Slaves of Obsession wm-11 Read online

  “And the guns and ammunition were all gone,” Casbolt added.

  “Breeland?” she whispered, searching his face. He was sitting close to her and she reached toward him instinctively.

  “It looks like it,” he replied. “We went to his rooms first, looking for him,” he went on. “For Merrit, really, and he was gone, all his belongings, everything. He received a message and packed and left within a matter of minutes, according to the doorman.”

  “And Merrit?” There was terror in her voice, in her eyes, the slender hands clenched in her lap.

  He reached out and rested his fingers over hers. “We don’t know. She was at his rooms and left with him.”

  Judith started to rock sideways, shaking her head in denial. “She wouldn’t! She can’t have known! She would never …”

  “Of course not,” he said softly, tightening his hand on hers. “She won’t have had the faintest idea of what he intended to do, and it may be he will never tell her. Don’t think the worst; there is no occasion to. Merrit is young, full of hotheaded ideals, and she was certainly swept off her feet by Breeland, but she is still at heart the girl you know, and she loved her father, in spite of the stupid quarrel.”

  “What will he do to her?” There was agony in her eyes. “She’ll ask him how he got the guns. She knows her father refused to sell them to him.”

  “He’ll lie,” Casbolt said simply. “He’ll say Daniel changed his mind after all, or that he stole them … she wouldn’t mind that because she believes the cause is above ordinary morality. But she wouldn’t ever countenance violence.” His voice rang with conviction, and for a moment there was a flicker of hope in Judith’s face. For the first time she turned to Monk.

  “He obviously had allies,” Monk said to her. “Someone came to his rooms with a message. He could not have moved the guns by himself. There must have been at least two of them, more likely three.” He did not mention the forced help at gunpoint he believed had been the case. “Merrit may have been looked after by someone else during that time.”

  “Could …” She swallowed and took a moment to regain her composure. “Could she just have eloped with Breeland, and neither of them had anything to do with the … the guns?” She could not bring herself to say “murder.” “Could that have been the blackmailer?”

  Casbolt was startled. He glanced questioningly at Monk and then back at Judith.

  “He didn’t tell me,” she said quickly. “Daniel did. I knew there was something wrong, and I asked him. I don’t believe he ever kept secrets from me.” The tears welled in her eyes and spilled over.

  Casbolt looked wretched and helpless. He was gaunt with shock and exhaustion himself. Suddenly, Monk felt an overwhelming sympathy for him. He had lost his closest friend, and with the theft of the guns, also a great deal of money. He had seen the bodies themselves in all their grotesque horror, and now he had to try to support the widow who had lost not only her husband but also her child. It would be days before she even thought of her share of the financial loss, if she ever did.

  “I’m sorry you had to know.” Casbolt found his voice. “It was all very silly. Daniel befriended the young man because the poor creature was ill and alone. He paid his bills, nothing more.”

  “I know …” she said quickly.

  “It is just a matter of reputation,” he went on. “He wanted to protect you from the distress, but he would never have sold guns to the blackmailers because of where they would be used.” His eyes were gentle, full of understood pain. After all, her brother had been his cousin and friend also. “And I don’t believe he would have paid anything,” he added bitterly. “Once you pay a blackmailer you have tacitly admitted that you have something to hide. It never stops. That’s why I brought Mr. Monk now. Perhaps we could still use his help.…” He left it hanging, for her to answer.

  “Yes,” she said, shaking. “Yes, I suppose we still need to find them. I’m afraid I … I hardly thought of it.” She turned to Monk.

  “I’ll do whatever you want, Mrs. Alberton,” he promised. “But now I’d like to go with the police and see what’s happening in their investigation. That is the first thing to know.”

  “Yes …” Again the hope flashed in her eyes. “Maybe … Merrit …” She did not dare to put it into words.

  It was plain in Casbolt’s face that he held no such illusion, but he could not bring himself to tell her so.

  “Yes,” he added, nodding to Monk. “I’ll stay here. You should see what Lanyon has found. Go with him. Please consider yourself still on retainer to do that. Help us in any way you can. Make your own judgments … anything at all. Just keep us informed … please?”

