The Shifting Tide (38 page)

Oliver remembered Henry’s profound affection for Hester; it made what he had to say almost impossibly difficult. He hesitated, now that the moment had arrived, lost for words.

“I cannot help if I do not know what it is,” Henry reminded him reasonably. “You have come this far, before dawn, and you are obviously beside yourself with anxiety over something. You had better say what it is.”

Rathbone looked up. His mere presence made it both better and worse. It brought all his own emotions so much closer to the surface. “It is something that can be told to no one else at all. I should not tell you, but I am at my wits’ end,” he said.

“Yes, I see that,” Henry agreed. “Wait till we have the tea and can be uninterrupted.”

Oliver obeyed, marshaling the thoughts in his mind into some kind of rational order.

When the tea was brought and they were alone, he began. He told the story very simply and in a manner as devoid of emotion as he could manage. Rather than robbing it of feeling, this reserve added to it.

Henry said nothing whatever until Oliver stopped speaking and waited for a comment.

“How like Hester,” Henry said at last. “I am sure Margaret Ballinger is a fine woman, that much is quite clear, and perhaps Hester would not have made you happy, nor you her. But I have never known anyone else whom I liked quite so much.”

“What can I do?” Oliver asked.

“Defend the thief to the best of your ability,” Henry told him. “As long as you do not ever allow anyone to guess, as wildly as they may, that you are concealing a disease of any nature, let alone this one. You could create a panic which could end in mass destruction. Neither Hester nor Margaret would survive it, and it would not even necessarily contain the plague. Whatever you do, Oliver, you must let no one suspect. It would be very dreadful if the thief is hanged for a crime of which he is innocent, but for once injustice is not the greatest evil.”

“I know,” Oliver agreed quietly. “I do know!”

“And poor Monk is doing what he can to trace the members of the crew who were paid off?”

“Yes. The last I spoke to him, he had had no success at all.”

“They may already be dead,” Henry pointed out. “It is even possible they died at sea and he will find no trace of them because there is none to find.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Oliver admitted.

“Is there any reason to believe this man, Louvain?”

“None at all.”

“Then you had better appeal to his interest rather than his honor.”

“Now that Margaret is no longer able to raise money for food, coal, medicines, it is up to me. There is a fear of immorality and disease in our midst. We don’t like to be reminded of such things so close to home. We feel guilty that it happens while we are perfectly well and comfortable ourselves. Africa is too far away to be our fault.”

“Personally,” Henry agreed dryly, “it is too far away for us to feel accountable for it and it is equally too far away for them to be accountable to us.”

Oliver was too tired to grasp his meaning. He was cold and exhausted deep to his bones. “What do you mean?”

“That we give money and feel our duty is discharged,” Henry replied. “There is no probability of seeing that it goes to the cause we have been told, so we feel virtuous and ignore the rest.”

“Well, of course it—” Oliver stopped.

Henry reached for the teapot and topped up his cup. “I shall help. It will not be difficult for me to raise money for you. You attend to rescuing the thief from the gallows. I shall bring money for you tomorrow. For today I have about seven pounds in the house. Take that and begin. I shall get more, however I do it.”

“However?” Oliver said sharply.

He glanced around the room at various pieces of pewter, silver, a couple of wooden carvings. “Can you think of anything better I could do with whatever I have?” Henry asked.

“No. No, of course not.” Oliver rose to his feet stiffly. “I must get back to town. Thank you.”

As darkness shrouded the river on the evening Rathbone took Margaret to dinner, Monk was standing on the shore at Wapping Stairs waiting for Durban. He heard the boat scraping against the stones and moved forward out of the shadows.

Durban came up the steps slowly, coughing in the raw night air. For a brief moment he was silhouetted against the water where the riding lights of a moored boat shimmered behind him, then he was in the dark. But Monk had seen him for that moment, and knew from the hunch of his shoulders that he had found nothing.

“Neither did I,” he said quietly. He voiced the thought that had been in his mind for some time. “Do you think they could have died at sea and simply been put overboard, and that’s why there is no trace?”

“Of plague?” Durban asked, standing close beside Monk so he did not have to raise his voice. “And the rest of the crew got the ship here?”

