Monk remembered to thank him, something he would not have done even a short while ago. The man nodded, but Monk’s gesture did not solve his disappointment.
Robb led Monk to a tiny office piled with papers. Monk felt a jolt of familiarity, as if he had been carried back in time to the early days of his own career. He still did not know how long ago that was.
Robb took a pile of books off the guest chair and dropped them on the floor. There was no room on the already precariously piled table.
'Sit down, sir,' he offered. He had not yet asked Monk’s name. He sat in the other chair. He was a young man in whom good manners were so schooled they came without thought.
'William Monk,' Monk introduced himself, and was idiotically relieved to see no sign of recognition in the other man’s face. The name meant nothing to him.
'I’m sorry, Mr. Monk,' Robb apologized. 'But at the moment I am investigating a murder of a man who answers fairly well to the description you have just given me. What is worse, I’m afraid, is that about half a mile away we found a coach and two horses which are almost certainly the ones you are missing. The coach is exactly as you say, and the horses are a brown and a bay, well matched, about fifteen hands or so.' He tightened his lips again. 'And the dead man was dressed in livery.'
Monk swallowed. 'When did you find him?'
'Five days ago,' Robb replied, meeting Monk’s eyes gravely. 'I’m sorry.'
'And he was murdered? You are sure?'
'Yes. The police surgeon can’t see any way he could have come by those injuries by accident.'
'Fallen off the box?' Monk suggested. Treadwell would certainly not have been the first coachman to be a little drunk or careless and topple off the driving seat, striking his head against an uneven cobblestone or the edge of the curb. Many a man had fallen under his own wheels, and even been trampled by vehicles behind him unable to stop in time.
Robb shook his head, his eyes not leaving Monk’s face. 'If he’d fallen off the box his clothes would show it. You can’t land on the road hard enough for injuries like that and leave no mark on the shoulders and back of your coat, no threads torn or pulled, no stains of mud or manure. Even though the streets are pretty dry now, there’s always something. Even his breeches would have been scuffed differently if he’d rolled.'
'Differently?' Monk said quickly. 'What do you mean? In what way were they scuffed?'
'All on the knees, as if he’d crawled quite a distance some time before he died.'
'Trying to escape?' Monk asked.
Robb chewed his lip. 'Don’t know. It wasn’t a fight. He was only struck the one blow.'
Monk was startled. 'One blow killed him? Then he crawled before he was struck? Why?'
'Not necessarily.' Robb shook his head again. 'Doctor says he bled inside his head. Could have been alive for quite a while and crawled a distance, knowing he was hurt but not how bad, and that he was dying.'
'Then could he have fallen forward and caught himself one severe blow on an angle of the box? Or even been down and kicked by one of the horses?'
'Doctor said he was struck from behind.' Robb swung his arms out to his right and brought them sideways and forward hard. 'Like that… when he was standing up. Caught him on the side of the head. Not a lot of blood-but lethal.'
'Couldn’t have been a kick?' Monk clung to the last hope.
'No. Indentation was nothing like a horse’s hoof. A long, rounded object like a crowbar or pole. Wasn’t a corner of the box, either.'
'I see.' Monk took a deep breath. 'Have you any idea who it was that killed him? Or why?' He added the last as an afterthought.
'Not yet,' Robb admitted. He looked totally puzzled, and Monk had a swift impression that he was finding the case overwhelming. Already the fear of failure loomed in his sight. 'He was hardly worth robbing. The only thing of value he had was the coach and horses, and they didn’t take them.'
'A personal enemy,' Monk concluded. The thought troubled him even more, for reasons Robb could not know. Where was Miriam Gardiner? Had she been there at the time of the murder? If so, she was either a witness or an accomplice-or else she, too, was dead. If she had not been there, then where had Treadwell left her, and why? At her will, or not?
How much should he tell Robb? If he were to serve Miriam’s interests, perhaps nothing at all-not yet, anyway.
'May I see the body?' he asked.
'Of course.' Robb rose to his feet. Identification might help. At the least it would make him feel as if he were achieving something. He would know who his victim was.
Monk thanked him and followed as he went out of his tiny office, back down the stairs and into the street, where there was a stir of air in the hot day, even if it smelled of horses and household smoke and dry gutters. The morgue was close enough to walk to, and Robb strode out, leading the way. He jammed his hands into his pockets and stared downwards, not speaking. It was not possible to know his thoughts. Monk judged him to be still in his late twenties. Perhaps he had not seen many deaths. This could be his first murder. He would be overawed by it, afraid of failure, disturbed by the immediacy of violence which was suddenly and uniquely his responsibility to deal with, an injustice he must resolve.
Monk walked beside him, keeping pace for pace, but he did not interrupt the silence. Carriages passed them moving swiftly, harnesses bright in the sun, horses’ hooves loud. The breeze was very light, only whispering through the leaves of the trees at the end of the street by the Heath. The smell of the air over the stretch of grass was clean and sweet. Somebody was playing a barrel organ.
The morgue was a handsome building, as if the architect had intended it as some kind of memorial to the dead, however temporarily there.
Robb tensed his shoulders and increased his pace, as if determined not to show any distaste for it or hesitation in his duty. Monk followed him up the steps and in through the door. The familiar odor caught in his throat. Every morgue smelled like this, cloyingly sweet with an underlying sourness, leaving a taste at the back of the mouth. No amount of scrubbing in the world removed the knowledge of death.
The attendant came out and asked politely if he could help them. He spoke with a slight lisp, and peered at Robb for a moment before he recognized him.
'You’ll be for your coachman again,' he said with a shake of his head. 'Can’t tell you any more.'
They followed him into the tiled room, which echoed their footsteps. It held a dampness from running water, and the sting of disinfectant. Beyond was the icehouse where it was necessary to keep the bodies they could not bury within a day or two. It had been five days since this particular one had been found.
'No need to bring him out,' Robb said abruptly. 'We’ll see him in there. It’s just that this gentleman might be able to tell us who he is.'
The icehouse was extremely cold. The chill of it made them gasp involuntarily, but neither complained. Monk was glad of it. He had known less efficient morgues than this.
He lifted the sheet. The body was that of a well-fed man in his thirties. He was muscular, especially in the upper torso and across his shoulders. His skin was very white until it came to his hands and neck and face, which had been darkened by sun and wind. He had brownish hair, sharp features, and was blemished by a huge bruise covering his right temple, as if someone who hated him had struck him extremely hard, just once.
Monk looked at him carefully for several minutes, but he could find no other marks at all, except one old scar on the leg, long since healed over, and a number of minor cuts and scrapes on his hands, some as old as the scar on the leg. It was what he would expect from a man who worked with horses and drove a coach for his living. There were fresh bruises and breaks on the skin on his knees and on the palms of his hands.
He studied the face last, but with the eyes closed and the animation gone in death, it was hard to make any judgment of what he had looked like beyond the mere physical facts. His features were strong, a trifle sharp, his lips narrow, his brow wide. Intelligence and charm could have made him attractive; ill temper or a streak of greed or cruelty could equally have made him ugly. So much lay in the expression, now gone.
Was this James Treadwell? Only someone from the Stourbridge household could tell him beyond doubt.
'Do you want to see the clothes?' Robb asked, watching his face.
'Please.'
But they told him no more than Robb himself had. There was only one likely conclusion: the man had been
