William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

look of a shell no longer inhabited by its spirit. He must have been large in life—the frame was there, the bones—but he seemed small now. It took a force of imagination to think of him as having been able to move and speak, to have will, even passion.
    The woman looked briefly at Louvain, then at Monk.
    Monk spoke to her first. “I am sorry for your grief, Mrs. Hodge. My name is William Monk. Mr. Louvain has hired me to find out who killed your husband, and to see that he answers for it.”
    She looked at him with leaden eyes. “Mebbe,” she answered. “Don’t make much difference ter me, nor me kids. Don’t pay the rent nor put food in our mouths. Still, I s’pose ’e should swing.” She turned back to the motionless form on the table. “Stupid sod!” she said with sudden fury. “But ’e weren’t all bad. Brought me a piece o’ wood back from Africa last time, all carved like an animal. Pretty. I never ’ocked it afore. S’pose I’ll ’ave ter now.” She glanced at the corpse. “Yer stupid sod!” she repeated helplessly.
    Monk’s anger at the thief stopped being a matter of law, or some inanimate sense of justice, and suddenly became hate, and deeply personal. Hodge was past injury, but this woman was not, nor her children. But there was nothing useful for him to say, nothing that would help now, and he could give her no assistance in her poverty.
    He looked instead at the dead man. He had thick hair, and the back of his head rested on the table. Monk reached across and lifted the head very slightly, feeling underneath for the extent of the injury. He had seen no blood on the top of the steps to the hold, and none on the deck. Scalp wounds bled.
    His fingers found the soft, broken skull under the hair. It had been an extremely hard blow. Something heavy and wide had been used, and by a person either of a good height or else standing slightly above. He looked at the attendant. “You cleaned him up, washed away the blood?”
    “A bit,” the attendant answered from the doorway. “There wasn’t much. Just made ’im presentable, like.” There was nothing in his face to indicate whether he knew if the man was a victim of murder or accident. There were probably many of the latter on ships, and especially on the docks, where heavy loads were moved and sometimes came loose.
    “Not much blood?” Monk questioned.
    “He had a woollen hat on,” Louvain explained again. “I’m afraid it must have been lost when we were carrying him here. I can describe it for you, if you think it matters.”
    “There was no blood on deck,” Monk pointed out. “And very little where he was found. It might have been helpful, but it’s probably not important. I’ve seen all I need to.” He thanked Mrs. Hodge again, then went out ahead of Louvain, back to the outside room. “I want the attendant’s testimony in writing, and yours.”
    A brief smile flickered across Louvain’s face, some oblique, inner humor he would not share. “I’ve not forgotten. You’ll get your pieces of paper. Dawson!” he called to the attendant. “Mr. Monk would like our testaments of Hodge’s death on paper to help him in his work. Would you be good enough, please?”
    Dawson looked slightly taken aback, but he produced paper, pen, and ink. He and Louvain both wrote their statements, signed, witnessed by each other, and Monk put them in his pocket.
    “Did you learn anything?” Louvain asked when they were on the pavement. The rain had now eased off and the wind slackened, allowing the mist to drift up off the water, wreathing the lamps and obscuring the roofs of some of the buildings nearby.
    Someone was lying.
That was what Monk had learned. Hodge had not been struck on deck and then carried below by a single thief. There was no blood on deck, no trail across the boards. Either Hodge had not died there, or there were more than two thieves, one from the boat and two on deck, or at least one of the crew had been involved. He decided not to say that much to Louvain.
    “Possibilities,” he answered. “I’ll start again in the morning.”
    “Report to me in three days, regardless of what you have,” Louvain reminded him. “Before, if you have the ivory, of course. I’ll pay you five pounds extra for every day short of ten that you recover it.”
    “Good,” Monk said levelly, but he felt the money slip out of his grasp as he walked forward in the darkness and wondered how far he would have to go to find an