William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

eyebrows rose, questioning what any of this mattered. There was no open contempt in his face, but it lay only just beneath the surface. “Does this matter, Mr. Monk? His head was beaten in. What did you see that proves Gould’s innocence, or anyone else’s?”
    Monk was losing control of the story. Orme was out of the boat and on the steps, and any patience Durban might have had was slipping away. For the first time since he had resigned from the police in fury, he felt grubby for treating crime as a way of earning a living rather than a matter of the law. That was unfair; he solved the crimes other law officers did not, and he wanted to show Durban that, but there was no time, and no reason except pride.
    “My wife nursed in the Crimea,” he said roughly. “Now she runs a clinic for sick and injured prostitutes in Portpool Lane.” He saw Durban’s contempt deepening. It was difficult not to reach out a hand and physically hold him from turning away. “A few days ago Clement Louvain brought a woman to her who was very ill. It looked like pneumonia. Yesterday afternoon she died.”
    Durban was watching him closely now, but his face was still full of skepticism. He did not interrupt.
    “When Hester came to wash her body for the undertaker”—Monk found his breath rasping in his throat; please, God, Orme stay out of earshot—“she found what she had really died of.” He swallowed hard and nearly choked. Would Durban realize the shattering enormity of what he said? Would he understand?
    Durban was waiting, his brows puckered. He lifted a hand in a gesture to stop Orme, who was halfway up the steps.
    It was senseless to prevaricate. If Monk was not doing this the right way, it was too late to do it better now. “Plague,” he whispered, even though the wind was carrying his words to Durban, not to Orme. “I mean bubonic plague—the Black Death.”
    Durban started to speak and then changed his mind. He stood perfectly motionless, even though the wind was now cutting them both like ice on the skin. The air was still bright around them. The gulls circled above, the strings of barges moved slowly past on the tide going up to the Pool.
    “Plague?” His voice was hoarse.
    Monk nodded. “The rat catcher Sutton told me last night, late. He came to my house, and he’ll tell Margaret Ballinger, who works at the clinic too, but no one else. If he did there’d be panic. People might even try to burn them out.”
    Durban ran his hand over his face. Suddenly he was so pale his skin looked almost gray. “We can’t let them out!”
    “I know,” Monk said softly. “Sutton already has friends patrolling all the ways in or out with pit bulls. They’ll take anyone down who tries to leave.”
    Durban rubbed the heel of his hand over his face again. “Oh, God!” he whispered. “Who . . .”
    “No one,” Monk replied. “We’ve got to deal with it ourselves. Margaret Ballinger will do all she can outside—getting food, water, coal, and medicine to them, leaving it somewhere they can pick it up after dark. At least at this time of year the nights are long, and Portpool Lane’s well lit. Hester and the women already there will nurse the sick . . . as long as . . .” He could not bring himself to say the rest, even though the words beat in his head:
as long as they live
.
    Durban did not say anything, but his eyes were filled with a terrible, drowning pity.
    Monk swallowed down the terror inside himself, fear not of the disease but of losing everything he loved. “We have to find where it came from,” he went on, his voice almost steady now. “We don’t have the plague in England. The
Maude Idris
, which the ivory came in on, has just returned from Africa. It is Louvain’s ship. Louvain took Ruth Clark to the clinic.”
    “Yes . . . I see,” Durban answered. “She probably came off the ship. Maybe Hodge knew that, in which case his death could have more to do with plague than with theft. Either way, we have to know. God in heaven! Once plague gets hold it could sweep the country! The question is who on the
Maude Idris
knows? And what about Louvain?”
    “I don’t know that,” Monk admitted. “I . . . I promised Gould I’d do what I could to see he didn’t hang, if he was innocent of Hodge’s death.”
    “Hang?” Durban said with dawning disbelief. “Great God, man! If what you say is true, the whole world could die, in a far worse way than hanging—which is brutal, but it’s quick. What’s