Slaves of Obsession Read online

  “Sir Oliver,” Rathbone corrected with a chilly smile.

  “What?”

  “My name is ‘Sir Oliver,’ not ’Mr. Rathbone.’ And the hat is important. Please describe it.”

  “It was large and extremely ugly. As far as I can recall, there was a lot of red in it, and some other, duller shade, brown or something like that—Sir Oliver.”

  “Thank you. I believe your account of your journey, even though it seems to contradict the facts that the police have.” He rose to his feet.

  “It is the truth,” Breeland said simply, also standing up. “Is that all?”

  “For the time being. Is there anything I can do for you? Do you wish any messages sent to your family, or anyone else? Do you have all you require in the way of clothes—toiletries, for example?”

  “Sufficient.” Breeland gave a slight grimace. “A soldier should think nothing of personal privation. And I have been permitted to write such letters as I wished to, so that my family might know I am in good health. I should prefer they did not learn of this absurd accusation until after it has been proved false.”

  “Then I shall continue investigating every avenue of proof that someone else is responsible for the deaths of Daniel Alberton and the two guards at the warehouse,” Rathbone said, inclining his head in the slightest of gestures and taking his leave.

  He was outside in the sun amid the traffic of the street with its noise and haste before he realized why he was so angry. Breeland’s account of his actions had tallied so precisely with Merrit’s, even to the complete irrelevancies such as the woman’s hat, that he did not doubt it was the truth. An invented tale would not run to such trivia. He was quite certain that both Merrit and Breeland had indeed made the journey by train from London to Liverpool, and there seemed no other occasion on which it could have happened. Nevertheless, he would have Monk make absolutely certain, produce witnesses if possible.

  What made him clench his hands as he strode along the footpath, holding his shoulders tight, was that not once had Breeland asked if Merrit was all right, if she was frightened, suffering, unwell, or in need of anything that could possibly be done for her. She was little more than a child, in a place that was more terrible than anything her life could have prepared her to meet, and facing the possibility of being hanged for a crime which depended wholly upon his passion for his own political cause, however justified. And yet it had not entered his mind to ask after her, even when he knew Rathbone had only just left her.

  Rathbone might admire Breeland’s dedication in time, but he could not imagine liking a man who devoted himself to the cause of mankind in general but could not care for the individuals closest to him, and who was blind to their suffering when even a word from him would have helped. The question crossed his mind whether it was people he loved at all, or simply that he needed some great, absorbing crusade to lose himself in as an excuse for evading personal involvement with its sacrifices of vanity, its compromises, its patience and its generosity of spirit. With a great cause one could be a hero. One’s own weaknesses did not show; one was not tested by intimacy.

  There was a prick of familiarity in that, an understanding of regret. The slow, quiet ache inside when he thought of Hester was also a self-knowledge, now made sharper by coming face-to-face with Lyman Breeland.

  It was late afternoon by the time Rathbone went to see Monk. It was not an interview he was looking forward to, but it was unavoidable. Breeland’s story must be substantiated by facts and witnesses. Monk was the person to find them, if they existed, and Rathbone was inclined to believe that they did.

  He arrived at Fitzroy Street just after six, and found Monk at home. He was glad. He would not have chosen to be alone with Hester. He was surprised by how little he trusted his emotions.

  Monk appeared almost to have expected him, and there was a look of satisfaction in his lean face as Rathbone came in.

  “Of course,” Monk agreed, waving for Rathbone to sit down. Hester was not in the room. Perhaps she was about some domestic duty. He did not ask.

  “I’ve heard her story.” Rathbone crossed his legs elegantly and leaned back, exactly as if he were at ease. He was a brilliant barrister, which meant he was articulate, thought rapidly and logically. He was also a very fine actor. He would not have described himself in those terms, however, at least not the last one. “And Breeland’s also,” he added. “I think it more likely true than not, but naturally we shall require substantiation.”

  “You believe it,” Monk said thoughtfully. It was impossible to tell from his expression what his own ideas were. Rathbone would have liked to know but he would not ask, not yet.

