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Exeter stared at him as if seeing the depth of his character for the first time. This very ordinary-looking ex-seaman had arrived at the possibility before him. “Maybe you are right,” he said slowly, only just loud enough for Hooper to hear him. “Of course you are. And if Doyle was involved, Kate had met him. She was good at speaking to ordinary people—tradesmen and so on, and never forgetting their names. It’s a skill.”
Hooper thought it was hardly a skill; it was a decency. And Doyle was hardly a tradesman, but that was not the point now. If she thought of him as such, that would only add to Doyle’s sense of exclusion.
“Do you really think Doyle could have done this?” Exeter was frowning now. “How would he know people such as the…creature that you found in the boat, with his throat cut? And are you sure he—Lister, wasn’t he called?—was involved? That is only a deduction, isn’t it?”
“It seems very likely, sir. Lister had been spending what were for him huge amounts of money. He was known to be violent on occasion, and when we followed him he was keeping company with other violent men.”
“Not a lot to go on,” Exeter pointed out. “Doyle had the connection. He knew about the kidnapping. God! When I recall his sympathy and apparent shock when I told him about it! He looked…shattered…but it makes sense. Have you any connection between Doyle and this fellow…Lister?”
“We followed Lister and know he met up with Mr. Doyle. And Miss Darwin recognized him, sir.”
“What!”
“Miss Darwin recognized him, sir,” Hooper repeated.
“What do you mean, recognized him? When in hell’s name did she ever see him?”
Hooper felt the blood rush up his face. Had he made a mistake in telling Exeter this? “She was with Mrs. Exeter when the man took her on the—”
“I know she was!” Exeter cut across him. “But when did she see him again, to recognize him?”
Hooper’s mind raced. “She did not name him, sir.” He had to admit to taking Celia to the morgue and showing her the corpse. Exeter would be furious with him. He could understand it. In his place, he would have felt the same. “She identified his body as the man she had seen on the riverbank,” he finished.
Exeter’s face paled. “God Almighty, man. You took Celia to look at the corpse, with his throat cut, of the man who kidnapped her cousin in front of her and then hacked her to death? Are you insane? You…you…Words fail me!” His face was flushed with rage.
“He was cleaned up, sir, and his throat was not visible. She saw only his face.”
“And that makes it all right? What kind of a man are you? Maybe the women in your society are used to that kind of thing, but Miss Darwin is a lady! She might be poor and from the least successful side of the family, in all respects, but she is…”
Hooper kept his temper with difficulty, but his anger was evident in the timbre of his voice, if not in his actual words. “Miss Darwin behaved herself with perfect composure, Mr. Exeter, as a lady would, in my experience. Mr. Monk’s wife, whom I have the privilege of knowing, was a nurse in the Crimea, with Florence Nightingale, and has seen more bloody corpses than all the police force put together, and certainly than you or I have. Neither she, nor the ladies with her, many of them from noble families, screamed or fainted or generally got in the way. Birth and death are both bloody, and frequently intimate and painful, and women usually do the attending to both.”
Exeter drew in his breath sharply, then his face eased into blankness. “You are perfectly correct,” he said with amazement. “I had never thought of Celia being any use at all, but perhaps she has at least that quality. Either that, or insufficient imagination to be horrified. I hope she did not identify this wretched man simply to please you.”
Hooper had had that thought as well, and had dismissed it. Now he was angry with Exeter for suggesting it, and yet he had no right to be. “So do I, sir. I hope it every time someone identifies a potential criminal. She did not see him for very long on the riverbank, but I believe her. She is observant.”
“You hardly know her well enough for such a judgment, Mr. Hooper.” Exeter’s face was slack with surprise as another thought came to him. “Unless, of course, that was not the first time she had seen him? Is that what you were suggesting?”
For an instant Hooper had no idea what Exeter meant. Then it came to him in a rush of profound anger. It took him a moment to hide it. Exeter must not know the regard Hooper had for this woman he had met only three times, and so briefly. He breathed in and out slowly, as if pensive rather than controlling his emotions. “I was not suggesting such a thing, sir. I have no reason to suppose any of you met Lister before, except perhaps Mr. Doyle. And I am sure you would tell me if you had any evidence of that.”
“How could I have?” Exeter demanded. “I have never seen this…Lister!”
“No, sir. I forgot that. If you think of anything else that might be of use in tracing the money through Mr. Doyle’s hands, his foreknowledge of the ransom and its amount, anything at all—”
“Yes, yes. I’ll tell you,” Exeter assured him. “Thank you. I’m sorry if I was short with you. This is all terribly hard for me. Nothing is as I thought it was…as I believed. It is all…” He shook his head.
Hooper rose to his feet. “Appalling, sir. I can hardly imagine,” he said quietly.
CHAPTER
12
MONK LISTENED CLOSELY AS Hooper told him about his visit to Harry Exeter. They were sitting in Monk’s office with the door closed. The kidnapping was still at the forefront of everyone’s minds although it was a week and a half since the event. It was a failure that ached like a deep wound. They were becoming used to it, and there were always other cases to deal with: robberies, smuggling, stolen goods moved from place to place, in and out of their jurisdiction, and violence here and there, usually bar brawls that got out of hand, occasionally a knifing or a body thrown into the water. But the murder of Kate Exeter was deliberate and unnecessary, and a failure of which they were forewarned and yet had still succumbed.
“But you think Miss Darwin’s identification was good?” Monk asked a second time, studying Hooper’s face. He was not a handsome man in a traditional way, but he had a good face. The strength in it was gentle; there was nothing coarse in him. Monk was overwhelmed with a sudden wave of hatred toward whoever had betrayed them and sown the seed of this darkness. Good men were unfairly doubted, robbed of a trust they had earned—more than earned—through danger, boredom, physical hardship, and pain. Yesterday h
e had followed up on young Bathurst’s paperwork on the arrest of a thief, and Marbury had seen him do it. Would he tell Bathurst? Or simply think that Bathurst needed more guidance?
One of his men had let him down, but in a sense he himself had let them all down. He repeated his question to Hooper in slightly different words. “You think she is right, not just trying to help, to do something for Kate, without thinking it through?”
