Cain His Brother - Anne Perry [76]
“Ye have the face o’ a man who cares,” Archie replied without looking at him. “I wouldn’a want ye after me. I’d as soon have the de’il himself.” He stopped at the top of a narrow flight of steps leading down to the water where a very small boat was rising gently as the tide rose. “It’s a hard thing to care,” he added.
Monk was about to deny that he cared, but Archie was not listening to him. He had bent his broad back and was loosening the moorings, which seemed to be in an extraordinarily complicated knot.
Monk climbed in and Archie settled to the oars. He pulled out skillfully, twisting the boat around, propelling it and steering it at the same time. The bank and the steps disappeared into the gray rain within yards. The thought crossed Monk’s mind that no one knew where he was. He had accepted the offer without taking the slightest precaution. Archie McLeish could have been paid by Caleb to do precisely this! He must know Monk was after him. Monk could go overboard in the darkness and mist of the river and be swept out with the ebb tide, his body washed up days later, or never. Caleb Stone might be blamed, but no one could prove it. It would be one more accident. Maybe Archie McLeish would even say Monk threw himself in.
He sat gripping the gunwales, determined if it came to that, he would make a damned good fight of it. Archie McLeish would go over with him.
They passed barges moving steadily, dark mounds in the mist, riding lights to port and starboard, hundreds of tons of cargo making them juggernauts on the tide. If they were caught in front of one of those they would be splintered like matchwood. There was no sound but the water, the dismal hoot far off of a foghorn, and now and then someone shouting.
They passed a square-rigger coming down from the Pool of London, its bare spars looming above them in the mist, reminding Monk of a row of gibbets. It was growing perceptibly colder. The raw wind blew through his coat as if it had been cotton shoddy, and touched his bones.
“Afraid o’ Caleb Stone, then, are ye?” Archie McLeish said cheerfully.
“No,” Monk snapped.
“Well, ye look it.” Archie pulled hard on the oars, leaning his weight into them. “Feel like I was rowing a man to ’is ’anging wi’ a face like that, an’ grippin’ me boat like it’d escape ye if ye let it go.”
Monk realized grimly how he must look, and made an effort to smile. It might well be worse.
“Goin’ ter kill ’im, are ye?” Archie said conversationally. “It’d surely be one way. Then ye’d have a corpse ter pass off. I daresay no one’d know it wasn’t his brother. Alike as two peas, they say.”
Monk laughed abruptly. “I hadn’t thought of it—but it sounds like a good idea … in fact, a brilliant one. Accomplish justice for everyone in one blow. Only trouble is, I don’t know if Angus is dead. He might not be.”
“Angus’d be the brother,” Archie said with wide eyes. “Well, I don’t know either, I’m glad to say. So I’ll not be havin’ to take ye back, because I’ll no be party to murder … even o’ the likes o’ Caleb Stone.”
Monk started to laugh.
“And why’ll that be so funny?” Archie asked crossly. “I may be a rough man and not the gentleman ye seem to be, although God knows, ye look hard enough … but I’ve me standards, same as ye!”
“Maybe better,” Monk granted. “It had just occurred to me you might murder me out here in the middle of this godforsaken waste of water … on Caleb’s account.”
Archie grunted, but his anger appeared to evaporate.
“Oh, aye,” he said quietly. “Well … I could have an’ all.”
He rowed in silence for several minutes. The shadows of the chemical works on the farther shore loomed through the mist, and Archie had to change course with a wrench of the oars to avoid a barge moving out from the dim wharves as the rain drove in their faces.
“Ye’ll be needing a spot o’ help then,” Archie said after several more minutes. “Ye’ll no catch the like o’ Caleb on your own.”
“Possibly,” Monk conceded. “But I’m not trying to take him into custody, only to speak with him.”
“Oh, aye,” Archie said skeptically.