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Duke considered it for a moment. “Yes, it is, actually. It is extremely good. He had just that rather patronizing air of self-righteousness.”
“You did not like him,” Monk observed.
“A crashing remark of the obvious.” Duke raised his eyebrows. “Do you really make a living at this, Mr. Monk?”
“You would be surprised how people betray themselves when they imagine themselves safe, Mr. Kynaston,” Monk said with a smile. “But thank you for your concern on my behalf. It is not necessary. What I came for was to warn you, and your brother, that the people of St. Giles, and of Seven Dials as well, are aware of who committed the recent rapes in their areas, and if either of you should return there, it is very probable you will meet with most unpleasant ends. You have been there. You know or can imagine how easily that could be accomplished and your bodies never found … at least not recognizable ones.”
Duke stared at him with a mixture of shock and incomprehension, but there was marked fear in it as well.
“Why do you care if I get murdered in St. Giles?” he said truculently, then passed his tongue over dry lips.
“I don’t,” Monk replied with a smile, but even as he said it, it was not entirely true. He disliked Marmaduke Kynaston less than when he had come in, for no reason that he would have been prepared to explain. “I don’t want the people of St. Giles to be pursued by a murder enquiry.”
Duke took a deep breath. “I should have known. Are you from St. Giles?”
Monk laughed outright. It was the first time he had felt like laughing for days.
“No. I come from Northumberland.”
“I suppose I should thank you for the warning,” Duke said casually, but his eyes still held the shock, and there was a reluctant sincerity in his voice.
Monk shrugged and smiled.
He left the house even further confused.
Time was desperately short.
He took Leighton Duff’s picture to Seven Dials and showed it to cabbies; street peddlers; a running patterer; sellers of flowers, bootlaces, matches and glassware; and to a ratcatcher and several prostitutes. It was recognized by at least a dozen people, and some without any hesitation at all. Not one of them was prepared to identify Rhys.
By the second night Monk had only one more question in his mind. He returned to St. Giles to pursue the answer, and walked the alleys and courtyards, the dripping passages and up and down the rotting stairs, until dawn came gray and bleak at about seven o’clock and he was exhausted, and so cold his feet were numb and he could not control the shaking of his body. But he knew two things. Rhys Duff and his father had come to St. Giles on the night of the murder from different directions, and there was no proof they had met until the fatal encounter in Water Lane.
The other thing he learned by chance. He was talking to a woman who had been a prostitute in her youth, and had saved sufficient money to purchase a boardinghouse, but still knew a remarkable amount of gossip. He went to her partly to confirm certain dates and places, but mainly from his compulsion to probe the darkness in his own mind, the fear that gathered every time Runcorn’s face came to his thoughts, which it did so often in these dark, slippery paths. It was not Runcorn as he was now, graying at the temples, a little broader at the waist, but a younger, keener Runcorn, shoulders straight, eyes clearer and braver.
“Do you remember the raid in the brothel when the magistrate, Gutteridge, was caught with his trousers down?” He was not sure why he asked, or what he expected the answer to be, only that it lay at the back of his mind and would not leave.
She gurgled with delight. “ ’Course I do. Why?”
“Runcorn led it?”
“You know that. Can’t tell me you’ve forgot.” She looked at him narrowly, her head tilted to one side.
“Did he set it up?” he asked.
“Wot’s this, a game or summink? You set it up, an’ Runcorn took it from yer. Yer let ’im, ’cos yer know’d poor ol’ Gutt-’ridge was gonna be there. Runcorn walked right iner it, daft sod.”
“Why? It was Gutteridge’s own fault. Did he expect the police to hold off just because he was indulging himself?”
Her eyes widened. “Yeah. ’Course ’e did. Or at least warn ’im. Upset a lot o’ people, that did … important people, like. None o’ us, mind. Laughed till we creased ourselves, we did.”
“What people?” Monk paused, knowing something eluded him, something that mattered.
“ ’Ere, wot’s this abaht?” she said with a frown. “It’s all dead an’ buried nah. ’Oo cares anymore? It don’t ’ave nuffink ter do wi’ them rapes ’ere.”
“I know it doesn’t. I just want to know. Tell me,” he pressed.
“Well, there was a few gents wot felt theirselves a bit exposed, like, arter that.” She laughed hugely at her own joke. “They’d always trusted you rozzers to keep yer distance from certain ’ouses o’ pleasure.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Arter that they din’t trust no one. Couldn’t. It kind o’ soured relations atween the rozzers and certain people o’ influence. On’y time I ever thought as I could like Mr. Runcorn. Bleedin’ pain, ’e is, most o’ the time. Worse ’n you. Yer a mean bastard, but yer was straight, and yer weren’t full o’ cant. I never knowed yer ta preach one thing an’ do another. Not like ’im.” She looked at him more closely. “Wot is it, Monk? W’y d’yer give a toss abaht a twenty-year-old raid in a bawdy ’ouse?”
“I’m not sure,” he said honestly.
