The Shifting Tide - Anne Perry [68]
“There’ll be other ships, won’t there?” Monk asked, leaning on the railing of the pier and watching the dark water churn beneath him. The barges going past, following the tide, were so heavily laden that in places the decks were awash.
“Course, but losin’ counts,” Duff replied, pulling a clay pipe out of the pocket of his coat, knocking the dottle out, then shredding tobacco with the fingers of his other hand before stuffing the shreds into the bowl. “Lose one fight, an’ the next time you start out two steps be’ind, like. People don’ back yer no more. Folks as used ter be scared o’ yer all of a sudden find out they’re more scared o’ someone else.” He put the pipe in his mouth and struck a match to light it, inhaling slowly. “Winnin’ an’ losin’ ’as their own rules,” he went on. “The more it goes one way, the more folks foller the tide, like. When it turns, that’s it. Yer don’ wanna lose, mister. Like rats, they are. The cowards leave yer, the bad ones turns on yer, all teeth an’ claws. If yer made enemies, losin’ is the beginnin’ o’ the end. The big bastards can’t afford ter lose. The likes o’ you an’ me it don’ matter, we done it afore, an’ we’ll be low awhile, then we’ll come back.”
Monk could see the profound truth of that. No wonder Louvain needed his ivory back. And that explained why there was no word of it anywhere along the river. It had not been sold; it was stored, hidden so the loss of it wrought the maximum damage to Louvain.
He thanked Duff and left. He needed to know more about Culpepper so he could find out where the ivory was. It would mean endless small questions. He would have to disguise them, or word would creep back to Culpepper. At best he would move the ivory and Monk would have to start all over again. If Culpepper was nervous, or angry enough, he would even sink it in the Thames mud, and it might never be found. There was the chance he had done that anyway, but surely he would not willingly destroy a cargo of that much value?
Monk tried several inventive stories, mostly about an heiress who had eloped, in order to question rivermen as to who and what they had seen on the river around Culpepper’s wharves on the morning of October twenty-first. For two days he stood in the cold asking painstaking questions and noting the answers almost illegibly, his hands were so stiff, his body shivering. The steps were slimy with salt and weed; the wooden piers creaked and sagged under the weight of years. The wind scythed in off the river, mist-swathed sometimes, knife-sharp in the early mornings, always the light shifting in blues and grays cut with silver shafts. Then finally he had enough.
It was the evening of October twenty-nine, as he sat at home, the kitchen stove open and stoked high, the kettle steaming, putting it all together, that he made sense of it. He had his feet in a bowl of hot water, and a pot of tea on the table, and three slices of toast made, when he saw the one fact that tied it all together.
The boatman Gould had told him that he could not have seen anyone rob the Maude Idris in the early hours of October twenty-one. Monk had verified that Gould had indeed been in Greenwich. But only in checking the ferries and lightermen in Greenwich had Monk realized that Gould had taken no fares that day. His boat had been at Greenwich, certainly, but idle! What boatman could afford that, unless he was being paid more than for working?
Gould’s boat had been at Culpepper’s wharf early in the day, and then disappeared without passengers. It had been seen as usual up in the Pool of London the day after. It answered every question if it was the boat in which the thieves had crept up to the Maude Idris, taken the ivory, and then carried it down to Culpepper at Greenwich. Whether they had done so to order, or simply taken advantage of a supreme opportunity, hardly mattered. If Louvain’s cargo had been betrayed to Culpepper by someone in his own company, that was Louvain’s problem to discover and to deal with. Once Monk had retrieved the