The Silent Cry - Anne Perry [145]
“Rathbone,” Monk answered tersely. “He would like to know more about what happened before that night.”
Evan stared at him. There was no anger in his face, no sense of betrayal. In fact, if anything he looked relieved.
“You mean Hester persuaded Rathbone to defend Rhys, and you are working to that end,” Evan said with something that sounded like satisfaction.
Monk was stung that Evan imagined he was working for Hester, and in a hopeless cause like this one. Worse than that, it was true. He was tilting at windmills, like a complete fool. It was totally out of character, contrary to everything he knew of himself, and it was to try to ease the pain for Hester when she had to watch Rhys Duff convicted of a crime for which they would hang him, and this time she would be helpless to offer him even the remotest comfort. The knowledge of her pain then twisted inside Monk like a cramp. And for that alone he could hate Rhys Duff and his selfish, obsessive appetites, his cruelty, his stupidity and his mindless violence.
“I’m working for Rathbone,” he snapped at Evan. “It is a total waste of time, but if I don’t do it he’ll find someone else, and waste poor Mrs. Duff’s money, not to mention her grief. If ever a woman did not need a further burden to carry, it is she.”
Evan did not argue. Monk would have preferred it if he had. It was an evasion, and Monk knew that Evan knew it. Instead he simply turned away to his desk drawer with a slight smile and a lift of his shoulders, and pulled out the two pictures. He gave them to Monk.
“I had better have them back when you are finished with them, in case they are required for evidence.”
“Thank you,” Monk said rather less courteously than Evan deserved. He folded them up carefully in a piece of paper and put them in his pocket. He bade Evan good-bye and went out of the police station quickly. He would prefer it if Runcorn did not know he had been there. The last thing he wanted was to run into him by chance … or mischance.
It would be a long and cold day, and evening was when he would have the best chance to find the people who would have been around at the time to see either Rhys or Leighton Duff, or, for that matter, either of the Kynastons. Feeling angry at the helplessness, his feet wet and almost numb with cold, he went back towards St. Giles, stopping at a public house for a hot meat pie, potatoes and onions, and a steamed pudding with a plain sauce.
He spent several hours in the area searching and questioning, walking slowly along the alleys and through the passages, up and down stairways, deeper into the older part, unchanged in generations. Water dripped off rotting eaves, the stones were slimy, wood creaked, doors hung crooked but fast closed. People moved ahead of him and behind like shadows. One moment it would be strange, frightening and bitterly infectious, the next he thought he recognized something. He would turn a corner and see exactly what he expected, a skyline or a crooked wall exactly as he had known it would be, a door with huge iron studs whose pattern he could have traced with his eyes closed.
He learned nothing, except that he had been there before, and that he already knew. The police station he had worked from made that much obvious to anyone.
He began with the larger and more prosperous brothels. If Leighton Duff had used prostitutes in St. Giles, they were the most likely places to find them.
He worked until after midnight, asking, threatening, cajoling, coercing, and learning nothing whatever. If Leighton Duff had been to any of these places, either the madams did not remember him or they were lying to protect their reputation for discretion. Monk believed it was the former. Duff was dead, and they had little to fear from answering Monk. He had not lost so much of his old character that he could not wring information from people who made their living on the edge of crime. He knew the balance too well not to use it.
He was walking along a short alley up towards Regent Street