Funeral in Blue

chapter Five
Monk was profoundly disturbed by what Hester had told him.  He set out early, walking head down, through the still-shrouded streets.  If it were true, then Kristian had a far deeper and more urgent motive for killing Elissa than any of them had realised.

If she were driving him beyond poverty into ruin the loss of his home, his reputation, his honour, even, when debts could not be met, with the prospect of debtors' prison then he could very easily imagine panic and desperation prompting anyone to think of murder.

The Queen's Prison was still kept exclusively for debtors, but all too often they were thrown in with everyone else thieves, forgers, embezzlers, arsonists, cutthroats.  They might remain there until their debts were discharged, dependent upon outside help even for food, and the grace of God for any kind of protection from cold, lice, disease, and the violence of their fellows, never mind the inner torments of despair.

Kristian was a man who in the past had faced injustice and fought it with violence, but then he had not stood alone.  Half Europe had risen in revolution against oppression, but perhaps the memory of it lay so deep in him that he would believe it was the answer again.  It could have been instinctive rather than reasoning, and then when it was too late, understanding and remorse returned.

It was too easily believable to discard.  If he were honest, Monk could even understand it.  Were anyone to threaten all he had spent his life building his career, his reputation, the core of his own integrity and independence, his power to follow the profession he chose, to exercise his skills and feel of value to the things he believed in he would fight to survive.  He was not prepared to swear what weapons he would use, or decline, however bitter the price, or the shame afterwards.

There was an icy wind this morning and he bent his head against it, feeling it sting in his face.  A newsboy was calling out reference to a dispatch bearer for President Davis of the Confederacy in America being arrested in New Orleans about to embark for England.  It barely touched the periphery of Monk's mind.  He still had to know the truth, all of it, and he had to be aware what Runcorn knew.  If Kristian were not guilty, Monk would defend him to the last stand.

But if Kristian were guilty then there was no moral defence.  Had it been only Elissa who'd been murdered, some plea of mitigation might have been possible.  He was certainly not the only man to have a wife who had driven him to the edge of madness, and violence lurks in many, if frightened or hurt enough.  But whoever the murderer was had then killed Sarah Mackeson also, simply because she was there.  Nothing could justify that.

Monk would not yet tell Runcorn anything about what he had learned.  It was still reasonable to assume that Sarah Mackeson was the intended victim, and even that Argo Allardyce was lying when he said he had not been back to Acton Street all night.  They should begin by finding the woman companion that Elissa Beck had undoubtedly taken with her to her portrait sittings.  She could have valuable testimony as to what had happened that night, at least up to the point where she and Elissa had parted.  Where had she left Elissa, and for what reason?  No doubt Runcorn had thought of that too.

Monk stopped abruptly, causing the man behind him on the footpath to collide with him and nearly lose his balance.  He swore under his breath and moved on, leaving Monk staring into the distance where one of the new horse-drawn trams loomed out of the thinning mist.

Runcorn would naturally begin with the assumption that Elissa had taken her maid, and he would go to Haverstock Hill to find her!  And, of course, there was no lady's maid there.  A man who had sold all his furniture except the sort of thing a bailiff would leave could not afford live-in servants.  The scrub-woman who had answered the door the first time was probably the only servant the Becks had, and she might come only two or three times a week.

Would Elissa have taken someone from her father's house?  Or a woman friend?  Or might she actually have gone alone?

But the question beating in his mind was how to keep Runcorn from finding out about her gambling, or at least the ruinous extent of it!

Perhaps he was only delaying the inevitable, but asking Allardyce himself about Elissa's companion would be as logical as beginning at Elissa's home.  He quickened his pace.  He must find Runcorn and suggest that to him, persuade him to agree.

He glanced both ways at the crossroads, and sprinted across between a dray and a vegetable cart.  He reached the police station at twenty minutes past eight and went straight up to Runcorn's office.

Runcorn looked up, his face carefully devoid of expression.  He was waiting for Monk to make the first move.

"Good morning."  Monk hid his smile and looked back straight into Runcorn's bland eyes.  "I thought you'd probably be going to Allardyce again to see who the woman was who went with Mrs.  Beck.  I'd like to come with you."  He thought of adding a request, but that would be rather too polite for Runcorn to believe of him.  He would suspect sarcasm.

Runcorn's shoulders relaxed a little.  "Yes, if you want," he said casually.  There was only the slightest flicker to betray that he had not thought of where to begin this line of inquiry.  "In fact, it would be a good idea," he added, standing up.  Who'd it be, a maid?"

