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Runcorn stiffened again.
“What do you want from me? I can’t testify against her. I know nothing about her but her dignity and her grief.” Runcorn met his eyes with frankness, and quite open pity.
This was the most difficult part. Monk found himself uncharacteristically reluctant to offend Runcorn. It surprised him. In the past he had been happy enough actually to seek opportunities to quarrel.
“She begged me to ask Oliver Rathbone to defend her,” he began a little awkwardly. “He agreed. Now he’s asked me to help him. I don’t know if he thinks she could be innocent. Nothing in the facts so far supports that. But the whole issue is full of ambiguities, and it matters far more than merely finding justice for Zenia Gadney.”
“ ‘Merely’?” Runcorn asked, his eyes wide.
Monk did not defend his choice of word. “It is a matter of justice for Dinah Lambourn also, and for Joel Lambourn, and it pertains to the whole question of the Pharmacy Act.”
Runcorn frowned. “Joel Lambourn? I don’t understand.”
Monk plunged in. “Dinah says he did not take his own life. She says he was murdered because of the report he made on the sale of opium and the damage it does, particularly the deaths of so many babies and small children. She also claims that the same people who murdered him murdered Zenia Gadney, and framed her, in order to prevent her from raising questions about Lambourn’s death, or raising too much interest in his report. The report itself seems to have vanished-all copies, and his notes.”
Runcorn did not interrupt, just sat forward a little in his chair, tense and puzzled, his body slightly hunched.
“And, of course, if his affair with Zenia Gadney were to become public, which obviously it will,” Monk went on, “then that provides an excellent motive for his suicide.” He watched Runcorn’s face and saw the revulsion, the anger, and then the pity. This was a Runcorn he did not know, a man of gentleness he had never seen before. Was it because Runcorn was utterly changed, or because something in Monk had changed, and he only now perceived what had always been there?
Runcorn thought for several moments before he answered. When he did, his words were carefully chosen, and his eyes did not leave Monk’s face.
“I wasn’t really happy about the verdict on Lambourn,” he admitted. “I wanted to look into it more carefully, tie up all the ends.” He shook his head very slightly. “Not that I could see any other answer. He was up there by himself, sitting on the ground half tumbled over, his back against that tree. His wrists were slashed and covered in blood. His clothes, too. I don’t even know why I wanted to look any further, just that it’s such a hell of a thing for a man with a family to do to himself.” He stopped, as if he needed a space to weigh what he meant to say next.
Monk thought of Runcorn’s solitary life and wondered if he had imagination of what it would be like to have a woman love him as Dinah Lambourn had loved her husband.
“The government was eager to close the whole thing as quickly as possible,” Runcorn continued. “They said his work was sensitive just at that time, and that he had made some very serious errors of judgment. I don’t know what errors precisely.” He looked puzzled. “We know he was collecting facts about the import and sale of opium, where it is available, and the way it is labeled, that type of thing. So what error in judgment could he have made?”
“I don’t know,” Monk admitted. “Perhaps as to how much proof he needed before he accepted a story? Whether records of doctors were accurate or properly kept? Did they say?”
“No.” Runcorn shook his head. “Just that for the sake of his reputation, and his family, it needed to be closed as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. I wasn’t happy about the details, but I could understand their wishes, and the need for compassion. Are you saying there is a strong chance it is themselves they were protecting, not Dinah and her daughters?”
“I’m not sure.” Monk was compelled to be honest. “And I need to be. Did you ever see this report of his?”
“No. They searched his house. I never did. The report would be government property anyway. They commissioned it and paid him for it. They said it was based on his emotional beliefs rather than scientific gathering of evidence, but that’s all: no details.” Runcorn sighed. “They suggested, without actually saying so, that it was evidence of the imbalance of his mind. They didn’t seem surprised that he had taken his life.”
“Did they mention his affair with Zenia Gadney?”
Runcorn shook his head. “No. They said he was eccentric in several ways. Perhaps that is what they were hinting at.” He looked grieved. “What do you want to do?”
“Go over the evidence again,” Monk answered. “See if there is any sense at all in Dinah Lambourn’s story, anything that raises questions, or doesn’t fit in with suicide, or the theory that he was losing his mind or was emotionally unbalanced.”
“Are you sure he had an affair with this woman in Limehouse?” Runcorn’s face still mirrored his disbelief. Surely Runcorn had been a policeman long enough to know that such an apparent aberration was in fact quite possible?
“Dinah denied knowing about it at first, but then she admitted it,” Monk repeated.
“It doesn’t sound right,” Runcorn insisted, looking at the desk, then up at Monk again. “I’d welcome the chance to go over it all piece by piece, to see if there were mistakes, but we’ll have to do it very quietly and unofficially, or we’ll get the government stepping in and blocking us.” There was no hesitation in his voice, no doubt.
Monk was not surprised, except at his courage. The Runcorn he had known in the past would never have defied authority, either openly or behind their backs. He held out his hand.
Runcorn took it. There was no need to give words to their agreement.
“I can get away at four o’clock,” Runcorn said. “Come to my house at five.” He wrote down an address in Blackheath on a small piece of paper. “I’ll tell you everything I know, and we can plan where to begin.”
Monk was even more surprised when he arrived at the house at five minutes before five that afternoon. It was a respectable family home on a quiet street. The garden was well kept and from the outside it had an air of comfort, even permanence. He would never have associated it with Runcorn.
He was completely taken aback when the door was opened not by Runcorn, or a maid, but by Melisande Ewart, the beautiful widow he and Runcorn had questioned as a witness in a murder some time ago. She
had insisted on speaking to them when her overbearing brother had tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent her. Monk had realized at the time that Runcorn had admired her far more than he wished to, and that he would have been mortified with embarrassment had she guessed it. Indeed it was too sensitive even for Monk to have made any remark at the time. If the situation had been less delicate, Monk would have joked about it. Runcorn was the man least likely to fall in love, let alone with a woman of superior social rank and position, even though she had had no money and was dependent upon a brother she found oppressive.
