Slaves of Obsession (48 page)

He hesitated, biting his lip for a moment. “And there is another thing, Mrs. Monk … the watch. Merrit said in court that she didn’t know where she left it, but she was lying. We all know that. She took it off in Breeland’s rooms when she changed her clothes, and forgot it. Someone went up there before we did. The porter said so.” He was looking at her very shakily. “If that were Trace, then he could have taken it and dropped it in the yard to incriminate Breeland. What would be more natural?”

Hester felt her heart lurch and her skin break out in a hot, prickly sweat of horror. Monk was alone with Trace at the bottom of the Thames, trusting him, his life dependent upon Trace’s skill and his honor.

She shot to her feet, her breath rasping. “William is diving.” She almost choked on the words. “He has only Trace with him! They’re looking for the barge that took the guns down.” She turned and stumbled towards the door. “I’ve got to get there! I’ve got to warn him … help … him.”

Casbolt was beside her instantly. “I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll get to them as fast as I can. I can get out on the river. You stay here, safely. You couldn’t help even if you were there. I’ll tell the river police.” And he moved past her, touching her gently on the arms, as if to hold her there.

“Remain here,” he repeated. “You’ll be safe. I’ll take the police and confront Trace. Monk will be all right.” And before she could argue he went out of the door, closing it behind him, and she heard his footsteps fade away.

She moved back to the center of the room. It really was beautiful. There was a miniature portrait at one end of the pale marble mantel. At first she had not realized who it was. Now she could see it was Judith as a young woman, perhaps
twenty or so. That would be when she had first met Daniel Alberton.

There was another picture, no more than a sketch, three young people climbing over the rocks on a beach, Judith laughing, close to Casbolt, Alberton a little distance away, looking towards them. It was obvious that Judith and Casbolt were the couple, Alberton the newcomer.

Trace, who was so much in love with Judith, was a newcomer too. Had his love for Judith had anything to do with the reason he had killed Alberton, instead of merely rendering him unconscious? Was it Judith herself, as much as the guns?

Monk was alone with him, possibly this moment under the water, dependent on him for skill, for life!

But Casbolt had gone to fetch Lanyon and rescue him. He would be there far before … There! Where?

Suddenly she froze like ice, her limbs shaking. Casbolt had not asked her where Monk was diving for the barge! He knew!

Everything that was true about Alberton and the private investment in the Chinese war was equally true about Casbolt himself. He could have lost money, and all the glamour and generosity that money allowed. This beautiful house and everything in it, the admiration and respect that go with success. And Casbolt was used to success. Everything around him showed he had had it all his life … except with Judith. She had given him no more than the love of a cousin and friend, never passion. He was too close.

She went over to the door and turned the handle. But it was locked. Damnation! That old manservant must have seen Casbolt leave and locked it up behind him.

She rattled the handle and called out.

Silence.

She tried shouting.

Either he was deaf or he did not care. Perhaps Casbolt had even told him to keep her there?

The watch! Casbolt would have seen it when he and Monk had gone to Breeland’s rooms looking for Merrit. He
could easily have taken it then, concealed it from Monk, and then dropped it himself when they were in the Tooley Street yard. No wonder he had been so startled when he discovered Breeland had given it to Merrit.

She shook the door as violently as she could, shouting for help. It had no effect whatever.

She swung around and went to the French doors and opened them. The balcony had wisteria climbing up it. Was it enough for a toehold? It would have to be! Monk’s life depended on it. Gingerly, disregarding the ruin of her skirts, she clambered over the edge, refusing to look down, and began to slip and clutch and slip again until she could jump the last few feet to the grass, landing in a heap.

She stood up, brushed herself down and set off at a run to reach the street.

It had all been about money, not guns, and because of Judith. The American war had nothing to do with it at all. The guns had been sold twice, and paid for at least once and a half. Casbolt had employed Shearer, and someone else who had committed the actual murders, carefully making sure he was accounted for that night. Then, as Monk had guessed, the following night they had all met up down the river at Bugsby’s Marshes to pay and be paid.

She ran out into the middle of the road, waving her arms and shouting out, her voice high and shrill, verging on hysteria.

A carriage slowed to a stop to avoid striking her. A hansom pulled up with a screech and a curse.

She called up to the driver. “I need to get to the Bermondsey police station. My husband’s life depends on it … please!”

There was an elderly man already inside. He looked momentarily alarmed, then seeing the anguish in her face and every aspect of her body, he acquiesced with startling generosity, offering his hand to help her.

“Come in, my dear. Driver, as the lady wishes, with all possible speed!”

The coachman hesitated only long enough to make certain Hester was safely inside, then he swung the whip wide and high, and urged the horses forward.

Monk gasped, then the hose fell loose. Air surged back around his face. There was a touch on his shoulder and he tried to swing around, but he was too slow, achingly clumsy.

Trace was beside him, shaking his head, holding the air hose, smiling.

Monk was ashamed of his thoughts, of his panic, but above all weak with relief. He was grinning idiotically at Trace through the filthy water and the thick glass.

He raised his hand in thanks.

Trace waved back, still shaking his head, then pointing to the nearest of the piled crates.

Monk took out his knife and together they prized the lid off. There were guns there. He could feel their outlines.

Trace held up his lamp, close, only inches above them. Now it was possible to see that they were old models, flintlocks mostly, many of them useless, without firing pins, a far cry from the latest Enfields Breeland had purchased. They were little more than sham.

Laboriously they unpacked the top layer. Underneath was only bricks and ballast.

They tried a second case, and a third. They were all the same; a few guns on top, then just weight.