"Pendreigh thought a friend," Monk reminded him.  "Which could be anyone.  Easier to start by asking Allardyce himself." Runcorn frowned, reaching his coat and hat from the stand near the door.  "I suppose the fog's still like pea soup, and it'll be just as fast to walk!"  It was not really a question because he did not wait for an answer.

Monk followed him down the stairs and fell into step beside him in the street.  Actually the weather was improving all the time and he could now see almost thirty yards in any direction; all the same they decided to walk rather than try to flag down a hansom from the steady stream of traffic.

"How many sittings do you have to have for a portrait, anyhow?" Runcorn asked after several minutes.

"I don't know," Monk admitted.  "Maybe it depends on the style, and the artist.  Perhaps the model sits in for you some of the time?"

"They didn't look much alike," Runcorn darted a sideways look at Monk.

"Still, I suppose for a dress or something it wouldn't matter."  He frowned.  "What did she do the rest of the time?  I mean every day?  A doctor's wife... not quite a lady, but certainly gentry ... at least."  He had exposed an ignorance without intending to.  Puzzlement was written plainly in his face.  "There isn't anything she would actually have to do, is there?"

"I doubt it," Monk lied.  Surely without any resident servants she would have to do most of the housework, cooking and laundry herself? Or perhaps with so little of the house occupied, there was far less to attend to?  Only sufficient food for Kristian when he was home, and herself if she was not out with friends, or at the gambling tables.

Maybe Kristian had his shirts laundered at the hospital.

Then what?"  Runcorn asked.  They crossed the Gray's Inn Road and walked north.  "I was ill once with bronchitis.  Took me ages to get back to regular duty.  Enjoyed the rest for the first two or three days.  Thought I'd get a lot out of a fortnight.  Nearly drove me mad! Never been so bored in my life!  Came back before the doctor said I should because I couldn't stand it." Monk could picture it in his mind.  Runcorn relaxing with a good book was almost a contradiction in ideas.  Again he suppressed a smile with difficulty.

Runcorn saw it and glared at him.

"Sympathy!"  Monk said quickly.  "Broke my ribs, remember?" Runcorn grunted and they went on in silence as far as Acton Street and turned the corner.  "Wouldn't like to be a lady," he said thoughtfully.

"Imagine I'd rather have work to do ... unless, of course, I didn't know any different."  He was still frowning, trying to imagine a world so terrifyingly empty, when they reached the top of the stairs and knocked on Allardyce's studio door.

It was several moments before it was opened by Allardyce himself, looking angry and half asleep.  "What in hell's name do you want at this hour?"  he demanded.  "It's barely daylight!  Haven't you got a home?"

"It's nearly nine o'clock, sir," Runcorn answered flatly, his face set in disapproval and studiously avoiding looking at Allardyce's hastily pulled on trousers and his nightshirt tails hanging over them.  His feet were bare and he moved from one to the other on the chilly step.

"I suppose policemen have to be up at this ungodly hour!"  Allardyce said irritably.  "What do you want now?  You'd better come in because I'm not standing out here any longer."  And he turned and went back inside, leaving the door open for them.

Runcorn followed him in, and Monk came a step behind.  The studio was otherwise unoccupied, but there were canvases stacked against the walls.  Half a dozen were in one stage or another of development four portraits, a street scene, and an interior with two girls sitting on a sofa reading.  The one painting on the easel was of a man of middle age and a great look of self-satisfaction.  Presumably it was a commission.

Allardyce muttered something under his breath and disappeared through the further door.

Runcorn wrinkled his nose very slightly.  He said nothing, but his face was eloquent of his disgust.

Monk walked over to a sheaf of drawings in a folder and opened them up.

The first was brilliant.  The artist had used only a charcoal pencil, but with an extraordinary economy of stroke he had caught the suppressed energy in face and body as three women leaned over a table.

The dice were so insignificant it took a moment before Monk even saw them.  All the passion was in the faces, the eyes, the open mouths, the jagged force that held them transfixed.  Gamblers.

He turned it over quickly and looked at the next.  Gamblers again, but this time the vacant stare of the loser.  It was powerful, desolate.  A home or a fortune lost on the turn of a piece of coloured cardboard, but all despair was in the eyes.

The third was a beautiful woman, her face alight as if at sight of a lover, her eyes shining, her lips parted, but it was a fan of cards that she stared at, a winning hand, colour and suits blurred, already without meaning as she looked towards the next deal.  Victory was so sweet, and the taste of it an instant, and then gone again.