  “Merrit gave a very detailed description of the train journey to Liverpool,” Rathbone explained, telling Monk about the woman with the hat. “Breeland gave the same description, more or less. It is not proof, but it is highly indicative. You might even be able to find someone else on that train who may have seen them. That would be conclusive.”

  Monk chewed his lower lip. “It would,” he conceded. “Then who killed Alberton? And rather more awkwardly, how did the guns get from the river at Bugsby’s Marshes across the city to the Euston Square station?”

  Rathbone smiled very slightly. “That is what I shall employ you to discover. There appears to be some major fact which we have not learned. Possibly it has to do with this agent, Shearer. There is also the very unpleasant possibility that Alberton himself was involved in deception of some sort and was double-crossed by Shearer, or even by Breeland.”

  A flicker of amusement lit Monk’s eyes. “I take it that you did not greatly like Mr. Breeland.” It was made more in the tone of an observation than a question.

  Rathbone raised his eyebrows. “That surprises you?”

  “Not in the slightest. There is much in him I admire, but I cannot bring myself to like him,” Monk agreed.

  “You know, he never once asked me how Merrit was.” Rathbone heard the anger and amazement in his own voice. “He can’t see anything but his damned cause!”

  “Slavery is pretty repugnant.”

  “A lot of things are, and a great many of them spring from obsession.” Rathbone’s voice suddenly shook with anger. “And an inability to see any point of view except your own, or to empathize with another person’s pain if he is in any way different from yourself.”

  Monk’s eyes widened. “You are absolutely right,” he said with sudden, profound seriousness. “Yes … Lyman Breeland is a very dangerous man. I wish to hell we did not have to defend him in order to defend Merrit.”

  “I see no alternative, or believe me, I should have taken it,” Rathbone assured him with feeling. “Investigate everything. I don’t believe Merrit is guilty of anything beyond falling in love with a cold fanatic of a man. He may be guilty of no more than an ability to love a theory too much and people too little. And that may lead to many sins, but not necessarily the murder of Daniel Alberton. You had better look very carefully at Philo Trace, and at this agent, Shearer, and anything else you find pertinent.”

  “And as always, you are in a hurry.”

  “Just so.” Rathbone rose to his feet. “Try hard, Monk. For Merrit Alberton’s sake, and for her mother’s.”

  “But not Breeland’s …”

  “I don’t give a damn about Breeland. Find the truth.”

  Monk walked towards the door with Rathbone, his face already furrowed in thought. “It has a nice irony to it, doesn’t it,” he observed. “I hope to hell it isn’t Trace. I rather like him.”

  Rathbone did not reply; they were both too aware of men in the past they had liked, of cases where love and hate had seemed so misplaced. Some tragedies it was too easy to understand, the emotions and judgments not nearly simple enough.

  8

  MONK WOULD also dearly have liked to find a way to defend Merrit without at the same time defending Breeland, but he was too much of a realist to imagine it could be done. He had watched them together on the long journey home a
cross the Atlantic. He knew Merrit would never allow it. Whatever her belief about Breeland, or her horror at the reality of war, her own nature was based on loyalty. To have saved herself at his expense would be to deny everything she valued. It would be a kind of suicide.

  Nor did it surprise him that Breeland was still more concerned with clearing his own name, and thus the cause, than with how Merrit was enduring imprisonment and the fear and suffering that must come with it. He smiled as he thought of Rathbone’s distaste, and imagined his regard for Merrit, her youth, her enthusiasm and vulnerability. He wondered also as he strode along Tottenham Court Road, watching for a hansom, what Rathbone had felt for Judith Alberton, and if he had been sensitive to her remarkable beauty.

  The August sun was hot, shimmering up from the pavements, winking in hard, glittering light on harnesses, polished carriage doors and, at certain angles, from the windows of busy shops.

  A shoeblack boy was accepting a penny from a top-hatted customer. He winked at a girl selling muffins.