  “Of course.” Monk rose to his feet and excused himself. He was immensely relieved to escape the house of tragedy. Judith’s grief was painful to be so close to, even though he would carry the knowledge of it with him wherever he went. Even so, to involve himself in some physical action was a kind of relief, and he strode towards Gower Street, where he could find a hansom and go back to the warehouse. From there he would start to look for Lanyon.

  He began in Tooley Street with the constable who had been posted outside the warehouse gates and was perfectly willing to tell him that Lanyon had questioned people closely. Then he set off in the direction of Hayes Dock, which was the closest point on the river with a crane at hand from which they could transfer the guns to barges.

  Of course it was possible they could have gone instead to the railway terminus, or across London Bridge back to the north side of the river. But movement by water seemed the obvious choice, and Monk followed the policeman’s directions to the dock, although he did not expect to find Lanyon still there.

  The place bustled with life now, teeming with carts and wagons laden with all kinds of goods. The shops were open for business and men and women carried bundles in and out. They seemed to be of every possible nature, groceries, ships’ supplies, ropes, candles, clothes for all weather, both on land and at sea.

  He walked quickly along the waterfront, traveling south, downriver. Gulls wheeled and circled, their harsh cries clear above the sound of the incoming tide against the stones, the wash of passing barges, lighters and the occasional heavier ship, and the shouts of men to each other as they worked at loading and hauling. The smells of salt, fish and tar were thick in his nostrils and with them came sudden memory of the distant past, of being a boy on the quayside in Northumberland. There he was by the sea, not a river, looking out at an endless horizon, a small stone pier, and hearing the lilt of country voices.

  Then it was gone again, and he was at Hayes Dock, and the tall, thin figure of Lanyon was unmistakable, his straight, fairish hair standing up like a brush in the wind. He was talking to a heavyset man with a dark, grimy face and hands almost black. Monk knew without asking that he was a coal backer, carrying sacks up the twenty-foot ladders from the holds of ships, across as many as half a dozen barges to the shore, and up or down more ladders, depending on the tide and the loading of the ship. It was a backbreaking job. Usually a man was past doing it anymore by the time he was forty. Often injury had taken its toll long before that. Monk could not remember how he knew. It was another of the many things lost in the past.

  But that was irrelevant now.

  Lanyon saw him and beckoned him over, then resumed his questioning of the coal backer.

  “You finished at nine yesterday evening, and you slept on the deck of that barge there, under the awning?” He smiled as if he were repeating the words to clarify them.

  “S’right,” the coal backer agreed. “Drunk, I was, an’ me ol’ woman gave me an ’ard time of it. Always goin’ on, she is. Never gives it a rest. an’ the kids screamin’ an’ wailin’. I jus’ kipped down ’ere. But I weren’t so tired I din’ ’ear them comin’ in an’ loadin’ them boxes, an’ the like. Dozens of ’em, there were. Went on fer an hour or more. Crate arter crate, there was. An’ nobody said a bleedin’ word. Not like normal folks, wot talks ter each ot
her. Jus’ back an’ for’ard, back an’ for’ard with them damn great crates. Must ’a bin lead in ’em, by the way they staggered around.” He shook his head gloomily.

  “Any idea what time that was?” Lanyon pressed.

  “Nah … ’ceptin’ it were black dark, so this time o’ the year, reckon it were between midnight an’ about four.”

  Lanyon glanced at Monk to make sure he was listening.

  “W’y?” the coal backer asked, running a filthy hand across his cheek and sniffing. “Was they stolen?”

  “Probably,” Lanyon conceded.

  “Well, they’re long gorn nah,” the man said flatly. “Be t’other side o’ the river past the Isle o’ Dogs, be now. Yer’ve no chance o’ getting ’em back. Wot was they? Damn ’eavy, wotever they was.”

  “Did the barge go up the river or down?” Lanyon asked.

  The man looked at him as if he were half-witted. “Down, o’ course! Ter the Pool, mos’ like, or could ’a bin farver. Ter Souf’end fer all I knows.”