Elissa Beck.

Monk turned the rest, aware of Runcorn at his shoulder, watching, saying nothing.

There were pictures of this woman, some sketched so hastily they were little more than a suggestion, half an outline, but with such power the emotion leaped raw off the paper the greed, the excitement, the pounding heart, the sweat on the skin, the clenched muscles.  Monk found himself holding his own breath as he looked at them one after another.

Had Runcorn recognised Elissa?  Monk felt himself grow hot, and then cold.  Could Runcorn possibly imagine Allardyce was so obsessed with her he had placed her here just to draw her again and again?  Not unless he was totally naive.  Those drawings were from life; anyone with the slightest knowledge of nature could see the honesty in them.

He did not want to turn to meet Runcorn's eyes.

There were two more pictures.  They were probably just the same, but their blank white edges challenged him, poking out beneath the one he saw now.  What were they?  More of Elissa?  He could feel Runcorn's presence so vividly he imagined the warmth of his body, his breath on Monk's neck.

He turned the page.  The second to last was a man, thick-chested, broken-nosed, leaning against the wall watching the women who were playing.  His face was brutish, bored.  Sooner or later they would lose, and it would be his job to make sure the debts were collected. He would get rid of troublemakers.

Slowly he lifted the page over to look at the last one.  It was an expensively dressed man with dead eyes, and a small pistol in his hand.

Runcorn let out a sigh and his voice was very quiet.  "Poor devil," he said.  "I suppose he reckons it's the better way.  Ever seen a debtors' prison, Monk?  Some of them aren't too bad, but when they throw 'em in with everyone else, for a man like that, he's probably right, better off a quick end." Monk said nothing.  His thoughts were too hard, the truth too close.

"I suppose you think he's a coward!"  Runcorn said, and there was anger and hurt bristling in him.

"No!"  Monk returned instantly.  "Don't suppose!  You've no idea what I think!" Runcorn was startled.

Now Monk was facing him, their eyes meeting.  Had Runcorn recognised Elissa?  How long would it be before he realised the cost of her gambling?  He knew enough not to imagine it was a game, a few hours of a harmless pastime.  If he had not before, it was there in the drawings: the consuming hunger that swept away all other thought and feeling.  The sketches destroyed any illusion that it was harmless, controllable.

"She didn't break her own neck," Runcorn said very softly, his voice rough as if his throat hurt.  "Debt collectors?  And the poor model just got in the way?" Monk thought about it.  Somewhere in his closed memory he must know more about gamblers, violence, ways of extorting money without endangering one's own gambling houses, and thus losing more profit than was gained.

"We don't know that she owed enough to be worth making an example of," he said to Runcorn.  "Does it look that way to you?" Runcorn's lips tightened.  "No," he said flatly.  He would like it to have been the answer, even if they never found the individual man responsible, it was clear in his face.  "Doesn't really make sense.  If she wasn't paying they'd simply ban her from the place... long before she got to owe enough to be worth the risk of killing.  They'd murder rivals who could drive them out of business, but not losers.  Hell, the gutters'd be choked with corpses if they did that."  His eyes widened suddenly.  "Might kill a winner, though!  Win a bit's good to encourage the others, win a lot is expensive." Monk laughed harshly.  "And you don't suppose they have control over how much anybody wins?" Runcorn grunted, anger nickering across his face, then unhappiness.

"Would have been a good answer.  Wonder how long she'd been doing it and how much she lost?" Monk felt the heat under his skin and the sweat drip down his body.

Damn Runcorn for making it so hard to remain silent!  Damn him for being real and finding an honesty in himself that made him impossible to ignore.  Perhaps Monk could get by with a half-truth?  No, he couldn't!  If Runcorn found out, and he would, he would despise him for it.  Monk had patronised Runcorn in the past, by-passed him as not worthy of telling the truth to, but he had never told him a face-to-face lie.  That was the coward's way.  Perhaps silence was too, but it was all that was left.

Runcorn hesitated, drew in a long breath, and then let it out again. He turned away.  "Mr.  Allardyce!"  he called.

Allardyce appeared in the doorway holding a mug of tea in both hands.

He was shaved and dressed, and he looked composed.  "What now?"  he said glumly.  "I already told you that I know nothing.  Hell!  Don't you think if I knew who did it I'd tell you?"  He waved his free arm angrily, slopping the tea in the other hand.  "Look what it's done to my life!" Runcorn forbore from answering the last question.  "This public house you say you were at..."

