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Runcorn responded immediately. It woke memories of a score of old quarrels. They were replaying so many past scenes: Runcorn’s anxiety, stubbornness, provocation; Monk’s anger and contempt, and quicker tongue. For an instant, for Monk it was as if he were removed from himself, a spectator seeing two men imprisoned in reenacting the same pointless tragedy over and over again.
“I told you before,” Runcorn said, sitting forward, banging the chair legs down, leaning his elbows on his desk. “You’ll never prove some men got violent with a prostitute. She’s already sold herself, Monk. You may not approve of it.” He wrinkled his long nose as if imitating Monk, although there had been no scorn in Monk’s voice or in his mind. “You may find it an immoral and contemptible way to make a living, but we’ll never get rid of it. It may offend your susceptibilities, but I assure you, a great many men you might call gentlemen, or might aspire to join, with your social airs and graces, a great many of them go to the Haymarket, and even to places like Seven Dials, and make use of women they pay for the privilege.”
Monk opened his mouth to argue, but Runcorn plowed on, talking over him deliberately.
“Maybe you would like to think differently, but it’s time you looked at some of your gentry as they really are.” He jabbed his finger at the desk. “They like to marry their wives for social nicety, to wear on their arms when they dine and dance with their equals. They like to have a cool and proper wife.” He kept on jabbing his finger, his face sneering. “A virtuous woman who doesn’t know anything about the pleasures of the flesh, to be the mother of their children, the guardian of all that’s safe and good and uplifting and morally clean. But when it comes to their appetites, they want a woman who doesn’t know them personally, doesn’t expect anything of them except payment for services rendered, and who won’t be horrified if they exhibit a few tastes that would disgust and terrify their gentle wives. They want the freedom to be any damned thing they like. And that can include a great deal you may not approve of, Monk.”
Monk leaned over the desk towards him, his jaw tight, spitting the words through his teeth.
“If a man wants a wife he won’t satisfy and can’t enjoy, that’s his misfortune,” he retorted. “And his hypocrisy … and hers. But it is not a crime. But if he joins with two of his friends and comes to Seven Dials and then rapes and beats the sweatshop women who practice a little prostitution on the side … that is a crime. I intend to stop it before it becomes murder as well.”
Runcorn’s face was dark with anger and surprise, but this time it was Monk who overrode him, still leaning forward, looking down on him. Runcorn’s earlier advantage of being seated while Monk stood was now the opposite, but he refused to move back. They were less than two feet away from each other.
“I thought you had the courage and the sense of your own duty to the law to have felt the same,” Monk went on. “I expected you to ask for my information and be glad to take it. What you think of me doesn’t matter …” He snapped his fingers in the air with a sharp sound. “Aren’t you man enough to forget it for as long as it takes to catch these men who rape and beat women, and even girls, for their ‘pleasure,’ as you put it? Or do you hate me enough to sacrifice your honor just to be able to deny me this? Have you really lost that much of yourself?”
“Lost?” Runcorn’s face was a dull purple, and he leaned even closer. “I haven’t lost anything, Monk. I have a job. I have a home. I have men who respect me … some of them even like me … which is more than you could ever say. I haven’t lost any of that.” His eyes were brilliant, accusing and triumphant, but his voice was rising higher and there was a sharpness that betrayed old wounds between them which none of this could heal. There was no ease on his face, no peace with himself.
Monk felt his own body rigid. Runcorn had struck home with his words, and they both knew it.
“Is that your answer?” he said very quietly, stepping back. “I tell you that women are being raped and beaten in an area in which you are responsible for the law, and you reply by rehearsing old quarrels with me as a justification for looking the other way? You may have the job, the money for it, and the liking of some of your juniors … do you think you have any claim to their respect—or anyone’s—if they heard you say this? I had forgotten why I despised you … but you remind me. You are a coward, and you put your personal, petty dislikes before honor.”
