William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

would have been dusk later, and the weather would have been milder. But he did not think that would substantially alter the time. If anything, Ballinger would have found it easier, and therefore faster.
    Monk caught a hansom without more than a few minutes’ wait, and settled himself for the long journey to Chiswick. It was tedious, and his mind wandered over all he had learned so far, juggling the pieces to try to make a picture that would hold against the assaults of doubt and reason. It was still all too tenuous, too full of other possible explanations.
    He reached Chiswick cold and irritable, his legs cramped from sitting still. He paid the cabby and walked down across the street onto the dockside. It was fully dark now, with a gusty wind blowing off the water. This far upriver it did not smell of salt, but rather of weed and mud.
    The clouds raced past, and for a few moments the moon showed, about half full, gleaming briefly on the water. There was a ferry twenty yards away. A couple of young men were sitting in it, and the sound of their laughter, happy and more than a little drunk, drifted across the distance between them.
    Monk waited until they docked, then walked down and asked theferryman to take him across. At the far side he thanked the man, paid, and walked up to the road to look for a hansom. That took rather longer, but even so he was in Mortlake by the time Ballinger had said he’d arrived at Harkness’s house.
    Now he had more than two hours to wait until Harkness had said Ballinger had left. He spent it walking along the waterfront with a lantern, looking at the boats pulled up in slipways, at the moorings, judging how long it would take to get any of them waterborne, and how wet he might get doing it.
    He looked ahead and saw the sign for the Bull’s Head swinging gently in the wind, creaking a little. He decided to go in and have a sandwich and a pint of ale.
    Monk asked the landlord casually about hiring boats just to row a bit up and down the water, not really fishing, just being by himself and forgetting the city and its life and its noise. The man seemed to find that odd, but he told Monk of half a dozen different people who might be happy to oblige him.
    Monk thanked him and left. He found one light, fast boat he could hire for a couple of shillings, and promised to return it before morning. If they thought he was eccentric, no one said so.
    He walked back up toward Harkness’s house and reached it a few moments before the earliest he could leave and still be following Ballinger’s path. He stared around. There was no one in sight, but he had not expected anyone. A witness would have been a stroke of luck too far!
    Some moments later he walked briskly back downriver toward the Bull’s Head. The wind was sharper from the west and carrying the smell of rain with it. He imagined the marshes and the fields beyond, damp earth turned by the plow. Past that, woods with heavy leaves falling, berries turning red, the pungency of wood smoke, crows in high nests for the winter.
    He found the boat he had hired, and after only a few moments’ fumbling, he got it down the slip and into the water. He reached for the oars, fit them into the oarlocks, and pulled away from the shore out into the stream.
    After a few more strokes he settled to row down the river to CorneyReach. Tonight, the tide was against him. It had turned while he was in the Bull’s Head and was now coming in. He must check what it had been on the night of Parfitt’s death. It would make a difference, but perhaps little enough—unless high or low water had occurred during the time Ballinger had actually killed Parfitt, which was unlikely. But it was a detail to be sure of, so absolutely nothing caught him by surprise. Anyway, since he had to row back up to Mortlake, the tide would be with him one way, and against him the other.
    It was a pleasant sensation to feel the power of the boat sliding through the water. It was silent here apart from the bow wave’s whisper, and the rattle of the oarlocks as the oars turned. Now and then a small night bird called from the trees along the shore. Once, far in the distance, a dog barked.
    He saw the dark hull of Parfitt’s boat before he expected to. He had lost all sense of time. He pulled over to it and rested on his oars. He imagined himself going up on deck. How long would it take to climb the ropes up the sides? An estimate?
    But Rathbone would ask him. It would destroy the validity