“And the guns and ammunition were all gone,” Casbolt added.
“Breeland?” she whispered, searching his face. He was sitting close to her and she reached toward him instinctively.
“It looks like it,” he replied. “We went to his rooms first, looking for him,” he went on. “For Merrit, really, and he was gone, all his belongings, everything. He received a message and packed and left within a matter of minutes, according to the doorman.”
“And Merrit?” There was terror in her voice, in her eyes, the slender hands clenched in her lap.
He reached out and rested his fingers over hers. “We don’t know. She was at his rooms and left with him.”
Judith started to rock sideways, shaking her head in denial. “She wouldn’t! She can’t have known! She would never …”
“Of course not,” he said softly, tightening his hand on hers. “She won’t have had the faintest idea of what he intended to do, and it may be he will never tell her. Don’t think the worst; there is no occasion to. Merrit is young, full of hotheaded ideals, and she was certainly swept off her feet by Breeland, but she is still at heart the girl you know, and she loved her father, in spite of the stupid quarrel.”
“What will he do to her?” There was agony in her eyes. “She’ll ask him how he got the guns. She knows her father refused to sell them to him.”
“He’ll lie,” Casbolt said simply. “He’ll say Daniel changed his mind after all, or that he stole them … she wouldn’t mind that because she believes the cause is above ordinary morality. But she wouldn’t ever countenance violence.” His voice rang with conviction, and for a moment there was a flicker of hope in Judith’s face. For the first time she turned to Monk.
“He obviously had allies,” Monk said to her. “Someone came to his rooms with a message. He could not have moved the guns by himself. There must have been at least two of them, more likely three.” He did not mention the forced help at gunpoint he believed had been the case. “Merrit may have been looked after by someone else during that time.”
“Could …” She swallowed and took a moment to regain her composure. “Could she just have eloped with Breeland, and neither of them had anything to do with the … the guns?” She could not bring herself to say “murder.” “Could that have been the blackmailer?”
Casbolt was startled. He glanced questioningly at Monk and then back at Judith.
“He didn’t tell me,” she said quickly. “Daniel did. I knew there was something wrong, and I asked him. I don’t believe he ever kept secrets from me.” The tears welled in her eyes and spilled over.
Casbolt looked wretched and helpless. He was gaunt with shock and exhaustion himself. Suddenly, Monk felt an overwhelming sympathy for him. He had lost his closest friend, and with the theft of the guns, also a great deal of money. He had seen the bodies themselves in all their grotesque horror, and now he had to try to support the widow who had lost not only her husband but also her child. It would be days before she even thought of her share of the financial loss, if she ever did.
“I’m sorry you had to know.” Casbolt found his voice. “It was all very silly. Daniel befriended the young man because the poor creature was ill and alone. He paid his bills, nothing more.”
“I know …” she said quickly.
“It is just a matter of reputation,” he went on. “He wanted to protect you from the distress, but he would never have sold guns to the blackmailers because of where they would be used.” His eyes were gentle, full of understood pain. After all, her brother had been his cousin and friend also. “And I don’t believe he would have paid anything,” he added bitterly. “Once you pay a blackmailer you have tacitly admitted that you have something to hide. It never stops. That’s why I brought Mr. Monk now. Perhaps we could still use his help.…” He left it hanging, for her to answer.
“Yes,” she said, shaking. “Yes, I suppose we still need to find them. I’m afraid I … I hardly thought of it.” She turned to Monk.
“I’ll do whatever you want, Mrs. Alberton,” he promised. “But now I’d like to go with the police and see what’s happening in their investigation. That is the first thing to know.”
“Yes …” Again the hope flashed in her eyes. “Maybe … Merrit …” She did not dare to put it into words.
It was plain in Casbolt’s face that he held no such illusion, but he could not bring himself to tell her so.
“Yes,” he added, nodding to Monk. “I’ll stay here. You should see what Lanyon has found. Go with him. Please consider yourself still on retainer to do that. Help us in any way you can. Make your own judgments … anything at all. Just keep us informed … please?”
“Of course.” Monk rose to his feet and excused himself. He was immensely relieved to escape the house of tragedy. Judith’s grief was painful to be so close to, even though he would carry the knowledge of it with him wherever he went. Even so, to involve himself in some physical action was a kind of relief, and he strode towards Gower Street, where he could find a hansom and go back to the warehouse. From there he would start to look for Lanyon.
He began in Tooley Street with the constable who had been posted outside the warehouse gates and was perfectly willing to tell him that Lanyon had questioned people closely. Then he set off in the direction of Hayes Dock, which was the closest point on the river with a crane at hand from which they could transfer the guns to barges.
Of course it was possible they could have gone instead to the railway terminus, or across London Bridge back to the north side of the river. But movement by water seemed the obvious choice, and Monk followed the policeman’s directions to the dock, although he did not expect to find Lanyon still there.
The place bustled with life now, teeming with carts and wagons laden with all kinds of goods. The shops were open for business and men and women carried bundles in and out. They seemed to be of every possible nature, groceries, ships’ supplies, ropes, candles, clothes for all weather, both on land and at sea.
He walked quickly along the waterfront, traveling south, downriver. Gulls wheeled and circled, their harsh cries clear above the sound of the incoming tide against the stones, the wash of passing barges, lighters and the occasional heavier ship, and the shouts of men to each other as they worked at loading and hauling. The smells of salt, fish and tar were thick in his nostrils and with them came sudden memory of the distant past, of being a boy on the quayside in Northumberland. There he was by the sea, not a river, looking out at an endless horizon, a small stone pier, and hearing the lilt of country voices.
Then it was gone again, and he was at Hayes Dock, and the tall, thin figure of Lanyon was unmistakable, his straight, fairish hair standing up like a brush in the wind. He was talking to a heavyset man with a dark, grimy face and hands almost black. Monk knew without asking that he was a coal backer, carrying sacks up the twenty-foot ladders from the holds of ships, across as many as half a dozen barges to the shore, and up or down more ladders, depending on the tide and the loading of the ship. It was a backbreaking job. Usually a man was past doing it anymore by the time he was forty. Often injury had taken its toll long before that. Monk could not remember how he knew. It was another of the many things lost in the past.
But that was irrelevant now.
Lanyon saw him and beckoned him over, then resumed his questioning of the coal backer.
“You finished at nine yesterday evening, and you slept on the deck of that barge there, under the awning?” He smiled as if he were repeating the words to clarify them.
“S’right,” the coal backer agreed. “Drunk, I was, an’ me ol’ woman gave me an ’ard time of it. Always goin’ on, she is. Never gives it a rest. an’ the kids screamin’ an’ wailin’. I jus’ kipped down ’ere. But I weren’t so tired I din’ ’ear them comin’ in an’ loadin’ them boxes, an’ the like. Dozens of ’em, there were. Went on fer an hour or more. Crate arter crate, there was. An’ nobody said a bleedin’ word. Not like normal folks, wot talks ter each other. Jus’ back an’ for’ard, back an’ for’ard with them damn great crates. Must ’a bin lead in ’em, by the way they staggered around.” He shook his head gloomily.
“Any idea what time that was?” Lanyon pressed.
“Nah … ’ceptin’ it were black dark, so this time o’ the year, reckon it were between midnight an’ about four.”
Lanyon glanced at Monk to make sure he was listening.
“W’y?” the coal backer asked, running a filthy hand across his cheek and sniffing. “Was they stolen?”
“Probably,” Lanyon conceded.
“Well, they’re long gorn nah,” the man said flatly. “Be t’other side o’ the river past the Isle o’ Dogs, be now.
