The murder doesn't matter," Louvain said abruptly, leaning
a little over his desk towards Monk.
The two men were standing in the big office next to windows
that faced the Pool of London with its forest of masts
swaying on the tide against the ragged autumn sky. There
were clippers and schooners from every seafaring nation on
earth, barges from up and down the river, local pleasure
boats, as well as tugs, ferries, and tenders.
"I have to have the ivory!" Louvain gritted the words
between his teeth. "I've no time to wait for the police."
Monk stared at him, trying to frame an answer. He needed
this job, or he would not have come down to the Louvain
Shipping Company offices prepared to undertake a task so
far outside his usual area of skill. He was a brilliant
detective in the city; he had proved it time and time
again, both in the police force and later as a private
agent of enquiry. He knew the mansions of the wealthy and
the back streets of the poor. He knew the petty thieves and
informers, the dealers in stolen goods and the brothel-
keepers, the forgers and many of the general ruffians for
hire. But the river, the "longest street in London," with
its shifting tides, its constant movement of ships, and men
who spoke scores of different languages, was strange
territory to him. The question beat in his mind, insistent
as a pulse: Why had Clement Louvain sent for him rather
than someone familiar with the docks and the water? The
River Police themselves were older than Peel's city police;
in fact, they had existed for nearly three quarters of a
century--since 1798. It was feasible that the River Police
were too busy to give Louvain's ivory the attentionhe
wanted, but was that really his reason for calling in Monk?
"The murder is part of the theft," Monk replied at
last. "If we knew who killed Hodge, we'd know who took the
ivory, and if we knew when, we might be a lot closer to
finding it."
Louvain's face tightened. He was a wind-burned, slender-
hipped man in his early forties, but hard-muscled like the
sailors he hired to work his ships to the East African
coast and back, with ivory, timber, spices, and skins. His
light brown hair was thick and sprang up from his forehead.
His features were broad and blunt.
"On the river at night, time makes no difference," he said
curtly. "There are light-horsemen, heavy-horsemen, night
plunderers up and down all the time. Nobody's going to
inform on anyone else, least of all to the River Police.
That's why I need my own man, one with the skills I'm told
you have." His eyes swept over Monk, seeing a man reputed
to have the same ruthlessness as himself, an inch or two
taller, darker, with high cheekbones and a lean, powerful
face. "I need that ivory back," Louvain repeated. "It's due
for delivery, and the money is owed. Don't look for the
murderer to find the thief. That might work on shore. On
the river you find the thief, and that will lead you to the
murderer."
Monk would have dearly liked to decline the case. It would
have been easy enough; his lack of knowledge alone would
have provided grounds for it. In fact, it was increasingly
difficult to see why Louvain had sent for him rather than
one of the many men who must at least know the river and
the docks. There was always someone who would undertake a
private commission--for a fee.
But Monk could not afford to point that out. He faced the
bitter fact that he must make himself obliging to Louvain,
and convince him, against the truth, that it was well
within his power to find the ivory and return it to him in
less time, and with greater discretion, than the River
Police could or would do.
Necessity drove him, the spate of recent trivial cases
which paid too little. He dared not go into debt, and since
Hester had given her time to the clinic in Portpool Lane,
which was wholly charitable, she added nothing to their
financial situation. But a man should not expect his wife
to keep herself. She asked little enough--no luxury, no
vanity, only to be able to do the work she loved. Monk
would have served any man to give her that. He resented
Louvain because he had the power to cause him acute
discomfort, but far more than that he was troubled that
Louvain showed more concern about catching a thief who had
robbed him of goods than a murderer who had taken Hodge's
life.
"And if we do catch him," he said aloud, "and Hodge is
buried, what evidence do we have? We will have concealed
his crime for him."
Louvain pursed his lips. "I can't afford to have the theft
known. It would ruin me. Would it serve if I swear a
testimony as to exactly where I found the body, and how and
when? The doctor can swear to his in- juries, and you
yourself can look, too. I'll sign the document and you can
have it."
"How will you explain concealing the crime from the
police?" Monk asked.
"I'll hand them the murderer, with proof," Louvain
answered. "What more could they want?"
"And if I don't catch him?"
Louvain looked at him with a wry, delicately twisted
smile. "You will," he said simply.
Monk could not afford to argue. Morally, it set ill with
him, but in practical terms Louvain was right. He must
succeed; but if he did not, then the River Police's chances
were even less.
"Tell me as much as you know," he said.
Louvain sat down at last, easing himself into the padded
round-backed chair and indicating that Monk should sit
also. He fixed his gaze on Monk's face.