"The Bull and Half Moon," Allardyce supplied.  "What about it?"

"Where is it, exactly?"

"Rotherhithe Street, near Southwark Park."

"Rather a long way to go for a drink?"  Runcorn raised his eyebrows.

"That's why I spent the night," Allardyce said reasonably.  "Too far to come home, and it was a filthy night.  Could hear the fog horns on the river every few minutes.  Never understand how they don't hit each other more often."

"So why go far?"  Monk asked.

Allardyce shrugged.  "Got good friends that way.  Knew they'd put me up, if necessary.  If I stayed home every time there was fog I'd never go anywhere.  Ask Gilbert Strother.  Lives in Great Hermitage Street, in Wapping.  Don't know the number.  You'll have to ask.  Somewhere around the middle.  Has a door with an angel on it.  He did a sketch of us all.  He'll tell you."

"I'll do that," Runcorn agreed, thin-lipped.

"Look, I can't tell you anything useful," Allardyce went on.  "I've got a friend hurt in that pile-up in Drury Lane.  I want to go and see him.

Broke his leg, poor devil."

"What pile-up?"  Runcorn said suspiciously.

"Horse bolted.  Two carriages got locked together and a dray got turned sideways and lost its load.  Must have been twenty kegs burst open at least raw sugar syrup!  Said he'd never seen such a mess in his life.

Stopped up Drury Lane all evening."

"When was that?" Allardyce's face tightened.  "The night of the murders."  He stared at Runcorn and suddenly his eyes filled with tears.  He blinked angrily and turned away.

"Mr.  Allardyce," Monk said quietly, 'when Mrs.  Beck came for the sittings, who did she bring with her?" Allardyce frowned.

"As chaperone," Monk added.

Allardyce gave a burst of laughter.  "A friend, once or twice, but she only came as far as the door.  Never knew her name."  His face darkened, his mouth turned down a little at the ends.  "She met the man here three or four times.  I suppose you know about that?"

"What man?"  Runcorn snapped.

"Dark.  Strong face.  Interesting.  Wouldn't mind drawing him some time, but I never met him.  Don't know his name."

"Draw him now!"  Runcorn commanded.

Allardyce walked over to the table and picked up a block of paper and a stick of charcoal.  With a dozen or so lines he created a very recognisable sketch of Max Niemann.  He turned it towards Runcorn.

"Max Niemann, Beck's ally in Vienna," Monk told him.

"Why didn't you say anything about this before?"  Runcorn was furious, his face mottling with dark colour.

Allardyce was pale.  "Because they were good friends, or more!"  he replied, his voice rising also.  "And I have no idea if he was anywhere near here that night!  Anyway, I wasn't expecting Elissa, or I'd have been here myself.  If she met Niemann, it wouldn't be in my studio.  I assume the killer was some old lover of Sarah's, or something of that sort, and Elissa just picked the wrong time to call in.  Perhaps she wanted to see if the portrait was finished ... or something." Runcorn gave him a withering look, but since it was more or less what he was inclined to believe himself, there was little argument to make.

"We'd better find out a great deal more about Sarah Mackeson," he said instead.

"I've told you all I know," Allardyce said uneasily, all the anger draining from his face and leaving only sadness.  "I gave all that to your man: where she was born, where she grew up, as far as she told me.

She didn't talk about herself."

"I know ... I know," Runcorn was irritated.  This case woke a mixture of feelings in him: pity because the woman was dead; duty because it was his task to find who had killed her and see they faced the law to answer for it.  At the same time he despised her for her morality, which offended every desire for decency in him, the love of rules to live by and order he could understand.  He turned to Monk.  "We'd better get on with it, then."  His eyes widened.  "If you're interested, that is?"

"I'm interested," Monk accepted.

They bade Allardyce goodbye and went back down the stairs into the street, where Runcorn pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.  "I'm going to start with Mrs.  Ethel Roberts who used to employ Sarah Mackeson as a milliner's assistant.  You can go to see Mrs.  Clark, who took her in now and then.  I'll leave you to find out for what!"  His expression conveyed his opinion of the possibilities.  "We'll meet up at that pub on the corner of North Street and the Caledonian Road can't remember what it's called.  Be there at one!"  And with that he thrust the piece of paper into Monk's hand, and turned abruptly to cross the street, leaving Monk standing on the kerb in the newly emerged sun and the noise, the increasing rattle of traffic, street vendors' cries: shellfish, cheeses, razors, shirt buttons, rat poison.

