William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

unclenching among the scattered papers on top of the wooden table.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “When Dr. Lambourn was searching for information about opium he accidentally found out a few other things. One of those things was so dangerous to someone that they defamed Lambourn professionally and then killed him, trying to make it look like suicide. That way they would be certain that their own secret would stay buried.”
    She waited, still watching him, an unmoving mountain of a woman.
    “I think he discovered this in the last week of his life,” Monk went on. “So I’m following as closely as I can in his footsteps.”
    “Soft, like,” she said with bitter humor. “You don’t want ter end up in the river yerself, wi’ yer throat cut, or worse.”
    “I see you understand perfectly. What was Lambourn looking for from you, and what did you tell him?” He wondered if he should add anything about her safety, but to offer to protect her would be insulting. She would know as well as he did that it would be impossible.
    “Opium,” she said thoughtfully. “Lot o’ things to do with it in’t so nice.”
    “Such as what?” he asked. “Stealing? Cutting it with bad substitutes so it’s impure? There’s no smuggling; it comes in perfectly legally. What’s worth killing anyone for?”
    “Yer can kill to corner the trade in anything!” Agatha said with disgust. “Bakers an’ fishmongers do it! You try cutting inter the meat market, an’ see ’ow long yer last!”
    “Is that what Lambourn asked you about?” he said.
    Her face tightened. “I got me own ways o’ getting opium—pure. I give it for pain, not for some rich fool to escape ’is troubles. I told ’im that.”
    “Then why would anyone bother to murder Dr. Lambourn? Come on, Miss Nisbet!” he urged. “He was a good man, a doctor trying to get medicine labeled properly so people didn’t kill themselves accidentally. They murdered him to keep him quiet, and then butchered his first wife to hang his second wife for it. Whatever it was he found out it was a damn sight worse than a petty trade war that I could hear about in common speech on the dockside.”
    She nodded her head slowly. “There’s worse than thievin’,” she agreed. “There’s slow poison. There’s good men gone bad an’ a kind o’ living death that’s worse than a grave. Opium’s a powerful thing, like fire. Warm yer hearth, or burn yer ’ouse down.”
    Monk was aware of how closely she was watching him. The slightest flicker in his face, an instant’s movement of his eyes, and she would see it. For a brief second he wondered what this woman had seen and done; what life had denied her that she had chosen this path. Then his attention returned to the present, to Joel Lambourn dead in disgrace and Dinah waiting to face the hangman.
    “My horrors have all been commonplace,” he answered her, knowing that she would not continue until he had made some acknowledgment. “A woman raped and beaten to death, a man hacked up and left to rot, children tortured and starved. It’s all happened before, and it will happen again. The best I can do is try to prevent it as often as I can. What do you know that’s going to ruin anyone in London, now?”
    Something inside her closed up tight and hard. “Murder,” she answered quietly. “It all comes down ter murder in the end, don’t it? Murder for money. Murder for silence. Murder for dreams, for peace instead o’ screamin’ pain, murder for a needle an’ a packet o’ white powder.”
    He said nothing. He heard footsteps on the other side of the door, fast and light, someone hurrying, and beyond that the noises of pain. No creak of bedsprings, only the rustle of straw palliasses on the floor.
    “Who?” he said at last. “Who did Lambourn find out about?”
    “Dunno,” she answered without a second’s hesitation. “Don’t want ter, ’cos then I’d ’ave ter kill ’im.”
    Monk had no doubt that she would. He was uncertain of his own morality, because he might feel the same, but he smiled.
    She smiled back at him, showing huge, white teeth. “Ye’re an odd duck, aren’t yer?” she said with interest. “If yer find the bastard, put an extra twist in the noose fer me, will yer? He’s ruined two right good men, an’ there in’t enough o’ them ter waste one, Gawd knows. Lambourn, and the ’ooever ’ee’s got sellin’ for ’im.” Her voice was hoarse, as if she held back tears far too long and her