“Do you think Breeland took them too, and he lied?” she asked.
“Why should he?”
“The money? Perhaps what he paid wasn’t enough?”
“Since there’s no trace of any money at all, there doesn’t seem to be any reason,” he pointed out.
There was no response to make. Again they walked a short distance without speaking. They passed another couple and nodded politely. The woman was young and pretty, the man openly admiring of her. It made Hester feel comfortable and very safe, not from pain or loss, but at least from the agony of disillusion. She gripped Monk’s arm a little more tightly.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said with a smile. “Nothing to do with Daniel Alberton, poor man. I really want to know what happened … and to prove it.”
He gave a little laugh, but he held her equally close.
“I can’t forget the blackmail,” she went on. “I don’t believe its happening at the same time was just coincidence. That’s why he called you in. The blackmailer has never been back! Pirates don’t give up, do they?”
“Alberton’s dead!”
“I know that! But Casbolt isn’t! Why didn’t they pursue it with him? He also gave money and help to Gilmer.”
They crossed the road and reached the pavement on the far side. They were still half a mile from home.
“The ugliest answer to that is that they didn’t give up,” he replied. “We still don’t know what happened to the barge that went down the river, who took it, or what was on it. Certainly something went from Tooley Street; there are five hundred guns not accounted for … the exact amount demanded by the pirates.”
“You think Alberton sold them after all?” she asked very quietly. It was the thought she had been trying to avoid for several days. The tension of the trial had allowed her to; now it could no longer be held away. “Why would he do that? Judith would loathe it.”
“Presumably he never intended her to know … or Casbolt either.”
“But why?” she insisted. “Five hundred guns … what would they be worth?”
“About one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five pounds,” he answered. He had no need to add that that was a small fortune.
“You looked at his company books,” she reminded him. “Could he possibly have needed that much?”
“No. He was doing well. Up and down, of course, but overall it was very profitable.”
“Down? You mean times when no one wanted to buy guns?” she said skeptically.
“They dealt in other things as well, timbers and machinery particularly. But I wasn’t thinking of that. Guns were the main profit makers, but also the only bad loss.” They reached the curb. He hesitated, looked, then crossed. They were close to Fitzroy Street now. “Do you remember the Third China War you said Judith told you about the first night at the Albertons’ home?”
“Over the ship and the French missionary?”
“Not that one, the one after … only last year.”
“What about it?” she asked.
“It seems they sold some guns to the Chinese just before that, and because of the hostilities they were never paid. It wasn’t a large amount, and they made it up within a few months. But that was the only bad deal. He didn’t need to sell to pirates. Trace had paid him thirteen thousand pounds on account for the guns Breeland took, which, of course, will need to be paid back. Breeland says he paid the full price, around twenty-two thousand five hundred pounds. And there’s the ammunition as well, which would be over one thousand four hundred pounds. The profit on all that would be a fortune.” He shook his head a little. “I can’t see why he should feel compelled to sell another one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five pounds’ worth of guns to pirates.”
“Nor can I,” she agreed. “So where are they? And who killed Alberton, and who went down the river? And for that matter, where is Walter Shearer?”
“I don’t know,” Monk admitted. “But I intend to find out.”
“Good,” she said softly, turning the corner into Fitzroy Street. “We have to know.”
In the morning Monk woke early and left without disturbing Hester. The sooner he started the sooner he might find some thread that would lead to the truth. As he walked towards Tottenham Court Road past the fruit and vegetable wagons heading for the market, he wondered if perhaps he already had that thread but had failed to recognize it. He rehearsed all he knew, going over it again in his mind, detail by detail, as he rode in a hansom across the river, ready to begin again the journey down to Bugsby’s Marshes.
This time he did the trip hastily, concentrating more on the description of the barge, any distinguishing marks or characteristics it might have had. If it had returned even part of the way, surely someone must have seen it?
It took him all morning to get as far as Greenwich, but he learned a little about the barge. It was large and yet still so heavily laden it rode almost dangerously low in the water. One or two men who were used to working on the river had noticed it for precisely that reason. They described the dimensions very roughly, but in the dark, even had there been any other distinguishing marks, no one saw them.
From Morden Wharf, beyond Greenwich, he went by boat back across the river and up a little to Cubitt Tower Pier and then by road again past the Blackwall entrance to West India South Dock, still asking about the barge. He stopped for a tankard of cider at the Artichoke Tavern, but no one remembered the night of the Tooley Street murders anymore. It was too long ago now.
He went increasingly despondently to the Blackwall Stairs, where he had a long conversation with a waterman who was busy splicing a rope, working with gnarled fingers and a skill at weaving and pulling with the iron spike which in its way was as beautiful as a woman making lace. It pleased Monk to watch, bringing back some faint memory of a long-distant past, an age of childhood by northern beaches, the smell of salt and the music of Northumbrian voices, a time he could not fully recall anymore, except like bright patches of sunlight on a dark landscape.
“A big barge,” the waterman said thoughtfully. “Yeah, I ’member the Tooley Street murders. Bad thing, that. Pity they in’t got ’oo done it. But then I don’t like guns neither. Guns are fer soldiers an’ armies an’ the like. Only bring trouble anywhere else.”
“The ones for the Union army seem to have gone by train to Liverpool,” Monk replied. Not that it mattered now, and certainly not to the waterman.
“Yeah.” The man wove the unraveled end of the rope into the main length and took out his knife to tidy off the last threads. “Mebbe.”
“They did,” Monk assured him.
“You see ’em?” The waterman raised his eyebrows.
“No … but they got there … to Washington, I mean.”
The waterman made no comment.
“But there were others,” Monk went on, narrowing his eyes against the sunlight off the river. They were directly across from the gray-brown stretch of Bugsby’s Marshes and the curve of Blackwall Point, beyond which he could not see. “Something came down on that barge. What I don’t know is where those boxes went, and where the barge went to after it was unloaded.”
“There’s plenty of illegal stuff goes back and forward around ’ere,” the waterman ventured. “Small stuff, mostly, and farther down towards the Estuary, ’specially beyond the Woolwich Arsenal an’ the docks on this side. Down Gallion’s Reach, or Barking Way and on.”
“It couldn’t have got that far in the time,” Monk replied.
“Mebbe it waited somewhere?” The waterman finished his work and surveyed it carefully. He was apparently satisfied, because he set it down and put away his knife and hook. “Margaret Ness, or Cross Ness, p’raps?”
“Any way I could find out?”
“Not as I can think of. You could try askin’, if there’s anybody ’round. Wanter go?”