He found Mrs.  Clark in a boarding house in Risinghill Street, north of the Pentonville Road, just beyond a tobacconist's shop with a Highlander on the sign to denote to the illiterate what it was he sold.

Inside the boarding house the air in the hall smelled of stale polish and yesterday's cooking, but it was cleaner than some he had seen, and there was a cheerful clatter of dishes, and a voice singing, coming from somewhere towards the back.

He followed the sound of it and knocked on the open kitchen door.  It was a large room with a scrubbed stone floor, a wooden table in the middle and on the stove a pan was boiling briskly, the steam jiggling the lid.  In the stone scullery beyond he could see three huge wooden sinks filled with linen soaking, and on a shelf above them big jars of lye, fat, potash and blue.  A washboard was balanced in one sink, a laundry dolly in the other, to push the clothes up and down with in the copper when they needed to be boiled.  He appeared to have interrupted Mrs.  Clark on her wash day.

She was a rotund woman, ample-bosomed and broad-hipped, with short, plump arms.  Her blue sleeves were pushed up untidily.  An apron which had seen very much better days was tied around her waist, and slipping to one side.  She pushed her hair back off her face and turned from the bowl where she was peeling potatoes, the knife still in her hand.

"Can't do nuthin' for yer, luv," she said amiably.  "Ain't got room ter 'ouse a cat!  Could try Mrs.  Last down the street.  Number 56.  In't as comfy as me, but what can yer do?"  She smiled at him, showing several gaps in her teeth.  "My, aren't yer the swell, then?  Got all yer money on yer back, 'ave yer?" Monk smiled in spite of himself.  There was a time when that would have been true.  Even now there was a stronger element in it than perhaps for most men.

"You read people pretty well, Mrs.  Clark," he replied.

"Gotter," she acknowledged.  "It's me business."  She looked him up and down appreciatively.  "Sorry as I can't 'elp yer.  I like a man wot knows 'ow ter look 'is best.  Like I said, try Mrs.  Last."

"Actually I wasn't looking for lodgings."  He had already decided to be candid with her.  "I'm told you used to give Sarah Mackeson a room now and then, when times were rough." Her face hardened.  "So what's that ter you then?  Yer got ideas about her, yer can forget 'em.  She's an artist's model now, and good at it she is too."  She stopped abruptly, defiance in her stare.

"Very good," Monk agreed, seeing in his mind the pictures Allardyce had painted of Sarah.  "But she was killed and I want to know who did it." It was brutal, and Mrs.  Clark swayed a little before leaning against the table heavily, the colour draining from her face.

"I'm sorry," Monk apologised.  It had not occurred to him that she might care about Sarah, and suddenly he realised how much he had concentrated on the reality of Elissa Beck, and forgotten the other woman and not considered those who might have known her and be wounded by her death.  But on the other hand, if Mrs.  Clark knew her well enough to feel deeply, then perhaps she could give him some better information about her.

She fumbled behind her for the chair, and he stepped forward quickly and placed it so she could sit down.

"I'm sorry," he repeated.  "I didn't know you were close to her." She sniffed fiercely and glared at him, ignoring her brimming eyes and daring him to comment.  "I liked 'er, poor little cow," she said tartly.  "Oo wouldn't?  Did 'er best.  So wot yer want 'ere, then?  I don't know 'oo killed 'er!" Monk fetched the other chair and sat down opposite her.  "You might be able to tell me something about her which would help."

"Why?  Wot der you care?"  She narrowed her eyes at him.  "Oo are yer, any'ow?  Yer never said.  Yer just came bargin' in 'ere like the rent collector, only I don't owe no rent.  This place is me own.  So explain yerself.  I don't care 'ow swell yer look, I in't tellin' yer nothin' as I don't want ter." He tried to put it in terms she would grasp.  "I'm a kind of private policeman.  I work for people who want to know the truth of something and pay me to find out."

"An' 'oo cares 'oo killed a poor little cow like Sarah Mackeson then?" she said derisively.  "She in't got nobody.  "Er pa were a navvy wot got killed diggin' the railways an' erma died years ago.  She's got a couple o' brothers someplace, but she never knew where."

"The wife of a friend of mine was murdered with her," Monk replied.

There was a kind of dignity in this woman, with her crooked apron and straggling hair, that demanded the truth from him, or at least no lies.

"There were two of 'em done?"  she said with horror.  "Geez!  Oo'd do a thing like that?  Poor Sarah!" He smiled at her very slightly, an acknowledgement.

She sniffed and stood up, turning her back to him.  Without explaining she filled the kettle and put it on the hob, then fetched a china teapot and two mugs.

