William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

that. That ’ad ter be the Yankee.”
    “What about for the price of six thousand first-class rifled muskets?” Monk persisted.
    “Well—s’pose so. That’s a lot o’ money in any man’s reckonin’,” Sandy acknowledged.
    “Could he have sympathized with the Union cause?” Monk tried a last question on the subject.
    They all looked mystified.
    “Against slaving,” Monk explained. “To keep all the states of America as one country.”
    “We don’t ’ave no slaving in England,” Sandy pointed out. “Least not black slaving,” he added wryly. “There’s some as thinks they got it ’ard. an’ as for the states o’ America, why should we care? Let ’em do whatever they likes, I says.”
    Bert shook his head. “I’d be agin slavery. In’t right.”
    “Me too,” the first man added. “Can’t say as Shearer gave a toss, though, not so as ter kill anyone over it, like.”
    “Do you know where Shearer lives?” Monk asked them.
    “New Church Street, just off Bermondsey Low Road,” Bert replied. “Dunno the number, but ends in a three, as I recall. About ’alfway along.”
    “Was he married?”
    “Shearer? Not likely!”
    Monk thanked them and left the yard to try New Church Street.
    It took him nearly half an hour to find where Shearer had lived, and an irate landlady who had waited three weeks with an empty property.
    “Bin ’ere near on nine year, ’e ’ad!” she said belligerently. “Then ups and goes Gawd knows where, an’ without a by-your-leave! Says nothing to nobody, an’ left all ’is rubbish ’ere fer me ter clear out. Lorst three weeks o’ rent money, I did.” Her eyes glared stonily at Monk. “You a friend o’ ’is, then?”
    “No,” Monk lied quickly. “He owes me money too.”
    She laughed abruptly. “Well, yer got no chance ’ere, ’cos I got nuffink an’ I ain’t partin’ wif the li’l I got from sellin’ ’is clothes ter the rag an’ bone, an’ I tell yer that fer nothin’.”
    “Do you think something could have happened to him?”
    Her thin eyebrows shot up.
    “That one? Not likely! Too fly by ’alf, ’im. Got a better offer an’ took it, I s’pec. Or the rozzers is after ’im.” She looked Monk up and down. “That wot you are, a rozzer?”
    “I told you, he owes me money.”
    “Yeah? Well, I never knew a rozzer wot was close kin ter the truth. But if ’e owes yer money, I reckon as ’e’s in for trouble if yer finds ’im, like. Yer look like trouble ter me.”
    Monk had an instant of recollection, as if someone else had said exactly the same to him, but it was gone before he could place it. Such jolts of memory from before the accident were becoming fewer, and he no longer actively searched for them or tried to hold them with him. What she had said was probably true. He did not forgive easily, and if someone had cheated him, he would have pursued the culprit to the last hiding place and exacted what was due. But that was a long time ago. Then his carriage had overturned, robbing him of all his past, in the summer of 1856. In the five years since he had built a new life, a new set of memories and characteristics.
    He thanked her and left. There was nothing more to be learned here. Shearer had disappeared. What mattered was where he had gone, and why. Tomorrow he would speak with dockers and bargees who would have known him. He might even find where the barge had come from that had taken the guns down the river. Then he would go on to the shipping offices Shearer would have dealt with to export Alberton’s guns, or machinery and whatever else he traded in.
    That evening he told Hester a little of what he had learned.
    “Do you think it was Shearer who actually killed Mr. Alberton?” she asked with a lift of hope in her voice.
    They were sitting at the table over a meal of cold chicken pie and fresh vegetables. He noticed that she looked a little tired.
    “Where have you been all day?” he asked.
    “Do you?” she insisted.
    “What?”
    “Do you think Shearer killed Daniel Alberton?”
    “Possibly. Where have you been?”
    “At the Small Pox Hospital at Highgate. We’re still trying to improve the quality of staff caring for the patients there, but it’s difficult. I’ve been writing letters most of the time.”
    It was on the edge of his tongue to make some remark about Florence Nightingale, who was inexhaustible in her letter writing in her efforts to bring about hospital reform, but he forbore. It explained