  Barges were passing them all the time on the water. Men called to each other. The cry of gulls mixed with the rattle of chains and creak of winches.

  “How many men did you see?” Lanyon persisted.

  “Dunno. Two, I reckon. Look, I were tryin’ ter get a spot o’ kip … a little peace. I din’t look at ’em. If folks wanna shift stuff around ’alf the night in’t none o’ my business-”

  “Did you hear them say anything at all?” Monk interrupted.

  “Like wot?” The coal backer looked at him with surprise. “I said they didn’t talk. Said nuffin’.”

  “Nothing at all?” Monk insisted.

  The man’s face tightened and Monk knew he would now stick to his story, true or not.

  “Did you notice what height they were?” he asked instead.

  The man thought for a moment or two, making Monk and Lanyon wait.

  “Yeah … one of ’em were shortish, the other were taller, an’ thin. Very straight ’e stood, like ’e ’ad a crick in ’is back, but worked real ’ard … the bit I saw,” he amended. “Made enough noise, clankin’ around.”

  Lanyon thanked him and turned to walk back towards the road along the river edge. Monk kept level with him.

  “Are you sure it was the wagon from the warehouse?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Lanyon said without hesitation. “Not many people about in the middle of the night, but a few. And I sent men in other directions as well. Searched around in other yards, just in case they moved them only a short way. Not likely, but don’t want to overlook anything.” He stepped off the curb to avoid a pile of ropes. They passed Horsleydown New Stairs, and ahead of them, close together, were four more wharfs before they had to bear almost a quarter of a mile inland to go around St. Saviour’s Dock, then back to the river’s edge and Bermondsey Wall, and more wharfs.

  The Tower of London was sharp gray-white on the far bank, a little behind them. The sun was bright in patches on the water, thin films of mist and smoke clouding here and there. Ahead of them lay the Pool of London, thick with forests of masts. Strings of barges moved slowly with the tide, so heavy laden the water seemed to lap at their gunwales.

  Behind them were the dark, disease-infested, crumbling buildings of Jacob’s Island, a misnamed slum which had suffered two major outbreaks of cholera in the last decade, in which thousands had died. The smell of sewage and rotting wood filled the air.

  “What do you know about Breeland?” Lanyon asked, increasing his stride a little as if he could escape the oppression of the place, even though they were following the curve of the river into Rotherhithe and what lay ahead was no better.

  “Very little,” Monk answered. “I saw him twice, both times at Alberton’s house. He seemed to be obsessed with the Union cause, but I hadn’t thought of him as a man to resort to this kind of violence.”

  “Did he mention anyone else, any friends or allies?”

  “No, no one at all.” Monk had been trying to remember that himself. “I thought he was here alone, simply to arrange purchase-as was the man from the Confederacy, Philo Trace.”

  “But Alberton had already promised the guns to Trace?”

  “Yes. And Trace had paid a half deposit. That was why Alberton said he couldn’t go back on the deal.”

  “But Breeland kept trying?”

  “Yes. He didn’t seem to be able to accept the idea that for Alberton it was also a matter of honor. He was something of a fanatic.” Should he have been able to foresee that Breeland was so closely poised to violence that a final refusal would break his frail links with decency, even perhaps sanity? Had preventing this been his moral task, even though it was not the one for which he had been hired?

  Lanyon seemed to be deep in thought, his narrow face tight with concentration. They walked quickly. It was half a mile around the dock, and they had to avoid bales and crates, piles of rope, chains, rusty tin, men heaving loads from the towering wharf buildings across to where barges lay, riding the slurping water, bumping and scraping sides as the wash of a passing boat caught them.

  The dockers were men of all ages and types. It was labor anyone could do if his strength permitted it. It surprised Monk that he knew that. Somewhere in the past he had been to places like this. He knew the different sorts of men as he saw them: the bankrupt master butchers or bakers, grocers or publicans; lawyers or government clerks who had been suspended or discharged; servants without references, pensioners, almsmen, old soldiers or sailors, gentlemen on hard times, refugees from Poland and other mid-European countries; and the usual fair share of thieves.

