Page 99 of The Shifting Tide (William Monk 14)

“You think Clement Louvain, the hard man of the river, couldn’t kill his own sister if she carried the plague?” Monk asked, his voice grating with the dreadful irony of the idea now in his mind.

Durban blinked; his eyes were pink-rimmed with exhaustion. “Could you?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you have to try every last thing you could to save her?”

Monk brushed his hands over his face. For all his joy at Hester’s return, he too was physically drained. “If she was going to spread the disease, I don’t know. But Mercy Louvain went there to help in the clinic as a volunteer.”

“To nurse her sister?” Durban’s face was gentle, his eyes shining. “What sublime devotion.”

“She went there to nurse her,” Monk replied. “But she killed her rather than let her leave carrying the plague with her.”

Durban stared at him in growing horror. He started to speak, then stopped, still incredulous. “Oh God!” he said at last. “I wish you hadn’t told me!”

“You can’t do anything,” Monk said, looking up at him. “If you could, I wouldn’t have said it. She’s dead, too.”

“Plague?” The word was a whisper, said with fierce, hurting pity; it seemed to be torn from somewhere deep inside him as if all his passion were in it.

Monk nodded. “They buried her properly.”

Durban turned his back to Monk, staring out of the small window, the cold light picking out the gray in his hair.

Now was the time Monk had to speak, no matter how preposterous, even if Durban thought him insane.

“I went to see Mrs. Hodge today.”

Durban was puzzled. “What for? Did you think she would know anything about the crew?” He smiled very slightly, hardly a movement of the lips. “Did you think I hadn’t thought of that?”

Monk was momentarily embarrassed, but the idea in him overrode everything else. “I’m sorry. Did you see the copper saucepans in the kitchen?”

“I didn’t go, Orme did.” Durban was frowning. “What about them? What does it matter? I can’t afford to care about petty theft now.” Again the fraction of a smile touched his mouth and disappeared.

“They weren’t stolen, so far as I know,” Monk answered. “She saw me looking at them and said her brother gave them to her.”

“I’m too tired to play games, Monk,” Durban said wearily. He looked gray-faced, close to collapse.

“I’m sorry,” Monk said quickly, and he meant it. He liked Durban as much as anyone he had known in years, more instinctively than he did Oliver Rathbone. “She told me she has only one brother and he gave them to her in August. She said she could prove that.”

Durban blinked, frowning harder. “She can’t! He was off the coast of Africa in August. Are you saying the Maude Idris was here then? Or that Newbolt wasn’t on her?”

“Not exactly either,” Monk said very quietly. “We checked the names of the crew.”

“Of course.”

“But not their appearances.”

Durban steadied himself, leaning back against the sill. “For God’s sake, what are you saying?” But the hideousness of it was already in his eyes. He shook his head. “But they’re still there-on the ship!”

“You told your men to keep them there because it was typhoid,” Monk reminded him. “Maybe Louvain told them the same, or close enough?”

Durban rubbed his hand over his face like a man trying to dispel a nightmare. “Then we’d better find out. Can you use a pistol?”

“Of course,” Monk replied, with no idea whether he could or not.

Durban straightened up. “I’ll get Orme and half a dozen men, but I’m the only one going below.” He stared very levelly at Monk, his eyes seeming to look into his brain. “That is an order.” He did not elaborate but walked past him and through the outside office, calling for Orme as he went.

He gave his orders concisely and with a clarity no man could misunderstand, like a commander going into a last battle.

The rain had cleared away and the water was bright and choppy with a knife-edge wind blowing from the west when they rowed out.

Monk sat in the stern of the boat, cradling his loaded gun as they plied between the ships and the Maude Idris came clearly into view.

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