The Silent Cry - Anne Perry [76]
“I saw ’im under the lights,” the patterer responded. “Faces is me business, least it’s part of it. I ’member ’is eyes partic’lar. Not like most folks’. Big, black almost. ’E looked lorst.”
“Lost?”
“Yeah, like ’e weren’t sure wot ’e wanted nor which way ter go. Kind o’ miserable.”
“That can’t be unusual around here.”
“ ’E don’ belong around ’ere. I knows most ’oo belongs ’ere. Don’ I, Mr. Shotts?”
Shotts looked startled. “Yeah … yeah, I s’pose you would.”
“But you go Seven Dials way as well.” Evan remembered what Shotts had said about the patterer’s telling him of Monk’s case. “Have you seen him there too?” It was a remote chance, but one he should not overlook.
“Me?” The patterer looked surprised, his blue eyes staring at Evan. “I don’ go ter Seven Dials. This is me patch.”
“But you know what happens there.” He should not give up too easily, and there was an uncertainty at the back of his mind.
“Sorry, guv, no idea. Yer’d ’ave ter ask some o’ them wot works there. Try Jimmy Morrison. ’E knows Seven Dials.”
“You don’t know about violence in Seven Dials towards women?”
The patterer gave a sharp, derisive laugh. “Wot, yer mean diff’rent from always?”
“Yes.”
“Dunno. Wot is it?”
“Rape and beatings of factory women.”
The patterer’s face wrinkled in disgust. Evan could not believe he had already known. Why had Shotts lied? It was a small thing, very small, but what was the point of it? It was out of the character he knew of the man, and disturbing.
“You told me he knew,” he said as soon as they were a dozen yards away.
Shotts did not look at him. “Must ’a bin someone else,” he replied dismissively.
“Don’t you write down who tells you what?” Evan pressed. “It makes a lot of difference. Did you ever speak to him before on this case?”
Shotts turned into the wind and his answer was half lost.
“ ’Course I did. Said so, didn’t I?”
Evan let the matter rest, but he knew he had been lied to, and it troubled him. His instinct was to like Shotts and to respect his abilities. There was something he did not know. The question was, was it something important?
He saw Monk that evening. Monk had left a note for him at the police station, and he was happy to spend an hour or two over a good meal in a public house and indulge in a little conversation.
Monk was in a dour mood. His case was going badly, but he had considerable sympathy for Evan.
“You think it could be the widow?” he asked, his eyes level and curious. The slight smile on his lips expressed his understanding of Evan’s reluctance to accept such a thing. He knew Evan too well, and his affection for him did not prevent his amusement and slight derision at his friend’s optimism in human nature.
“I think it was probably just what it looked like,” Evan replied gloomily. “Rhys was a young man who had been indulged by his mother and whose father had great expectations of him which he possibly could not live up to—and did not want to. He indulged a selfish and possibly cruel streak in his character. His father went after him to try to stop him, perhaps to warn of the dangers, and somehow they became involved in a fight with others. The father died. The son was severely injured physically, and so horrified by what he saw that now he cannot even speak.”
Monk cut into the thick, light suet crust of his steak-and-kidney pudding.
“The question is,” he said with his mouth full, “were they both attacked by the denizens of St. Giles, or did Rhys kill his own father in a quarrel?”
“Or did Sylvestra Duff have a lover, and did he either do it himself or have someone else do it?” Evan asked.
“Who is he? Samson?” Monk raised his eyebrows.
“What?”
“He took on two men at once, killed one and left the other senseless, and walked away from the scene himself,” Monk pointed out.
“Then there was more than one,” Evan