“Why not? Couldn’t four men do it if they had to?”

“Probably, and they wouldn’t all go at once. But that isn’t the issue. If the men died of an ordinary illness they’d report it. Why not? And Louvain would know.”

“Yes,” Monk agreed. “But if they died of plague, they wouldn’t. The ship would be barred from landing and Louvain would lose his cargo, and we already know he can’t afford that.”

“You saw Newbolt and the others,” Durban responded. “Do you think they’d stay on a plague ship out of loyalty to Louvain?”

“No.” There was no argument; the idea was ludicrous. “So where are they?”

“Paid off, as Louvain said, and either lucky enough not to have got the plague, or died of it by now,” Durban answered, his voice soft in the darkness and the gentle slurping of the tide against the stones.

“Gould goes to trial tomorrow,” Monk said. “I believe Hodge died of plague, and someone beat his head in to hide the fact. They didn’t dare put him over the side once they were in port, which means Gould had nothing to do with it. We can’t prove that, and wouldn’t even if we could. We daren’t even suggest it was one of them, or the whole thing could come out. We daren’t give any cause to dig up the body, so we can’t call any medical evidence.”

Durban did not ask if Monk knew anything from the clinic; they had spent enough time together that he would have heard it in Monk’s voice, in what he didn’t say as well as what he did. He never once offered pity, just a quiet understanding of pain.

“It wasn’t any of the crew,” he agreed. “If they knew it was plague they’d have been off that ship if they’d had to swim. It must have been Louvain himself. But we’ll not get him to testify to that.”

“What would be reasonable doubt?” Monk was thinking aloud. “Dead drunk and fell?”

“It would mean Louvain would have to go back on his word,” Durban warned. “He’d not like that.”

“He’d not like the alternative either,” Monk said with growing conviction. “I need to make it sufficiently unpleasant so he’ll be glad to say he was mistaken. Hodge was drunk and he fell and hit his head so hard it killed him. There was more blood around Hodge’s than he first realized.”

“Hodge was a drunkard?” Durban asked dubiously. “They left a known drunkard on watch at night on the river, with the cargo still on board? That’s incompetent.”

“They’re shorthanded.”

“Then put your drunkard on during daylight.”

“Then you’re right, they’re incompetent,” Monk agreed bitterly. “That’s still better than plague-ridden, and that’s Louvain’s choice.”

“You going to tell him?”

“Can you think of anything better?”

“You want me to come?”

Monk heard the exhaustion in Durban’s voice. “No. Anyway, I’d like to see that bastard alone. I want to be the one to force him to save Gould. It’s not much, but I’d like to.”

“I understand. But be careful,” Durban warned, and suddenly the edge was back in his tone, the tiredness gone. “Make sure he knows you are not working alone. The River Police know everything. Make absolutely certain he understands that!”

“You think he’d kill me?” Monk was only mildly surprised, and it was a strange, flat emptiness inside him that he did not really care. He was exhausted with plunging between hope and despair for Hester. Hope was agonizing; sometimes it was almost unbearable to cherish it. Better to accept that this was the end. Sooner or later she would catch it. She had given her life to save London, maybe Europe. He was passionately proud of her, yet so angry he could have killed Louvain with his bare hands and felt the life choke out of him with the nearest he could know to pleasure. He was so full of pain he was buckling under the weight of it. He did not want to eat, and could not sleep, only succumb to unconsciousness now and then.

“Actually I think you might kill him,” Durban said reasonably. “So I’ll come with you anyway. You can be the one to talk, I’ll just be there.”

“And if he has men there, and kills both of us?” Monk asked.

“Chance I’ll take,” Durban replied dryly. “We’ll take him with us; that’ll be something.”

“Won’t help Gould much.”

“No, it won’t, will it!” Durban agreed. “Come on. Let’s go and see him.”

This time it was less easy to gain entrance to Louvain’s office, even though the clerk readily admitted that Mr. Louvain was still in and there was no one with him.

“It’s to do with the
Maude Idris
and the theft of the ivory,” Monk said curtly.

“Yes, sir. We have the ivory back, thank you.”

“I know, damn it! I’m the one who got it back for you. The thief goes on trial tomorrow. A matter has arisen which I need to speak to Louvain about before then.”

