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He must know! Why did Drusilla hate him?
There was nothing he could do until Evan returned and he knew for certain whether it was a case or not. If it was not, then the next thing was to travel to Norfolk, but he could not leave London until he had testified in the Stonefield trial.
He could join the police in their further search of the river for Angus’s body. Not that there was much hope of finding it now, but it was still worth every effort. It would almost certainly close the case against Caleb, and God knew, he deserved that. If ever a man warranted hanging, it was Caleb. More importantly, it would free Genevieve from the emotional and financial prison of not knowing. When he thought of her suffering, and her courage, her loss, he was barely aware of his own dilemma, or the gray street around him.
It was a clear, cold afternoon when he stood in the small boat setting off from the Shadwell Dock Stairs and started downstream with the wind in his face. They took the north bank. Another boat was searching the south.
It was a long, bitter day, filled with the smell of tide and sewage, the endlessly moving filthy water, the sound of lapping and slurping as the wake of the larger ships washed against the shingle or the pier stakes and stairs, and cargo boats, and barges bound for the east coast, passenger ships for France and Holland, clippers for every part in the Empire and the world.
They went in and out of every dock, every yard and stair, poked every pile of wood or canvas, every hulk, every shadowed stretch of water, lifted every drifting piece of flotsam. They scoured carefully through the pier stakes where long ago those convicted of piracy on the high seas were tied until the morning tide drowned them.
Monk was frozen. His feet and trousers were wet from where he had jumped ashore onto the shingle. His body ached, his knuckles were skinned, as were his palms from the wet ropes, and he was hungry.
As dusk drew over a clear sky, the air began to prickle the skin with cold and on shore the rime of moisture on the cobbles was turning to ice. The tide was rising again. They were beyond Woolwich and the Royal Arsenal, down as far as the end of Gallion’s Reach. Ahead of them was Barking Reach.
“Nothing,” the sergeant said with a shake of his head. “We’re wasting our time. If ’e went in at all, ’e’s long gone now. Poor devil.” He waved his arm, rocking the boat slightly. “Right, men. Might as well go ’ome. Gawd knows, it’s going ter freeze as ’ard as the ’obs o’ ’ell tonight. Pass ’round that tot o’ rum. It’s far enough ’ome, dammit.”
“We’ll find ’im somew’ere,” one of the others said laconically. “Sea gives up its dead, sooner or later.”
“Mebbe,” the sergeant agreed. “But not tonight, lads.”
They turned in a wide circle and leaned their weight into the oars, too tired to bother talking. The shore was only a greater density in the night, lit by yellow lamps, carriage lights moving slowly. Sounds were faint across the water, a rattle of wheels, a shout, the creak of spars in midstream.
It was a good hour later when they bumped into the mass in the water and the man in the bow called out. It took them another twenty minutes, working by lamplight, awkward with the small boat tipping and the sodden heaviness of it, to haul the body into the bottom and examine it.
Monk felt his stomach knot, and then churn with revulsion and he thought for a moment he was going to be sick.
It was the remains of a man in his late thirties or early forties, as much as one could tell. He had been dead for some time, in Monk’s judgment well over a week. His features were badly decomposed by the river and its natural inhabitants. What was left of his clothes were beyond recognition except that they must once have been a shirt and some form of trousers, but of what quality or color it was impossible to say.
“Well?” the sergeant asked, looking at Monk. “This ’im?” There was a dry smile on his mouth, and hopelessness in his eyes. “Geez! Poor devil. No ’uman bein’ should come ter this.”
Monk steeled himself and looked at the body more closely. He was surprised his stomach had settled again although he was shuddering with cold. He must have done such things before, perhaps often. The man was tall, strongly built. His hair was thick and dark. There was nothing to disprove it was Angus Stonefield.
“I don’t know. It could be,” he said with a sense of sadness which all but overwhelmed him, as if up to that moment he had in some way still believed Angus might have been alive.
The sergeant sighed. “I suppose we’ll ’ave ter ask the wife, although Gawd ’isself knows ’ow yer could expec’ any woman ter look at that … the more so if it’s ’im.”
“Take him to the morgue,” Monk said quietly, loathing what he was doing even as he heard his own voice. Suddenly it seemed easy to hang Caleb. The anger was not enough even for that. “I’ll bring her. It has to be done. There may be some mark on the body where the clothes have protected it, something she can recognize … or which makes it possible.”
The sergeant searched hi
s face in the moon of the lamplight, then nodded slowly. “Right y’are, sir. We’ll do that. C’mon now, boys, put yer back inter them oars. D’yer wanter be stuck ’ere in the middle o’ the damn’ river till yer freezes solid?”
“Yes, Mr. Monk?” Genevieve looked at him, her face creased with anxiety, fear already at the back of her eyes. He had been admitted to the parlor. She was not using the larger, more formal rooms, probably to save the cost of heating them. She looked exhausted. He knew she had been in the courtroom all day, and in the witness-box a great deal of it, testifying in an attempt to prove her husband’s death. Watching Caleb, so physically like him, must have been the worst ordeal of her life. And now he was possibly going to add to it the final horror.
Yet it could not be avoided. No one else could do this. If his face were undamaged, recognizable, perhaps Ravensbrook or Mr. Arbuthnot could have spared her. As it was, only she could know the intimacies of his body which were left.
Monk was not often at a loss for words, but even though he had thought of this since their grim find in the river, he still did not know how best to tell her.
“What is it, Mr. Monk?” Her eyes did not leave his face. “Have you found Angus? Is that what you cannot bring yourself to tell me?”
“I don’t know.” It was ridiculous that she should be helping him, when he should somehow be easing it for her. It was her grief, her loss, not his. “We have found a body, but it will require someone who knows him well to identify it.”
“I don’t understand.…” She swayed a little bit. “What are you trying to say?” She swallowed. “Is it Angus, or not? You have seen Caleb. I can see a multitude of differences between them, but to you they will be so alike you must know if it is Angus or not!” There was a rising panic in her voice and her eyes. “Please! This … this uncertainty is worse than knowing would be.” She stood with her hands knotted in front of her, her body so right she was shaking.
“If I knew, Mrs. Stonefield, I would not subject you to this!” he said desperately. “If even Lord Ravensbrook could have told, I would have asked him. But the river has done its damage to the face. Only where the clothes have protected it is it unharmed. That is why you alone can tell.”
She drew in her breath with a gasp, tried to speak, and made no sound at all.
