William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

it? P’raps she’d got pains. ’Aven’t we all? She don’ sell it, if that’s wot yer mean. Quiet, she was. I ’eard someone say she read books. If yer want the truth, I think she were all right once, an’ she fell on ’ard times. I’d say ’er ’usband died, or went ter jail. Left ’er ’igh an’ dry. Got by the best way she could, poor cow. Until some bleedin’ madman got to ’er. If the rozzers were any good at all, they’d ’ave ’anged the bastard by now.”
    Squeaky nodded as if he understood perfectly.
    Hester glared at him, and he smiled back, showing crooked teeth, several of them dark with decay.
    “Well, even if you ain’t got nothin’ ter do,” the woman went on, “I ’ave.” And without adding anything more, she swirled her skirt and walked away, swaying invitingly.
    H ESTER RETURNED TO SEE Dr. Winfarthing and found him sitting hunched up in his office, his expression one of deep gloom. He barely managed a smile as he hauled himself out of his chair to welcome her.
    “What did you find?” she said without preamble.
    “Barely scratched the surface,” he answered. “But enough to know there’s a devil of a lot going on underneath. This is a rats’ nest, girl.Hundreds of rats in it, including some very big, fat ones with sharp teeth. Lot of money in opium. I asked enough to get some idea of how they bring the raw stuff into the country, which I suppose we all know, if we thought about it. They cut it with God knows what. But it goes back a lot further than that. Back to the Opium Wars in China, ’39 to ’42, then ’56 to ’60. There’s a whole lot of that you don’t want to know about. Lot of death, lot of cheating, lot of profit.”
    She sat down at last. “I know some people eat opium whom you wouldn’t necessarily expect to. Artists and writers we admire.”
    He shook his head, his lips pursed. “It isn’t the eating of it that’s the big, ugly thing you’re going to uncover, girl. It’s the nice, respectable fortunes that were built on deceit, and the deaths of a lot of soldiers sent in to fight a filthy war, not for honor but for money. And God knows how many Chinese. Tens of thousands of them. Nobody’s going to like you for showing them that. It’s all right for foreign savages to behave like savages, but we don’t want to hear that we did it—that Englishmen were without honor.”
    “Those of us with any knowledge of history already know it,” Hester said very quietly. Even though she meant it, it was still painful to admit. Perhaps that, as much as the senseless death, was what infuriated her still about the Crimea.
    He nodded. “Those of us who’ve seen it, and had to try to clear it up, not the rest. Did you ever meet anyone else who wanted to learn about it anymore, because as sure as hell’s on fire, I didn’t.”
    “Is that what was in Dr. Lambourn’s report?” she asked.
    “I don’t know, but it’s what would be in mine, if I made one. Some of the things we did out there would shame the devil.” He glared at her, angry because he was afraid for her. “Leave it alone, Hester. You can’t save Lambourn, God rest him. And it didn’t have anything to do with this poor woman’s death. She’s just one more incidental victim.”
    “Thank you.” She smiled at him bleakly.
    “Don’t thank me!” he roared. “Just tell me you’ll leave it alone!”
    “I never make promises I don’t mean to keep,” she answered. “Well, hardly ever. And not to people I like.”
    He groaned, but knew her too well to argue.

CHAPTER

8
    T HE NEWSPAPERS WERE STILL writing black headlines about the murder of Zenia Gadney and the police failure to solve the crime. Monk walked briskly past one paperboy after another, ignoring them as much as it was possible. But he could not close his ears to the singsong voices calling out the headlines in an attempt to lure people into buying the whole paper.
    “ ‘Terrible murder in Limehouse still unsolved,’ ” one gap-toothed boy cried out, thrusting the paper at Monk. “ ‘Police doing nothing!’ ”
    Monk shook his head and walked on, increasing his pace. He and his men were doing everything he could think of. Orme was busy in the Limehouse area. Others were questioning lightermen and dockworkers, anyone regularly on the water, asking if they had noticed anything strange, or someone acting in an unusual manner. Nothing had been revealed so far. No one else in Copenhagen Place or its surrounding