  Monk hailed a cab and gave the address of the police station, where he hoped, this early in the morning, to find Lanyon still there. It was the natural place to begin, even though he was now attempting to prove the opposite from that which had seemed to be so obviously the truth at the beginning.

  He was fortunate. He met Lanyon just as he was coming down the steps, the sun catching his fair, straight hair. He was surprised to see Monk and stopped, his face full of curiosity.

  “Looking for me?” he asked, almost hopefully.

  Monk smiled in self-mockery. “I am now retained for the defense,” he said frankly. He owed Lanyon the truth, and it was easier than lying or evasion.

  Lanyon grunted, but there was no criticism in his eyes. “Money or conviction?” he replied.

  “Money,” Monk replied.

  Lanyon grinned. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You asked!”

  Lanyon started to walk, a long, loping step, and Monk kept pace with him. “Sorry for the girl,” Lanyon went on. “Wish I could think she was innocent, but she was there in the yard.” He looked sideways at Monk, his face shadowed with regret, trying to read Monk’s reaction.

  Monk kept his own face expressionless. It cost him an effort.

  “How do you know?”

  “The watch you found … it was Breeland’s all right, of course, but he had given it to her as a keepsake.”

  “Did he say so?”

  Lanyon’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Do you think I would take his word for it? No, he didn’t mention it at all, and I didn’t bother to ask him. It doesn’t really matter what he says. Miss Dorothea Parfitt told us. She’s a friend of Miss Alberton’s, and apparently Miss Alberton was showing it to her, boasting a little.” His expression was rueful, leaving Monk to picture the scene himself and draw his own conclusions.

  They passed a strawberry seller’s cart.

  Monk said nothing. His mind was racing, trying to fit into one congruous whole the vision of Merrit bragging about the watch Breeland had given her as a token of his love, Merrit standing in the warehouse yard watching as Breeland forced her father and the two guards into the cramped and humiliating position, then shot them in cold blood, and the Merrit he had seen in Washington and on the ship home, young and loyal, confused by Breeland’s coldness towards her, constantly making excuses for him in her own mind, making herself believe the best of him, and now alone and in prison, frightened, facing trial and perhaps death, and yet determined not to betray him, even to save herself.

  Perhaps she was one of the world’s great lovers, but Breeland was not. He might be one of the world’s idealists, or one of its flawed obsessives, not so much a man who supported a cause as a man who needed a cause to support him, to fulfill a nature otherwise empty.

  Lanyon was waiting for an answer from him.

  “An ugly fact,” he granted. “I’m not yet ready to concede its meaning.”

  Lanyon shrugged.

  “What about Shearer?” Monk changed the subject. “What does he say for himself? Have you found the boy who delivered the message to Breeland at his rooms? Who sent it?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Lanyon answered. “Haven’t found the boy. Could be any of thousands, and he’s not coming forward. Doesn’t surprise me. Doesn’t want to be connected with a man who committed a triple murder, even supposing he knows we want him. Very likely he can’t read. Even if somebody’s told him, he’ll be keeping his head down.”

  “Merrit said it was Shearer who sent it.”

  “Nobody’s seen him since the day before Alberton was killed,” Lanyon replied again, watching for Monk’s response.

  They crossed the street just behind an open landau, with laughing ladies holding up pale parasols, their white and blue muslins fluttering in the slight breeze.

  A lemonade seller stood on the corner, now and then shouting out his wares. Lanyon stopped and bought one, looking enquiringly at Monk, who copied him. They both drank the liquid down without interrupting themselves to speak.

  “Have you looked for him?” Monk asked as they moved on. Already the air was getting hot, but it was nothing like the stifling closeness of Washington—and London, for all its tens of thousands, its poverty and grime, its magnificence, opulence and hypocrisy, was at peace.

  “Yes, of course we have,” Lanyon replied. “Not a whisper.”

  “Don’t you think that requires an explanation?”

  Lanyon grinned. “Well, the first one that comes to mind is that he was in league with Breeland, but had the good sense to disappear completely, instead of going openly somewhere. But then he didn’t have six thousand guns to ship.”

