William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

water,” Monk corrected him.
    “Shallow?”
    “Over the knees, and muddy.” Monk gave a slight wince at the memory of it.
    “And no doubt cold,” Winchester added.
    “Yes.”
    “And the reason the local police had sent for you?”
    “The body of a man, fully clothed, floating in the water. Theyturned him over to identify him, which was actually fairly easy in spite of a degree of water damage, because he had a withered arm.”
    “Withered?” Winchester questioned.
    “His right arm was shorter than the left, and the muscle was badly wasted. It looked as if it was almost unusable.”
    “Whose was this body?”
    “A local man called Mickey Parfitt.”
    “Did he appear to have drowned?” Winchester sounded no more than curious, his voice mild. “Do they call you for every drowning?”
    “No,” Monk replied. “There was a nasty injury to the back of his head, slightly to the right of the crown. And we discovered there was a tight ligature buried in the swollen flesh of his throat.”
    “Ligature? As in something long and thin tied around his throat and pulled so tight as to strangle him?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you notice what it was that had done this?”
    “Not at that time. We only really looked at it later.”
    “Later?”
    “When the police surgeon cut it off and brought it to me.”
    Winchester raised his hand in a slight gesture, as if to prevent Monk from saying anything more. “We will come to that later. At that time, Mr. Monk, standing in the water in the early morning light, did you believe that Mr. Parfitt had come to his death from natural causes?”
    “I believed it extremely unlikely.”
    “An accident?”
    “I could not think of any that would meet such evidence.”
    “So it was murder?”
    “I thought so, yes.”
    “What did you do then, Mr. Monk?”
    Monk described hauling the body out of the water, heavy and dripping with mud, then carrying it up to the cart, and finally back to Chiswick, leaving it in the morgue for the police surgeon to perform a postmortem.
    “Then what, Mr. Monk?” Winchester looked relaxed, comfortable. Rathbone knew him by reputation, but he had not faced himacross a courtroom before, and he could not read his mood. He seemed deceptively bland, almost casual, as if he imagined this case would require only half his attention.
    “I started to make inquiries as to the nature and business of Mr. Parfitt, and why anyone might have wished to kill him,” Monk replied.
    “Routine?” Winchester said quickly.
    “Yes.”
    “Then, unless Sir Oliver wishes to go into detail …” He swiveled a little to glance at Rathbone, his face sharp with inquiry, but it was rhetorical. He looked back at Monk. “I would be quite happy not to bore the gentlemen of the jury with every step of the way. What did you discover? For example, what was Mr. Parfitt’s occupation, as far as you could ascertain, and please be careful to keep precisely to the facts.”
    Monk smiled bleakly. He knew that for all Winchester’s casual air, he was as tightly coiled as Rathbone, concentrating just as intensely on every word, every nuance.
    “The police told me that Mr. Parfitt owned a boat, which he kept at various different locations; at that time it was moored farther up Corney Reach, something like halfway between Chiswick and Mortlake. I went to the boat, taking Sergeant Orme with me.”
    “The local man?”
    “No, my own sergeant from the station at Wapping.”
    “Why was that, Mr. Monk? Would not the local man have been of more assistance, given his knowledge of the area, the tides, and possibly of Mr. Parfitt himself?”
    “He was still speaking with Mr. Parfitt’s associates, and we found his local knowledge to be more advantageous in that undertaking.”
    “I see. We will hear from him later. My lord, I shall call Mr. Jones, Mr. Wilkin, and Mr. Crumble in due course. I think it would be simpler for the court to hear all Mr. Monk’s evidence in one piece, even if it does disturb the narrative a little, if it so please your lordship?”
    The judge nodded and made a small, impatient gesture with his hand.
    Winchester inclined his head slightly to convey his thanks.
    “Did you board this boat, Mr. Monk?” he asked.
    Rathbone realized that he was sitting with his muscles clenched, and deliberately forced himself to relax them one by one. He could not look up at the dock to his left, where fifteen feet above him Arthur Ballinger was sitting immobile, staring down at