The Shifting Tide (27 page)

Ruth Clark had died of plague. Clement Louvain had brought her to the clinic. Where from? Who was she? He had said she was the cast-off mistress of a friend. Was that true? Was she his own mistress? He knew she was ill, but had he any idea with what?

Where had she contracted a disease like that? Not in London. The
Maude Idris
had just come back from Africa. Had she come on it? Was that how the plague had got here? Did Louvain know that, or guess? And he had taken her to Hester!

For a moment red fury swept over Monk so it almost blinded him. His body trembled and his nails dug into the flesh of his hands till they drew blood.

He must control himself! He had no idea whether Louvain had known what was wrong with her. Why should he? The woman was sick. That was all Hester had known, and Hester was a nurse who had cared for her day and night.

He started to walk back and forth. Should he go to Louvain and tell him? Should he at least tell him that Ruth was dead? If Louvain had known she had the plague, he would be expecting it. Would he panic now? Might he cause the very terror they were afraid of? But then if he had not known, and she had been his mistress, would he be distressed? Hardly, or he would have gotten a nurse in to care for her, not sent her to a clinic for street women to be looked after by strangers. Far better to keep her death silent. Let him find out in time.

Then another thought struck him. What if Gould had been telling the exact truth, and Hodge had been dead, without a mark on him except the slight bruises of a fall, and his head had been beaten in afterwards, because he had died of plague? Was it not a murder, but the concealment of a death which could end up killing half the world?

Half the world? Wasn’t that a ridiculous exaggeration? Nightmare, hysteria rather than reality? What did the history books say?

Back in 1348 England had been a rural community, ignorant and isolated compared with today. If people traveled at all it was by foot or on horseback. Knowledge of medicine was rudimentary and filled with superstition.

He strode back and forth, trying to picture it. He could not make himself sit down or concentrate his mind in linear reasoning. It had been a barbarous time. Who had been on the throne? One of the Plantagenet kings, long before the Renaissance. It was a hundred and fifty years before they had even learned that the world was round!

There were still forests over England, with wild animals. Nobody would have conceived of such a thing as a train. They burned witches at the stake.

And yet the plague had spread like a stench on the wind! How much farther would it spread now, when a man could ride from the south coast of England all the way to Scotland in a day? London was the largest city in the world, crammed cheek by jowl with close to five million people. He had heard someone say recently that there were more Scots in London than in Edinburgh! And more Irish than in Dublin, and more Roman Catholics than in Rome!

London would become a wasteland of the dead and dying, disease spreading ever outward until it polluted the whole country. It needed only one ship leaving the shores with a sick man, and it would destroy Europe as well.

He had only one choice. He had no power to investigate Hodge’s death or to question anyone. He must find Durban and tell him the whole truth. There was time to pay the price of that afterwards. All that mattered now was to trace the disease, and anyone who might carry it.

He slept fitfully and woke confused and heavy-headed, wondering what was wrong. Then the hideousness of the memory returned, filling him like darkness till he hardly knew how to bear it. He lay frozen, as if time were suspended, until finally intelligence told him the only way to survive was to do something. Action would drive the horror back and leave free a fraction of his mind in which he could live, at least until exhaustion made him too weak to resist.

He dressed quickly with as many clothes as he could, knowing that he would almost certainly spend most of the day on the river. Then he went out and bought hot tea and a sandwich from a street peddler.

He had turned over a dozen different ways to tell Durban the truth, but there was no good way to say any of this, and it hardly mattered how he expressed it. All personal needs and cares vanished in the enormity of this new, terrible truth that swallowed everything else.

It was a sharp, glittering day, just above freezing but feeling far colder because of the wind that scythed in off the shifting, brilliant surface of the water. Gulls wheeled overhead, flashing white against the sky, and the incoming tide slurped on the wood of piers and the wet stone of steps.

The river was busy this morning. Everywhere Monk looked there were men lifting, wheeling, staggering under the weight of sacks and bales. Their shouts were carried by the wind and blown away. Canvas flapped loose and banged against boards. In the clear air he could see as far as the river bends in both directions, and every mast, spar, and line of rigging was sharp as an etching on the sky. Only in the distance above the city was there a thin pall of smoke.

