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The answer was to see if anyone in St. Giles recognized Leighton Duff from any night except that of his death. Was he known in any of the brothels? It would be by sight. A man as sophisticated in the ways of the world was hardly likely to use his own name. While society knew perfectly well that a great many gentlemen took their pleasures in such places, it was still another matter to be caught at it. One’s reputation would suffer, perhaps a great deal.
He stopped abruptly, almost tripping over the edge of the curb. He all but overbalanced, memory came to him so sharply. Of course, a man could be ruined, become the butt of social jokes, not so much from his carnal weakness as the absurdity of being caught in a ridiculous position. The man’s dignity was shattered forever. His inferiors laughed, respect vanished. He could no longer exert authority.
Why had he thought of authority?
A man with a brazier of roasting chestnuts was staring at him curiously. A coster girl giggled and disappeared around the end of the alley into the thoroughfare, carrying a bag in front of her.
A magistrate. It had been a magistrate caught in a police raid in a brothel. He had been in bed with a fat, saucy girl of about fourteen. When the police had gone in, he had come running out of the room in his shirt tails, his hair flying, his spectacles left behind, and he had tripped and fallen downstairs, landing at the police officer’s feet with his shirt over his head, very little left to the imagination. Monk had not been there. He had heard about it afterwards, and laughed till he was blind with tears and his ribs were aching.
Why did he remember that now? It was still funny, but there was a certain injustice to it, a pain.
Why? Why should Monk feel any guilt? The man was a hypocrite, sentencing women for a crime in which he himself was the abettor, for selling goods which he only too obviously bought.
And yet the sense of regret remained with Monk as he turned left and crossed the road again. He was unconsciously heading towards one of the bigger brothels he knew of. Was it to ask about Leighton Duff? Or was this where the old raid had happened? Why would the police raid a brothel in St. Giles—or the Holy Land? It was riddled with them, and no one cared. There must have been some other reason—theft, forgery, perhaps something more serious, kidnapping or even murder. That would justify storming into the place without warning.
He passed a man with a bundle of walking sticks, threading his way through the alleys to a main street where he would begin to sell them. A beggar moved into a doorway to shelter himself from the rain. For no particular reason Monk gave him a threepence.
It would be more intelligent to go to the police station and get a picture of Leighton Duff from Evan. Thousands of men matched his description. It would be an extremely tedious job to comb St. Giles for someone who had seen Leighton Duff and could recognize him, but he had nowhere else to start. And there was only a day or two before the trial began.
But while he was still in St. Giles he must see if he could trace his own history there with Runcorn. It was what he needed to know. Vida Hopgood was satisfied. He thought, with a smile, of her face when he had told her about Rhys Duff and his friends. It was less than perfect that Arthur and Duke Kynaston should escape, but it was not necessarily a permanent state of affairs. They would be unlikely to return to Seven Dials, and if they did, they would find a most unpleasant reception awaiting them. Perhaps Monk should go and warn them of that? It might save their lives, which did not concern him overmuch, but it would also free his own conscience from the stain of accessory to murder if they should be foolish enough to ignore him.
He reached the station and found Evan, now engaged in a new case.
“May I borrow your pictures of Rhys and Leighton Duff?” he asked when they were in Evan’s tiny room.
Evan was surprised. “What for? Isn’t Vida Hopgood satisfied?”
“Yes. This isn’t for her.” He would prefer not to have to tell Evan that he was trying to save Rhys Duff, that he was, in a sense, working against the case Evan had built with Monk’s own help.
“Then who?” Evan watched him closely, his hazel eyes bright.
Evan would find out sooner or later that Rathbone had taken up the defense. Evan would testify at the trial; he would know then, if not before.
“Rathbone,” Monk answered tersely. “He would like to know more about what happened before that night.”
Evan stared at him. There was no anger in his face, no sense of betrayal. In fact, if anything he looked relieved.
“You mean Hester persuaded Rathbone to defend Rhys, and you are working to that end,” Evan said with something that sounded like satisfaction.
Monk was stung that Evan imagined he was working for Hester, and in a hopeless cause like this one. Worse than that, it was true. He was tilting at windmills, like a complete fool. It was totally out of character, contrary to everything he knew of himself, and it was to try to ease the pain for Hester when she had to watch Rhys Duff convicted of a crime for which they would hang him, and this time she would be helpless to offer him even the remotest comfort. The knowledge of her pain then twisted inside Monk like a cramp. And for that alone he could hate Rhys Duff and his selfish, obsessive appetites, his cruelty, his stupidity and his mindless violence.
“I’m working for Rathbone,” he snapped at Evan. “It is a total waste of time, but if I don’t do it he’ll find someone else, and waste poor Mrs. Duff’s money, not to mention her grief. If ever a woman did not need a further burden to carry, it is she.”
Evan did not argue. Monk would have preferred it if he had. It was an evasion, and Monk knew that Evan knew it. Instead he simply turned away to his desk drawer with a slight smile and a lift of his shoulders, and pulled out the two pictures. He gave them to Monk.
“I had better have them back when you are finished with them, in case they are required for evidence.”
“Thank you,” Monk said rather less courteously than Evan deserved. He folded them up carefully in a piece of paper and put them in his pocket. He bade Evan good-bye and went out of the police station quickly. He would prefer it if Runcorn did not know he had been there. The last thing he wanted was to run into him by chance … or mischance.
It would be a long and cold day, and evening was when he would have the best chance to find the people who would have been around at the time to see either Rhys or Leighton Duff, or, for that matter, either of the Kynastons. Feeling angry at the helplessness, his feet wet and almost numb with cold, he went back towards St. Giles, stopping at a public house for a hot meat pie, potatoes and onions, and a steamed pudding with a plain sauce.
He spent several hours in the area searching and questioning, walking slowly along the alleys and through the passages, up and down stairways, deeper into the older part, unchanged in generations. Water dripped off rotting eaves, the stones were slimy, wood creaked, doors hung crooked but fast closed. People moved ahead of him and behind like shadows. One moment it would be strange, frightening and bitterly infectious, the next he thought he recognized something. He would turn a corner and see exactly what he expected, a skyline or a crooked wall exactly as he had known it would be, a door with huge iron studs whose pattern he could have traced with his eyes closed.
He learned nothing, except that he had been there before, and that he already knew. The police station he had worked from made that much obvious to anyone.
He began with the larger and more prosperous brothels. If Leighton Duff had used prostitutes in St. Giles, they were the most likely places to find them.
He worked until after midnight, asking, threatening, cajoling, coercing, and learning nothing whatever. If Leighton Duff had been to any of these places, either the madams did not remember him or they were lying to protect their reputation for discretion
