Monk tried to imagine what his own house would be like if Hester never returned. It was unbearable, and he forced the idea out of his mind. His job was to learn who had killed Zenia Gadney. There was nothing he could do to change the fact of the suicide of Joel Lambourn. How did anyone deal with such a painful tragedy, find the answers that allowed them to continue on? Daily life must seem absurd and completely meaningless after such a thing. He supposed having children both hurt and helped. You would force yourself to keep going, for their sakes, even if the sight of them was a reminder of what you had lost.
But what about at night when you lay alone in the bed you had shared, and the house was silent? What could you think of then that allowed you live with pain?
“Mrs. Lambourn, please go on.”
She sighed. “Joel was very clever; in fact, he was brilliant. He worked for the government on various kinds of medical research.”
“What was his latest work?” Monk was not really interested; he just wanted to keep her talking.
“Opium,” she replied without hesitation. “He was passionately angry about the harm it is doing, when it isn’t labeled properly. And he said that happens almost all of the time. He had an enormous amount of facts and figures on the number dead because of it. He used to sit in his study and go over and over them, weighing every story against the evidence, checking to make sure he was always correct and exact.”
“To what purpose?” In spite of himself Monk was now curious.
For the first time she looked up at him. “Thousands of people die of opium poisoning, Mr. Monk, among them many children. Do you know what a ‘penny twist’ is?”
“Of course I do. A small dose of opium powder you can buy at a corner shop or apothecary.” He thought back to Mr. Clawson and his general hardware shop with all its remedies, and his fierce defense of Zenia Gadney.
“How much is in a dose?” Dinah Lambourn asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Monk admitted.
“Neither has the man who sells it, or the woman who buys it to give to her child, or to take herself for her headache, or a stomachache, or because she can’t sleep.” She gave a little gesture of helplessness with her beautiful hands. “Neither have I, for that matter. That is what Joel was concerned about. He knew of thousands of cases over the whole country where this lack of knowledge led to death. Especially children. That was only part of his work, but that was what he did.”
Monk was still trying to imagine the man who had gone to Limehouse to visit Zenia Gadney, who paid her every month. So far, the picture was so incomplete and contradictory as to be almost meaningless. And
“Was he a successful man, financially?” he asked, feeling as if he were poking at an open wound.
“Of course,” she said, as if the question were a little foolish. “He was brilliant.”
“Scientific brilliance is not always financially rewarded,” he pointed out. Was it possible she had no idea of his business affairs? Could he have gambled and lost badly? Or was it possible someone had blackmailed him over his visits to Limehouse, and when he could no longer pay, he had committed suicide rather than face the shame, and the ruin of his family? Other men, outwardly just as respectable, had done so.
“Look around you, Mr. Monk,” Mrs. Lambourn said simply. “Do we appear to be in difficult times as far as money is concerned? I assure you, I am not ignorant of my situation. Joel’s man of affairs has advised me very thoroughly in exactly what we have, and how to both use it and conserve the principal, so that we shall not fall into difficulty. We are more than comfortably provided for.”
That at least would be easy enough to check, and he would have someone do so.
“I’m glad,” he said sincerely. “Mrs. Gadney was not so fortunate. She lived very much from one month to the next.”
“I’m sorry for her, but that is not my concern,” Dinah replied. “Indeed, since the poor woman is dead, you say, it is not anyone’s now.”
He could not let it go. “Are you sure you did not know that your husband visited her every month?” he repeated. “It seems an extraordinary breach of trust, especially for a man who hated liars.”
The color washed up her face and she drew in her breath sharply. She opened her mouth to respond, and then closed it when she quite clearly realized she did not know what to say.
Monk leaned forward a little and his voice was gentle. “I think it is time for the truth, Mrs. Lambourn. I promise you I’ll find out either way, but it would be easier if you would just tell me. I give you my word that if your husband’s relationship with Zenia Gadney has no connection with her murder, I will not make it public. So now I’ll ask you again: Did you know about his visits to Zenia Gadney?”
“Yes,” she said in a whisper.
“When did you learn?”
“Years ago. I don’t remember how long.”
He did not know whether to believe her or not. Certainly there was no shock or surprise in her now; but then if she had discovered it only two months ago, grief at Lambourn’s suicide would have outweighed any other emotion in her. If she had known for years, how had she lived with it so happily, according to her? Perhaps a woman’s acceptance of such an arrangement was something a man would never understand. He could not imagine how he would ever endure it if Hester were to betray him in that way. The idea was one he could not even look at.
Dinah was regarding him with the outward calm of one who has already faced the worst she can think of and has no energy left to fear anything more.
There had been a passionate hatred in whoever had ripped open Zenia Gadney and left her on the pier like so much rubbish.
“Was Zenia Gadney the only woman your husband visited and paid, Mrs. Lambourn?” he asked. “Or were there others?”
She froze, as if he had slapped her. “She was the only one,” she replied with such certainty that he found it hard to disbelieve her. “I don’t know if she … dealt with others. But you say she didn’t.”
“Not while Dr. Lambourn was alive,” he agreed. “And after that there appeared to be no one regular.”
She looked down at her hands again.
“Why did Dr. Lambourn take his own life?” Monk asked, feeling like a torturer.
She sat still for so long that he was about to repeat the words when finally she looked up. “He didn’t, Mr. Monk. He was murdered.” She took a long, deep breath. “I told you he was engaged in a work of great importance. If he had succeeded it would have saved thousands of lives, but it would also have cost certain businesses a good portion of their profit. Joel could not be bought. He would not bend the facts to suit them, nor hide the truth. The only way they could silence him was to mock his work, deny its validity. Then, when he still would not be silent, they made it look as if he had realized he was wrong and, in despair and shame, killed himself.” She stared at him intently, her eyes brilliant, her face tense and passionately alive with the power of her feelings.
He did not believe her, and yet it was impossible not to accept that she believed it herself.
He cleared his throat, trying to steady his voice and keep his incredulity out of it. “What happened to his report?”
“They destroyed it, of course. They couldn’t afford for it to remain.”
Some vague mention of such a report stirred in his mind. It had been discredited, put down to one man’s mistaken crusade, a man whose grasp on reality had finally snapped. The whole situation had been regarded as a tragedy.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” Dinah said quietly. “But it is the truth. Joel would never have killed himself, and certainly not over poor Zenia Gadney. Perhaps they killed her, too.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Someone with a deep interest in the import and sale of opium,” she answered.
“And why would they have killed Mrs. Gadney?” It made no sense. Surely even through her grief she could see that?
Her face looked bruised, desperately vulnerable. “Perhaps to make sure of his disgrace, so no one can resurrect his work,” she answered.
“Did she have something to do with his work?”
