Monk glanced up at Orme.
Orme frowned. He was a quiet, solid man, used to the river and to those who preyed on its business and its pleasures. “Wonder if the blow killed him, or if he drowned,” he said thoughtfully. “An’ what was he doing down here anyway? Was he alone? How far upstream did he go into the water?”
Monk was thinking of the blood in the dead man’s eyes. The eyes did not look like those of someone who had drowned. He bent down and lifted one eyelid again, then the other. It was the same-stained with small hemorrhages. Carefully, using both hands, he pulled the jacket open and the collar of the wet shirt, exposing the thin neck.
Orme let out a sigh between his teeth.
“Oh, Gawd!” Coburn said hoarsely.
The throat was horribly swollen, but the thin line of a ligature was still unmistakable, biting deep into the flesh. Irregularly, every few inches, there were spreading bruises, as if whatever it was had knots in it that had further lacerated the flesh.
“There’s no way that happened by accident,” Monk said grimly. “I’m afraid we very definitely have a murder. Let’s get him out of the water and ask the police surgeon to tell us what he can. And we’ll speak to Mr. ’Orrie Jones, who so fortuitously found him. And Tosh. What’s the rest of his name?” He looked at Coburn.
“Never heard it,” Coburn said apologetically.
They waded ashore, Orme and Coburn dragging the body. Then the three of them lifted it awkwardly onto the bank, scrambling to keep a footing as the mud gave way beneath their feet. The last thing Monk wanted was to land spread-eagled in the water, soaked to the skin. It was bad enough that his shoes were sodden and his trouser legs were flapping coldly around his ankles.
They laid the body in the cart that Coburn had sent for, and then followed behind it in a grim troop across the fields to the roadway. Then they climbed up into it for the rest of the journey.
Monk was only slowly getting used to the tidal waters of the Thames, even this far upstream. Initially he had assumed that the body would have been carried down toward the sea, but just in time he prevented himself from saying so.
“How far do you think he was carried?” he asked Coburn. Ignorance of the local tide was acceptable. There were several factors involved: speed, currents, obstacles, as well as time.
“Depends where ’e went in,” Coburn said, chewing his lip. He guided the horse to the right, down toward Chiswick. “Could a bin carried both ways, if nothing on the shore stopped ’im. ’Ard to tell.”
“Many barges this far up?” Monk asked. He had seen only two all the time they had been there, and it was now midmorning.
“Not many,” Coburn replied. “An’ they usually stay as far out as they can. Nobody wants to get caught up on sandbanks, fallen logs, rubbish. Easier to find out what ’e were doin’ in the water at all than try to reckon where ’e went in by where we found ’im.”
The town was barely a mile away, and they arrived in clear sunshine. The streets were full of carts, drays, wagons of one sort or another, and the pavements were crowded with people. Several barges lay moored at the docks, loading and unloading.
The police surgeon had come from the city and took charge of what was left of Mickey Parfitt, promising a report in good time. He seemed to be waiting for a challenge, a demand for haste, but he did not get one. Monk already knew that Parfitt had been strangled and had taken a hard blow to the head first-there was no sense in hitting a man after he was dead. The weapon that had struck him could have been almost anything. What had strangled him was more interesting, but the shape of the bruises told him that. The surgeon would have to cut the ligature off to find out more.
“I want to see this Tosh,” Monk said to Coburn as they left the morgue.
“Yes, sir. Thought yer would. Got ’im at the station. Unusually ’elpful, ’e is.” Again the look of distaste twisted his mouth.
Monk made no reply but followed Coburn across the roadway and into the police station, where Tosh was sitting in the interview room, sipping a mug of tea and eating a large, sugary bun. He looked suitably sober, as befitted a man who had reported finding a corpse. However, Monk detected a certain sheen of satisfaction in his long face as he rose to his feet slowly, careful not to spill his tea.
