William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

room a pleasant, smoky smell, and there was hot tea, stewed almost black, waiting for them. None of the men really knew Monk yet, and they were still grieving for Durban. They treated Monk with civility; if he wanted anything more, he would have to earn it. The river was a dangerous place with its shifting tides and currents, occasional sunken obstacles, fast-moving traffic, and sudden changes of weather. It demanded courage, skill, and even more loyalty between men than did the same profession on land. However, human decency dictated they offer Monk tea laced with rum, as they would to any man, probably even to a stray dog at this time of the year. Indeed, Humphrey, the station cat, a large white animal with a ginger tail, was provided with a basket by the stove and as much milk as he could drink. Mice were his own affair to catch for himself, which he did whenever he could be bothered, or nobody had fed him with other titbits.
    “Thank you.” Monk drank the tea and felt some resemblance of life return to his body, warmth working slowly from the inside outwards.
    “Accident?” Sergeant Palmer asked, looking at the bodies now lying on the floor, faces decently covered with spare coats.
    “Don’t know yet,” Monk replied. “Came off Waterloo Bridge right in front of us, but we can’t be sure how it happened.”
    Palmer frowned, puzzled. He had his doubts about Monk’s competence anyway, and this indecision went towards confirming them.
    Orme finished his tea. “Went off together,” he said, looking at Palmer expressionlessly. “ ’Ard to tell if ’e were trying to save ’er, or could’ve pushed ’er. Know what killed ’em all right, poor souls. ’It the water ’ard, like they always do. But I daresay as we’ll never know for certain why.”
    Palmer waited for Monk to say something. The room was suddenly silent. The other two men from the boat, Jones and Butterworth, stood watching, turning from one to the other, to see what Monk would do. It was a test again. Would he match up to Durban?
    “Get the surgeon to look at them, just in case there’s something else,” Monk answered. “Probably isn’t, but we don’t want to risk looking stupid.”
    “Drownded,” Palmer said sourly, turning away. “Come orff one o’ the bridges, yer always are. Anybody knows that. Water shocks yer an’ so yer breathes it in. Kills yer. Quick’s almost the only good thing to it.”
    “And how stupid will we look if we say she’s a suicide, and it turns out she was knifed or strangled, but we didn’t notice it?” Monk asked quietly. “I just want to make sure. Or with child, and we didn’t see that, either? Look at the quality of her clothes. She’s not a street woman. She has a decent address and she may have family. We owe them the truth.”
    Palmer colored unhappily. “It won’t make them feel no better if she’s with child,” he observed without looking back at Monk.
    “We don’t look for the answers that make people feel better,” Monk told him. “We have to deal with the ones we find closest to the truth. We know who they are and where they lived. Orme and I are going to tell their families. You get the police surgeon to look at them.”
    “Yes, sir,” Palmer said stiffly. “You’ll be goin’ ’ome to put dry clothes on, no doubt?” He raised his eyebrows.
    Monk had already learned that lesson. “I’ve got a dry shirt and coat in the cupboard. They’ll do fine.”
    Orme turned away, but not before Monk had seen his smile.
     
    Monk and Orme took a hansom from Wapping, westward along High Street. The lights intermittently flickered from the river and the hard wind whipped the smell of salt and weed up the alleys between the waterfront houses. They went around the looming mass of the Tower of London, then back down to the water again along Lower Thames Street. They finally crossed the river at the Southwark Bridge and passed through the more elegant residential areas until they came to the six-way crossing at St. George’s Circus. From there it was not far to the Westminster Bridge Road and Walnut Tree Walk.
    Informing the families of the dead was the part of any investigation that every policeman hated, and it was the duty of the senior man. It would be both cowardly and the worst discourtesy to the bereaved to delegate it.
    Monk paid the driver and let him go. He had no idea how long it would take them to break the news, or what they might find.
    The house where Toby Argyll had