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CHAPTER 6
In the morning Monk went to the office of the coroner who had dealt with Lambourn’s suicide. The findings of the inquest were public record and he had no difficulty in obtaining the papers.
“Very sad,” the clerk said to him solemnly. He was a young man who took his position gravely. His already receding hair was slicked back over his head and his dark suit was immaculate. “Anyone choosing to end their own life has to make one stop and think.”
Monk nodded, unable to find any reply worth making. He turned to the medical section of the report. Apparently Lambourn had taken a fairly large dose of opium, then slit his wrists and bled to death. The police surgeon had testified to it succinctly and no one had questioned either his accuracy or his skill. Indeed, there was no reason to.
The coroner had had no hesitation in passing a verdict of suicide, adding the usual compassion of presuming that the balance of the dead man’s mind had been affected, and therefore he was to be pitied rather than condemned. It was a pious form of words so customary as to be almost without meaning.
The commiserations were polite but formal. Lambourn had been a man much respected by his colleagues and no one wished to speculate aloud as to what might have been the reasons behind his death. Dinah Lambourn had not been called upon to say anything. The only witness of any personal nature had been his brother-in-law, Barclay Herne, who said that Lambourn had been depressed about the findings of his latest inquiry, and that the government’s inability to accept his recommendations had troubled him rather more than was to be expected. Herne added that he regretted the fact deeply.
The coroner offered no further comment. The matter was closed.
“Thank you,” Monk said to the clerk, giving him back the papers. “There must be a police report. Where is that?”
The clerk looked blank. “Not really a police matter, sir. No one at fault. Stands to reason.”
“Who found the body?” Monk asked. He expected the man to say it was Dinah, and he tried to picture her horror-the initial disbelief.
“A man out walking his dog,” the clerk said. “Might not have been seen for ages, except for the dog smelling it. They do … smell death, I mean.” He shook his head, shivering a little.
“Where was he found?” Monk asked, somewhat surprised. He had assumed Lambourn would either have been at home or at work.
“Greenwich Park,” the young man replied. “One Tree Hill. There’s more than one tree on it, actually. He was in a bit of a dip, up near the top. Sitting there, with his back leaned against the trunk.”
Monk was silent for a moment. What had happened to this man that he had abandoned his wife and daughters and gone by himself into the park, in the cold and the dark, then taken opium, waited for it to take effect, then cut his wrists so he bled to death where he would lie until some stranger found him? Forcing someone he knew, who cared, to be called in to identify what remained of him, and carry the news to his family. By all the accounts Monk had heard so far, Lambourn had been a gentle and considerate man. What had made him do something so unbearably selfish?
“The coroner’s report doesn’t mention his health,” he said to the clerk. “Could he have had some terminal illness?”
The clerk looked taken aback. “No idea, sir. The cause of death was perfectly obvious.”
“The immediate cause, yes, but not the reason,” Monk pointed out.
The clerk raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps that isn’t our concern, sir. Poor man obviously had something happen in his life so bad that he felt he couldn’t live with it. Nothing we can do to help, except afford him a little privacy. It can’t matter now, anyway.” The implied criticism was clear in his tone as well as his choice of words.
Monk felt a flicker of anger. “It matters because Dr. Lambourn seems to have been the only person well acquainted with the victim of a very violent and obscene murder in Limehouse,” he replied a little abruptly. “I need to know if he was aware of anything that led up to it, or if someone at least believed that he did.”
He saw the clerk’s look of alarm with momentary guilt. He had no evidence that understanding Joel Lambourn’s death would help him know who had murdered Zenia Gadney, or why. It bothered him because there were so many aspects of their relationship that did not make sense-but perhaps it was part of a greater whole he wasn’t seeing yet. And so far he had nothing else to follow, unless Orme found something, or a witness came forward.
The clerk was shaking his head as if to get rid of the idea that was forcing itself upon him. “Dr. Lambourn was a scientist, sir, a very respectable man. Worked for the government trying to get information for them. Nothing personal, not that sort of thing. It was about medicines, not about people. He wouldn’t have cared in the slightest about murders, or the sort of people who get involved in such affairs. You said the crime was ‘obscene.’ That wouldn’t be Dr. Lambourn, sir.”
“How long had he been dead before he was found?” Monk asked.
The clerk looked at the papers again, then up at Monk. “Doesn’t say, sir. I imagine it didn’t affect the verdict, and they wanted to be as discreet as possible. Details distress the family. Doesn’t help any.”
“Who was the police surgeon?”
“Ah … Dr. Wembley, sir.”
“Where do I find him?”
“Don’t know, sir. You’ll have to ask at the police station.” The clerk’s disapproval was now undisguised. He clearly considered Monk to be reopening a case that was decidedly closed, and believed that decency required it to remain so.
Monk noted the facts he needed, thanked the man, and left.
At the police station they gave him Wembley’s address, but it took him another hour to find the man’s surgery and then gain the opportunity to speak to him alone. Then Monk was introduced to a man well into his sixties, handsome, with thick gray hair and mustache.
“Thank you.” Monk accepted the seat Wembley offered him, relaxing back into the chair and crossing his legs.
