Cain His Brother (25 page)

She forced back her impatience. She had seen both shock and fear before and she knew the signs. To have affected Monk this way it must be something very dreadful indeed.

“Sit down and tell me,” she said gently. “What has happened?”

Temper flared in his eyes, then died away, replaced by the fear again. The very fact that he did not retaliate chilled her even more. She sat down on the drab, overstuffed chair and folded her hands in her lap, under her apron, where he could not see that they were clenched together.

“I have been accused of assault.” He said the words between his teeth, not looking at her.

“And are you guilty?” she asked levelly, knowing his rage and his physical strength. She had not forgotten the body in Mecklenburg Square, beaten to death, and that Monk had once feared he had done it himself.

His eyes widened, glaring at her, his features twisted with outrage.

“No!” he shouted. “God in heaven, no! How can you even ask?” The words choked him. He looked as if he could never forgive her for the question. He was shaking with fury, his body so tensed he was even now at the edge of violence, simply to release what was becoming unbearable.

“Because I know you,” she answered, feeling increasingly that perhaps she did not. “If someone angered you enough, you might-“

“A woman!” The cry strangled in his throat. “Assault a woman? Force myself on her?”

She was stunned. It was so absurd it was almost funny.

Except that he was obviously serious, and profoundly frightened. Such a charge would ruin him, she knew that only too well. Her own professional existence also rested on reputation, and she knew how nearly she had once lost that. It had been Monk who had fought for her, worked night and day to prove her innocence.

“That's ridiculous,” she said gravely. “Obviously she cannot prove it to be so, but equally obviously you cannot prove it not to be, or you would not be here. Who is she, and what happened? Is she someone you rejected?

Or has she some other reason for such a charge? Do you suppose she is with child, and needs to blame someone for it to claim her own innocence in the matter?”

“I don't know.” At last he sat down as well, staring at the patched carpet on the floor. “I don't know why she has done it, except that it was deliberate. We were in a hansom, going home after an evening”-he hesitated, still looking down= “an evening of mild entertainment, a pleasant din ner. She suddenly tore open the bodice of her dress, then glared at me with the most violent hatred, screamed, and threw herself out of the carriage with it under way, in front of a score of guests leaving a party in North Audley Street!”

She felt a chill of fear touch her also. Such behavior held an element of madness. The woman had risked not only Monk's reputation but a good deal of her own as well. However innocent she claimed to be, there would be talk, speculation, tongues willing to be unkind.

“Who is she?” she asked again.

“Drusilla Wyndham,” he said very quietly, still not looking at her. She said nothing. A curious mix of emotions filled her mind: relief that after all he could not now love Drusilla, that Drusilla had failed him in every way, and her own hatred of Drusilla of a quite different nature from before, because now the woman threatened him. There was also fear for the injury Drusilla would do him, and anger for the injustice of it. She did not even think of curiosity as to why.

“Who is she?” she asked. “I mean socially. Where does she come from?” He looked up at her, meeting her eyes for the first time.

“I don't know more than I could judge from her manner and her speech, which was enough. But what does it matter? Whoever she is, she can ruin me by the suggestion. She doesn't have to be related to anyone important.” His voice rose again with impatience that she did not understand the point. “Any woman making the charge, except perhaps a servant or a prostitute-” “I know that.” She cut across him just as sharply, jerking her hand to dismiss the notion. “I'm not thinking of that, I'm thinking how to fight her. Know your enemy!”

“I can't fight her!” His voice rose in fury and desperation. “If she takes it to court I can deny it, but not if she simply does it by whisper and innuendo. What do you suggest? That I sue her for slander? Don't be absurd! Even if I could, which I couldn't, my reputation would still be ruined. In fact, the very act of calling her a liar would make it worse.” He looked like a man on the edge of an abyss, staring destruction in the face.

“Of course not,” she said quietly. “Who's your adviser? Lord Cardigan?”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“The charge of the Light Brigade,” she answered bitterly.

She saw a glimmer of comprehension in his face.

“So what do you suggest?” he said, but without hope.

