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“You’d have to know that place damn well to do that. He didn’t know it at all!”
“How do you know that?”
“He said so. That was why he needed us…”
“That’s as may be, but he was behind it,” Runcorn insisted. “The money was the thing. He may very well have meant them to get her back—heroically rescued by him—and the money passed over. They double-crossed him and killed her. Perhaps she saw Doyle and knew it was—”
“No!”
“Fisk was the man who got it tied up,” Runcorn went on, speaking over Monk, insisting on saying what he meant and finishing it. “Lister knew it was Exeter, which is probably why he had to be killed. He would have blackmailed Exeter; perhaps he even tried it.”
“No!” Monk insisted. “Why? What for?”
“The money—”
“That’s rubbish! It was his money.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Runcorn insisted. “It was Katherine’s inheritance. A lot of his money is only on paper. You need a clever accountant to see it, but the bank’s books are thoroughly fiddled. Doyle was probably in on it, and Miss Franken discovered it. That was why she had to be killed.”
“By Doyle, for heaven’s sake. Not by Exeter!”
“Yes, by Exeter. Doyle hadn’t the stomach for it. He’s greedy and quite capable of fiddling the books, but he’s essentially a coward.”
Monk was bewildered. He remembered Exeter’s grief, his horror and utter misery afterward as sharply as if it were a thing that could be inhaled, filling his own body. “I don’t believe it. Who got this evidence? You?”
“Mostly Fisk. He’s a good man, reliable and honest.”
“Which is he?”
“You remember him. You said he was staring at Hooper…”
It came back to Monk in a flood of memory. Now it was like a dark tide, drowning everything. If he had been wrong about Exeter, that was an unusual error of judgment on his part. But if he was wrong about Hooper, too, that was more than a crack in the surface; it was a flaw through the heart of all his decisions, his trust, everything he thought he knew.
“Monk,” Runcorn spoke softly, “Fisk’s a good man. He’s not wrong in this. I gave him the books to look at and he took them to a fellow he knows, a first-class cheat and embezzler. There isn’t a trick he doesn’t know. Fisk showed him this, and then Fisk showed me. Once you see it, it’s as plain as day. Exeter came out of this a rich man.”
“Or Doyle did!” Monk insisted, refusing to believe that the man whose suffering he had seen so instinctively was a sham.
“Granted, he came out richer than he went in, but the big gain was Exeter’s,” Runcorn insisted.
“I don’t believe he did it, certainly not that he had any part in Kate’s death. Fisk’s wrong.” Monk stood up. “I’ll go and see Exeter tomorrow. I’ll get Rathbone to defend him. Tonight, I want to see Hooper.”
Runcorn stood up as well. “If you have unfinished business with him, you’d better. I’m sorry, I know you trusted him.” There was intense pity in his face. “It’s the worst thing I can think of, to have trusted someone and been betrayed. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“It was one of my men,” Monk could hardly get the words through his aching throat. “And we’ve excluded all the others.” He had to face it at last. There would be an explanation: someone else’s life, maybe, a price Hooper could not pay. Monk refused to think what it could be.
“There’s something he’s not telling me. It’s in the air like a fog between us. Someone must have blackmailed him. That’s what’s been crushing him all this time. I need to know what it is. Good God, Runcorn, do you think I don’t know what it’s like to have the past weighing on you till you can hardly breathe? Does he think I don’t know that? Why didn’t he tell me? I would have helped. He doesn’t trust me. He knows all about me…everything I know—not that that’s much, but the emptiness still weighs like a lead coat. Couldn’t he have trusted me?”
“You trusted him because you had no choice,” Runcorn pointed out. There was no flinching or evasion in his eyes, but no blame either.
“Well, he’s got no choice now!” Monk said. He was so torn with emotion that he almost stumbled out the door, and went into the street without speaking again.
* * *
—
HE FOUND HOOPER IN Wapping Street, looking cold and white-faced. “Come to my office,” Monk ordered. “And close the door.”
Hooper followed him in and did as he was told. He did not sit. Monk chose to stand as well.