"I'll tell yer wot I know," she remarked while she waited for the water to boil.  "Wot in't much.  She used ter do quite well sometimes, and bad others.  If she were in an 'and patch she'd come 'ere an' I'd finder a bed for a spell.  She'd always turner 'and ter cookin' an' cleanin' as return.  Din't expec' sum mink fer nuffink.  Honest, she were, in 'er own fashion.  An' generous."  She kept her back to him as the steam started to whistle in the spout.

Monk did not press her in what way; he understood it from her turned back.  She was not willing to put words to it.

"Anyone in particular?"  he asked, quite casually.

"Arthur Cutter," she said, bringing the teapot over to the table and putting it down.  "E's a right waster, but 'e wouldn't 'ave 'urt erIt would 'a bin some 'o them daft artist people.  I always told 'er they was no good."  She sniffed again and reached for a piece of cloth in her apron pocket.  She blew her nose savagely and then poured the tea for both of them, not bothering to ask if he wanted milk or sugar, but assuming both.  Monk disliked sugar intensely, but he made no comment, simply thanking her.

"How did she get in with the artists?"  he asked.

Now Mrs.  Clark seemed willing to talk.  She rambled on, telling and retelling, but a vivid picture of Sarah Mackeson emerged from a mixture of memory, opinion and anger.  Nineteen years ago, aged eighteen, she had arrived in Risinghill Street without a penny, but willing to work.

Within weeks her handsome figure and truly beautiful hair and eyes had attracted attention, some of it welcome, much of it beyond her skill to deal with.

Mrs.  Clark had taken her in and taught her a good deal about caring for herself and learning to play one admirer off against another in order to survive.  Within a few months Sarah had found a protector prepared to take her as his mistress and give her a very pleasant standard of living.

It lasted four years, until he grew bored and found another eighteen-year-old and began again.  Sarah had come back to Risinghill Street, wiser and a good deal more careful.  She found work in a public house, the Hare and Billet about half a mile away, and it was there that a young artist had see her and hired her to sit for him.

Over the space of a couple of years she had improved her skill and an ally Argo Allardyce had persuaded her to leave Risinghill Street and go to Acton Street to be at his disposal any time he should wish.  She kept a room nearby, when she could afford it, but more often than not she had to let it go.

"Was she in love with Allardyce?"  Monk asked.

Mrs.  Clark poured more tea.  "Course she was, poor creature," she said tartly.  "Wot do you think?  Told 'er she were beautiful, an' 'e meant it.  So she was, too.  But she were no lady, an' she never imagined she were.  Knew 'er limits.  That were part of 'er trouble.  Never thought she were more'n pretty.  Never thought no one'd care for 'er once 'er skin an' 'er figure went." In spite of himself Monk was struck with a stab of sorrow for a woman who thought her only worth was her beauty.  Had she really no sense of her value for her laughter or her courage, her ideas, just her gift to love?  Was that what life had taught her?  That no man could simply like her, rather than want to look at her, touch her, use her?

A vision of fear opened up in front of him of constant anxiety each time she looked in the mirror, saw a line or a blemish on her skin, an extra pound or two on the rich lines of her body, a slackness real or imagined, that signalled the decline at the end of which lay hunger, loneliness and eventually despair.

Mrs.  Clark went on talking, describing a life where beauty was caught on canvas and made immortal, for the pleasure of artists and viewers, and strangely disconnected from the woman, as if her face, her hair, her body were not really her.  She could walk away unnoticed, leaving the image of herself, the part they valued, still in their possession.

The loneliness of it appalled him.  He pressed her for more stories, more details, names, places, times.

He felt subdued and deeply thoughtful when he arrived to meet Runcorn nearly an hour late.  Runcorn was sitting in the corner of a tavern nursing a mug of ale, getting steadily angrier as the minutes passed.

"Mislaid your watch, have you?"  he said between clenched teeth.

Monk sat down.  He had drunk so much tea he had no desire for ale or cider, and the good-natured babble of the crowd around him made it impossible to speak quietly.  "Do you want to know about her or not?" he replied, ignoring the remark.  He refused to explain himself.  He already knew Runcorn's views on the virtues of women, which consisted mostly of their being hard-working, obedient and chaste, the last being the necessity which framed all else.  He had been too long away from the streets, and the reality of most women's lives, perhaps too afraid of his own frailties to look at other people's.

Runcorn glared at him.  "So what did you find, then?"  he demanded.