He straightened up, squaring his shoulders. “I shall go back and tell Mrs. Hopgood that I told you I had evidence and wanted to share it with you; but you were so intent on having your personal revenge on me, you would not look at it. It will get out, Runcorn. Don’t imagine this is between you and me, because it isn’t. Our dislike for each other is petty and dishonorable. These women are being injured, maybe the next one will be killed, and it will be our fault, because we couldn’t work together to stop these men—”
Runcorn rose to his feet, his skin sweating, white around the lips.
“Don’t you dare tell me how to do my job! And don’t try coercing me with threats! Bring me one piece of evidence I can use in a court and I’ll arrest any man it points to! So far you’ve told me nothing that means a thing. And I’m not wasting men until I know there’s a probable crime and some chance of prosecution. One decent woman who’s been raped, Monk. One woman who will give evidence I can use …”
“Who are you trying?” Monk retaliated. “The man or the woman, the rapist or the victim?”
“Both,” Runcorn said, suddenly lowering his voice. “I have to deal with reality. Have you forgotten that, or are you just pretending you have because that is easier? Gives you a high moral note, but it’s hypocrisy, and you know it.”
Monk did know it. It infuriated him. He hated it with all the passion of which he was capable. There were times when he hated people, almost all people, for their willing blindness. It was injustice, burning, callous, self-righteous injustice.
“Have you got anything, Monk?” Runcorn asked, this time quietly and seriously.
Still standing, Monk told him everything he knew and how he knew it. He told him the victims he had spoken to, collating it all chronologically, showing how the attacks had increased in violence, each time the injuries worse and more viciously given. He told Runcorn how he had traced the men to specific hansom drivers, times and places. He gave him the most consistent physical descriptions.
“All right,” Runcorn said at last. “I agree crimes have been committed. I don’t doubt that. I wish I could do something about it. But set your outrage aside for long enough to let your brain think clearly, Monk. You know the law. When did you ever see a gentleman convicted of rape? Juries are made up of property owners. You can’t be a juror if you’re not. They are all men … obviously. Can you imagine any jury in the land convicting one of their own of raping a series of prostitutes from Seven Dials? You would put the women through a terrible ordeal … for nothing.”
Monk did not speak.
“Find out who they are, if you can, by all means,” Runcorn went on. “And tell your client. But if she provokes the local men into attacking those responsible, even killing them, then we still step in. Murder’s another thing. We’ll have to go on with it until we find them. Is that what you want?”
Runcorn was right. It was choking to have to concede it.
“I’ll find out who they are,” Monk said almost under his breath. “And I’ll prove it … not to Vida Hopgood or to you. I’ll prove it to their own bloody society. I’ll see them ruined!” And with that he turned on his heel and went out of the door.
It was dark and snowing outside, but he barely noticed. His rage was blazing too hotly for mere ice in the wind to temper it.
7
Rhys progressed only very slowly. Dr. Wade pronounced himself satisfied with the way in which his external wounds were healing. He came out of Rhys’s room looking grave but not more concerned than when Hester had shown him in. As always, he had chosen to see Rhys alone. Bearing in mind the site of some of the injuries, and a young man’s natural modesty, it was easy to understand why. Hester was not as impersonal a nurse to him as she had been to the men in the hospitals of the Crimea. There were so many of them she had had no time to become a friend to any one, except in brief moments of extremity. With Rhys she was far more than merely someone who attended to his needs. They spent hours together; she talked to him, read to him, sometimes they laughed. She knew his family and his friends, like Arthur Kynaston, and now also Arthur’s brother, Duke, a young man she found less attractive.
“Satisfactory, Miss Latterly,” Wade said with a very slight smile. “He seems to be responding well, although I do not wish to give false encouragement. He is certainly not recovered yet. You must still care for him with the greatest skill you possess.”
His brows drew together and he looked at her intensely. “And I cannot impress upon you too strongly how important it is that he should not be disturbed or caused anxiety, fear or other turbulence of spirit that can be avoided. You must not permit that young policeman, or any other, to force him to attempt a recollection of what happened the night of his injury. I hope you understand that. I imagine you do. I feel that you are very fully aware of his pain and would do anything, even place yourself at risk, to protect him.” He looked very slightly self-conscious, a faint color on his cheeks. “I have a high opinion of you, Miss Latterly.”
