William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

bed. Why? What does that matter?”
    “You did not go to St. Giles with Leighton Duff?”
    Duke’s utter amazement was too profound to disbelieve.
    “What?”
    Monk repeated what he had said.
    “With Leighton Duff? Have you lost your wits? I’ve been whoring in St. Giles, certainly—with Rhys, for that matter, and my brother Arthur. But Leighton Duff! That pompous, dry-as-dust old stick!” He started to laugh, and it was harsh, critical, but as far as Monk could tell, perfectly genuine.
    “I take it you think it unlikely Mr. Duff would have gone to St. Giles in search of a prostitute?”
    “About as likely as Her Majesty appearing on the stage of the music halls, I should think,” Duke replied bitterly. “Whatever gave you that notion? You must be very out of touch with the case. You really have not the least idea, have you?”
    Monk took the picture of Leighton Duff out of his pocket.
    “Is that a good likeness of him?”
    Duke considered it for a moment. “Yes, it is, actually. It is extremely good. He had just that rather patronizing air of self-righteousness.”
    “You did not like him,” Monk observed.
    “A crashing remark of the obvious.” Duke raised his eyebrows. “Do you really make a living at this, Mr. Monk?”
    “You would be surprised how people betray themselves when they imagine themselves safe, Mr. Kynaston,” Monk said with a smile. “But thank you for your concern on my behalf. It is not necessary. What I came for was to warn you, and your brother, that the people of St. Giles, and of Seven Dials as well, are aware of who committed the recent rapes in their areas, and if either of you should return there, it is very probable you will meet with most unpleasant ends. You have been there. You know or can imagine how easily that could be accomplished and your bodies never found … at least not recognizable ones.”
    Duke stared at him with a mixture of shock and incomprehension, but there was marked fear in it as well.
    “Why do you care if I get murdered in St. Giles?” he said truculently, then passed his tongue over dry lips.
    “I don’t,” Monk replied with a smile, but even as he said it, it was not entirely true. He disliked Marmaduke Kynaston lessthan when he had come in, for no reason that he would have been prepared to explain. “I don’t want the people of St. Giles to be pursued by a murder enquiry.”
    Duke took a deep breath. “I should have known. Are you from St. Giles?”
    Monk laughed outright. It was the first time he had felt like laughing for days.
    “No. I come from Northumberland.”
    “I suppose I should thank you for the warning,” Duke said casually, but his eyes still held the shock, and there was a reluctant sincerity in his voice.
    Monk shrugged and smiled.
    He left the house even further confused.
    Time was desperately short.
    He took Leighton Duff’s picture to Seven Dials and showed it to cabbies; street peddlers; a running patterer; sellers of flowers, bootlaces, matches and glassware; and to a ratcatcher and several prostitutes. It was recognized by at least a dozen people, and some without any hesitation at all. Not one of them was prepared to identify Rhys.
    By the second night Monk had only one more question in his mind. He returned to St. Giles to pursue the answer, and walked the alleys and courtyards, the dripping passages and up and down the rotting stairs, until dawn came gray and bleak at about seven o’clock and he was exhausted, and so cold his feet were numb and he could not control the shaking of his body. But he knew two things. Rhys Duff and his father had come to St. Giles on the night of the murder from different directions, and there was no proof they had met until the fatal encounter in Water Lane.
    The other thing he learned by chance. He was talking to a woman who had been a prostitute in her youth, and had saved sufficient money to purchase a boardinghouse, but still knew a remarkable amount of gossip. He went to her partly to confirm certain dates and places, but mainly from his compulsion to probe the darkness in his own mind, the fear that gathered every time Runcorn’s face came to his thoughts, which it did sooften in these dark, slippery paths. It was not Runcorn as he was now, graying at the temples, a little broader at the waist, but a younger, keener Runcorn, shoulders straight, eyes clearer and braver.
    “Do you remember the raid in the brothel when the magistrate, Gutteridge, was caught with his