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Monk felt a sharp prickle of satisfaction-he did not like to call it pride.
“Indeed. William Monk,” he introduced himself, allowing himself a faint smile. “Now I need to be sure that at that trial the man does not escape justice. He is claiming that he bought the guns quite legally, paying full price for them, and that he shipped them out from this station, on the train to Liverpool, the very night that the murders took place. There was a train to Liverpool that night?”
“No trains before six in the morning, sir.” Pickering shook his head. “We don’t run night trains on this line.”
Monk was taken aback. Suddenly the one thing he was sure of had slipped away.
“None at all?” he pressed.
“Well, the occasional special.” Pickering swallowed hard, but his eyes did not waver. “Private hire. Don’t often refuse one of those.”
“Was there one that night? Friday, the twenty-eighth of June? It would really be the early hours of Saturday morning.”
“I can look it up,” Pickering offered, turning to look at a sheaf of papers on a shelf behind his desk.
Monk waited impatiently. The seconds stretched out into a minute, then two.
“Here we are,” Pickering said at last. “Yes, by Jove, there was a special that night, all the way to Liverpool. Goods and a few passengers. Here you are.” He held out the sheaf of paper.
Monk snatched it from him. The train had left at five minutes before two o’clock.
“Are you sure it went on time?” he demanded. He heard the edge to his voice, and could not control it.
“Yes, sir,” Pickering assured him. “That sheet is written up afterwards. It should have gone five minutes before. That’s the time it actually went.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Does it help?”
“Yes, it does. The murders could not have happened before about three o’clock.”
Pickering looked relieved, and puzzled. “I see,” he said, although plainly he did not.
“Do you know if it carried cases of guns?” Monk asked, not expecting an answer of any value.
“Guns? No sir, just machinery, timber and I believe a consignment of bathroom furnishings.”
“Why a special train for those?”
“Bathroom furniture’s fragile, sir, I suppose.”
“Who hired it?”
“On the bottom, there, sir.” Pickering pointed at the sheet in Monk’s hand. “Messrs. Butterby and Scott, of Camberwell.” He regarded Monk curiously. “Did you think the American took the guns on our train to Liverpool? Newspapers said he went down the river to Bugsby’s Marshes and then across the Atlantic to America. Seems like the sensible thing to do. If I’d just murdered three men and stolen thousands o’ guns, I’d get out of the country and away from the law as fast as I could. I wouldn’t even hang around on the river; I’d be down there as quick as the tide would carry me, and while it was still as dark as it gets, this time o’ the year.”
“So would I,” Monk agreed. “I’d hope to have weighed anchor and be on the high seas before they’d traced which way I’d gone.”
Pickering looked puzzled.
“But if I hadn’t stolen them,” Monk explained. “If I’d bought them legitimately and didn’t know anything about murders, I’d go through Liverpool. It would save considerable time, days, rather than go all around the south coast of England before reaching the Atlantic.”
Pickering’s bristly eyebrows shot up. “You think he didn’t do it? So who did, then?”
“I don’t know what I think,” Monk admitted. “Except that whoever killed those men in Tooley Street did not travel north on one of your trains.”
“I can swear to that,” Pickering assured him. “And I will, if I’m called. You get that devil, Mr. Monk. That’s no way to treat anybody. Whatever it is you think you’re fighting for!”
Monk agreed with him, thanked him and took his leave.