“Morning, gentlemen,” Tosh said in a remarkably well-modulated voice. He was a tall man, narrow- shouldered, with rather a long nose and decidedly frizzy hair, which stood out all over his head. “Sad business.” He turned to Monk, recognizing authority immediately. “Tosh Wilkin. What can I do to ’elp you?”
Monk introduced himself.
“ ’Ow do yer do, Mr. Monk?” Tosh said soberly. “All the way up from Wapping, eh? You must take it all very serious.”
“Murder is always serious, Mr. Wilkin.”
“Murder, is it?” Tosh affected mild surprise. “ ’Ere was I ’oping ’e were just unfortunate, an’ fell in by ’imself.”
“Really? You didn’t notice the ligature around his neck?”
Tosh affected innocence. “The what?”
“The knotted rope around his neck,” Monk elaborated. He watched Tosh’s eyes, his face, the long, scrupulously clean hands at his sides. Nothing gave him away.
“Can’t say as I did,” Tosh replied. “But, then, I didn’t look more ’n to make sure ’Orrie wasn’t ’avin’ visions, like. Police business, either way. Don’t do for ordinary folk to meddle. ‘Don’t touch’ is my watchword. Just called Constable Coburn ’ere.”
He hesitated, as if undecided about exactly how to go on. He looked only at Monk, avoiding the eyes of the other two. “Actually, Mr. Monk, to tell the truth, ’Orrie came to me early, about ’alf past six in the morning. I could ’ave brained ’im for waking me up. But ’e said ’e took Mickey out to ’is boat, about eleven o’clock or so, last night. Mickey told ’im to go back for ’im in about an hour. Well, when ’Orrie went, there were nobody there. No Mickey, no anyone. ’E said ’e ’ung around for a while, calling out, looking, but then ’e reckoned ’e must ’ave got it wrong, an’ ’e went ’ome. But when Mickey wasn’t there this morning, ’Orrie was scared something ’ad ’appened.”
“At half past six?” Monk said with disbelief.
“That’s it,” Tosh agreed. “You see, I didn’t believe ’im. I told ’im to get out an’ leave me alone. Go back to bed like civilized folk, and don’t be so stupid. An’ off ’e went.”
Monk waited impatiently.
“Then I got to worrying meself,” Tosh continued, looking at Monk gravely. “So instead o’ going back to sleep, I lay there for a while, then I got up and dressed, an’ I was on me way down the path, just to check up, so to speak, when I saw ’Orrie come up at a run, all red-faced an’ out o’ breath.”
Monk looked from Tosh to Constable Coburn, and back again. “Where is this boat that ’Orrie took Mickey to last night?” he asked.
“Moves around,” Coburn answered.
“Moored up between ’ere an’ Barnes,” Tosh said, and gestured upriver. “Which don’t mean to say poor Mickey went into the river there. Tides can play funny games wi’ things-floaters in particular.”
“So ’Orrie took Parfitt to his boat shortly after eleven o’clock last night, and went to collect him an hour or so later, and he wasn’t there?”
Tosh nodded his fuzzy head. “Yer got it. Given, o’ course, that ’Orrie isn’t always that exact with time.”
“Is ’Orrie short for Horace?”
Tosh half hid a smile. “ ’Orrible. When you’ve met ’im, you’ll see why. ’E’s not …” He tapped his forehead, and left the rest to Monk’s imagination.
Monk remembered the corpse’s withered arm. “I assume Mr. Parfitt was not able to row himself? Was this usually Mr. Jones’s job?”
“Yes. ’E obeys well enough, but not much use for anything else.”
“I see. And do you know for yourself that what he says is true, or do you just believe him?”
Tosh’s eyes opened very wide with exaggerated surprise, sending a row of wrinkles up his forehead. “I believe ’im ’cos it makes sense, and ’e ’asn’t the wit to lie. One of the benefits of employing idiots-they’re not imaginative enough to tell a decent lie. And ’aven’t the brains to remember it if they did.”
Monk forbore from responding to that. “So after he had appealed to you, at about six-thirty in the morning,”
