William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

the last fifteen years or so,” he explained. “He visited her at least once a month and gave her money. He was her sole support.”
    “I don’t believe it,” Runcorn said simply. “But if he was, then when he died, she would be left with nothing. She probably went out on the streets again and ran into a bloody lunatic. Isn’t that the obvious answer?”
    “Yes,” Monk agreed. “Except that we can’t find any trace of a lunatic. A man who would kill like that doesn’t commit just one crime with nothing before or after it. You know that as well as I do. He strikes with a few random acts of violence, which get worse as he gets away with it and his insanity increases.”
    “Someone just passing through?” Runcorn suggested. “A sailor. You can’t find him because he doesn’t belong there. His earlier crimes happened somewhere else.”
    “I wish that were the answer.” Monk meant it. “This was terribly personal, Runcorn. I saw the body. A man insane enough to do that leaves traces. Other people up and down the river would have heard ofhim. Even a foreign sailor would have been seen by someone. Don’t you think we’ve looked for that?”
    “Dinah Lambourn would have been seen, too,” Runcorn retorted instantly.
    “She was … by several people. She made quite a scene trying to find Zenia Gadney. People in the shops at the time remember her; so does the shopkeeper.”
    Runcorn looked stunned. He shook his head. “You want me to testify to something about her? I can’t. She seemed to me one of the sanest women I ever met: a woman who loved her husband very deeply indeed and was shattered by his death. She could hardly believe it.” His own face was crumpled with grief. “I can’t imagine how anyone deals with the fact that the person they love most in the world, and trust, has taken their own life, without even letting you know they were hurting, let alone wanted to die.”
    “Neither can I.” Monk refused to think of Hester. “Imagine what it did to her to hear of his fifteen-year affair with a middle-aged prostitute in Limehouse.”
    “Did she know?”
    “Yes. Her sister-in-law says she did, and Mrs. Lambourn herself admits it.”
    Runcorn sat motionless in his chair as if part of him were paralyzed.
    “Does she admit to killing this … Gadney woman?”
    “No. She says she didn’t. She swore she was with a friend of hers at the time, a Mrs. Moulton, at a soirée …”
    “There you are!” Runcorn was overcome with relief. Finally he relaxed, easing himself in the chair.
    “And Mrs. Moulton says she was at an art exhibition, and under pressure, she admitted that Dinah Lambourn was not with her,” Monk told him.
    Runcorn stiffened again.
    “What do you want from me? I can’t testify against her. I know nothing about her but her dignity and her grief.” Runcorn met his eyes with frankness, and quite open pity.
    This was the most difficult part. Monk found himself uncharacteristicallyreluctant to offend Runcorn. It surprised him. In the past he had been happy enough actually to seek opportunities to quarrel.
    “She begged me to ask Oliver Rathbone to defend her,” he began a little awkwardly. “He agreed. Now he’s asked me to help him. I don’t know if he thinks she could be innocent. Nothing in the facts so far supports that. But the whole issue is full of ambiguities, and it matters far more than merely finding justice for Zenia Gadney.”
    “ ‘Merely’?” Runcorn asked, his eyes wide.
    Monk did not defend his choice of word. “It is a matter of justice for Dinah Lambourn also, and for Joel Lambourn, and it pertains to the whole question of the Pharmacy Act.”
    Runcorn frowned. “Joel Lambourn? I don’t understand.”
    Monk plunged in. “Dinah says he did not take his own life. She says he was murdered because of the report he made on the sale of opium and the damage it does, particularly the deaths of so many babies and small children. She also claims that the same people who murdered him murdered Zenia Gadney, and framed her, in order to prevent her from raising questions about Lambourn’s death, or raising too much interest in his report. The report itself seems to have vanished—all copies, and his notes.”
    Runcorn did not interrupt, just sat forward a little in his chair, tense and puzzled, his body slightly hunched.
    “And, of course, if his affair with Zenia Gadney were to become public, which obviously it will,” Monk went on, “then that