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And the answer was there before the thought was whole. Sweatshops required a skill in sewing she might not possess, and paid less for a fourteen-hour day than she could make in her room in an hour. Both would probably break her health by the time she was forty.
“I don’t want to lie with you, I want to ask you about Sarah Mackeson,” he said, sitting down on the one wooden chair. He was trying to place the faint smell in the room. It was not any of the usual body odors he would have expected, and not pleasing enough to have been a deliberate perfume, even if such a thing had been likely.
“You a rozzer?” she asked. “Don’t look like one.” There was little expression in her voice. “Well, yer can’t get ’er fer nothin’ now, poor bitch. She’s dead. Some bastard did ’er in a few days ago, up Acton Street. Don’t yer swine never tell each other nothin’? Even the patterers is talkin’ about it. Yer should listen!”
Monk ignored her resentment. He even saw the reason for it. She probably saw herself in Sarah Mackeson. It could as easily have been she, and she would expect as little protection before, or care afterwards.
“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I want to learn what I can about her. I want to catch who did it.”
It took a moment or two for her to grasp what he had said and consider whether she believed it. Then she began to talk.
He asked questions and she rambled on, a mixture of memories and observations, thoughts, all charged with so much emotion he was not certain when she was referring to Sarah and when to herself, but perhaps at times they were interchangeable. A painfully clear picture emerged of a woman who was careless, openhearted, loyal to her friends, feckless with money, and yet deeply frightened of a future in which she saw no safety. She was untidy, generous, quick to laugh-and to cry. If any man had loved her enough to feel jealousy, let alone to kill, she certainly had not known it. In her own eyes, her sole value was as an object of beauty for as long as it lasted. Both time and fashion were already eroding it, and she felt the cold breath of rejection.
Bella Holden was walking the same path, and she could offer no clue as to who might have killed Sarah. Reluctantly, she named a few other people who had known her moderately well, but he doubted they could help. Bella would not compromise her own future for the sake of finding justice for Sarah. Sarah was dead, and past help. Bella had too little on her side to risk any of it.
Monk thanked her and left. This time he returned to the police station, and found Runcorn in his office looking tired and unhappy, his brows drawn down.
“Opium,” he said, almost as if he were challenging Monk.
Suddenly, Monk placed the smell in Bella Holden’s room. He was annoyed with himself for not having known at the time. That was another gap in his memory. He hated Runcorn’s seeing it, especially now. “Sarah Mackeson was taking opium?” he asked with something close to a snarl.
/> Runcorn misread his expression for contempt. His face flushed with anger almost beyond his control. His voice shook when he spoke. “So might you, if you had nothing to offer but your looks, and they were fading!” He gulped air. His knuckles shone white where his hands were pressed on the desk in front of him. “With nothing ahead of you but doss-houses and selling your body to strangers for less and less every year, you might not stand there in your handmade boots looking down your damn nose at someone who escaped into a dream every now and then, because reality was too hard to bear! It’s your job to find out who killed her, not decide whether she was right or wrong.” He stopped abruptly and sniffed hard, looking away from Monk now, as if his anger embarrassed him. “Did you go and see Bella What’s-her-name as I told you? Have you done anything useful at all?”
Monk stood totally still, an incredible reality dawning on him. Runcorn was abashed because he felt defensive of Sarah and had developed a pity for her he had not expected, and it totally confused him. He was not idly defending her, but was instead defending himself and his own nakedness in front of Monk, who he imagined could not share his understanding or his pain.
The fact that he did share it made Monk angry, too. He admired Runcorn for it. It must have required an inner courage to admit an openness to hurt and to change Monk had not thought Runcorn capable of. Now it meant Monk, too, had to alter his judgments-and of Runcorn, of all people.
He was aware that Runcorn was watching him now. “Opium?” he said, forcing his voice to convey interest. “Any idea where she got it from?”
Runcorn grunted. “Could be Allardyce,” he said noncommittally. “That could be what all this is about-opium sale gone wrong. Perhaps Mrs. Beck came in on it and they were afraid she would cause a scandal.”
“Worth killing her for?” Monk said dubiously. Selling opium was not a crime.
“Might have been a lot of money,” Runcorn reasoned. “Or other people involved. Don’t know who else Allardyce painted, perhaps society ladies. Maybe they were taking the stuff and wouldn’t want their husbands to know?”
It was possible; in fact, the more he thought of it the better it looked. It would mean the murders had nothing to do with Kristian, or with Elissa Beck. “A quarrel perhaps, or a little blackmail?” he added to the idea. “Allardyce was the supplier?”
Runcorn looked at him with something almost like approval. “Well, he probably gave it to Sarah Mackeson, to keep her docile, if nothing else-poor creature. He wouldn’t care what it did to her over time. He’s only interested in the way she looks now, not what happens to her once he’s tired of her and picked someone else.” His mouth closed in a bitter line, as if he were angry not only with Allardyce but with everyone else who failed to see what he did or was indifferent to it.
Monk said nothing. There were too many changes whirling through his mind. His fury against Runcorn dissolved, and then was confused with a new one, because he did not want to have to change his opinion of this man, especially so quickly and so violently. It was his own fault for leaping to a cruel conclusion before he knew the truth, but he still blamed Runcorn for not being what he had supposed. Even as he was doing it he knew it was unfair, and that made it worse.
Runcorn flicked through the papers on his desk and found what he was looking for. He held it out to Monk. “That’s the drawing Allardyce spoke about. Feller who drew it said it was the night of the murders, and the pub landlord said he was there right enough, and drawing people.”
Monk took it from him. He needed only a glance to see an unmistakable portrait of Allardyce. It had not Allardyce’s skill at catching the passion of a moment. There was no tension in it, no drama. It was simply a group of friends around a table at a tavern, but the atmosphere was pervasive; even in such a hasty sketch one could imagine the laughter, the hum of conversation, the clink of glasses, and music in the background, a theater poster on the wall behind them.
“They were there all evening,” Runcorn said flatly. “We can forget Allardyce.”
Monk said nothing; the ugly, choking misery inside him closed his throat.
CHAPTER SIX
Hester went to the hospital again to see Mary Ellsworth. She found her sitting up in bed, her wound healing nicely and the pain definitely less than even a day ago.
“I’m going to be all right!” she said the moment Hester was in the door. “Aren’t I?” Her eyes were anxious, and she held the bedclothes so tightly her hands were balled into fists. Her hair was straggling out of the braids she had put it in for the night, as if already she had started to pull at it again.
Hester felt her heart sink. What could she say to this woman that would even begin to heal her real illness? The bezoar had been the symptom, not the cause.
“You are recovering very well,” she replied. She reached out her hand and put it over Mary’s. It was as rigid as it looked.
