William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

“What for? Did you think she would know anything about the crew?” He smiled very slightly, hardly a movement of the lips. “Did you think I hadn’t thought of that?”
    Monk was momentarily embarrassed, but the idea in him overrode everything else. “I’m sorry. Did you see the copper saucepans in the kitchen?”
    “I didn’t go, Orme did.” Durban was frowning. “What about them? What does it matter? I can’t afford to care about petty theft now.” Again the fraction of a smile touched his mouth and disappeared.
    “They weren’t stolen, so far as I know,” Monk answered. “She saw me looking at them and said her brother gave them to her.”
    “I’m too tired to play games, Monk,” Durban said wearily. He looked gray-faced, close to collapse.
    “I’m sorry,” Monk said quickly, and he meant it. He liked Durban as much as anyone he had known in years, more instinctively than he did Oliver Rathbone. “She told me she has only one brother and he gave them to her in August. She said she could prove that.”
    Durban blinked, frowning harder. “She can’t! He was off the coast of Africa in August. Are you saying the
Maude Idris
was here then? Or that Newbolt wasn’t on her?”
    “Not exactly either,” Monk said very quietly. “We checked the names of the crew.”
    “Of course.”
    “But not their appearances.”
    Durban steadied himself, leaning back against the sill. “For God’s sake, what are you saying?” But the hideousness of it was already in his eyes. He shook his head. “But they’re still there—on the ship!”
    “You told your men to keep them there because it was typhoid,” Monk reminded him. “Maybe Louvain told them the same, or close enough?”
    Durban rubbed his hand over his face like a man trying to dispel a nightmare. “Then we’d better find out. Can you use a pistol?”
    “Of course,” Monk replied, with no idea whether he could or not.
    Durban straightened up. “I’ll get Orme and half a dozen men, but I’m the only one going below.” He stared very levelly at Monk, his eyes seeming to look into his brain. “That is an order.” He did not elaborate but walked past him and through the outside office, calling for Orme as he went.
    He gave his orders concisely and with a clarity no man could misunderstand, like a commander going into a last battle.
    The rain had cleared away and the water was bright and choppy with a knife-edge wind blowing from the west when they rowed out.
    Monk sat in the stern of the boat, cradling his loaded gun as they plied between the ships and the
Maude Idris
came clearly into view.
    Durban sat in the bow, a little apart. He glanced at each of his men, then gave a barely discernible nod as they drew alongside and he stood up, balancing easily even in the pitching boat. He hailed the ship, and Newbolt’s head appeared over the railing.
    “River Police!” Durban called out. “Coming aboard.”
    Newbolt hesitated, then disappeared. The next moment the rope ladder came pitching over, uncurling to fall almost in Durban’s hands. He caught it and climbed up—it seemed to Monk, watching from below—less agilely than before.
    Two of the River Police went up after him, Orme and another man, guns tucked in their belts, and lastly Monk, leaving only the oarsman in the boat. Monk climbed over the rail onto the deck where three River Police faced Newbolt and Atkinson. There was no sound except the whine of the wind in the rigging and the slap of water against the hull below them.
    “What d’yer want this time?” Newbolt asked, staring sullenly at Durban. “None of us killed ’Odge, and none of us ’elped anyone take the bleedin’ ivory.”
    “I know,” Durban replied steadily. “We don’t think anyone killed Hodge; he died by accident. And we know that Gould stole the ivory because we have it back.”
    “So wot d’yer want ’ere then?” Newbolt said irritably. “If yer wanter do summink useful, get bleedin’ Louvain ter unload this ship an’ pay us off!”
    “I want to see below deck, then we might do that,” Durban replied, watching him curiously, his face intent. “Where’s McKeever?”
    “Dead,” Newbolt said tersely. “We got the typhoid. Still wanna go below?”
    “I know you have,” Durban replied. “That’s why you’ve not berthed. Now open the hatch.”
    Newbolt’s eyes flickered and his head came up as if at last he was paying real attention. “Right! Wot d’yer wanter see?”
    “I’ll find