“I'm not sure,” she replied, rising to her feet and walking to the one small window. “But certainly not a head-on charge at the enemy's guns. If they are dug into the high ground with breached cannons pointing at us, then we must either move them out of it or come at them by some other means.”

“Stop playing soldiers,” he said quietly. “Just because you nursed in the Crimea doesn't mean you know the first damn thing about warfare.”

“Yes it does!” she said, swinging around. “The first damn thing about warfare is that soldiers get killed. Ask anyone who's been there! Except the bloody incompetent generals, of course.”

He smiled in spite of himself, but there was only the humor of the grave in it.

“What a charming woman you are. What do you suggest in this particular battle? Shall I shoot her, besiege her, poison her water, or wait for the winter to freeze her out? Or hope that she contracts the typhoid?” “Call on another woman,” she answered, wishing the moment she had said it that she had not. She had no plans, no ideas, only a boiling determination to win.

He looked nonplussed. “Another woman? Whatever for? Who?”

“Me, of course, you fool!” she retorted. “You haven't the slightest understanding of women or how they think. You never have had. Obviously she hates you. How did you meet her?”

“I bumped into her on the steps of the Geographical Society. Or perhaps she bumped into me.”

“You think she contrived it?” she said without great surprise. Women did such things far more often than most men realized.

“I do now. I didn't then.” A bitter amusement lit his eyes for a moment.

“She must have been surprised when I did not recognize her. She held me in conversation for several minutes. She must have been waiting for me to remember, and then realized that I didn't.”

“You don't remember anything at all?” she pressed. “Not even an impression?”

“No! Of course I don't, or I would have said so. I have been through everything I can think of, but I can't remember anything about her. It's a complete blank.”

She had a glimpse of his utter helplessness, the shadows and glimpses of cruelty within his memory, and the fears that would always be part of him.

Then it evaporated. All she felt was tenderness and the determination to protect him whatever the cost.

“It doesn't matter anyway,” she said, moving over and touching his head gently, just her fingers on his hair for a moment. “It is who she is now that matters. I'll think of a way to fight back. Don't worry. Just don't go anywhere near her again. Keep on looking for Angus Stonefield.”

“At least I'm not likely to run into any outraged high society face down in the mud 'round the Isle of Dogs!” he said savagely. “A little rape might add to my credibility with the locals.”

“I would mention it only if you intend to remain there,” she replied tartly, turning to the door. “In the meantime, keep your powder dry.”

He saluted sarcastically. “Yes, general, sir!”

But when he left Ravensbrook House, Monk did feel marginally better. The anger was scalding inside him, and the fear was just as real. Nothing had changed. Yet now he no longer stood alone. That took the despair away, the very worst of the pain.

He strode along the footpath, ignoring those he passed by, all but bumping into them. Even the smut-laden rain driving in his face was hardly heeded.

He would find where Caleb had murdered his brother. He might not find the body, but he would prove his death, and he would see Caleb hanged for it.

Somewhere there was a piece of evidence, a witness, a chain of events which would damn him. It was up to Monk to persist until he did. Wherever it was, whoever knew it, whatever it took to uncover it.

It was midday by the time he got to the Isle of Dogs and went again to the house in Manilla Street to speak to Selina. At first she refused to see him. She looked frightened, and he guessed it was not long since Caleb had been there. Her silence was a mixture of loyalty and fear. The fear at least was probably well grounded.

He stood in front of her in the small, cold, well-kept room.

“He killed Angus, and I'm going to prove it,” he said viciously. “One way or another, I'll see him swing for it. Whether you prove it with me, or swing with him, is up to you.”

She said nothing. She faced him defiantly, her head held cockily, as if she were sure of herself, one hip jutting out. But he saw her knuckles whiten, and heard the terror beneath her voice.

“You think he's a dangerous swine,” he said grimly. “Cross me, and you'll think he's a model of the civilized man.”

“It's his life,” she retorted with contempt, looking him up and down, seeing the beautifully cut coat and the polished boots. “You don't even know what dangerous is.”

