Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [145]
Monk lit the lantern and carefully moved back to where Orme had laid the woman. She lay on her back. Orme had folded her hands and smoothed the hair off her face. Her eyes were closed, her skin already gray-white, as if she had been dead longer than just the few minutes since they had seen her on the bridge.
She had a wide mouth and high cheekbones under delicately arched brows. It was a very feminine face, both strong and vulnerable, as if she had been filled with high passions in life.
“Poor creature,” Orme said softly. “S’pose we’ll never know wot made ’er do it. Mebbe ’e were breakin’ orff an engagement or somethin’.” The expression on his face was all but masked by the deepening shadows, but Monk could hear the intense pity in his voice.
Monk suddenly realized he was wet up to the armpits from having lifted the body out of the water. He was shuddering with cold and it was hard to speak without his teeth chattering. He would have given all the money in his pocket for a hot mug of tea with a lacing of rum in it. He could not remember ever being this perishingly cold on shore.
Suicide was a crime, not only against the state but in the eyes of the Church as well. If that was the coroner’s verdict, she would be buried in unhallowed ground. And there was the question of the young man’s death as well. Perhaps there was no point in arguing it, but Monk did so instinctively. “Was he trying to stop her?”
The boat was moving slowly, against the tide. The water was choppy, slapping at the wooden sides and making it difficult for two oarsmen to keep her steady.
Orme hesitated for several moments before answering. “I dunno, Mr. Monk, an’ that’s the truth. Could’ve bin. Could’ve bin an accident both ways.” His voice dropped lower. “Or could’ve bin ’e pushed ’er. It ’appened quick.”
“Do you have an opinion?” Monk could hardly get the words out clearly, he was shaking so much.
“You’d be best on an oar, sir,” Orme said gravely. “Get the blood movin’, as it were.”
Monk accepted the suggestion. Senior officers might not be supposed to row like ordinary constables, but they were not much use frozen stiff or with pneumonia, either.
He moved to the center of the boat and took up one of the oars beside Orme. After several strokes he got into the rhythm and the boat sped forward, cutting the water more cleanly. They rowed a long way without speaking again. They passed under Blackfriars Bridge toward the Southwark Bridge, which was visible in the distance only by its lights. The wind was like a knife edge, slicing the breath almost before it reached the lungs.
Monk had accepted his current position in the River Police partly as a debt of honor. Eight years ago he had woken up in the hospital with no memory at all. Fact by fact he had assembled an identity, discovering things about himself, not all of which pleased him. At that time he was a policeman, heartily disliked by his immediate superior, Superintendent Runcorn. Their relationship had deteriorated until it became a debatable question whether Monk had resigned before or after Runcorn had dismissed him. Since the detection and solving of crime was the only profession he knew, and he was required to earn his living, he had taken up the same work privately.
But circumstances had altered in the late autumn of last year. The need for money had compelled him to accept employment with shipping magnate Clement Louvain, his first experience on the river. Subsequently he had met Inspector Durban and had become involved with the Maude Idris and its terrible cargo. Now Durban was dead, but before his death he had recommended Monk to succeed him in his place at the Wapping station.
Durban could have had no idea how Monk had previously failed in commanding men. The former policeman was brilliant, but he had never worked easily with others, either in giving or taking orders. Runcorn would have told Durban that, would have told him that—clever or not, brave or not—Monk was not worth the trouble he would cost. Monk had been mellowed by time and circumstance,