Funeral In Blue Part 8

Chapter Five.

Monk was profoundly disturbed by what Hester had told him. He set out early, walking head down, through the still-shrouded streets. If it were true, then Kristian had a far deeper and more urgent motive for killing Elissa than any of them had realised.

If she were driving him beyond poverty into ruin the loss of his home, his reputation, his honour, even, when debts could not be met, with the prospect of debtors' prison then he could very easily imagine panic and desperation prompting anyone to think of murder.

The Queen's Prison was still kept exclusively for debtors, but all too often they were thrown in with everyone else thieves, forgers, embezzlers, arsonists, cutthroats. They might remain there until their debts were discharged, dependent upon outside help even for food, and the grace of G.o.d for any kind of protection from cold, lice, disease, and the violence of their fellows, never mind the inner torments of despair.

Kristian was a man who in the past had faced injustice and fought it with violence, but then he had not stood alone. Half Europe had risen in revolution against oppression, but perhaps the memory of it lay so deep in him that he would believe it was the answer again. It could have been instinctive rather than reasoning, and then when it was too late, understanding and remorse returned.

It was too easily believable to discard. If he were honest, Monk could even understand it. Were anyone to threaten all he had spent his life building his career, his reputation, the core of his own integrity and independence, his power to follow the profession he chose, to exercise his skills and feel of value to the things he believed in he would fight to survive. He was not prepared to swear what weapons he would use, or decline, however bitter the price, or the shame afterwards.

There was an icy wind this morning and he bent his head against it, feeling it sting in his face. A newsboy was calling out reference to a dispatch bearer for President Davis of the Confederacy in America being arrested in New Orleans about to embark for England. It barely touched the periphery of Monk's mind. He still had to know the truth, all of it, and he had to be aware what Runcorn knew. If Kristian were not guilty, Monk would defend him to the last stand.

But if Kristian were guilty then there was no moral defence. Had it been only Elissa who'd been murdered, some plea of mitigation might have been possible. He was certainly not the only man to have a wife who had driven him to the edge of madness, and violence lurks in many, if frightened or hurt enough. But whoever the murderer was had then killed Sarah Mackeson also, simply because she was there. Nothing could justify that.

Monk would not yet tell Runcorn anything about what he had learned. It was still reasonable to a.s.sume that Sarah Mackeson was the intended victim, and even that Argo Allardyce was lying when he said he had not been back to Acton Street all night. They should begin by finding the woman companion that Elissa Beck had undoubtedly taken with her to her portrait sittings. She could have valuable testimony as to what had happened that night, at least up to the point where she and Elissa had parted. Where had she left Elissa, and for what reason? No doubt Runcorn had thought of that too.

Monk stopped abruptly, causing the man behind him on the footpath to collide with him and nearly lose his balance. He swore under his breath and moved on, leaving Monk staring into the distance where one of the new horse-drawn trams loomed out of the thinning mist.

Runcorn would naturally begin with the a.s.sumption that Elissa had taken her maid, and he would go to Haverstock Hill to find her! And, of course, there was no lady's maid there. A man who had sold all his furniture except the sort of thing a bailiff would leave could not afford live-in servants. The scrub-woman who had answered the door the first time was probably the only servant the Becks had, and she might come only two or three times a week.

Would Elissa have taken someone from her father's house? Or a woman friend? Or might she actually have gone alone?

But the question beating in his mind was how to keep Runcorn from finding out about her gambling, or at least the ruinous extent of it!

Perhaps he was only delaying the inevitable, but asking Allardyce himself about Elissa's companion would be as logical as beginning at Elissa's home. He quickened his pace. He must find Runcorn and suggest that to him, persuade him to agree.

He glanced both ways at the crossroads, and sprinted across between a dray and a vegetable cart. He reached the police station at twenty minutes past eight and went straight up to Runcorn's office.

Runcorn looked up, his face carefully devoid of expression. He was waiting for Monk to make the first move.

