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“This is a case of murder,” Evan snapped, sounding more like Monk than his own usually soft-spoken self. “The owner of this suit is lying at death’s door in St. Thomas’s. Another man, who also wore a suit with your label in it, is in the morgue. I do not know who they are … other than this …” He ignored Jiggs’s pasty face and wide eyes. “If you can tell me, then I demand that you do so.” He spilled the jacket onto the tailor’s table.
Jiggs started backwards as if the garment was alive and dangerous.
“Will you look at it, please,” Evan commanded.
“Oh, my God!” Mr. Jiggs put a clammy hand to his brow. “Whatever happened?”
“I don’t know yet,” Evan answered a trifle more gently. “Will you please look at that jacket and tell me if you know for whom you made it?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. I always know my gentlemen, sir.” Gingerly Mr. Jiggs unfolded the coat only sufficiently to see his own label. He glanced at it, touched the cloth with his forefinger, then looked at Evan. “I made that suit for young Mr. Rhys Duff, of Ebury Street, sir.” He looked extremely pale. “I am very sorry indeed that he seems to have met with a disaster. It truly grieves me, sir.”
Evan bit his lip. “I’m sure. Did you also make a suit in a brown wool for another gentleman, possibly related to him? This man would be in his middle fifties, average height, quite solidly built. He had gray hair, rather fairer than Rhys Duff’s, I should think.”
“Yes sir.” Jiggs took a shaky breath. “I made several suits for Mr. Leighton Duff; he’s Master Rhys’s father. I fear it may be he you are describing. Was he injured also?”
“I am afraid he is dead, Mr. Jiggs. Can you tell me the number in Ebury Street. I am obliged to inform his family.”
“Oh—why, of course. How very terrible. I wish there were some way I could assist.” The tailor stepped back as he said it, but there was a look of acute distress in his face, and Evan was disposed to believe him, at least in part.
“The number in Ebury Street?” he repeated.
“Yes … yes. I think it is thirty-four, if my memory serves, but I’ll look in my books. Yes, of course I will.”
Evan did not go straight to Ebury Street. First he returned to St. Thomas’s. There was a sense in which it would be kinder to the family if he could tell them at least that Rhys Duff was still alive, perhaps conscious. And if the young man could speak, maybe he could tell them what had happened, and Evan would have to ask fewer questions.
And there was part of him which was simply not ready yet to go and tell some woman that her husband was dead and her son might or might not survive, and no one knew yet in what degree of injury, pain or disability.
He found Riley straightaway, looking as if he had been there all night. Certainly he seemed to be wearing the same clothes with precisely the same wrinkles and bloodstains on them.
“He’s still alive,” he said as soon as he saw Evan and before Evan could ask. “He stirred a bit about an hour ago. Let’s go and see if he’s come around.” And he set off with a long-legged stride as if he too were eager to know.
The ward was busy. Two young doctors were changing bandages and examining wounds. A nurse who looked no more than fifteen or sixteen was carrying buckets of slops, her shoulders bent as she strove to keep the buckets off the floor. An elderly woman struggled with a bucket of coals and Evan offered to take them from her, but she refused, looking nervously at Riley. Another nurse gathered up soiled laundry and brushed past them with her face averted. Riley seemed hardly to notice; his attention was solely upon the patients.
Evan followed him to the end of the ward, where he saw with a rush of relief, overtaken instantly by anxiety, that Rhys Duff lay motionless on his back, but his eyes were open—large, dark eyes which stared up at the ceiling and seemed to see only horror.
Riley stopped by the bed and looked at his patient with some concern.
“Good morning, Mr. Duff,” he said gently. “You are in St. Thomas’s Hospital. My name is Riley. How are you feeling?”
Rhys Duff rolled his head very slightly until his eyes were focusing on Riley.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Duff?” Riley repeated.
Rhys opened his mouth, his lips moved, but there was no sound whatever.
“Does your throat hurt?” Riley asked with a frown. It was obviously not something he had expected.
Rhys stared at him.
“Does your throat hurt?” Riley asked again. “Nod if it does.”
Very slowly Rhys shook his head. He looked faintly surprised.
Riley put his hand on Rhys’s slender wrist above the bandaging of his broken hand. The other, similarly splinted a
nd bound, lay on the cover.
“Can you speak, Mr. Duff?” Riley asked very softly.