  “It must have been very well planned,” Lanyon interrupted his thoughts. “Everything worked to time. The question is, did he stage the quarrel just to keep himself informed about Alberton’s movements and whether or not the guns had already gone? Did he know perfectly well that Alberton wouldn’t change his mind?”

  That had not even occurred to Monk. He had assumed the quarrels were as spontaneous as they had seemed. Breeland’s indignation had sounded entirely genuine. Could any man act so superbly? Breeland had not struck him as a man with sufficient imagination to simulate anything.

  Lanyon was waiting for an answer, looking sideways at Monk curiously.

  “It was certainly planned,” Monk admitted reluctantly. “He must have had men ready to help, with a wagon. They must have known the river and where to hire a barge. Perhaps that was the message he received which made him leave his lodgings and go that night. I had wondered where Merrit Alberton fitted in, if it was her leaving home that precipitated it.”

  Lanyon grunted. “I’d like to know her part in it too. How much idea had she as to the kind of man Breeland really is? What is she now-lover or hostage?”

  “She’s sixteen,” Monk replied, not knowing really what he meant.

  Lanyon did not answer. They were back at the water’s edge. On both sides of the river tall chimneys spewed out black smoke which drifted upwards, staining the air. Massive sheds had wheels vaulting up through their roofs like the paddles of unimaginably huge steamers. Monk remembered from somewhere in the past that the London docks could take about five hundred ships. The tobacco warehouses alone covered five acres. He could smell the tobacco now, along with tar, sulfur, the saltiness of the tide, the stench of hides, the fragrance of coffee.

  All around were the noises of labor and trade, shouts, clanging of metal on metal, scrape of wood on stone, the slap of water and whine of wind.

  A man passed them, his face dyed blue with the indigo he unloaded. Behind him was a black man with a fancy waistcoat, such as a ship’s mate might wear. A fat man with long gray hair curling on his collar carried a brass-tipped rule, dripping spirit. There was a stack of casks a dozen yards away. He had been probing them to test their content. He was a gauger-that was his work.

  A whiff of spice was sharp and sweet for a moment, then Monk and Lanyon were negotiating their way around a stack of cork, then yellow bins of sulfur, and lead-c
olored copper ore.

  Somewhere twenty yards away, sailors were singing as they worked, keeping time.

  Lanyon stopped a brass-buttoned customs officer and explained who he was, without reference to Monk.

  “Yes, sir,” the customs man said helpfully. “Wot was it about, then?”

  “A triple murder and robbery from a warehouse in Tooley Street last night,” Lanyon said succinctly. “We think the goods were loaded onto a barge and sent downriver. Probably got this far about one or two in the morning.”

  The customs man bit his lip dubiously. “Dunno, meself, but yer best chance’d be to ask the watermen, or mebbe even river finders. They often work by night as well, lookin’ fer bodies an’ the like. Never tell what the river’ll fetch up. Not lookin’ fer bodies too, are yer?”

  “No,” Lanyon said grimly. “We have all the bodies we need. I was going to try the watermen and river finders. I thought you would know of any ships bound for America from the Pool, especially any that might have gone this morning.” There was a wry expression on his lugubrious face, as if he were aware of the irony of it.

  The customs man shrugged. “Well, if there was, I reckon your murderer and thief is long gone with it!”

  “I know,” Lanyon agreed. “It’ll do me no good. I just have to be sure. He may have accomplices here. It took more than one man to do what was done last night. If any Englishman helped him, I want to catch the swine and see him hang for it. The American might be able to find some justification, although not in my book, but not our men. They’ll have done it for money.”

  “Well, come with me into my office, an’ I’ll see,” the customs man offered. “I think the Princess Maude might have gone on the early tide, and she was bound that way, but I’d ’ave ter check.”

  Lanyon and Monk followed obediently, and found that two ships had left, bound for New York, that morning. It took them until early afternoon to question the dockers, sackmakers, and ballast heavers before being satisfied that Alberton’s guns had not gone on either vessel.

  With a feeling of heavy disappointment they went to the Ship Aground for a late lunch.