"Good morning." Monk hid his smile and looked back straight into Runcorn's bland eyes. "I thought you'd probably be going to Allardyce again to see who the woman was who went with Mrs. Beck. I'd like to come with you." He thought of adding a request, but that would be rather too polite for Runcorn to believe of him. He would suspect sarcasm.

Runcorn's shoulders relaxed a little. "Yes, if you want," he said casually. There was only the slightest flicker to betray that he had not thought of where to begin this line of inquiry. "In fact, it would be a good idea," he added, standing up. Who'd it be, a maid?"

"Pendreigh thought a friend," Monk reminded him. "Which could be anyone. Easier to start by asking Allardyce himself." Runcorn frowned, reaching his coat and hat from the stand near the door. "I suppose the fog's still like pea soup, and it'll be just as fast to walk!" It was not really a question because he did not wait for an answer.

Monk followed him down the stairs and fell into step beside him in the street. Actually the weather was improving all the time and he could now see almost thirty yards in any direction; all the same they decided to walk rather than try to flag down a hansom from the steady stream of traffic.

"How many sittings do you have to have for a portrait, anyhow?" Runcorn asked after several minutes.

"I don't know," Monk admitted. "Maybe it depends on the style, and the artist. Perhaps the model sits in for you some of the time?"

"They didn't look much alike," Runcorn darted a sideways look at Monk.

"Still, I suppose for a dress or something it wouldn't matter." He frowned. "What did she do the rest of the time? I mean every day? A doctor's wife... not quite a lady, but certainly gentry ... at least." He had exposed an ignorance without intending to. Puzzlement was written plainly in his face. "There isn't anything she would actually have to do, is there?"

"I doubt it," Monk lied. Surely without any resident servants she would have to do most of the housework, cooking and laundry herself? Or perhaps with so little of the house occupied, there was far less to attend to? Only sufficient food for Kristian when he was home, and herself if she was not out with friends, or at the gambling tables.

Maybe Kristian had his shirts laundered at the hospital.

Then what?" Runcorn asked. They crossed the Gray's Inn Road and walked north. "I was ill once with bronchitis. Took me ages to get back to regular duty. Enjoyed the rest for the first two or three days. Thought I'd get a lot out of a fortnight. Nearly drove me mad! Never been so bored in my life! Came back before the doctor said I should because I couldn't stand it." Monk could picture it in his mind. Runcorn relaxing with a good book was almost a contradiction in ideas. Again he suppressed a smile with difficulty.

Runcorn saw it and glared at him.

"Sympathy!" Monk said quickly. "Broke my ribs, remember?" Runcorn grunted and they went on in silence as far as Acton Street and turned the corner. "Wouldn't like to be a lady," he said thoughtfully.

"Imagine I'd rather have work to do ... unless, of course, I didn't know any different." He was still frowning, trying to imagine a world so terrifyingly empty, when they reached the top of the stairs and knocked on Allardyce's studio door.

It was several moments before it was opened by Allardyce himself, looking angry and half asleep. "What in h.e.l.l's name do you want at this hour?" he demanded. "It's barely daylight! Haven't you got a home?"

"It's nearly nine o'clock, sir," Runcorn answered flatly, his face set in disapproval and studiously avoiding looking at Allardyce's hastily pulled on trousers and his nightshirt tails hanging over them. His feet were bare and he moved from one to the other on the chilly step.

"I suppose policemen have to be up at this unG.o.dly hour!" Allardyce said irritably. "What do you want now? You'd better come in because I'm not standing out here any longer." And he turned and went back inside, leaving the door open for them.

Runcorn followed him in, and Monk came a step behind. The studio was otherwise unoccupied, but there were canvases stacked against the walls. Half a dozen were in one stage or another of development four portraits, a street scene, and an interior with two girls sitting on a sofa reading. The one painting on the easel was of a man of middle age and a great look of self-satisfaction. Presumably it was a commission.

Allardyce muttered something under his breath and disappeared through the further door.

Runcorn wrinkled his nose very slightly. He said nothing, but his face was eloquent of his disgust.

Monk walked over to a sheaf of drawings in a folder and opened them up.