Durban was not at the police station. The sergeant informed Monk that he was already out on the water, probably south, but he didn’t know.

Monk thanked him and went out immediately. There was nothing to do but find a boat and go to look for him. He could not afford to wait.

A few minutes later he was down by the water again, scanning the river urgently for a ferry willing to take him on a search. At first he barely noticed the voice calling him, and only when his sleeve was plucked did he turn.

“Y’all right, then?” Scuff said in an elaborately casual manner, but his eyes were screwed up and there was an edge of anxiety to his tone.

Monk forced himself to be gentler than he felt. “Yes. The man with the ivory was very happy.”

“Paid yer?” Scuff asked for the true measure of success.

“Oh, yes.”

“Then why d’yer look like ’e din’t?” Now there was real concern in his face.

“It’s not money. Someone who might be sick. Do you know Mr. Durban of the River Police?” Monk asked.

“ ’im wi’ the gray ’air, walks like a sailor? Course I do. Why?”

“I need to speak to him, urgently.”

“I’ll find ’im for yer.” Scuff put two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, then walked over to the edge and repeated it. Within two minutes there was a boat at the steps. After a hurried conversation Scuff scrambled in and beckoned for Monk to follow.

Monk did not want the child with him. What he had to do was going to be awkward and unpleasant, possibly even dangerous. And he certainly could not afford to have Scuff learn the truth.

“C’mon then!” Scuff said sharply, his face wrinkled in puzzlement. “Y’in’t gonner find ’im standin’ there!”

Monk dropped down into the boat. “Thank you,” he said politely, but his voice was rough, as if he were trembling. “I don’t need you to come. Go back to your own work.” He was uncertain whether to offer him money or not; he might see it as an insult to friendship.

Scuff pulled a face. “If yer ’aven’t noticed, the tide’s up. Like I said, yer shouldn’t be out by yerself, yer in’t fit!” He sat down in the stern, a self-appointed guardian for someone he obviously felt to be in need of one.

“Word is ’e’s gorn down Debtford Creek way,” the boatman said pleasantly. “Bin a bit o’ trouble that way yesterday. Yer wanna go or not?”

Monk accepted. If he put Scuff ashore against his will he would lose the boatman’s respect, possibly even his cooperation. “Yes. As quick as you can, please.”

They pulled out onto the main stream of traffic and went south along Limehouse Reach, weaving in and out of strings of barges, moored ships waiting to unload their cargoes, and a few still seeking anchorage.

It took them nearly three quarters of an hour, but finally Monk recognized Durban’s figure on the quayside above a flight of steps near Debtford Creek. Then he saw the police boat on the water just below, with two men at the oars and Orme standing in the stern.

“Over there!” Monk told his own boatman. The raw edge to his voice gave it all the urgency he needed. “How much?”

“A shilling,” the boatman replied instantly.

Monk fished a shilling and threepence out of his pocket, and as soon as they pulled in to the steps he passed it over and stood up. Scuff stood up also. “No!” Monk swung around, all but losing his balance. “I’ll be all right now.”

“Yer might need me!” Scuff argued. “I can do things.”

There was no time to explain, or be gentle. “I know. I’ll find you when I have something for you to do. For now, keep out of the rozzers’ way!”

Scuff sank back reluctantly and Monk leapt for the step and went on up without looking back.

Durban turned around just as Monk reached the top. He was about to speak when he saw Monk’s face. Instead, he looked at the other man, a sullen, weary creature with one shoulder higher than the other. “Do it again an’ I’ll have you. Now get gone.”

The man obeyed with alacrity, leaving Monk and Durban alone at the top of the steps in the wind.

“What is it?” Durban asked. “You look like you’ve seen hell.”

“Not yet, but that could be truer than you think,” Monk said with bitter humor. How could he laugh at anything now? Except, insane as it seemed, perhaps it was the only sanity left. “I need to talk to you alone, and it’s more important than anything else at all.”

Durban drew in his breath, possibly to tell him not to exaggerate, and then let it out again. “What is it? If you’re going to tell me you were lying about the ivory, and that Gould’s innocent of the murder of Hodge, I already know the first, and I might believe the second, with proof. Do you have any?”

