Funeral in Blue Page 11

  Kristian was a man who in the past had faced injustice and fought it with violence, but then he had not stood alone. Half of 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. Violence could have been instinctive rather than reasoned, 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 that morning, and he bent his head against it, feeling it sting his face. A newsboy was calling out something about a dispatch bearer for President Davis of the Confederacy in America who had been 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 of what Runcorn knew. If Kristian were not guilty, he would defend him to the last stand.

  But if he were guilty, then such defense as there might be was different. Except there was no moral defense. Had it been only Elissa, 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 they are frightened or hurt enough. But whoever it was had then killed Sarah Mackeson also, simply because she was there. Nothing could justify that.

  He would not yet tell Runcorn anything about what he had learned. It was still reasonable to assume 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 when she and Elissa had parted. Where had she left Elissa, and for what reason? No doubt Runcorn had thought of that, too.

  He stopped abruptly, causing the man behind him on the footpath to collide with him and nearly lose his balance. The other man 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 assumption 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 such a thing. The scrubwoman who had answered the door the first time was probably the only servant they 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, then 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 it. “In fact, it would be a good idea,” he added, standing up. “I suppose Mrs. Beck would take someone, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t be proper alone with an artist in his studio, especially not when there’s living quarters there as well. Who’d it be, a maid?”

  “Or a friend,” Monk replied. “Which could be anyone. Easier to start by asking Allardyce himself.”

  Runcorn frowned, taking 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 hell’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 ungodly 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 d
evelopment—four portraits, one street scene, 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 farther 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 passion 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 with the vacant stare of the loser. It was powerful, desolate. A home or a fortune lost on the turn of a piece of colored 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, colors 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 leapt 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 recognized Elissa? Monk felt himself hot, and then cold. Could Runcorn possibly imagine Allardyce was so obsessed with her he had placed her there 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, poking out beneath the one he saw now, challenged him. What were they? More of Elissa? He could feel Runcorn’s presence so vividly he imagined the warmth of his body, Runcorn’s breath on his neck.

  He turned the page. The second to last was a man, thick-chested, broken-nosed, leaning against a wall and watching the women, who were again 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, Monk 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 recognized Elissa? How long would it be before he realized 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 or feeling. They destroyed any illusion that it was a harmless, controllable vice.

  “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 their own gambling houses, and thus losing more profit than they 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 that 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. Hell, 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 flickering 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. Damn Runcorn for making him unable to lie to him anymore. Damn him for being real, and for finding an honesty in himself that made him impossible to ignore. Perhaps he could get by with a half-truth? No, he couldn’t! If Runcorn found out, and he would, he would despise Monk for it. He had patronized Runcorn in the past, bypassed him as not worthy of being told the truth, but he had never told him a face-to-face lie. That was the coward’s way.

  There was no more time.

  “A lot,” he said, hating the betrayal of Kristian, knowing that Hester had not meant him to tell Runcorn.

  Runcorn’s eyes widened slightly. “How do you know?”

  “Hester went to see Kristian last night. She told me.” He tried to make his voice final, closing the subject. Surely, Allardyce would come back any moment now? He had had time to wash and shave and dress fully.

  Runcorn hesitated, drew in a long breath. He decided not to press it farther. Something in him sensed a victory, a balance. He turned away. “Mr. Allardyce!” he called.

  Allardyce appeared in the doorway holding a mug of tea in one hand. He was shaved and dressed, and he looked composed. “What now?” he said glumly. “I already told you that I know nothing. Hell! 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, Southwark.”

  “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 foghorns on the river every few minutes. The Pool was thick as pea soup. Never understand how they don’t hit each other more often.”

  “So why go that 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 pileup in Drury Lane. I want to go and see him. Broke his leg, poor devil.”

  “What pileup?” 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 sometime, 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 recognizable 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 color.

  Allardyce was pale. “Because they were good friends . . . or more,” he replied, his voice rising. “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 this man Niemann, it wouldn’t be in my studio. I assume the murderer 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.