Monk relayed the facts of Sarah's parentage and career up to the point of Allardyce seeing her and then shortly afterwards employing her exclusively.  He also gave him the name of her one-time lover, Arthur Cutter.

Runcorn listened in silence, his face heavy with conflicting emotions.

"Better see him, I suppose," he said at the end.  "Could be him, if he thought she'd betrayed him somehow, but doesn't seem likely.  Women like that move from one man to another and nobody cares all that much.

No doubt he expected it, and has had half a dozen different women since then."

"Somebody cared enough to kill her!"  Monk responded angrily.  What Runcorn had said was probably true, it was not the fact that cut Monk raw, it was the contempt with which he said it, or perhaps even the fact that he said it at all.  There were some truths that compassion covered over, like hiding the faces of the dead, a small decency when nothing greater was possible.  He looked at Runcorn with intense dislike.  All his old memories returned with their ugliness: the narrowness of mind, the judgement, the willingness to hurt.  "She's just as dead as Elissa Beck!"  he added.

Runcorn stood up.  "Go and see Bella Holden," he ordered.  "You'll probably find her at her lodgings, 23 Pentonville Road.  She's another artist's model, and I dare say it's a bawdy house.  Unless you want to give up?  But looks like you're as keen to find who killed Sarah Mackeson as you are about Beck's wife."  He walked between the other drinkers without looking back or bothering to tell Monk where to meet him again.  Monk watched his high, tight shoulders as he pushed his way out and lost sight of him just before the door.

Number 23 Pentonville Road was indeed a brothel of sorts, and Monk found Bella Holden only after considerable argument, and the payment of two shillings and sixpence, which he could ill afford.  Callandra would willingly have replaced it, but both pride and the awareness of her vulnerability would prevent him from asking.  This was friendship, not business.

Bella Holden was handsome, with a cloud of dark hair and remarkable pale blue eyes.  She must have been a little over thirty, and he could see underneath the loose nightgown she wore that her body was losing its firmness and the shape an artist would admire.  She was too lush, too overtly womanly.  It would not be long before this house, and its like, were her main support, unless she learned a trade.  No domestic employer would have her, even if she were capable of the skills required.  Without a 'character' she would not be allowed over the step, let alone into the household.

Looking at her now as she stared back at him, holding the money in her hand, he saw anger and the need to please struggling against each other in her face, and a certain heaviness about her eyelids, a lethargy as if he had woken her from a dream far more pleasant than any reality. It was three o'clock.  He might be her first customer.  The indifference in her face was a lifetime's tragedy.

He thought of Hester, and how she would loathe a stranger's hand on her clothes, let alone on her naked skin.  This woman had to endure intimacy from whoever chose to walk through the door with two shillings and sixpence to spend.  Where did the ignorance and the desperation come from that she would not prefer to work, even in a sweatshop, rather than this?

And the answer was there before the thought was whole.  Sweatshops required a skill in sewing she might not possess, and paid less for a fourteen-hour day than she could make here in an hour.  Both would probably break her health by the time she was forty.

"I don't want to lie with you, I want to ask you about Sarah Mackeson," he said, sitting down on the one wooden chair.  He was trying to place the faint smell in the room.  It was not any of the usual body odours he would have expected, and not pleasing enough to have been a deliberate perfume, even if such a thing had been likely.

"You a rozzer?"  she asked.  "Don't look like one."  There was little expression in her voice.  "Well, yer can't get 'er fer nothin' now, poor bitch.  She's dead.  Some bastard did erin a few days ago, up Acton Street.  Don't yer swine never tell each other nothin'?  Even the patterers is talkin' about it.  Yer should listen!" Monk ignored the resentment.  He even felt with it.  She probably saw herself in Sarah Mackeson.  It could as easily have been her, and she would expect as little protection before, or care afterwards.

"I know," he replied.  "That's why I want to learn what I can about her.  I want to catch who did it." It took a moment or two for her to grasp what he had said and consider whether she believed it.  Then she began to talk.

He asked questions and she rambled on, a mixture of memories and observations, thoughts, all charged with so much emotion he was not certain when she was referring to Sarah and when to herself, but perhaps at times they were interchangeable.  A painfully clear picture emerged of a woman who was careless, open-hearted, loyal to her friends, feckless with money and yet deeply frightened of a future in which she saw no safety.  She was untidy, generous, quick to laugh and to cry.  If any man had loved her enough to feel jealousy, let alone to kill, she certainly had not known it.  In her own eyes, her sole value was as an object of beauty, for as long as it lasted.  Both time and fashion were already eroding it, and she felt the cold breath of rejection.