Now at last Monk understood almost all of it. The real guns had never been at Tooley Street. They had been stored somewhere else, and taken to Euston and loaded onto the freight wagons on the train before Shearer even got there the night of the murders. He had merely accepted Breeland’s money. Where he had been the rest of that night, they would probably never know.

These cast-off guns laid over bricks and ballast had been stolen by the wretched men whose bodies floated in this ghastly cabin below the Thames. They had hidden the barge, disguised among the wrecks on the shore of Bugsby’s Marshes, until the following night, then floated it again to
keep a rendezvous they thought was to deliver their goods and receive payment for murder. Instead, along with Shearer, they had met their own deaths. If he looked again he would find all the times fitted.

He put his hand on Trace’s arm to signal they should leave. They had seen all there was. They moved slowly away. And was it all simply greed, a matter of selling the guns twice and thus having more money? Admittedly, a vast amount more.

He lurched through the gloom, fumbling his way, awash in clouds of mud, pulled by tides as the flow increased, and they were trying to fight against it. It seemed an endless journey. His legs ached from the weight of his boots. He was imprisoned behind the glass plate, breathing pumped air. He struggled to remember what they had told him to do. Use the outlet valve. Get more buoyancy. That was better. Life and sunlight were only a few fathoms away, but like another world.

Trace was beside him, moving more rapidly, surer-footed. He was waving his light, guiding and urging Monk forward. Then suddenly Trace dropped his light. Monk saw his hands scrabble at where his throat would be beneath the helmet; his face appeared contorted behind the glass, as though he were gasping, choking for air.

Then his ropes tightened, and he was dragged backwards and up, disappearing into the murk, leaving Monk completely alone.

Where was the boat? He strained upwards, looking for its shadow through the cloud of sand that swirled around him, and did not see it.

Then at last the steps were there. He grasped them, hauling himself up, desperate to reach the top, the light, to get out of the cold, clammy, imprisoning suit. It seemed to take forever. He was leaden-weighted. There was no help from the ropes. They had stopped pulling him. He had to climb on his own. The effort was overwhelming.

At last his head broke the surface and instinctively he gasped, drawing in only more pumped air. Hands reached
out to help him aboard, and as the water drained off him and the attendant removed the front glass from his helmet, he recognized Robert Casbolt. Then a shot rang out, and another, and another. The attendant crumpled forward, his chest scarlet, and slid into the water.

The other two men lay sprawled beside the pumping equipment, one partly on his back next to Trace, staring sightlessly upward, a dark hole in his head, the third doubled over the after thwart, blood on his hair. Philo Trace was slumped in the bottom of the boat, eyes closed, barely conscious, his helmet beside him.

Casbolt was holding a gun, its muzzle pointed towards Monk.

“You found something down there that showed you it was Trace,” he said with a sad little shake of his head. “But you weren’t quick enough for him. He shot you. He nearly got away with it, too. If your wife hadn’t come to me with the truth, and I raced here to try to rescue you, then he would have succeeded! Tragically, I was just too late.…” He swallowed hard. “I really am sorry. All I wanted was Judith … back again, as it used to be. And enough money to look after her. That was all I ever wanted.” He raised the gun a little higher.

A shot rang out, then another. Casbolt teetered for a moment and then overbalanced, falling into the brown, swelling tide.

Across the water another boat was coming towards them, Lanyon in the bow, a pistol in his hand. Beside him, Hester was ashen-faced, the wind whipping her hair and blowing her torn and wet skirts.

The boat reached the barge and Lanyon jumped over. A look of horror filled his eyes as he saw the bodies. It was a moment before he collected himself and came over to Monk. Trace coughed and sat up a little straighter, one of the other boat’s crew helping him.

Hester scrambled from one boat to the other and ran forward, falling on her knees beside Monk, saying his name over and over, searching his face, desperate to know he was
all right. Her voice caught in her throat; her breathing was wild and jerky.

He grinned at her, and saw the tears of relief run down her cheeks. He could understand so very easily that you could love one woman so much that no one else filled your heart or mind. For a moment he could almost have been sorry for Casbolt. He had wanted Judith all his life. Love could hurt. It would ask for sacrifices greater than the imagination could foresee, and it was not always returned, or even understood. But it did not excuse what he had done. The end does not justify the means.

Lanyon unfastened Monk’s helmet and lifted it off.

Hester put her arms around Monk’s neck and buried her head on his shoulder, clinging to him with all the strength she possessed, until it hurt them both, but she could not let go.

by Anne Perry

Elissa Beck, the wife of Dr. Kristian Beck, a prominent London surgeon, is found strangled along with another woman in the studio of a well-known London artist. Hester Monk presses her husband, Inspector William Monk, to search for evidence that will save her former colleague from the hangman’s noose as well as solve the riddle of Elissa Beck’s secret life and murder.

Published by Ballantine Books.
Available at bookstores everywhere.

by
Anne Perry

As private investigator William Monk listens to the young Lucius Stourbridge plead for help in tracking down his runaway fiancée, he feels a sense of heavy foreboding. Miriam Gardiner disappeared suddenly from a croquet party at the luxurious Bayswater mansion of her in-laws-to-be and has not been seen since. But on Hampstead Heath, Monk finds the coach in which Miriam had fled and, nearby, the murdered body of the coachman. There is no trace of Miriam.

What strange compulsion could have driven the beautiful widow to abandon the prospect of a loving marriage and financial abundance? Monk’s attempt to answer that question proves a challenge, as Miriam Gardiner’s fateful flight ends in a packed London courtroom and a charge of murder. And in a race with the hangman, Monk and clever nurse Hester Latterly—themselves now newlyweds—desperately pursue the elusive truth … and an unknown killer whose malign brilliance they have scarcely begun to fathom.