suppose I should have asked. It didn’t seem important. It looked obvious what had happened. I admit, I was shaken.” His tone was apologetic. “I admired his work, and insofar as I knew him, I liked him.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. The sound of footsteps echoed outside in the passage, and then faded away.
Monk did not prompt Wembley to go on. He felt touched by the same sense of regret, even though he had never known Dr. Lambourn.
“He had a very nice sense of humor,” Wembley went on quietly. “He had a keen amusement at the absurd, with a kind of affection, as if oddities pleased him.” He stared into the distance, into the past, it seemed to Monk. “If there was something wrong, something strange about his death,” he went on after a moment, “I’d be happy if you found it. It is one of those cases about which I would much rather be mistaken.”
Monk returned to the local police station in Greenwich but was not surprised when a young sergeant told him that the case was closed, and that such tragedies were best left alone.
“Dr. Lambourn was a very well thought of gentleman, sir,” he said with a tight smile. “It shakes the whole neighborhood when something like that happens. Not really River Police business.”
Monk struggled to think of a reason why he could ask if anyone had moved a bottle of water or alcohol, or something that could have contained a solution of opium, but the sergeant was right. It was not River Police business.
“I would like to speak with the policeman first on the scene,” he said instead. “It may have a connection with a case that is our business. A murder,” he added, in case the young man was inclined to take it lightly.
The constable’s smooth face yielded nothing. He met Monk’s eyes blandly.
“Sorry, sir, but that’d probably be Constable Watkins, and he’s out Deptford way right now.” He smiled very slightly. Monk did not know if it was meant to be charm, or insolence. He thought the latter.
“Not be back here until tomorrow,” the young man continued. “Couldn’t tell you anything anyway. Poor gentleman’d been dead for hours, so the doctor told us. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”
Monk hid his irritation with difficulty.
“Who was in charge of the case?”
“Some senior man the government brought in, Dr. Lambourn being an important person,” the young man replied. “Kept it … discreet.” He loaded the last word with importance.
“And you don’t know the name of this man?”
“That’s right, sir, I don’t.” Again he smiled and met Monk’s eyes boldly.
Monk thanked him and left, feeling thwarted, but also that he was wasting his time. Perhaps Lambourn had taken his opium in alcohol, possibly a lot of it, and it was a small kindness to conceal the fact. Grudgingly he acknowledged that those who found him might well have hidden it, for compassion’s sake. He might have done the same himself.
He spoke to Orme the next morning at the River Police headquarters in Wapping. They were standing on the dockside in front of the station, staring across the river, watching the lighters as they made their way upstream in long strings, ten to fifteen of them carrying cargo to the Pool of London ready to be loaded and sent to every port in the world.
“Been through all the records I can find,” Orme said unhappily. “Asked everyone. No crime similar enough to this to make it worth comparing, thank the Lord. Can’t find anyone who’s even been attacked in the last couple of years, except for the ordinary beatings or stranglings. No one sliced open and torn to pieces.” His mouth pulled thin in distaste. “There’s no trace of him doing this before, either side of the river.” He shook his head. “I think this is a one-off, sir. And I don’t know if it had anything to do with Dr. Lambourn or not. But I can’t find anyone else she knew, except the odd local people to talk to. Shopkeepers, a laundress, old man a couple of streets away, but he’s eighty if he’s a day, and can hardly walk, let alone get himself to the pier.”
“And Lambourn was two months dead by that time,” Monk added. “Then we’re left with someone connected to Lambourn. What could someone think he said or confessed to Zenia Gadney that was worth killing her for-and killing her like that?”
“To make us think it was a lunatic, and to do with Limehouse and her profession, not with Lambourn,” Orme answered.
Monk did not argue. “And what made Lambourn kill himself when he did? Why not sooner, or later?” he asked, as much to himself as to Orme. “What changed so terribly?”
Orme said nothing. He knew he was not expected to reply.
That was also what Monk asked Lambourn’s assistant a couple of hours later. He was a young doctor named Daventry, somewhat unhappy at now working for Lambourn’s replacement, who was a stiff, busy man who had no time to speak with Monk himself, and was only too happy to find an excuse to send him to someone else.
Monk did not phrase his question quite so boldly. He was standing in a brightly lit laboratory full of jars and bottles, vials, burners, basins, and retorts. All kinds of glass and metal equipment stood around on surfaces. One complete wall was obscured by stacks of files.
“You worked closely with Dr. Lambourn before his death?” Monk began.
“Yes,” Daventry answered, pushing his wild, dark hair out of his eyes and looking at Monk aggressively. “What are you after now? Why can’t you leave him alone? He was a good doctor, better than that-” He stopped abruptly. “Don’t waste my time. What is it you want?”
Monk was pleased he found someone loyal to Lambourn, even if it might make his own task more difficult.
“I’m River Police, not government,” he said.
“What difference does that make?” Daventry challenged him. Then he peered forward to look more closely at Monk. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I’m just tired of hearing Dr. Lambourn run down by a lot of people who didn’t know him and didn’t believe his findings.”
Monk changed his approach instantly. “You did believe in them?” he asked.
“I don’t know for myself.” Daventry was scrupulously honest. “Except bits here and there. I collected some of the figures for him. But he was meticulous, and he never included anything he couldn’t verify. Even cut some of my findings because I didn’t double-check it with at least two sources.”
“About opium?”
“Among other things. He worked on all kinds of medicines. But, yes, that was the one he cared about most recently.”
“Why?”
Daventry’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?” he said incredulously.
“Yes. What was he researching, and for whom?”
“The public’s use of opium, because it’s killing too many people. For the government, who else?” Daventry looked at Monk as if he were a particularly stupid schoolchild. He saw the confusion in Monk’s face. “The government is looking to pass a bill to regulate the use of opium in medicines,” he explained a little wearily, as if he had already said it too many times, to too many people who were apparently incapable of understanding.
“To stop people buying it?” Now it was Monk who was incredulous. A small dose of opium, as in a “penny twist,” was the only way to kill pain, other than to drink oneself insensible to it, and to everything else. “Why, for heaven’s sake?” he asked. “Nobody’ll pass an act like that, and it would be impossible to police. You’d have two- thirds of the population in jail.”
Daventry looked at him with heavy exasperation. “No, sir, just to regulate it, so that if you go to buy something with opium in it-such as Battley’s Sedative, which is much like laudanum, except it’s with calcium hydrate and sherry, not distilled water and alcohol-you’ll know for sure how much opium it contains. And that it’s pure opium, not opium cut with something else.”
“Opium cut with something else?” Monk was puzzled.
“Do you know what’s in Dover’s Powder, sir?” Daventry asked.
Monk had no idea. “Apart from opium? No,” he admitted.
“Saltpeter, tartar, licorice, and ipecacuanha,” Daventry told him. “What about chlorodyne?”
