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Now he was going to do what really mattered: help Monk and Hester-and Sir Oliver, of course. There might be only one right way for that too. He must not make even the smallest mistake. It was not as if he were the only one who would pay.
He had already thought to leave his good jacket at home. His boots were better than many people’s, but he could scuff them a bit, get them dusty, and no one would notice. He needed to step back into the person he had been two years ago, cunning, hungry, willing to do most things for a cup of tea and a bun.
Monk had asked him to find out about the Taft family, specifically the wife and daughters. That was what he was going to do. He thought about it hard as he took a ferry across the river and sat in the stern, like a grown-up, and watched the sun bright on the water. As usual, the breeze was a bit chilly. He had known the river smell all his life, and he was used to cold.
How was he going to find out about the Tafts? Obviously he’d ask someone who knew things about them, things the family didn’t realize they’d given away. Who would know such things?
He thought about that for quite a long time, even after getting to the other side, paying the ferryman, and walking all the way to the main road and the omnibus stop. The street was busy. There were peddlers, men loading brewers’ drays, costermongers, shoppers at the vegetable carts, butchers’ boys, newspaper sellers. That was the answer: the invisible people saw things because no one noticed them. Delivery boys, scullery maids, postmen, street sweepers, lamplighters, the people you saw every day and didn’t remember. You realized they mattered only when they weren’t there and you went without something you were used to having.
The omnibus drew up and stopped. Scuff jumped on eagerly. He knew exactly where he was going, and what for. He knew how to be charming, how to ask questions without seeming to and make people think he liked them and wanted to hear what they had to say. He had watched both Hester and Monk do it often. And girls always liked to talk about other girls, and clothes, and romance. He might not find out much about Mrs. Taft, but he would hear all sorts of things about her daughters. He was going
to detect. He would learn something valuable first, and then he would tell Monk and Hester how he had done it. He would help them save Sir Oliver.
From time to time Monk had done certain favors for men from police forces other than those under his own jurisdiction. Perhaps in the distant past, before his accident and resulting amnesia, that might not have been true. Evidence he found suggested he had been grudging to share back then if he could avoid it. Now he thought such an attitude not only mean-spirited but also tactically shortsighted. He saw the wisdom in not only doing favors now and then, but also in being seen to return a favor done for him.
He was grateful to be owed a few that he could now collect. He chose them very carefully. Inspector Courtland was a lean, middle-aged man who had worked his way up the ranks to a position of some power, but he never forgot the great, decent family that had nurtured him. Monk knew that his mother was a churchgoing woman who had raised five children after her husband was killed in an industrial accident. Courtland spoke of her in such a way that Monk had envied him a family childhood, which, if he had had such a thing himself, he could remember nothing of now.
He did not insult Courtland by pretending he was doing anything other than collecting a favor. He would not have appreciated such condescension himself.
“Not my case personally,” Courtland explained as they shared a couple of pints of ale and remarkably good pork pies in a public house half a mile from Courtland’s police station. “But of course I know about it. What do you need?”
Monk smiled and took another bite of his pork pie. “They do a very good baked apple here.”
Courtland nodded. “Good. It’ll take that long for me to tell you all I can about Mr. Taft and his unfortunate ending. Mind, you didn’t hear it from me.”
“Of course not,” Monk agreed. “I observed it all myself, or deduced it. I don’t know that it’s going to be any damned use anyway. But there’s something in all this that we don’t understand.”
“Something?” Courtland raised his eyebrows. “There’s everything. Starting with, where is the money? Going on to, where did Rathbone get the picture of Drew? Why did Taft kill himself because Drew was a child abuser and pornographer? And why the devil did he kill his wife and daughters? But the facts say that that is what happened.” He took another mouthful of his pie. “And you know as well as I do that if we can prove a thing happened we don’t have to find a sane reason for it-or any reason at all.”
“Just tell me as much as you know of what are absolute facts,” Monk asked. “The sort of thing the best defense in the world couldn’t shake.”
Courtland stopped halfway through his pie and took another long draft of his ale. He put his tankard down again and met Monk’s eyes.
“Taft and his wife came home from court after the revelation about Drew and the photograph,” he began. “They got there a little after five o’clock. Both daughters were at home, but there were no servants in the house.”
“At five in the afternoon? Why not?” Monk asked, his mouth full.
“Apparently they all gave notice when the scandal broke and Taft was accused of misappropriating the charity money. Mrs. Taft is probably the only one who could confirm that, though, and she’s not here to say different, poor woman,” Courtland explained.
“But he hadn’t been found guilty yet,” Monk said with some surprise. “Looks as if they didn’t expect him to be acquitted. Why was that? Did they know something more than the prosecution did?”
“A good question,” Courtland answered. “But I doubt we’ll get a straight answer from them. If they left because they thought he was guilty, they’ll want to stay far away from the whole thing.”
Monk thought for a moment, drinking more of his ale, and Courtland waited.
Someone slapped the plump barmaid lightly on the behind, and there was a burst of laughter from the next table. She flounced off, giggling.
“Did they go before the trial began, or afterward?” Monk asked. “Because, according to the prosecution, they thought they had a good case against Taft, until Drew started to give evidence. Then he pretty well destroyed it.”
“You’re giving the servants credit for more foresight than I think they warrant,” Courtland told him grimly. “Looks more like they went as soon as they got a decent offer anywhere else. The feeling was much divided in the community. Still is. Servants don’t like uncertainty. Can’t blame them. If you’ve been in a home where there’s a scandal it can be hard to find another place.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Monk agreed. “So the daughters were home, and Mr. and Mrs. Taft got back at about five o’clock. What then?”
Courtland shook his head. “Their lawyer, Gavinton, called by. He’s not sure as to the exact time, but he thinks about half past eight. He said Taft was very upset, but he didn’t think he was in the least suicidal.”
Monk smiled bleakly. “Well, he would say that. He’s hardly likely to admit he found the man looking as if he’d kill his family and then himself. He’d have a lot of explaining to do if he walked out and left them after that.”
“True,” Courtland conceded. “All the same, it’s easy enough to believe that as far as Gavinton was concerned, Taft was distressed at the prospect of conviction, as any other man would’ve been, and upset to find that the man he had trusted so completely was a child abuser and pornographer. But that isn’t the type of distress that drives you to kill your family and then yourself. You really can’t blame Gavinton for not noticing that anything seemed out of the ordinary, given what the circumstances were.”
