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“Sergeant.”
He turned. “Yes sir?”
“I think your case may be insoluble. Please try to consider Mrs. Duff’s feelings as much as you can. Do not pursue tragic and sordid details of her son’s life which cannot help you and which she will have to live with, as well as with her grief. I cannot promise you that Rhys will recover. He may not.”
“Do you mean his speech or his life?”
“Both.”
“I see. Thank you for your kindness. Good night, Dr. Wade.”
“Good night, Sergeant.”
Evan left with a deep grief inside him. He went out into the dark street. The fog had descended since he had gone inside and now he could barely see four or five yards in front of him. The gas lamps were no more than blurs in the gloom in front of and behind him. Beyond that the fog was a dense wall. The sound of traffic was muffled, wheels almost silent, hooves a dull sound on stone, eaten by the fog as soon as they touched. Carriage lamps lurched towards him, passed and disappeared.
He walked with his collar up and his hat pulled forward over his brow. The air was wet and clung to his skin, smelling of soot. He thought of the people of St. Giles on a night like this, the ones huddled together, a dozen to a room, cold and hungry. And he thought of those outside in doorways, without even shelter.
What had happened to Rhys Duff? Why had he thrown away everything he had—warmth, home, love, opportunity of achievement, respect of his father—to chase after some appetite which would end in destroying him?
Evan thought of his own youth, of his mother’s kitchen full of herbs and vegetables and the smell of baking. There was always soup on the stove all winter long. His sisters were noisy, laughing, quarreling, gossiping. Their pretty clothes were all over the place, their dolls, and later their books and letters, paintbrushes and embroidery.
He had sat for hours in his father’s study talking about all manner of things with him, mostly ideas, values, old stories of love and adventure, courage, sacrifice and reward. How would his father have explained this? What meaning and hope could he have found in it? How could he equate it with the God he preached of every Sunday in the church amid its great trees and humble gravestones where the village had buried its dead for seven hundred years and laid flowers on quiet graves?
Evan felt no anger, no bitterness, only confusion.
The following morning he met Shotts back in the alley in St. Giles and started over again in the search for witnesses, evidence, anything which would lead to the truth. He could not disown the possibility that Sylvestra Duff had had some part in her husband’s death. It was an ugly thought, but now that it had entered his mind, he saw more that upheld it, at least sufficiently to warrant its investigation.
Was it that knowledge which had horrified Rhys so much he could not speak? Was it at the core of his apparent chill now towards his mother? Was that burden the one which tormented him and kept him silent?
Who was the man? Was he implicated or merely the unknowing motive? Was it Corriden Wade, and did Rhys know that?
Or was it as the doctor had implied: Rhys’s own weakness had taken him to St. Giles, and his father, in desperation for him, had followed, interrupted him, and been killed for his trouble?
Which led to the other dreadful question: What hand had Rhys in his father’s death? A witness … or more?
“Have you got those pictures?” he asked Shotts.
“What? Oh, yeah.” Shotts took out of his pocket two drawings, one of Rhys, as close as the artist could estimate, removing the present bruises; the other of Leighton Duff, necessarily poorer, less accurate, made from a portrait in the Duffs’ hall. But they were sufficient to give a very lively impression of how each man must have appeared in life.
“Have you found nothing more?” Evan pressed. “Peddlers, street traders or cabbies? Someone must have seen them.”
Shotts bit his lip. “Nobody wants ter ’ave seen ’em,” he said candidly.
“What about women?” Evan went on. “If they were here for women, someone must know them.”
“Not for sure,” Shotts argued. “Quick fumble in an alley or a doorway. ’Oo cares about faces?”
Evan shivered. It was bitterly cold, and he felt the chill eating inside him as well as numbing his face, his hands and his feet. It was beginning to rain again, and the broken eaves were dripping steadily. The gutters overflowed.
“Would have thought women would be careful about familiarity in the street these days. I hear there have been several bad rapes of dolly mops and amateur prostitutes lately,” Evan remarked.
“Yeah,” Shotts said with a frown. “I ’eard that too. But it’s over Seven Dials way, not ’ere.”
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“Who did you hear it from?” Evan asked.
There was a moment’s silence.