The first was brilliant. The artist had used only a charcoal pencil, but with an extraordinary economy of stroke he had caught the suppressed energy in face and body as three women leaned over a table.

The dice were so insignificant it took a moment before Monk even saw them. All the pa.s.sion was in the faces, the eyes, the open mouths, the jagged force that held them transfixed. Gamblers.

He turned it over quickly and looked at the next. Gamblers again, but this time the vacant stare of the loser. It was powerful, desolate. A home or a fortune lost on the turn of a piece of coloured cardboard, but all despair was in the eyes.

The third was a beautiful woman, her face alight as if at sight of a lover, her eyes shining, her lips parted, but it was a fan of cards that she stared at, a winning hand, colour and suits blurred, already without meaning as she looked towards the next deal. Victory was so sweet, and the taste of it an instant, and then gone again.

Elissa Beck.

Monk turned the rest, aware of Runcorn at his shoulder, watching, saying nothing.

There were pictures of this woman, some sketched so hastily they were little more than a suggestion, half an outline, but with such power the emotion leaped raw off the paper the greed, the excitement, the pounding heart, the sweat on the skin, the clenched muscles. Monk found himself holding his own breath as he looked at them one after another.

Had Runcorn recognised Elissa? Monk felt himself grow hot, and then cold. Could Runcorn possibly imagine Allardyce was so obsessed with her he had placed her here just to draw her again and again? Not unless he was totally naive. Those drawings were from life; anyone with the slightest knowledge of nature could see the honesty in them.

He did not want to turn to meet Runcorn's eyes.

There were two more pictures. They were probably just the same, but their blank white edges challenged him, poking out beneath the one he saw now. What were they? More of Elissa? He could feel Runcorn's presence so vividly he imagined the warmth of his body, his breath on Monk's neck.

He turned the page. The second to last was a man, thick-chested, broken-nosed, leaning against the wall watching the women who were playing. His face was brutish, bored. Sooner or later they would lose, and it would be his job to make sure the debts were collected. He would get rid of troublemakers.

Slowly he lifted the page over to look at the last one. It was an expensively dressed man with dead eyes, and a small pistol in his hand.

Runcorn let out a sigh and his voice was very quiet. "Poor devil," he said. "I suppose he reckons it's the better way. Ever seen a debtors' prison, Monk? Some of them aren't too bad, but when they throw 'em in with everyone else, for a man like that, he's probably right, better off a quick end." Monk said nothing. His thoughts were too hard, the truth too close.

"I suppose you think he's a coward!" Runcorn said, and there was anger and hurt bristling in him.

"No!" Monk returned instantly. "Don't suppose! You've no idea what I think!" Runcorn was startled.

Now Monk was facing him, their eyes meeting. Had Runcorn recognised Elissa? How long would it be before he realised the cost of her gambling? He knew enough not to imagine it was a game, a few hours of a harmless pastime. If he had not before, it was there in the drawings: the consuming hunger that swept away all other thought and feeling. The sketches destroyed any illusion that it was harmless, controllable.

"She didn't break her own neck," Runcorn said very softly, his voice rough as if his throat hurt. "Debt collectors? And the poor model just got in the way?" Monk thought about it. Somewhere in his closed memory he must know more about gamblers, violence, ways of extorting money without endangering one's own gambling houses, and thus losing more profit than was gained.

"We don't know that she owed enough to be worth making an example of," he said to Runcorn. "Does it look that way to you?" Runcorn's lips tightened. "No," he said flatly. He would like it to have been the answer, even if they never found the individual man responsible, it was clear in his face. "Doesn't really make sense. If she wasn't paying they'd simply ban her from the place... long before she got to owe enough to be worth the risk of killing. They'd murder rivals who could drive them out of business, but not losers. h.e.l.l, the gutters'd be choked with corpses if they did that." His eyes widened suddenly. "Might kill a winner, though! Win a bit's good to encourage the others, win a lot is expensive." Monk laughed harshly. "And you don't suppose they have control over how much anybody wins?" Runcorn grunted, anger nickering across his face, then unhappiness.