“I’ll ask, sir. And the gentleman with you?”

“Inspector Durban of the River Police.”

Ten minutes later they were in Louvain’s office, the fire still burning, the room warm, the gaslight gleaming on the polished surface of his desk. He was standing with his back to the window, as he had been when Monk was there the last time, the lights of the Thames flickering in the dark window behind him. He looked tense and tired.

“What is it?” he said as soon as the door was closed. “I know the thief goes on trial tomorrow. What of it?” He did not bother to hide his irritation as they faced each other across the room, anger brittle in the air between them. “What the hell have you got the River Police here for?”

“Gould didn’t kill Hodge,” Monk stated. “I didn’t look at the body closely. As I was meant to, I saw only the back of his head.”

Louvain’s eyes were hard and steady. Not once did they look at Durban. “And what more did you wish to see?” he asked.

“The cause of death,” Monk replied instantly. “Or the cause of Ruth Clark’s death—whoever she was.”

Louvain’s face paled under the windburn on his skin. “She has nothing to do with them,” he said gruffly. For the first time there was an emotion in him quite different from anger.

Monk wondered if she had been Louvain’s mistress after all. Had it even hurt him to take her to the clinic and leave her there? Monk had thought it possible that Louvain had not known it was plague, believed it to be simply pneumonia, but Durban’s logic was relentless. If Gould had not killed Hodge, then it had to be Louvain who had disguised the cause of his death. If the crew had known the truth, nothing on earth would have kept them on the ship. Which also meant that the other three had been paid off rather than died at sea.

“She has everything to do with it,” Monk said with a choking hatred inside him. “You took her to the Portpool Lane clinic knowing she had the plague.” He ignored Louvain’s wince of pain. However much he might have cared for her, it did not excuse his taking her to where she could pass on the disease to other people, women other men loved! In fact, the depth of his own loss made it worse. “That is what Hodge died of—isn’t it!” he accused. “It was you who took a shovel to the back of his head to make it look like murder, so he would be buried quickly and no one would ever know the truth. You didn’t care a toss that an innocent man might hang for it!”

“He’s a thief,” Louvain said bitterly, anger in his voice at being held to account.

“Is that why you’re hanging him?” Monk was incredulous, and yet the more he thought of it, the more he believed it. “Because he stole from you?”

Louvain’s mouth twisted. “You think you’re a worldly man, Monk, and that no one dares to defy you, but you’re naÏve. You’re hobbled by your own morals. You’re too weak to survive on the river.”

A few days ago that insult would have bothered Monk. Today it was too trivial even to answer. What was vanity in the face of the loss that gaped in front of him?

“Gould is not going to hang,” Monk answered instead. “Because we are going to see he is acquitted on the grounds of reasonable doubt.”

Louvain bared his teeth in something like a smile. “Reasonable doubt as to what? You’re not going to tell anyone he died of plague.” Even as he said the word his voice caught, and Monk realized for the first time the horror that turned Louvain sick at even speaking the word. It was anger, greed, and pride which drove him, but it was fear which beaded the sweat on his skin and drained the blood from it. “You’ll have panic like forest fire,” he went on. “Your own wife will be one of the first to be killed. The mob would torch the clinic, and you know that.” A glitter of triumph, thin as melting ice, lit his eyes.

Monk was drenched with the sense of the power in Louvain, the intelligence and the violence held in check only by judgment of his own need. Now Monk knew exactly why he had been so willing to sign the paper testifying to Hodge’s death. He had intended even then to hold Hester and the clinic to ransom. That was why he had chosen Monk! It made the most perfect sense.

“Of course I won’t tell,” Monk agreed, his voice shaking, and almost oblivious now of Durban behind him. “And neither will you, because if you do you’ll be mobbed as well. I’ll see to it. The river wouldn’t thank you for bringing plague into London. You’ll not only lose your ship, and the cargo still in it, but you’ll be lucky if they don’t burn your warehouse, your offices, and your home. They’d string you up for the pleasure of it.” He smiled back. “I’ll make damn sure of it—if I have to.”

He saw the sweat of fear on Louvain’s lip and brow, and the hatred in his eyes.