  “Presumably he just had the money,” Monk said dryly.

  Lanyon walked in silence for a hundred yards or so.

  “You did look into the money?” Monk asked him.

  “Of course,” Lanyon answered, stepping off onto the cross street, Monk keeping pace with him. “It’s clear enough in Casbolt and Alberton’s books. He had the half down that Trace paid him. He never received a penny from Breeland.”

  “Breeland says he paid the full amount to Shearer when the guns were handed over at the Euston Square station.”

  “Well, he would!” Lanyon skirted around two elderly gentlemen in dark coats and striped trousers, heads bent in earnest conversation. “And if he received the guns in time for the night train to Liverpool, what was it we followed down the river to Bugsby’s Marshes?”

  Monk thought for several minutes while they walked.

  “Perhaps Merrit was his witness,” he said at last, the idea forming in his mind as he spoke. “Maybe the guns went from Bugsby’s Marshes, and he simply told Merrit they went through Liverpool, but he went that way himself so she would swear to it?”

  “On the assumption you would go to America, find him, and bring him back to stand trial …” Lanyon finished for him. “You work hard for your money, Monk, I’ll give you that! I’d hire you on my case, if I were in trouble.”

  “Not on the assumption I’d bring him back!” Monk snapped, feeling the color wash up his face. “In order to deceive Merrit, because he didn’t want her to know the truth, couldn’t afford for her to know. He may well believe that anything he does, including triple murder, is justified by the cause, but he knows damned well that Merrit wouldn’t. Especially when one of the victims was her father.”

  Lanyon’s eyes widened, and he slowed his stride considerably. “I suppose that’s not impossible. You mean Shearer and Breeland were accomplices, Breeland got the guns, and Shearer got the money? Poor Alberton was killed. Which way did the guns go?”

  “Down the river to Bugsby’s Marshes, and across the Atlantic from there,” Monk answered as they crossed a busy street. “Breeland went to Liverpool and sailed separately, taking Merrit with him. That may have been his original intention, and he might have had to change his mind because of Merrit’s obsession with him. Either way, she is innocent of her fathe
r’s death.”

  “So Shearer killed Alberton in order to steal the guns and sell them to Breeland?”

  “Why not?” Monk’s spirits rose. “Doesn’t it fit with everything we know?”

  “Apart from Breeland’s watch at the warehouse yard, yes.” Lanyon looked sideways at him, stepping up onto the curb. “How do you explain that?”

  “I don’t … yet. Maybe she dropped it there earlier?”

  “Doing what?” Lanyon asked incredulously. “Why would Merrit Alberton be at the warehouse in Tooley Street? Not a usual place for a young lady in the normal course of her summer social round.”

  Even as he was denying it, Monk realized how desperately he was reaching for an escape for Merrit. “Perhaps she and Breeland went there to make some agreement with Shearer earlier in the evening?”

  “Why there?”

  “To verify the merchandise. Breeland wouldn’t pay for guns unless he knew what he was getting.”

  Lanyon squinted at him. “Didn’t trust him to sell the right guns, even though he was Alberton’s agent, but did trust him enough to hand over the whole amount of the money to him and sail off to America in the absolute faith that the guns would be shipped to him, and not either kept or sold to someone else?” He pursed his lips. “What was to stop Shearer from pocketing the money and selling the guns again, or even simply leaving them where they were? Not a lot Breeland could do about it from New York!”

  Another idea flashed into Monk’s mind. “Maybe that was why he took Merrit with him? Insurance against being cheated.”

  “By Alberton, maybe … but why would Shearer care what happened to Merrit? He killed Alberton anyway.”

  Monk remembered Breeland’s face when he had been told about the murders. “I don’t believe Breeland knew about that. He believed Shearer was acting out of principle, that he believed just as passionately as he did himself in the fight against slavery.” He saw Lanyon’s look of comical incredulity. “Talk to Breeland,” he said quickly. “Listen to him. He’s a fanatic. In his view, all right-minded people believe as he does.”