"The Maude Idris put out from Zanzibar fully loaded with
ebony, spices, and fourteen first-grade tusks of ivory,
bound 'round the Cape of Good Hope and home. She's a four-
masted schooner with a nine-man crew: captain, mate, bosun,
cook, cabin boy, and four able seamen, one per mast. That's
standard for her tonnage." He was still watching Monk's
face. "She made fair weather most of the way, calling in
for supplies and fresh water up the west coast of Africa.
She reached Biscay five days ago, Spithead the day before
yesterday, and tacked the last few miles upriver with the
wind behind her. Dropped anchor just east of the Pool
yesterday, October twentieth."
Monk was listening intently, but the account held nothing
useful to him. He was certain Louvain knew that;
nevertheless they both continued to play out the charade.
"Crew was paid off," Louvain went on. "As is usual. Been
away a long time, close to half a year, one way and
another. I left the bosun and three able seamen on board to
keep things safe. One of them is the dead man, Hodge." A
flicker passed across his face. It could have been any
emotion at all: anger, sorrow, even guilt.
"Four out of the nine stayed?" Monk confirmed it.
As if reading his thoughts, Louvain pursed his lips. "I
know the river's dangerous, especially for a ship newly
come in. All the watermen will know the cargo's still on
it. Not much on the river is secret for long, but any fool
could work that out. You don't come up this far if you're
empty. You're loading or unloading. I thought four men,
armed, would be enough. I was wrong." His face was filled
with emotion, but which emotion was unreadable.
"How were they armed?" Monk asked.
"Pistols and cutlasses," Louvain replied.
Monk frowned. "Those are close-quarter weapons. Is that all
you carry?"
Louvain's eyes widened almost imperceptibly. "There are
four cannons on deck," he replied guardedly. "But that's in
case of piracy at sea. You can't fire that sort of thing on
the river!" A slight flare of amusement crossed his face
and vanished. "They only wanted the ivory, not the whole
damn ship!"
"Was anyone else injured apart from Hodge?" Monk concealed
his annoyance with an effort. It was not Louvain's fault
that he was obliged to work out of his depth.
"No," Louvain said. "River thieves know how to come
alongside and board in silence. Hodge was the only one they
encountered, and they killed him without arousing anyone
else."
Monk tried to imagine the scene: the cramped spaces in the
bowels of the ship, the floor shifting and tilting with the
tide, the creaking of the ship's timbers. And then would
come the sudden knowledge that there were footsteps, then
the terror, the violence, and finally the crippling pain as
they struck.
"Who found him?" he said quietly. "And when?"
Louvain's face was heavy, his mouth drawn tight. "The man
who came to relieve him at eight o'clock."
"Before or after he saw the ivory was missing?"
Louvain hesitated only a second. It was barely discernible,
and Monk wondered if he had imagined it. "After."
If he had said before, Monk would not have believed him. In
self-preservation the man would have wanted to know what he
was dealing with before he told Louvain anything. And
unless he were a complete fool, he would have thought first
to make sure the killer was not still on board. If he could
have said he had captured him, and kept the ivory, he would
have had a very different story to tell. Unless, of course,
he already knew all about it and was party to it?
"Where were you when you got the message?"
Louvain looked at him stonily. "Here. It was nearly half
past eight by then."
"How long had you been here?"
"Since seven."
"Would he know that?" He watched Louvain's face closely.
One of the ways he could judge the men left on the ship was
by Louvain's trust in them. A man in Louvain's position
could not afford to forgive even error, let alone any kind
of disloyalty.
"Yes," Louvain replied, a flicker of amusement in his
eyes. "Any seaman would expect it. That doesn't tell you
what you think it does."
Monk felt the heat burn up inside him. He was clawing after
answers, not grasping as he usually did. This was not the
right pace at which to play games of wits with Louvain. He
must be either blunter or a great deal more subtle.
"All shipowners are in their offices at that hour?" he
concluded aloud.
Louvain relaxed a little. "Yes. He came here and told me
Hodge had been killed and the ivory stolen. I went with him
immediately--" He stopped as Monk stood up.
"Can you retrace your steps, and I'll come with you?" Monk
requested.
Louvain rose smoothly. "Of course." He said nothing else as
he led Monk across the worn carpet to the heavy door,
opened it and then locked it behind them, putting the key
in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. As he took a heavier
jacket from a coat stand, he glanced at Monk's attire, as
if to consider its adequacy, and decided it would suffice.
Monk was proud of his clothes. Even in his most financially
restricted times, he had dressed well. He had a natural
elegance, and pride dictated that the tailor's bill had
come before the butcher's. But that had been when he was
single. Now he might have to reverse that order, and it
already weighed heavily with him. It was a kind of defeat.
