'That's right. No idea what the 'R' stands for, but maybe he'll be able to tell us himself tomorrow. Anyway, you can try the tailor in the morning. A man often knows his own handiwork.”
'Yes yes. I'll take a piece of it to show him. Can I see the boy's clothes?”
'They're by his bed, over in the next ward. I'll take you.' He turned and led the way along the wide, bare corridor, and into a ward lined with beds, grey blanketed, each showing the outline of a figure lying or propped up. At the farther end a pot-bellied stove gave off quite a good heat, and even as they walked up, a nurse staggered past them with a bucketful of fresh coals to keep it stoked.
Evan was reminded sharply of Hester Latterly, the young woman he had met so soon after his first encounter with Monk. She had gone out to the Crimea and nursed with Florence Nightingale. He could not even imagine the courage it must have taken to do that, to face that raging disease, the carnage of the battlefield, the constant pain and death, and to find within oneself the resources to keep on fighting to overcome, to offer help and to give some kind of comfort to those you were powerless even to ease, let alone to save.
No wonder such an anger still burned inside her at what she perceived to be incompetence in medical administration! How she and Monk had quarrelled! He smiled even as he thought of it. Monk loathed her sharp tongue at the same time as he admired her. And she despised the hardness she thought she saw in him, the arrogance and disregard for others. And yet when he had faced the worst crisis in his life it had been she who had stood beside him, she who had refused to let him give in, had fought for him when it looked as if he could not win, and worst of all, did not deserve to.
How she rebelled against rolling bandages, sweeping floors and carrying coals when she was capable of so much more, and had done it in the field surgeons' tents when all the doctors were already doing all they could. She had wanted to reform so much, and the eagerness had got in her way.
They were at the end of the ward now and Riley had stopped by a bed where a young man lay, white-faced, motionless. Only the clouding of his breath on a glass could have told if he was still alive. There was nothing for the eye to see.
Evan recognised him from the alley. The features were the same, the curve of eyelid, the almost black hair, rather long nose, sensitive mouth. The bruising did not hide that, and the blood had been cleared away. Evan found himself willing him to live, aching with the tension in his own body as if by strength of his feeling he could make it happen, and yet at the same time, terrified of the pain of it when he woke and felt his broken body, and his memory returned.
Who was he R. Duff? Was the older man related to him? And what had happened in that alley? Why had they been there? What appetite had taken them to such a place on a January night?
'Give me the trousers,' Evan whispered, a wave of horror and revulsion returning to him. 'I'll take them to the tailor.”
'You'd be better with the coat,' Riley replied. 'It's got the label on it, and there's less blood.”
'Less blood? The other man's coat was soaked in it!”
'I know.' Riley shrugged his thin shoulders. 'With this one it's the trousers. Maybe they all went down together in a scrum But if you want the tailor to be fit for anything, take the jacket. No need to give the poor man a turn.”
Evan took it after he had examined them both. Like the dead man's, they were torn in several places, filthy with mud and effluent from the gutter, and stained with blood on coat sleeves and tails, and the trousers were sodden.
Evan left the hospital horrified, exhausted in mind and spirit as well as body, and now so cold he could not stop shivering. He took a hansom home to his rooms. He would not get in an omnibus with that dreadful jacket and he had no wish to sit among other people, decent people at the end of their day's work, who had no idea of what he had seen and felt and of the young man who lay invisible in St. Thomas's, and who might or might not awaken again.
He found the tailor at nine o'clock. He spoke personally to Mr.
Jiggs of Jiggs & Muldrew, a rotund man who needed all his own art to disguise his ample stomach and rather short legs.
'What may I do for you, sir?' he said with some distaste as he saw the parcel under Evan's arm. He disapproved of gentlemen who bundled up clothes. It was no way to treat a highly skilled piece of workmanship.
Evan had no time or mood for catering to anyone's sensitivities.
'Do you have a client by the name of R. Duff, Mr. Jiggs?' he asked bluntly.
'My client list is a matter of confidence, sir…”
'This is a case of murder,' Evan snapped, sounding more like Monk than his own usually soft-spoken manner. 'The owner of this suit is lying at death's door in St. Thomas's. Another man, also wearing a suit with your label in it, is in the morgue. I do not know who they are… other than this…' He ignored Jiggs's pasty face and wide eyes.
'If you can tell me, then I demand that you do so.' He spilled out the jacket on to the tailor's table.
Jiggs started backwards as if it had been alive and dangerous.
'Will you look at it, please,' Evan commanded.
'Oh my God!' Mr. Jiggs put a clammy hand to his brow. 'Whatever happened?”
'I don't know yet,' Evan answered a trifle more gently. 'Will you please look at that jacket and tell me if you know for whom you made it?”
'Yes. Yes, of course. I always know my gentlemen, sir.' Gingerly Mr.
Jiggs unfolded the coat only sufficiently to see his own label. He glanced at it, touched the cloth with his forefinger, then looked at Evan. 'I made that suit for young Mr. Rhys Duff, of Ebury Street, sir.' He looked extremely pale. 'I am very sorry indeed that he seems to have met with a disaster. It truly grieves me, sir.”
Evan bit his lip. 'I'm sure. Did you also make a suit in a brown wool for another gentleman, possibly related to him? This man would be in his middle-fifties, average height, quite solidly built. He had grey hair, rather fairer than Rhys Duffs I should think.”
'Yes, sir.' Jiggs took a shaky breath. 'I made several suits for Mr.
Leighton Duff, he's Master Rhys's father. I fear it may be he you are describing. Was he injured also?”
'I am afraid he is dead, Mr. Jiggs. Can you tell me the number in Ebury Street. I am obliged to inform his family.”
'Oh why, of course. How very terrible. I wish there were some way I could assist.' He stepped back as he said it, but there was a look of acute distress in his face, and Evan was disposed to believe him, at least in part.
'The number in Ebury Street?' he repeated.
'Yes… yes. I think it is thirty-four, if my memory serves, but I'll look in my books. Yes, of course I will.”
However, Evan did not go straight to Ebury Street. Rather he returned first to St. Thomas's. There was a sense in which it would be kinder to the family if he could tell them at least that Rhys Duff was still alive, perhaps conscious. And if he could speak, maybe he could tell what had happened, and Evan would have to ask fewer questions.
And there was part of him which was simply not ready yet to go and tell some woman that her husband was dead, and her son may or may not survive, and no one knew yet in what degree of injury, pain or disability.
He found Riley straight away, looking as if he had been there all night. Certainly he seemed to be wearing the same clothes with precisely the same wrinkles and bloodstains on them.
'He's still alive,' he said as soon as he saw Evan, and before Evan could ask. 'He stirred a bit about an hour ago. Let's go and see if he's come around.' And he set off with a long-legged stride as if he too were eager to know.
The ward was busy. Two young doctors were changing bandages and examining wounds. A nurse who looked no more than fifteen or sixteen was carrying buckets of slops, her shoulders bent as she strove to keep them off the floor. An elderly woman struggled with a bucket of coals and Evan offered to take them from her, but she refused, looking nervously at Riley. Another nurse gathered up soiled laundry and brushed past them with her face averted. Riley seemed hardly to notice, his attention was solely upon the patients.
Evan followed him to the end of the ward where he saw with a rush of relief, overtaken instantly by anxiety, that Rhys Duff lay motionless on his back, but his eyes were open, large, dark eyes which stared up at the ceiling and seemed to see only horror.
