other two men from the boat, Jones and Butterworth, stood watching, turning from one to the other, to see what Monk would do. It was a test again. Would he match up to Durban?
“Get the surgeon to look at them, just in case there’s something else,” Monk answered. “Probably isn’t, but we don’t want to risk looking stupid.”
“Drownded,” Palmer said sourly, turning away. “Come orff one o’ the bridges, yer always are. Anybody knows that. Water shocks yer an’ so yer breathes it in. Kills yer. Quick’s almost the only good thing to it.”
“And how stupid will we look if we say she’s a suicide, and it turns out she was knifed or strangled, but we didn’t notice it?” Monk asked quietly. “Or with child, and we didn’t see that, either? I just want to make sure. Look at the quality of her clothes. She’s not a street woman. She has a decent address and she may have family. We owe them the truth.”
Palmer colored unhappily. “It won’t make them feel no better if she’s with child,” he observed without looking back at Monk.
“We don’t look for the answers that make people feel better,” Monk told him. “We have to deal with the ones we find closest to the truth. We know who they are and where they lived. Orme and I are going to tell their families. You get the police surgeon to look at them.”
“Yes, sir,” Palmer said stiffly. “You’ll be goin’ ’ome to put dry clothes on, no doubt?” He raised his eyebrows.
Monk had already learned that lesson. “I’ve got a dry shirt and coat in the cupboard. They’ll do fine.”
Orme turned away, but not before Monk had seen his smile.
Long Spoon Lane
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2006 Ballantine Books Mass Market Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Anne Perry
Excerpt from
Dark Assassin
by Anne Perry copyright © 2005 by Anne Perry
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming hardcover edition of
Dark Assassin
by Anne Perry. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2005.
eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49086-5
eISBN-10: 0-345-49086-X
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