AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mr. Runcorn wouldn’t approve, sir. I mean ter marry ’er, but I ’aven’t saved enough money yet, an’ I can’t afford ter lose me job.”
“Then be a little more efficient with your lying, and Mr. Runcorn won’t need to find out. At least be wholehearted in your inventions.”
Shotts stared at him.
Evan kept on walking, coming to the crossroad and, after a brief glance to left and right, striding out, leaving Shotts on the curb as a rag-and-bone cart lumbered between them. Now he was smiling widely.
When Evan reached the police station there was a message that Monk wanted to see him and had information to impart relevant to the Leighton Duff case of a nature which would bring to a conclusion the initial part of the enquiry. That was very strong language for Monk, who never exaggerated, and Evan went out again immediately and took a hansom to Fitzroy Street, and knocked on the door of Monk’s rooms.
It was some time since he had been there, and he was surprised to see how comfortable they were—in fact, even inviting. He was too intent on his purpose for calling to notice more than peripherally, but he was aware of personal touches. It was not something he would have associated with Monk, it was too restful. There were antimacassars on the chair backs and a palm tree of some sort in a large brass pot. The fire was hot, as if it had been lit for some time. He found he was relaxing, in spite of himself.
“What is it?” he asked as soon as his coat was off and even before he sat in the chair opposite Monk’s. “What have you found out? Have you proof?”
“I have witnesses,” Monk replied, crossing his legs and leaning back, his eyes on Evan’s face. “I have several people who saw Rhys Duff in St. Giles leading up to the murder, and a prostitute he used there on several occasions. It was definitely him. She identified him from the picture you gave me, and she knew him by name, also Arthur and Duke Kynaston. I even have the last victim of rape, attacked just before the murder, only a few yards from Water Lane.”
“She identified Rhys Duff?” Evan said incredulously. It was almost too good to be true. How had he and Shotts missed that? Were they really so inferior to Monk? Was Monk’s skill, and his ruthlessness, so much greater? Evan looked across at where Monk sat, the firelight red on his lean cheeks and casting shadows across his eyes. It was a strong, clever face, but not insensitive, not without imagination or the possibility of compassion. There was a certain darkness in it now, as if this victory destroyed as well as created. There was so much in him Evan did not understand, but it did not stop him caring. He had never been afraid to commit his friendship.
“No,” Monk answered. “She described three men, one tall and fairly slight, one shorter and leaner built, and one of average height and thin. She did not see or remember their faces.”
“That could be Rhys Duff and Duke and Arthur Kynasto
n, but it’s not proof,” Evan argued. “A decent defense lawyer would tear that apart.”
Monk linked his fingers together in a steeple and stared at Evan. “When this defense lawyer you have in mind asks why on earth Rhys Duff should murder his father,” he said, “we will be able to say that Rhys was a decent, well-bred young man who, like any other of his age and class, occasionally took his pleasures with a prostitute. Simply because his father was a trifle straitlaced about such things, even a little pompous perhaps, is not cause for anything beyond a quarrel, and perhaps a reduction in his allowance. This provides the answer: Leighton Duff interrupted his son and his friends raping and beating a young woman. He was horrified and appalled. He would not accept it as part of any young man’s natural appetites. Therefore he had to be silenced.”
Evan followed the reasoning perfectly. A possible motive had been the one thing lacking before. A quarrel was easy to understand, even a few blows struck. But a fight to the death over the issue of using a prostitute was absurd. The issue of a series of rapes of increasing violence, by three of them together, and being caught red-handed, was another matter entirely. It was repellent, and it was criminal. It was also escalating to the degree that sooner or later it would become murder. To imagine three young men, fresh from the victory of violence against a terrified victim, beating to death the one man who threatened their exposure, was sickening but not difficult to believe.
“Yes, I see,” he agreed with a sudden sadness. They were hideous crimes, so ugly he should have been overwhelmed with revulsion and a towering anger against the young men who had committed them. Yet what filled his mind was the picture of Rhys as he had seen him on the cobbles, soaked with blood, insensible, and yet still breathing, still just barely alive.
And then leaping to his mind came the sight of him in the hospital bed, his face swollen and blue with bruising as he opened his eyes and tried desperately to speak, choking in horror, gagging, drowning in pain.
Evan felt no sense of victory, not even the usual loosening of tension inside himself that knowledge brought. There was no peace in this. “You had better take me to these witnesses,” he said flatly. “I presume they will tell me the same thing? Will they swear in court, do you suppose?” He did not know what he hoped. Even if they would not, nothing could alter the truth of it.
“You can make them,” Monk answered with impatience in his voice. “The majesty of the law will persuade them. Once in the witness box they have no reason to lie. That is not your decision anyway.”
He was right. There was nothing to argue about.
“Then I’ll take it to Runcorn,” Evan went on. He smiled with a downward turn of his lips. “He won’t be amused that you solved the case.”
A curious look crossed Monk’s face, a mixture of irony and something which could have been regret, or even a form of guilt. Evan was aware of uncertainty in him, a hesitation, as if there was something else he wanted to talk about, but was unsure how to begin. He was making no move to rise from his comfortable chair.
“I know he refused to pursue the rapes,” Evan started. “But with this it’s different. No one will bother prosecuting that when there is the murder. That’s what we’ll charge them with. We will only prove the rapes to establish motive. The ones in Seven Dials will be by implication.”
“I know.”
Evan was puzzled. Why did Monk’s contempt for Runcorn run so deep? Runcorn was pompous at times, but it was his manner of defending himself from the triviality he felt in his life, perhaps the loneliness. He was a man who seemed to know little else but the concern of his work, the value it gave him, even his relationships with others. Evan realized he knew nothing whatever of the man Runcorn was when he left the police station, except that he never spoke of family or other friends, other pastimes. Had Monk ever considered such things?
“Do you still think he should have pressed the cases of rape alone?” he asked, hearing the criticism in his voice.
Monk shrugged. “No.” He sounded reluctant. “He was right. It would have put the victims through more of an ordeal than the offenders … presuming they would even have testified … which they probably wouldn’t. I would not ask any woman I cared for to do that. We would be pursuing it far more for our own sense of vengeance than anything to do with the well-being of the women, or even justice. They would suffer and the men would go free. We wouldn’t even be able to try them again, even if we eventually found proof, because they would have been vindicated by the law.” There was anger in his face, but it was for the situation, not for Runcorn.
“Rape is not a crime for which we have any answer even remotely just or compassionate,” he went on. “It strikes at a part of the emotions which we don’t exercise honestly, let alone govern with rationality. It is even more primitive than murder. Why is that, Evan? We deny it, excuse it, torture logic and twist facts to pretend it did not happen, that somehow it was the victim’s fault and therefore not the crime we named it.”
“I don’t know,” Evan said, even as he was thinking. “It is something to do with violation—”
“For God’s sake! It is the woman who is violated!” Monk exploded, his face dark.
“Yes, it is,” Evan agreed wryly. “But the violation we get so upset about is our own. Our property has been spoiled. Someone has taken something to which only we have the right. The rape of any woman is a reminder that our own women can also be spoiled that way. It is a very intimate thing.”