Maybe telling the truth was going to be less difficult than Monk had thought, and facing Durban’s contempt was going to be more. Already, guilt was eating him inside. “It might be proof, but that isn’t what matters,” he replied. “It’s not quick, or easy to tell.”

Durban stood motionless, waiting, his hands in his pockets. He did not ask or prompt. Somehow that made it harder. “There were fourteen tusks originally,” Monk began. “I found all of them on Jacob’s Island, and hid one as proof.”

“An’ gave the rest to Louvain, which I presume is what you were hired for.” Durban nodded.

Monk had no time to indulge in excuses. He was conscious of the other police in the boat a few yards away, and that any moment Orme might come up to see what was the matter.

“I saw Hodge’s body when Louvain first told me about the robbery,” Monk answered. “It was my condition for doing the job that I found whoever killed him and handed them to you. I only looked at the back of his head, nothing else.”

Durban’s eyebrows rose, questioning what any of this mattered. There was no open contempt in his face, but it lay only just beneath the surface. “Does this matter, Mr. Monk? His head was beaten in. What did you see that proves Gould’s innocence, or anyone else’s?”

Monk was losing control of the story. Orme was out of the boat and on the steps, and any patience Durban might have had was slipping away. For the first time since he had resigned from the police in fury, he felt grubby for treating crime as a way of earning a living rather than a matter of the law. That was unfair; he solved the crimes other law officers did not, and he wanted to show Durban that, but there was no time, and no reason except pride.

“My wife nursed in the Crimea,” he said roughly. “Now she runs a clinic for sick and injured prostitutes in Portpool Lane.” He saw Durban’s contempt deepening. It was difficult not to reach out a hand and physically hold him from turning away. “A few days ago Clement Louvain brought a woman to her who was very ill. It looked like pneumonia. Yesterday afternoon she died.”

Durban was watching him closely now, but his face was still full of skepticism. He did not interrupt.

“When Hester came to wash her body for the undertaker”—Monk found his breath rasping in his throat; please, God, Orme stay out of earshot—“she found what she had really died of.” He swallowed hard and nearly choked. Would Durban realize the shattering enormity of what he said? Would he understand?

Durban was waiting, his brows puckered. He lifted a hand in a gesture to stop Orme, who was halfway up the steps.

It was senseless to prevaricate. If Monk was not doing this the right way, it was too late to do it better now. “Plague,” he whispered, even though the wind was carrying his words to Durban, not to Orme. “I mean bubonic plague—the Black Death.”

Durban started to speak and then changed his mind. He stood perfectly motionless, even though the wind was now cutting them both like ice on the skin. The air was still bright around them. The gulls circled above, the strings of barges moved slowly past on the tide going up to the Pool.

“Plague?” His voice was hoarse.

Monk nodded. “The rat catcher Sutton told me last night, late. He came to my house, and he’ll tell Margaret Ballinger, who works at the clinic too, but no one else. If he did there’d be panic. People might even try to burn them out.”

Durban ran his hand over his face. Suddenly he was so pale his skin looked almost gray. “We can’t let them out!”

“I know,” Monk said softly. “Sutton already has friends patrolling all the ways in or out with pit bulls. They’ll take anyone down who tries to leave.”

Durban rubbed the heel of his hand over his face again. “Oh, God!” he whispered. “Who . . .”

“No one,” Monk replied. “We’ve got to deal with it ourselves. Margaret Ballinger will do all she can outside—getting food, water, coal, and medicine to them, leaving it somewhere they can pick it up after dark. At least at this time of year the nights are long, and Portpool Lane’s well lit. Hester and the women already there will nurse the sick . . . as long as . . .” He could not bring himself to say the rest, even though the words beat in his head:
as long as they live
.

Durban did not say anything, but his eyes were filled with a terrible, drowning pity.

Monk swallowed down the terror inside himself, fear not of the disease but of losing everything he loved. “We have to find where it came from,” he went on, his voice almost steady now. “We don’t have the plague in England. The
Maude Idris
, which the ivory came in on, has just returned from Africa. It is Louvain’s ship. Louvain took Ruth Clark to the clinic.”