Sergeant Walters was a thin, dark man with an enthusiastic manner. He took Monk to a small, chaotic room with books and papers piled everywhere, and cleared a chair by lifting everything off it and putting it all on the floor. He invited Monk to sit down, then perched on the windowsill, the only other space available.
“Right!” he said with a smile. “What do you wanter know about Gilmer, poor devil?”
“Everything you know,” Monk said. “Or as much as you have time and inclination to tell me.”
“Ah! Well.” Walters settled himself more comfortably. It seemed he often sat on the sill. This was apparently the normal state of the room. How he found anything was a miracle.
Monk leaned back hopefully.
Walters stared at the ceiling. “About twenty-nine when he died. Tubercular. Thin. Haunted sort of look to his face, but good features. Not surprised artists wanted to paint him. That’s what he did, you know? Yes, I suppose you do know.” He seemed to be waiting for confirmation.
Monk nodded. “I was told that.”
“Only saw him when he was dead,” Walters went on. He spoke quite casually, but his eyes never left Monk’s face, and Monk formed the very clear impression that he was being measured and nothing about him taken for granted. He could imagine Walters writing notes on him the moment he was gone, and adding them to the file on Gilmer, and that Walters would know exactly where in this chaos the file was.
Monk already knew the name of the artist from Casbolt, but he did not say so.
“Fellow called FitzAlan,” Walters went on when Monk did not speak. “Quite famous. Found Gilmer in Edinburgh, or somewhere up that way. Brought him down here and took him in. Paid him a lot. Then grew tired of him, for whatever reason, and threw him out.” He waited to see Monk’s reaction to this piece of information.
Monk said nothing, keeping his expression bland.
Walters understood, and smiled. It was a measuring of wits, of professionalism, and now they both acknowledged it.
“He drifted from one artist to another,” Walters said with a little shake of his head. “Downhill all the time. Be all right for a while, then he seemed to quarrel and get thrown out again. Could’ve left of his own choice, of course, but since he had nowhere to go, and his health was getting worse, seems unlikely.”
Monk tried to imagine the young man, alone, far from home and increasingly ill. Why would he keep provoking such disagreements? He could not afford it, and he must have known that. Was he a man of ungoverned temper? Had he become an unusable model, the ravages of his disease spoiling his looks? Or were the relationships those of lovers, or by then simply user and used, and when the user grew bored the used was discarded for someone else? It was a sad and ugly picture, whichever of these answers was true.
“How did he die?” he asked.
Walters watched him very steadily, his eyes almost unblinking. “Doctor said it was consumption,” he replied. “But he’d been knocked around pretty badly as well. Not exactly murder, not technically, but morally I reckon it was. I’d find a way to beat the daylights out of any man who treated a dog like that man’d been used. I don’t care what he did to get by or what his nature was.” Under the calm of his manner there was an anger so hot he dared not let it go, but Monk saw it behind his eyes, and in the rigid set of his shoulders and in his arms where the fingers were stiff on the windowsill, knuckles white.
He had found Walters instantly agreeable. Now he liked him the more.
“Did you ever get anybody for it?” he asked, although he knew the answer.
“No. But I haven’t stopped looking,” Walters replied. “If you find anybody in your … help for your friend … I’d be obliged.” He looked at Monk curiously now, trying to assess where his loyalties lay and exactly what sort of “friend” he had.
Monk himself was not sure. The blackmail letter Alberton had shown him was comparatively innocuous. It was awkwardly worded, made up from pieces cut from newspapers and pasted onto a sheet of very ordinary paper one might buy at any stationer’s. It had stated that the payments could be interpreted as purchase of several forms, and in light of the way in which Gilmer had died, public knowledge of it would ruin Alberton’s standing in society. No suggestion had been made that either Alberton or Casbolt was responsible for Gilmer’s death. Possibly the blackmailer was afraid they could prove themselves elsewhere at the time. More likely such a threat was unnecessary. He thought he could obtain what he wanted without going so far.
“If I find out,” Monk promised, “I shall be happy to assist you to dispense justice. I gather it was a male brothel where he was found?”
“That’s right,” Walters agreed. “And before you ask me what he was doing there, I’ll tell you that I don’t know. The owner said he took pity on him and fetched him in off the streets, an act of charity.” There was no irony in his eyes, and his look dared Monk to differ. “Could be true. Gilmer, poor devil, was in little state to be any use as a worker, and he had neither strength nor money to be a client, assuming he was that way inclined, which no one seems to know. We’ve just got it down officially as death by natural causes. But we all know damned well that someone beat him pretty badly too. Could have had them for assault if the poor sod hadn’t died anyway.”
“Any idea who it was that beat him?” Monk asked, hearing the edge in his own voice. “Privately, even if you couldn’t prove it?”
“Ideas,” Walters said darkly. “Not much more. Clients in places like that don’t leave their names on a list. Some of them have some pretty sordid tastes that they can’t exercise at home and aren’t keen to have known.”
“Think it was a client?”
“Sure of it. Why? Your friend one of them?” The sneer in Walters’s voice was too bitter to hide.
“He says not. If you tell me when Gilmer died, exactly, I may be able to ascertain where my friend was.”
Walters took out his notebook and rifled through it.
“Between eight and midnight on September twenty-eighth last year. Is your friend being blackmailed over Gilmer’s death?”
“No, over having given him some money, which is open to misinterpretation.”
“Nobody gave him much, poor devil.” Walters shrugged. “Got himself into debt pretty badly. Thought it might have been one of his creditors beat him to teach him to pay up more promptly. We went and interviewed the man we suspected.” He smiled, showing his teeth. It was more of a snarl, although there was definitely pleasure in it. “Somewhat vigorously,” he added. “But he said Gilmer had paid everything he owed. Didn’t believe that for a moment, but the bastard could unarguably prove where he was all that night. He spent it in jail! Only time I was sorry to see him there.”
“Do you know how much it was?” Monk enquired. He knew exactly how much Alberton had said he gave Gilmer.
“No. Why?” Walters said quickly. “Do you know something about it?”
Monk smiled at him. “I might. How much was it?”
“Told you, I don’t know. But it was over fifty pounds.”
Alberton had paid sixty-five. Monk was unreasonably pleased. He realized only now how profoundly he had wanted to find Alberton honest.
“That answer you?” Walters was staring at him.
“No,” Monk said quickly. “It confirms what I thought. My friend claimed to have paid it. It looks as if he did.”
“Why?”
“Compassion,” Monk said immediately. “Are you thinking it was for services rendered? I’d like to meet the boy that commands that much!”
Walters grinned. His eyes opened wide. “Looks like a good man caught in an unpleasant situation.”
“It does, doesn’t it,” Monk agreed. “Thank you for your help.”