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Runcorn saw it and glared at him.
“Sympathy!” Monk said quickly. “Broke my ribs, remember?”
Runcorn grunted, and they went on in silence as far as Acton Street and turned the corner. “Wouldn’t like to be a lady,” he said thoughtfully. “Imagine I’d rather have work to do. . unless, of course, I didn’t know any different.” He was still frowning, trying to imagine a world so terrifyingly empty, when they reached the top of the stairs and knocked on Allardyce’s studio door.
It was several moments before it was opened by Allardyce himself, looking angry and half asleep. “What in hell’s name do you want at this hour?” he demanded. “It’s barely daylight! Haven’t you got a home?”
“It’s nearly nine o’clock, sir,” Runcorn answered flatly, his face set in disapproval and studiously avoiding looking at Allardyce’s hastily pulled on trousers and his nightshirt tails hanging over them. His feet were bare, and he moved from one to the other on the chilly step.
“I suppose policemen have to be up at this ungodly hour,” Allardyce said irritably. “What do you want now? You’d better come in, because I’m not standing out here any longer.” And he turned and went back inside, leaving the door open for them.
Runcorn followed him in, and Monk came a step behind. The studio was otherwise unoccupied, but there were canvases stacked against the walls. Half a dozen were in one stage or another of development-four portraits, one street scene, an interior with two girls sitting on a sofa reading. The one painting on the easel was of a man of middle age and a great look of self-satisfaction. Presumably it was a commission.
Allardyce muttered something under his breath and disappeared through the farther door.
Runcorn wrinkled his nose very slightly. He said nothing, but his face was eloquent of his disgust.
Monk walked over to a sheaf of drawings in a folder and opened them up. The first was brilliant. The artist had used only a charcoal pencil, but with an extraordinary economy of stroke he had caught the suppressed energy in face and body as three women leaned over a table. The dice were so insignificant it took a moment before Monk even saw them. All the passion was in the faces, the eyes, the open mouths, the jagged force that held them transfixed. Gamblers.
He turned it over quickly and looked at the next. Gamblers again, but this time with the vacant stare of the loser. It was powerful, desolate. A home or a fortune lost on the turn of a piece of colored cardboard, but all despair was in the eyes.
The third was a beautiful woman, her face alight as if at sight of a lover, her eyes shining, her lips parted, but it was a fan of cards that she stared at, a winning hand, colors and suits blurred, already without
meaning as she looked towards the next deal. Victory was so sweet, and the taste of it an instant, and then gone again.
Elissa Beck.
Monk turned the rest, aware of Runcorn at his shoulder, watching, saying nothing.
There were pictures of this woman, some sketched so hastily they were little more than a suggestion, half an outline, but with such power the emotion leapt raw off the paper, the greed, the excitement, the pounding heart, the sweat on the skin, the clenched muscles. Monk found himself holding his own breath as he looked at them one after another.
Had Runcorn recognized Elissa? Monk felt himself hot, and then cold. Could Runcorn possibly imagine Allardyce was so obsessed with her he had placed her there just to draw her again and again? Not unless he was totally naive. Those drawings were from life; anyone with the slightest knowledge of nature could see the honesty in them. He did not want to turn to meet Runcorn’s eyes.
There were two more pictures. They were probably just the same, but their blank white edges, poking out beneath the one he saw now, challenged him. What were they? More of Elissa? He could feel Runcorn’s presence so vividly he imagined the warmth of his body, Runcorn’s breath on his neck.
He turned the page. The second to last was a man, thick-chested, broken-nosed, leaning against a wall and watching the women, who were again playing. His face was brutish, bored. Sooner or later they would lose, and it would be his job to make sure the debts were collected. He would get rid of troublemakers.
Slowly, Monk lifted the page over to look at the last one. It was an expensively dressed man with dead eyes, and a small pistol in his hand.
Runcorn let out a sigh, and his voice was very quiet. “Poor devil,” he said. “I suppose he reckons it’s the better way. Ever seen a debtors’ prison, Monk? Some of them aren’t too bad, but when they throw ’em in with everyone else, for a man like that, he’s probably right, better off a quick end.”
Monk said nothing. His thoughts were too hard, the truth too close.
“I suppose you think he’s a coward,” Runcorn said, and there was anger and hurt bristling in him.
“No!” Monk returned instantly. “Don’t suppose. You’ve no idea what I think!”
Runcorn was startled.
Now Monk was facing him, their eyes meeting. Had Runcorn recognized Elissa? How long would it be before he realized the cost of her gambling? He knew enough not to imagine it was a game, a few hours of a harmless pastime. If he had not before, it was there in the drawings, the consuming hunger that swept away all other thought or feeling. They destroyed any illusion that it was a harmless, controllable vice.
“She didn’t break her own neck,” Runcorn said very softly, his voice rough as if his throat hurt. “Debt collectors? And the poor model just got in the way?”
Monk thought about it. Somewhere in his closed memory he must know more about gamblers, violence, ways of extorting money without endangering their own gambling houses, and thus losing more profit than they gained. “We don’t know that she owed enough to be worth making an example of,” he said to Runcorn. “Does it look that way to you?”
Runcorn’s lips tightened. “No,” he said flatly. He would like that to have been the answer, even if they never found the individual man responsible; it was clear in his face. “Doesn’t really make sense. If she wasn’t paying they’d simply ban her from the place. . long before she got to owe enough to be worth the risk of killing. They’d murder rivals who could drive them out of business, but not losers. Hell, the gutters’d be choked with corpses if they did that.” His eyes widened suddenly. “Might kill a winner, though! Win a bit’s good to encourage the others, win a lot is expensive.”
Monk laughed harshly. “And you don’t suppose they have control over how much anybody wins?”
