Slaves of Obsession

Could Breeland’s story be true? That was the place to start. The wagons loaded with six thousand guns would be big enough, passing through the streets in the middle of the night.

But time was a whole different question. Breeland had said the note had come to him about midnight. Alberton was still alive then. He was killed around three, according to the medical evidence, and the reasonable deduction as to the loading of the guns. The wagons must have left immediately after. How long would it take them heavily laden, but in the traffic-free still of the night?

He started to walk rapidly, then caught a cab, following the shortest route over the river towards the Euston Square station, thinking furiously all the way. Even at a trot, which wagons could not have done, he could not have made it in less than half- to three-quarters of an hour.

He paid the cabdriver and strode into the station. He asked to see the stationmaster, quoting Lanyon’s name as if he had a right to.

“It is regarding illegal shipment of arms,” he said grimly. “And triple murder. My information must be exact. Lives depend upon it, and perhaps Britain’s reputation for honor.”

The clerk obeyed with alacrity. Let the decision for dealing with this be somebody else’s. “I’ll fetch Mr. Pickering, sir!”

The stationmaster kept him waiting only fifteen minutes. He was an agreeable man with a thick gray mustache and handsome side-whiskers. He welcomed Monk into his office.

“How can I be of assistance, sir?” he said mildly, but he eyed Monk up and down, weighing his importance and reserving judgment. He had heard wild statements before and was not easily impressed.

Monk would not retreat, but he decided to phrase his request carefully.

“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Pickering. As you are no doubt aware, there was a triple murder in Tooley Street on June twenty-eighth, and a large shipment of British guns was stolen and exported to America.”

“All London is aware of it, sir,” Pickering replied. “A very enterprising agent of enquiry tracked down the murderer and brought him back to stand trial for it.”

Monk felt a sharp prickle of satisfaction-he did not like to call it pride.

“Indeed. William Monk,” he introduced himself, allowing himself a faint smile. “Now I need to be sure that at that trial the man does not escape justice. He is claiming that he bought the guns quite legally, paying full price for them, and that he shipped them out from this station, on the train to Liverpool, the very night that the murders took place. There was a train to Liverpool that night?”

“No trains before six in the morning, sir.” Pickering shook his head. “We don’t run night trains on this line.”

Monk was taken aback. Suddenly the one thing he was sure of had slipped away.

“None at all?” he pressed.

“Well, the occasional special.” Pickering swallowed hard, but his eyes did not waver. “Private hire. Don’t often refuse one of those.”

“Was there one that night? Friday, the twenty-eighth of June? It would really be the early hours of Saturday morning.”

“I can look it up,” Pickering offered, turning to look at a sheaf of papers on a shelf behind his desk.

Monk waited impatiently. The seconds stretched out into a minute, then two.

“Here we are,” Pickering said at last. “Yes, by Jove, there was a special that night, all the way to Liverpool. Goods and a few passengers. Here you are.” He held out the sheaf of paper.

Monk snatched it from him. The train had left at five minutes before two o’clock.

“Are you sure it went on time?” he demanded. He heard the edge to his voice, and could not control it.

“Yes, sir,” Pickering assured him. “That sheet is written up afterwards. It should have gone five minutes before. That’s the time it actually went.”

“I see. Thank you.”

“Does it help?”

“Yes, it does. The murders could not have happened before about three o’clock.”

Pickering looked relieved, and puzzled. “I see,” he said, although plainly he did not.

“Do you know if it carried cases of guns?” Monk asked, not expecting an answer of any value.

“Guns? No sir, just machinery, timber and I believe a consignment of bathroom furnishings.”

“Why a special train for those?”

“Bathroom furniture’s fragile, sir, I suppose.”

“Who hired it?”

“On the bottom, there, sir.” Pickering pointed at the sheet in Monk’s hand. “Messrs. Butterby and Scott, of Camberwell.” He regarded Monk curiously. “Did you think the American took the guns on our train to Liverpool? Newspapers said he went down the river to Bugsby’s Marshes and then across the Atlantic to America. Seems like the sensible thing to do. If I’d just murdered three men and stolen thousands o’ guns, I’d get out of the country and away from the law as fast as I could. I wouldn’t even hang around on the river; I’d be down there as quick as the tide would carry me, and while it was still as dark as it gets, this time o’ the year.”

“So would I,” Monk agreed. “I’d hope to have weighed anchor and be on the high seas before they’d traced which way I’d gone.”

Pickering looked puzzled.

“But if I hadn’t stolen them,” Monk explained. “If I’d bought them legitimately and didn’t know anything about murders, I’d go through Liverpool. It would save considerable time, days, rather than go all around the south coast of England before reaching the Atlantic.”

Pickering’s bristly eyebrows shot up. “You think he didn’t do it? So who did, then?”

“I don’t know what I think,” Monk admitted. “Except that whoever killed those men in Tooley Street did not travel north on one of your trains.”

“I can swear to that,” Pickering assured him. “And I will, if I’m called. You get that devil, Mr. Monk. That’s no way to treat anybody. Whatever it is you think you’re fighting for!”

Monk agreed with him, thanked him and took his leave.

He spent the rest of the day and all the following one retracing his steps down the river from Tooley Street as far as Bugsby’s Marshes. Again he spoke to everyone who had seen the barge he and Lanyon had tracked the first time, and a good few others who might have. It was exactly the same as before: a heavily laden barge, piled with crates the size and shape to carry muskets, the barge lying low in the water, moving clumsily to begin with but gathering impetus as it increased speed out in the center of the current. Two men, one tall and lean and with a soft, foreign accent-they thought American. Certainly with its pronounced r’s and slightly slurred consonants it was not European of any sort. He had seemed to be in charge and was giving the orders.

It had all been done discreetly, even stealthily, hailing no one else, ignoring the usual comradeship of the river men.

Again he lost them at Bugsby’s Marshes. He tried several times to find anyone who had seen them beyond Greenwich, or who had seen an oceangoing ship coming, going or moored, but there was nothing.

A waterman shrugged, leaning on his oars, wrinkling his eyes against the glare of the sun off the incoming tide.

“Not so odd really,” he said, chewing on his lip. “ ’Idden ’round the bend o’ Bugsby’s Marshes, ’oo’d be lookin’? Lie there all night and not likely ter be seen, if yer lie close in, like. That’s wot I’d do … if I ’ad business as was private. Then be off on the first o’ the tide. Be out ter sea afore breakfast.”

Monk thanked him and was about to turn away and walk back towards the Artichoke Tavern when the man called after him.

“Eh! Yer wanner find out wot ’appened ter it?”

Monk swiveled back. “Do you know?”

“Course I don’t, or I’d a’ told yer. But yer said yer traced it down this far, an’ a blind man can see yer think it ’ad suffink valuable in it, suffink stolen.”

Monk was impatient.

“Well, ’aven’t yer asked them wot ’as the barge?” the waterman said, shaking his head.

“Asked …” Then it struck Monk almost like a physical blow. He had followed the trail of the barge as far as Bugsby’s Marshes, but his mind had been fixed on Breeland and the guns. He had not thought of the barge’s returning upstream to wherever it was now! That might provide proof of Shearer’s complicity, and if not where he