William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

rather long nose, sensitive mouth. The bruising did not hide that, and the blood had been cleared away. Evan found himself willing the young man to live, aching with the tension in his own body, as if by strength of his feeling he could make it happen—and yet at the same time he was concerned about the pain the young man would feel when he woke.
    Who was he—R. Duff? Was the older man related to him? And what had happened in that alley? Why had they been there? What appetite had taken them to such a place on a January night?
    “Give me the trousers,” Evan whispered, a wave of horror and revulsion returning to him. “I’ll take them to the tailor.”
    “You’d be better with the coat,” Riley replied. “It’s got the label on it, and there’s less blood.”
    “Less blood? The other man’s coat was soaked in it.”
    “I know.” Riley shrugged his thin shoulders. “With this one it’s the trousers. Maybe they all went down together in a scrum. But if you want the tailor to be fit for anything, take the jacket. No need to give the poor man a turn.”
    Evan took the jacket after he had examined both pieces. Like the dead man’s clothes, they were torn in several places, filthy with mud and effluent from the gutter, and stained with blood on coat sleeves and tails, and the trousers were sodden.
    Evan left the hospital horrified, exhausted in mind and spirit as well as body, and now so cold he could not stop shivering. He took a hansom home to his rooms. He would not get in an omnibus with that dreadful jacket, and he had no wish to sit among other people, decent people at the end of their day’s work, who had no idea of what he had seen and felt or of theyoung man in St. Thomas’s who might or might not awake again.
    He found the tailor at nine o’clock. He spoke personally to Mr. Jiggs of Jiggs and Muldrew, a rotund man who needed all his own art to disguise his ample stomach and rather short legs.
    “What may I do for you, sir?” he said with some distaste as he saw the parcel under Evan’s arm. He disapproved of gentlemen who bundled up clothes. It was no way to treat a highly crafted piece of workmanship.
    Evan had no time or mood for catering to anyone’s sensitivities.
    “Do you have a client by the name of R. Duff, Mr. Jiggs?” he asked bluntly.
    “My client list is a matter of confidence, sir—”
    “This is a case of murder,” Evan snapped, sounding more like Monk than his own usually soft-spoken self. “The owner of this suit is lying at death’s door in St. Thomas’s. Another man, who also wore a suit with your label in it, is in the morgue. I do not know who they are … other than this …” He ignored Jiggs’s pasty face and wide eyes. “If you can tell me, then I demand that you do so.” He spilled the jacket onto the tailor’s table.
    Jiggs started backwards as if the garment was alive and dangerous.
    “Will you look at it, please,” Evan commanded.
    “Oh, my God!” Mr. Jiggs put a clammy hand to his brow. “Whatever happened?”
    “I don’t know yet,” Evan answered a trifle more gently. “Will you please look at that jacket and tell me if you know for whom you made it?”
    “Yes. Yes, of course. I always know my gentlemen, sir.” Gingerly Mr. Jiggs unfolded the coat only sufficiently to see his own label. He glanced at it, touched the cloth with his forefinger, then looked at Evan. “I made that suit for young Mr. Rhys Duff, of Ebury Street, sir.” He looked extremely pale. “I am very sorry indeed that he seems to have met with a disaster. It truly grieves me, sir.”
    Evan bit his lip. “I’m sure. Did you also make a suit in a brown wool for another gentleman, possibly related to him? This man would be in his middle fifties, average height, quite solidly built. He had gray hair, rather fairer than Rhys Duff’s, I should think.”
    “Yes sir.” Jiggs took a shaky breath. “I made several suits for Mr. Leighton Duff; he’s Master Rhys’s father. I fear it may be he you are describing. Was he injured also?”
    “I am afraid he is dead, Mr. Jiggs. Can you tell me the number in Ebury Street. I am obliged to inform his family.”
    “Oh—why, of course. How very terrible. I wish there were some way I could assist.” The tailor stepped back as he said it, but there was a look of acute distress in his face, and Evan was disposed to believe him, at least in part.
    “The number in Ebury Street?” he repeated.
    “Yes … yes. I think it is