"Would have been a good answer. Wonder how long she'd been doing it and how much she lost?" Monk felt the heat under his skin and the sweat drip down his body.

d.a.m.n Runcorn for making it so hard to remain silent! d.a.m.n him for being real and finding an honesty in himself that made him impossible to ignore. Perhaps Monk could get by with a half-truth? No, he couldn't! If Runcorn found out, and he would, he would despise him for it. Monk had patronised Runcorn in the past, by-pa.s.sed him as not worthy of telling the truth to, but he had never told him a face-to-face lie. That was the coward's way. Perhaps silence was too, but it was all that was left.

Runcorn hesitated, drew in a long breath, and then let it out again. He turned away. "Mr. Allardyce!" he called.

Allardyce appeared in the doorway holding a mug of tea in both hands.

He was shaved and dressed, and he looked composed. "What now?" he said glumly. "I already told you that I know nothing. h.e.l.l! Don't you think if I knew who did it I'd tell you?" He waved his free arm angrily, slopping the tea in the other hand. "Look what it's done to my life!" Runcorn forbore from answering the last question. "This public house you say you were at..."

"The Bull and Half Moon," Allardyce supplied. "What about it?"

"Where is it, exactly?"

"Rotherhithe Street, near Southwark Park."

"Rather a long way to go for a drink?" Runcorn raised his eyebrows.

"That's why I spent the night," Allardyce said reasonably. "Too far to come home, and it was a filthy night. Could hear the fog horns on the river every few minutes. Never understand how they don't hit each other more often."

"So why go far?" Monk asked.

Allardyce shrugged. "Got good friends that way. Knew they'd put me up, if necessary. If I stayed home every time there was fog I'd never go anywhere. Ask Gilbert Strother. Lives in Great Hermitage Street, in Wapping. Don't know the number. You'll have to ask. Somewhere around the middle. Has a door with an angel on it. He did a sketch of us all. He'll tell you."

"I'll do that," Runcorn agreed, thin-lipped.

"Look, I can't tell you anything useful," Allardyce went on. "I've got a friend hurt in that pile-up in Drury Lane. I want to go and see him.

Broke his leg, poor devil."

"What pile-up?" Runcorn said suspiciously.

"Horse bolted. Two carriages got locked together and a dray got turned sideways and lost its load. Must have been twenty kegs burst open at least raw sugar syrup! Said he'd never seen such a mess in his life.

Stopped up Drury Lane all evening."

"When was that?" Allardyce's face tightened. "The night of the murders." He stared at Runcorn and suddenly his eyes filled with tears. He blinked angrily and turned away.

"Mr. Allardyce," Monk said quietly, 'when Mrs. Beck came for the sittings, who did she bring with her?" Allardyce frowned.

"As chaperone," Monk added.

Allardyce gave a burst of laughter. "A friend, once or twice, but she only came as far as the door. Never knew her name." His face darkened, his mouth turned down a little at the ends. "She met the man here three or four times. I suppose you know about that?"

"What man?" Runcorn snapped.

"Dark. Strong face. Interesting. Wouldn't mind drawing him some time, but I never met him. Don't know his name."

"Draw him now!" Runcorn commanded.

Allardyce walked over to the table and picked up a block of paper and a stick of charcoal. With a dozen or so lines he created a very recognisable sketch of Max Niemann. He turned it towards Runcorn.

"Max Niemann, Beck's ally in Vienna," Monk told him.

"Why didn't you say anything about this before?" Runcorn was furious, his face mottling with dark colour.

Allardyce was pale. "Because they were good friends, or more!" he replied, his voice rising also. "And I have no idea if he was anywhere near here that night! Anyway, I wasn't expecting Elissa, or I'd have been here myself. If she met Niemann, it wouldn't be in my studio. I a.s.sume the killer was some old lover of Sarah's, or something of that sort, and Elissa just picked the wrong time to call in. Perhaps she wanted to see if the portrait was finished ... or something." Runcorn gave him a withering look, but since it was more or less what he was inclined to believe himself, there was little argument to make.

