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and which had been the cause of his murder.
Monk pushed his chair back from the table and stretched. He had been concentrating so intensely he was stiff, and his back and neck ached.
“Orme, can you check the ferrymen again? They’ll speak to you, even if you have to go back and forth across the water, or pay them to sit still.” He smiled grimly. “Should be an easy fare, no bending the back to earn a few pence, just rest on the oars and remember.” He turned to one of his other men. “Taylor, see if Lambourn spent any time in the opium dens in Limehouse. I doubt it. There’s probably nothing there we don’t already know about, but you’ve got sources. We need to be sure.”
“Yes, sir. Want me to try the Isle of Dogs as well? There’s a fair few dens there, too,” Taylor asked.
“Yes. Good idea. If Lambourn found something he’d have gone back to make certain. Look particularly for opium dealers out of the ordinary.” He looked at Runcorn questioningly. It was the moment when in the past he would have given orders. There would have been a brief struggle for authority, each guarding his own territory. This time he bit back the words and waited.
He saw the flash of recognition in Runcorn’s eyes, and then the relaxing of his body. “I’m going back to Lambourn’s house to question the servants,” he said calmly. “The valet will know when he came and went, and, I dare say, the cook. Between them they’ll have a good idea. When I spoke to them before they were very loyal to him. If they know it’s to prove he was murdered, they’ll help. The difficulty’ll be not putting words into their mouths.” He opened his eyes wide and looked at Monk.
Monk gave him a momentary smile, in an acknowledgment of the changed balance of power between them. “I’m going to find this Agatha Nisbet that Hester told me about, and speak to her again. I want to know what Lambourn said to her, and anything else she knows about him.”
“Good. Where’ll we meet?” Runcorn asked.
“Back here, nine o’clock tonight,” Monk replied.
“My home, ten o’clock,” Runcorn argued. “You can walk from here. And we’ll need that long. Rathbone won’t be able to string the trial much more than a couple of days after Christmas. That gives us only a few more days to find whatever it is.”
Monk nodded. “That’s sense. But make it my house. The kitchen. Hot tea and something to eat.” He looked at Orme.
“Yes, sir,” Orme replied. “Taylor, too?”
“Certainly,” Monk answered. “Paradise Place, Rotherhithe.”
“Yes, sir, I know.” Taylor nodded, smiling as if he had been given some kind of accolade.
It took Monk more than an hour to find the makeshift clinic that Hester had described to him, but far longer than that to oblige Agatha to make time for him and sit down in her tiny office, uninterrupted, and answer his questions.
She was a huge woman, about his height but much larger boned. He could imagine very easily being intimidated by her. Only when he looked at her eyes did he see any of the compassion or intelligence Hester had spoken of.
“Wot d’yer want, then?” she said bluntly. “I in’t got nothin’ to tell the River Police.”
Whatever chance he had of her cooperation, it would die the moment she suspected he was lying. He decided to be as blunt with her as he imagined she would be with him.
“I’m trying to solve the murder of a good man, before his wife is convicted and hanged for it. Or, more accurately, she’s convicted of another murder the same person also committed. I believe the good man, a doctor, was killed because he discovered something very bad about someone connected with the opium trade.”
Suddenly Agatha’s boredom changed to interest.
“That’d be Dr. Lambourn, an’ that poor creature they slit open over on Limehouse Pier. If it wasn’t the doctor’s wife ’oo killed ’er, then ’oo was it?” She looked at Monk with hard, bright eyes, and he noticed that her hands, bigger than his, were slowly clenching and unclenching among the scattered papers on top of the wooden table.
“Yes,” he agreed. “When Dr. Lambourn was searching for information about opium he accidentally found out a few other things. One of those things was so dangerous to someone that they defamed Lambourn professionally and then killed him, trying to make it look like suicide. That way they would be certain that their own secret would stay buried.”
She waited, still watching him, an unmoving mountain of a woman.
“I think he discovered this in the last week of his life,” Monk went on. “So I’m following as closely as I can in his footsteps.”
“Soft, like,” she said with bitter humor. “You don’t want ter end up in the river yerself, wi’ yer throat cut, or worse.”
“I see you understand perfectly. What was Lambourn looking for from you, and what did you tell him?” He wondered if he should add anything about her safety, but to offer to protect her would be insulting. She would know as well as he did that it would be impossible.
“Opium,” she said thoughtfully. “Lot o’ things to do with it in’t so nice.”
“Such as what?” he asked. “Stealing? Cutting it with bad substitutes so it’s impure? There’s no smuggling; it comes in perfectly legally. What’s worth killing anyone for?”
“Yer can kill to corner the trade in anything!” Agatha said with disgust. “Bakers an’ fishmongers do it! You try cutting inter the meat market, an’ see ’ow long yer last!”
“Is that what Lambourn asked you about?” he said.
