The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [21]
He put up his hand shakily and felt his wet cheek. There was a hard, angular rain driving on the wind.
He turned to see Evan behind him. But if Evan had felt that savage presence, there was no sign of it in his face. He was puzzled, a little concerned, but Monk could read no more in him than that.
“A violent man.” Monk repeated Evan’s words through stiff lips.
“Yes sir,” Evan said solemnly, catching up to him. He started to say something, then changed his mind. “Where are you going to begin, sir?” he asked instead.
It was a moment before Monk could collect his thoughts to reply. They were walking along Doughty Street to Guilford Street.
“Recheck the statements,” he answered, stopping on the corner curb as a hansom sped past them, its wheels spraying filth. “That’s the only place I know to begin. I’ll do the least promising first. The street sweeper boy is there.” He indicated the child a few yards from them, busy shoveling dung and at the same time seizing a penny that had been thrown him. “Is he the same one?”
“I think so, sir; I can’t see his face from here.” That was something of a euphemism; the child’s features were hidden by dirt and the hazards of his occupation, and the top half of his head was covered by an enormous cloth cap, to protect him from the rain.
Monk and Evan stepped out onto the street towards him.
“Well?” Monk asked when they reached the boy.
Evan nodded.
Monk fished for a coin; he felt obliged to recompense the child for the earnings he might lose in the time forfeited. He came up with twopence and offered it.
“Alfred, I am a policeman. I want to talk to you about the gentleman who was killed in Number Six in the square.”
The boy took the twopence.
“Yeah guv, I dunno anyfink what I din’t tell ve ovver rozzer as asked me.” He sniffed and looked up hopefully. A man with twopence to spend was worth pleasing.
“Maybe not,” Monk conceded, “but I’d like to talk to you anyway.” A tradesman’s cart clattered by them towards Grey’s Inn Road, splashing them with mud and leaving a couple of cabbage leaves almost at their feet. “Can we go to the footpath?” Monk inquired, hiding his distaste. His good boots were getting soiled and his trouser legs were wet.
The boy nodded, then acknowledging their lack of skill in dodging wheels and hooves with the professional’s condescension for the amateur, he steered them to the curb again.
“Yers guv?” he asked hopefully, pocketing the twopence somewhere inside the folds of his several jackets and sniffing hard. He refrained from wiping his hand across his face in deference to their superior status.
“You saw Major Grey come home the day he was killed?” Monk asked with appropriate gravity.
“Yers guv, and vere weren’t nob’dy followiny’ im, as fer as I could see.”
“Was the street busy?”
“No, wicked night, it were, for July, raining summink ’orrible. Nob’dy much abaht, an’ everyone goin’ as fast as veir legs’d carry ’em.”
“How long have you been at this crossing?”
“Couple o’ years.” His faint fair eyebrows rose with surprise; obviously it was a question he had not expected.
“So you must know most of the people who live around here?” Monk pursued.
“Yers, reckon as I do.” His eyes sparked with sudden sharp comprehension. “Yer means did I see anyone as don’t belong?”
Monk nodded in appreciation of his sagacity. “Precisely.”
“’E were bashed ter deaf, weren’t ’e?”
“Yes.” Monk winced inwardly at the appropriateness of the phrase.
“Ven yer in’t lookin’ fer a woman?”
“No,” Monk agreed. Then it flashed through his mind that a man might dress as a woman, if perhaps it were not some stranger who had murdered Grey, but a person known to him, someone who had built up over the years the kind of hatred that had seemed to linger in that room. “Unless it were a large woman,” he added, “and very strong, perhaps.”
The boy hid a smirk. “Woman as I saw was on the little side. Most women as makes veir way vat fashion gotta look fetchin’ like, or leastways summink as a woman oughter. Don’t see no great big scrubbers ’round ’ere, an’ no dollymops.” He sniffed again