Wiliam Monk 01 - The Face of a Stranger

have shocked him in anyone else. Was that really what he was like? Surely it was only a threat, and he would never have carried it out? Or would he? He remembered the anger that had welled up inside him at the mention of moneylenders, parasites of the desperate poor who clung to respectability, to a few precious standards. Sometimes a man's honesty was his only real possession, his only source of pride and identity in the anonymous, wretched, teeming multitude.
    What had Evan thought of him? He cared; it was a miserable thought that Evan would be disillusioned, finding
    his methods as ugly as the crime he fought, not understanding he was using words, only words.
    Or did Evan know him better than he knew himself? Evan would know his past. Perhaps in the past the words had been a warning, and reality had followed.
    And what would Imogen Latterly have felt? It was a preposterous dream. The rookeries were as foreign to her as the planets in the sky. She would be sick, disgusted even to see them, let alone to have passed through them and dealt with their occupants. If she had seen him threaten the screever, standing in the filthy room, she would not permit him to enter her house again.
    He sat staring up at the ceiling, full of anger and pain. It was cold comfort to him that tomorrow he would find the usurer who might have killed Joscelin Grey. He hated the world he had to deal with; he wanted to belong to the clean, gracious world where he could speak as an equal with people like the Latterlys; Charles would not patronize him, he could converse with Imogen Latterly as a friend, and quarrel with Hester without the hindrance of social inferiority. That would be a delicate pleasure. He would dearly like to put that opinionated young woman in her place.
    But purely because he hated the rookeries so fiercely, he could not ignore them. He had seen them, known their squalor and their desperation, and they would not go away.
    Well at least he could turn his anger to some purpose; he would find the violent, greedy man who had paid to have Joscelin Grey beaten to death. Then he could face Grey in peace in his imagination—and Runcorn would be defeated.

10

    Monk sent Evan to try pawnshops for the pink jade, and then himself went to look for Josiah Wigtight. He had no trouble finding the address. It was half a mile east of Whitechapel off the Mile End Road. The building was narrow and almost lost between a seedy lawyer's office and a sweatshop where in dim light and heavy, breathless air women worked eighteen hours a day sewing shirts for a handful of pence. Some felt driven to walk the street at night also, for the extra dreadfully and easily earned silver coins that meant food and rent. A few were wives or daughters of the poor, the drunken or the inadequate; many were women who had in the past been in domestic service, and had lost their "character" one way or another—for impertinence, dishonesty, loose morals, or because a mistress found them "uppity," or a master had taken advantage of them and been discovered, and in a number of cases they had become with child, and thus not only unemployable but a disgrace and an affront.
    Inside, the office was dim behind drawn blinds and smelled of polish, dust and ancient leather. A black-dressed clerk sat at a high stool in the first room. He looked up as Monk came in.
    "Good morning, sir; may we be of assistance to you?"
    His voice was soft, like mud. "Perhaps you have a little problem?" He rubbed his hands together as though the cold bothered him, although it was summer. "A temporary problem, of course?" He smiled at his own hypocrisy.
    "I hope so." Monk smiled back.
    The man was skilled at his job. He regarded Monk with caution. His expression had not the nervousness he was accustomed to; if anything it was a little wolfish. Monk realized he had been clumsy. Surely in the past he must have been more skilled, more attuned to the nuances of judgment?
    "That rather depends on you," he added to encourage the man, and allay any suspicion he might unwittingly have aroused.
    "Indeed," the clerk agreed. "That's what we're in business for: to help gentlemen with a temporary embarrassment of funds. Of course there are conditions, you understand?" He fished out a clean sheet of paper and held his pen ready. "If I could just have the details, sir?"
    "My problem is not a shortage of funds," Monk replied with the faintest smile. He hated moneylenders; he hated the relish with which they plied