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Lanyon squinted at him. “Didn’t trust him to sell the right guns, even though he was Alberton’s agent, but did trust him enough to hand over the whole amount of the money to him and sail off to America in the absolute faith that the guns would be shipped to him, and not either kept or sold to someone else?” He pursed his lips. “What was to stop Shearer from pocketing the money and selling the guns again, or even simply leaving them where they were? Not a lot Breeland could do about it from New York!”
Another idea flashed into Monk’s mind. “Maybe that was why he took Merrit with him? Insurance against being cheated.”
“By Alberton, maybe … but why would Shearer care what happened to Merrit? He killed Alberton anyway.”
Monk remembered Breeland’s face when he had been told about the murders. “I don’t believe Breeland knew about that. He believed Shearer was acting out of principle, that he believed just as passionately as he did himself in the fight against slavery.” He saw Lanyon’s look of comical incredulity. “Talk to Breeland,” he said quickly. “Listen to him. He’s a fanatic. In his view, all right-minded people believe as he does.”
Lanyon took the point. “I suppose it’s possible,” he said cautiously. “So Shearer is the villain, Breeland the fanatic, guilty of buying stolen guns and using Merrit’s love for him, but not of murder. And Merrit herself is guilty only of being led by her heart and ignoring her head? I suppose at sixteen that’s half to be expected.” He shrugged. “If a woman wouldn’t do all she could to help her betrothed, we’d be just as quick to criticize her.”
“Probably,” Monk agreed, although privately he wondered just how much blind adoration he could take-perhaps at thirty a lot more than he could now. And would he have used it with the same disregard as Lyman Breeland did? Probably. What was given so freely was often valued too little. But the fact that he himself might have been no better did not soften his dislike for Breeland; if anything it deepened it.
“Are you going to pursue that?” Lanyon asked curiously.
“I’m going to pursue everything,” Monk replied. “Unless, of course, I find something so conclusive it isn’t necessary.” He grinned broadly at Lanyon, but it was ironic, and they both knew it.
Lanyon shrugged. “Good luck.” He sounded as if he meant it.
Monk started again at the very beginning, at the warehouse yard, following the trail of the wagons leaving. He remembered vividly going into the closed space in the pale, summer morning and seeing the dead bodies in their grotesque positions. He remembered Casbolt’s face in the light, the smell of blood, the wheel tracks over the stones.
He also remembered Manassas and the strange reality of war. The whole of it was like a dream, all smaller than it should have been, the dust and the heat ridiculously commonplace. Gunshots were not like thunder; they were crackling, like dozens of sticks being snapped as a bonfire took hold. Only the cannons roared.
But the blood and the fear had been more real than anyone could imagine, so stark they still came back to him every time he closed his eyes and forgot to guard against them. It was the smell that stayed in his memory.
What were three deaths compared with so many? Some of the soldiers had been shot down without even a fight, just wasted, as thoughtlessly as a man mows down grass.
Was that how Breeland looked at it? Did he see it not as murder but as war? Did he feel a few individual deaths were a small price to pay to secure the end of slavery for a whole race? And perhaps the end of the sin of enslaving for another race, h
is own? An argument could be made for it. Monk could make one himself.
He knew what Hester would say. At least he thought he did. You did not save a people from sin by committing another sin yourself. But was she a realist? Or did she think of individuals, one man’s injuries or pain, one man’s grief, because it was what she could help, and refuse to see a wider whole?
Certainly, Lyman Breeland ignored the individual and saw the thousands, the tens of thousands. And Monk found something in Breeland repellent. Did that make Breeland wrong, or only morally braver, more of a visionary and less of an ordinary, limited human being?
Monk stood in the sun in Tooley Street and weighed the possibilities. The wagons had left through the gates and must have turned either left or right. The guns were too heavy to have been transported other than by horse-drawn vehicles or on barges along the river. The river was by far the closer. It was the way Alberton normally moved all heavy goods. It was the way everyone did.
But Breeland was American. Perhaps he did not know that? Could he have gone by road to the Euston Square station? Well over a month had gone by. It would be hard to find witnesses who remembered anything, let alone were willing to testify to it.
Could Breeland’s story be true? That was the place to start. The wagons loaded with six thousand guns would be big enough, passing through the streets in the middle of the night.
But time was a whole different question. Breeland had said the note had come to him about midnight. Alberton was still alive then. He was killed around three, according to the medical evidence, and the reasonable deduction as to the loading of the guns. The wagons must have left immediately after. How long would it take them heavily laden, but in the traffic-free still of the night?
He started to walk rapidly, then caught a cab, following the shortest route over the river towards the Euston Square station, thinking furiously all the way. Even at a trot, which wagons could not have done, he could not have made it in less than half- to three-quarters of an hour.
He paid the cabdriver and strode into the station. He asked to see the stationmaster, quoting Lanyon’s name as if he had a right to.
“It is regarding illegal shipment of arms,” he said grimly. “And triple murder. My information must be exact. Lives depend upon it, and perhaps Britain’s reputation for honor.”
The clerk obeyed with alacrity. Let the decision for dealing with this be somebody else’s. “I’ll fetch Mr. Pickering, sir!”
The stationmaster kept him waiting only fifteen minutes. He was an agreeable man with a thick gray mustache and handsome side-whiskers. He welcomed Monk into his office.
“How can I be of assistance, sir?” he said mildly, but he eyed Monk up and down, weighing his importance and reserving judgment. He had heard wild statements before and was not easily impressed.
Monk would not retreat, but he decided to phrase his request carefully.
“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Pickering. As you are no doubt aware, there was a triple murder in Tooley Street on June twenty-eighth, and a large shipment of British guns was stolen and exported to America.”
“All London is aware of it, sir,” Pickering replied. “A very enterprising agent of enquiry tracked down the murderer and brought him back to stand trial for it.”