Bella Holden was walking the same path, and she could offer no clue as to who might have killed Sarah.  Reluctantly she named a few other people who had known her moderately well, but Monk doubted they could help.  Bella would not compromise her own future for the sake of finding justice for Sarah.  Sarah was dead, and past help.  Bella had too little on her side to risk any of it.

Monk thanked her and left.  This time he returned to the police station, and found Runcorn in his office, looking tired and unhappy, his brows drawn down.

"Opium," he said, almost as if he were challenging Monk.

Suddenly Monk placed the smell in Bella Holden's room.  He was annoyed with himself for not having known at the time.  That was another gap in his memory.  He hated Runcorn seeing it, especially now.

"Sarah Mackeson was taking opium?"  he asked with something close to a snarl.

Runcorn misread his expression for contempt.  His face flushed with anger almost beyond his control.  His voice shook when he spoke.  "So might you, if you had nothing to offer but your looks, and they were fading!"  He gulped air.  His knuckles shone white where his hands were pressed on the desk in front of him.  "With nothing ahead of you but doss houses and selling your body to strangers for less and less every year, you might not stand there in your hand-made boots, looking down your damn nose at someone who escaped into a dream every now and then, because reality was too hard to bear!  It's your job to find out who killed her, not decide whether she was right or wrong."  He stopped abruptly and sniffed hard, looking away from Monk now, as if his anger embarrassed him.  "Did you go and see Bella whatshername as I told you?

Have you done anything useful at all?" Monk stood totally still, an incredible reality dawning on him. Runcorn was abashed because he felt defensive of Sarah and a pity for her he had not expected, and it totally confused him.  He was not idly defending her, but his own nakedness in front of Monk, whom he imagined could not share his understanding or his pain.

The fact that he did share it made Monk angry too.  He admired Runcorn for it.  It must have required an inner courage to admit an openness to hurt and to change he had not thought him capable of.  Now it meant Monk too had to alter his judgements, and of Runcorn, of all people.

He was aware Runcorn was watching him now.  "Opium?"  he said, forcing his voice to convey interest.  "Any idea where she got it from?" Runcorn grunted.  "Could be Allardyce," he said noncommittally.  "That could be what all this is about opium sale gone wrong.  Perhaps Mrs.

Beck came in on it and they were afraid she would cause a scandal."

"Worth killing her for?"  Monk said dubiously.  Selling opium was not a crime.

"Might have been a lot of money," Runcorn reasoned.  "Or other people involved.  Don't know who else Allardyce painted, perhaps Society ladies.  Maybe they were taking the stuff, and wouldn't want their husbands to know?" It was possible in fact, the more he thought of it the better it looked.  It would mean the motive for the murders was nothing to do with Kristian, or Elissa Beck.  "A quarrel perhaps, or a little blackmail?"  he added to the idea.  "Allardyce was the supplier?" Runcorn looked at him with something almost like approval.  "Well, he probably gave it to Sarah Mackeson, keep her docile, if nothing else poor creature.  He wouldn't care what it did to her over time.  He's only interested in the way she looks now, not what happens to her once he's tired of her and picked someone else."  His mouth closed in a bitter line, as if he were angry not only with Allardyce but with everyone else who failed to see what he did, or was indifferent to it.

Monk said nothing.  There were too many changes whirling through his mind.  His fury against Runcorn dissolved, and then was confused with a new one, because he did not want to have to alter his opinion of him, especially so quickly and so violently.  It was his own fault for leaping to a cruel conclusion before he knew the truth, but he still blamed Runcorn for not being what he had supposed.  Even as he was doing it he knew it was unfair, and that made it worse.

Runcorn flicked through the papers on his desk and found what he was looking for.  He held it out to Monk.  "That's the drawing Allardyce spoke about.  Feller who drew it said it was the night of the murders, and pub landlord said he was there right enough, and drawing people." Monk took the sketch from him.  He needed only a glance to see an unmistakable portrait of Allardyce.  It had not Allardyce's skill at catching the passion of a moment.  There was no tension in it, no drama.  It was simply a group of friends around a table at a tavern, but the atmosphere was pervasive.  Even in such a hasty sketch one could imagine the laughter, the hum of conversation, the clink of glasses, and music in the background, a theatre poster on the wall behind them.

"They were there all evening," Runcorn said flatly.  "We can forget Allardyce." Monk said nothing.  The ugly, choking misery inside him closed his throat.