However, he had realized that a man involved in shipping,
as Louvain was, might well have business that required them
both to go on the river, so he had come with that in mind.
His boots were heavy and well soled; his overcoat was easy
to move in and would cut the wind.
He followed Louvain down the stairs and across the outer
office, where clerks were bent over ledgers or sitting on
high stools with quills in hand. The odors of ink and dust
were in the air, and there was an acrid sting of smoke as
he passed the iron heating stove just as someone opened it
to put more coke in the top.
Outside in the roadway towards the dock, the raw-edged wind
struck them immediately, making the skin smart, whipping
the hair back, catching in the throat the taste of salt on
the incoming tide. It was heavy with smells of fish, tar,
and the sour, overbearing effluent of mud and sewage from
above the waterline beyond the wharves.
The water slurped against the pier stakes in endless
movement, rhythm broken now and then by the wash of barges
laden so they sank deep. They moved slowly upriver towards
London Bridge and beyond. The mewing of gulls was shrill,
yet it was a sound that brought back echoes of meaning for
Monk, flashes of his life in Northumberland as a boy. A
carriage accident seven years before, in 1856, had robbed
him of most of those many-colored fragments that build the
past and form the pictures of who we are. By deduction he
had pieced much of it together, and now and again windows
opened suddenly and showed him whole landscapes for a
moment. The cry of gulls was one of those.
Louvain was crossing the cobbles down to the wharf and
striding along without looking right or left. The docks,
with their vast warehouses, cranes and derricks, were all
familiar to him. He was used to seeing the laborers and
watermen and the small craft coming and going.
Monk followed Louvain to the end of the wharf, where the
dark water swirled and slapped under the shadows, its
surface spotted with scum and drifting refuse. On the far
bank there was a stretch of mud below the tide line, and
three children were wading in it, sunk halfway up to their
knees, bent over, searching with busy, skilled hands for
whatever they could find. A snatch of memory told Monk it
was almost certainly for coal off the barges, fallen by
chance, or deliberately pushed a piece at a time, precisely
in order to be picked up by the mudlarks.
Louvain waved his arm and shouted across the water. Within
moments a light boat, twelve or fourteen feet long, drew up
to the steps with a single man aboard at the oars. His face
was weather-beaten to the color of old wood, his gray beard
little more than bristle, and his hat, jammed down over his
ears, hid whatever hair he might have had. He gave a brief,
half salute of recognition and waited for Louvain's orders.
"Take us out to the Maude Idris," Louvain told him,
stepping easily down into the boat, adjusting his weight to
keep his balance as it tipped and jiggled. He offered no
assistance to Monk behind him, either assuming he was
accustomed to boats or uninterested in whether he made a
fool of himself or not.
A moment of fear rose in Monk, and embarrassment in case he
did it clumsily. He stiffened, and then physical instinct
told him that was wrong, and he dropped down loosely,
bending his knees and adjusting with a grace that surprised
both of them.
The waterman wove between the barges with practiced skill,
skirting around a three-masted schooner, its canvas lashed,
timbers stained and peeling from long days of tropical sun
and salt wind. Monk glanced down and saw the crusting of
barnacles below the waterline. The river was too murky for
him to see more than a foot or so below the surface.
He looked up quickly as they passed under the shadow of a
much larger ship and caught his breath with a sudden thrill
as the sheer beauty of it gripped him. It towered into the
air, three tremendous masts with yardarms eighty or ninety
feet long and dark against the gray clouds, sails furled,
rigging in fine lines like an etching on the sky. It was
one of the great clippers that sailed around the world,
probably racing from China to London with tea, silk, and
spices of the Far East. First one to unload won the
stupendous prices, second got only what was left. His
imagination teemed with visions of roaring winds and seas,
worlds of sky, billowing canvas, spars thrashing in a wild
dance of the elements. And there would be calmer seas,
flaming sunsets, clear water like glass teeming with
creatures of myriad shapes, and windless days when time and
space stretched into eternity.
Monk jerked himself back to the present and the loud, busy
river, the cold spray off the water whipping his face.
Ahead of them was a four-masted schooner lying at anchor,
rolling slightly on the wake from a string of barges. She
was wide beamed and quite deep of draft, an oceangoing
carrier of heavy cargo, swift under full sail, easy to
maneuver, and this close, the gun ports on the foredeck
were plain to see. She would be neither caught nor captured
easily.
Yet here in her home port she was a sitting target for two
or three men creeping up over the black water by night,
swarming up the sides to the deck and taking an inattentive
guard by surprise.