William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

balance as Orme heaved the body of the young woman over the gunwale. Awkwardly, as gently as he could, he laid her inside. Monk could see the other body, but it was too far away to reach, and if he stretched he could tip the boat.
    “Port!” he instructed, although the oarsmen were already moving to do it. He reached over carefully to the half-submerged body of the young man, whose coat was drifting out in the water, his boots dragging his legs downwards. Awkwardly, straining his shoulders, Monk hauled him up over the gunwale and in, laying him on the bottom of the boat next to the young woman. He had seen many dead people before, but the sense of loss never diminished. From the victim’s pale face, smeared with dirt from the river water and plastered with hair across the brow, he appeared about thirty. He had a mustache but was otherwise clean-shaven. His clothes were well cut and of excellent quality. The hat he had been wearing on the bridge was gone.
    Orme was standing, balancing easily, looking down at Monk and the young man.
    “Nothing we can do for either of ’em, sir,” he said. “Drown quick going off the bridge like that. Pity,” he added softly. “Looks no more’n twenty, she does. Nice face.”
    Monk sat back on the bench. “Anything to indicate who she was?” he asked.
    Orme shook his head.
    “If she ’ad one of ’em little bags ladies carry, it’s gone, but there’s a letter in ’er pocket addressed to Miss Mary ’Avilland o’ Charles Street. It’s postmarked already, like it’s bin sent and received, so could be it’s ’er.”
    Monk leaned forward and systematically went through the pockets of the dead man, keeping his balance with less ease than Orme as the boat began the journey downstream, back towards Wapping. There was no point in putting a man ashore to look for witnesses to the quarrel, if that was what it had been. They could not identify the traffic that had been on the bridge, and on the water they themselves had seen as much as anyone. Two people quarrelling—or kissing and parting—who lost their balance and fell. There was nothing anyone could add.
    Actually, as far as Monk could remember, there had been no one passing at exactly that moment. It was the hour when the dusk is not drawn in sufficiently for the lamps to be lit, but the light wanes and the grayness of the air seems to delude the eye. Things are half seen; the imagination fills in the rest, sometimes inaccurately.
    Monk turned to the man’s pockets and found a leather wallet with a little money and a case carrying cards. He was apparently Toby Argyll, of Walnut Tree Walk, Lambeth. That was also south of the river, not far from the girl’s address on Charles Street off the Westminster Bridge Road. Monk read the information aloud for Orme.
    The boat was moving slowly, as only two men were rowing. Orme squatted on the boards near Argyll’s body. On the shore the lamps were beginning to come on, yellow moons in the deepening haze. The wind had the breath of ice in it. It was time to trim their own riding lights, or they would be struck by barges—or the ferries going crosscurrent—carrying passengers from one bank to the other.
    Monk lit the lantern and carefully moved back to where Orme had laid the woman. She lay on her back. Orme had folded her hands and smoothed the hair off her face. Her eyes were closed, her skin already gray-white, as if she had been dead longer than just the few minutes since they had seen her on the bridge.
    She had a wide mouth and high cheekbones under delicately arched brows. It was a very feminine face, both strong and vulnerable, as if she had been filled with high passions in life.
    “Poor creature,” Orme said softly. “S’pose we’ll never know wot made ’er do it. Mebbe ’e were breakin’ orff an engagement, or somethin’.” The expression on his face was all but masked by the deepening shadows, but Monk could hear the intense pity in his voice.
    Monk suddenly realized he was wet up to the armpits from having lifted the body out of the water. He was shuddering with cold and it was hard to speak without his teeth chattering. He would have given all the money in his pocket for a hot mug of tea with a lacing of rum in it. He could not remember ever being this perishingly cold on shore.
    Suicide was a crime, not only against the state but in the eyes of the Church as well. If that was the coroner’s verdict, she would be buried in unhallowed ground. And there