"We'd better find out a great deal more about Sarah Mackeson," he said instead.

"I've told you all I know," Allardyce said uneasily, all the anger draining from his face and leaving only sadness. "I gave all that to your man: where she was born, where she grew up, as far as she told me.

She didn't talk about herself."

"I know ... I know," Runcorn was irritated. This case woke a mixture of feelings in him: pity because the woman was dead; duty because it was his task to find who had killed her and see they faced the law to answer for it. At the same time he despised her for her morality, which offended every desire for decency in him, the love of rules to live by and order he could understand. He turned to Monk. "We'd better get on with it, then." His eyes widened. "If you're interested, that is?"

"I'm interested," Monk accepted.

They bade Allardyce goodbye and went back down the stairs into the street, where Runcorn pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. "I'm going to start with Mrs. Ethel Roberts who used to employ Sarah Mackeson as a milliner's a.s.sistant. You can go to see Mrs. Clark, who took her in now and then. I'll leave you to find out for what!" His expression conveyed his opinion of the possibilities. "We'll meet up at that pub on the corner of North Street and the Caledonian Road can't remember what it's called. Be there at one!" And with that he thrust the piece of paper into Monk's hand, and turned abruptly to cross the street, leaving Monk standing on the kerb in the newly emerged sun and the noise, the increasing rattle of traffic, street vendors' cries: sh.e.l.lfish, cheeses, razors, shirt b.u.t.tons, rat poison.

He found Mrs. Clark in a boarding house in Risinghill Street, north of the Pentonville Road, just beyond a tobacconist's shop with a Highlander on the sign to denote to the illiterate what it was he sold.

Inside the boarding house the air in the hall smelled of stale polish and yesterday's cooking, but it was cleaner than some he had seen, and there was a cheerful clatter of dishes, and a voice singing, coming from somewhere towards the back.

He followed the sound of it and knocked on the open kitchen door. It was a large room with a scrubbed stone floor, a wooden table in the middle and on the stove a pan was boiling briskly, the steam jiggling the lid. In the stone scullery beyond he could see three huge wooden sinks filled with linen soaking, and on a shelf above them big jars of lye, fat, potash and blue. A washboard was balanced in one sink, a laundry dolly in the other, to push the clothes up and down with in the copper when they needed to be boiled. He appeared to have interrupted Mrs. Clark on her wash day.

She was a rotund woman, ample-bosomed and broad-hipped, with short, plump arms. Her blue sleeves were pushed up untidily. An ap.r.o.n which had seen very much better days was tied around her waist, and slipping to one side. She pushed her hair back off her face and turned from the bowl where she was peeling potatoes, the knife still in her hand.

"Can't do nuthin' for yer, luv," she said amiably. "Ain't got room ter 'ouse a cat! Could try Mrs. Last down the street. Number 56. In't as comfy as me, but what can yer do?" She smiled at him, showing several gaps in her teeth. "My, aren't yer the swell, then? Got all yer money on yer back, 'ave yer?" Monk smiled in spite of himself. There was a time when that would have been true. Even now there was a stronger element in it than perhaps for most men.

"You read people pretty well, Mrs. Clark," he replied.

"Gotter," she acknowledged. "It's me business." She looked him up and down appreciatively. "Sorry as I can't 'elp yer. I like a man wot knows 'ow ter look 'is best. Like I said, try Mrs. Last."

"Actually I wasn't looking for lodgings." He had already decided to be candid with her. "I'm told you used to give Sarah Mackeson a room now and then, when times were rough." Her face hardened. "So what's that ter you then? Yer got ideas about her, yer can forget 'em. She's an artist's model now, and good at it she is too." She stopped abruptly, defiance in her stare.

"Very good," Monk agreed, seeing in his mind the pictures Allardyce had painted of Sarah. "But she was killed and I want to know who did it." It was brutal, and Mrs. Clark swayed a little before leaning against the table heavily, the colour draining from her face.