“Believe me, I have little left to lose either,” he said passionately. She stared at him, looked into his eyes, and slowly her face changed. She saw something of the rage and despair in him, and the contempt died. “I don't know where he is,” she said quietly.

“I didn't expect you to. I want to know where he met Angus, every place you know of that they went together, or might have gone. He murdered Angus.

Somebody somewhere knows about it.”

“They won't tell you!” Her chin lifted again in defiance and a kind of pride.

“Yes they will.” He laughed bitterly. “Whatever Caleb can do to them, the long wait of the last night, the eight o'clock walk in the morning to the hangman's rope, is worse.”

She swore at him, and the hatred in her eyes reminded him of Drusilla. It robbed him of the pity he might have felt for her.

“Where did they meet?” he said again.

Silence.

“Have you seen a corpse after it's been hanged?” He looked at her slender throat.

“At the Artichoke, along by the Blackwall Stairs. But it won't do yer no good. They won't tell yer nothin'. I 'ope yer rot in 'ell. I 'ope they drown yer in a cesspool and feed yer body ter the rats.”

“Is that what he did with Angus?”

“Gawd, I dunno.” But beneath the paint her face was white and there was horror in her eyes. “Nah gits aht!”

Monk went back along Manilla Street in the rain, and turned east.

The landlord of the Artichoke served him a slice of eel pie and a glass of ale, but eyed him with suspicion. Men dressed as Monk presently was did not frequent such taverns, but money was money, and he took it readily enough.

After Monk had eaten he began his questions, civilly at first, but quickly gaining an undertone of menace. He learned only one piece of information which, if true, might prove of worth, and that was given as an incidental to an insult. But that had many times been the way. An angry man betrayed more than he knew. The landlord let slip that Caleb had several friends, whether by choice or mutual advantage, and one of them, another dangerous and greedy man, had a yard off Coldharbour, hard by the Cattle Wharf. Apparently he was a good friend, one whom Caleb could trust and who would, according to the landlord, avenge any wrong done Caleb by the likes of Monk.

Fifteen minutes later found Monk west again at Coldharbour, right on the bank of the river. It was now running hard and gray, carrying ships, barges and all manner of detritus on the outgoing tide. A dead rat floated by, and half a dozen rotted timbers. The smell of sewage clogged the nostrils. A clipper, half-rigged, was making its way majestically down from the Pool of London towards the open sea and the world beyond.

It was not hard to find the yard, but it served only as a starting point.

If Caleb had intended from the beginning to murder his brother, he would have chosen a private place to do it. He would certainly not have risked a witness. There were far too many people up and down the river who would be only too happy to have the power to ruin Caleb Stone.

And if the act had arisen out of a quarrel which got out of control, then he would equally have needed somewhere out of sight to think what to do with the body. Simply to tip it into the river was too much of a risk, especially if it had been daylight. It would have to be weighted and set in nudstream. Better still to take it to Limehouse and bury it as a typhoid victim. And all that took time.

There would be little purpose in being direct. He yanked the collar of his coat even higher and strode past the yard. He found all manner of laborers, derelicts, the hungry, cold, idle or sick, huddled in doorways, sheltering under sacking or canvas. He questioned them all. He walked from one end of Coldharbour to the other, and then across the bridge over the Blackwall Basin towards the stairs to the sibilant water.

He moved downriver slowly, picking his way over slippery stones and wet timbers, across patches of rotting shingle, through loading and unloading yards. He passed piles of merchandise, hauls of fish, lengths of rope and canvas. He climbed up and down steps and across gangways over dark, still water into a dozen larger or smaller slipways and docks. Always the stench was there, the sound of dripping and slurping, the creak of timber and straining ropes.

By dusk he was exhausted, angry and cold to the bone, but he refused to give up. Somewhere near here Caleb had killed Angus. Someone had seen or heard them quarreling, shouting voices, a cry of fury or pain, and then Caleb carrying the body. Perhaps there had been blood or a weapon. They were the same size, the same build. If it had come to a battle they must have been fairly evenly matched, even allowing for their different lives.