Blood on the Water (37 page)

H
ESTER FOUND
O
RME VERY
willing to show her the guest list for the party on the
Princess Mary
, and also the rest of the passenger manifest. It had been a long trip, all the way from Westminster Bridge to Gravesend and back again; so all places had been reserved, and names written down.

A great deal of work had already been done to identify most of the passengers and eliminate them from suspicion.

“What are you looking for, ma’am, exactly?” Orme asked as they sat together in Monk’s office. Monk was still in court, as she had known he would be, so at least for the moment, they were uninterrupted.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I think it is possible that the
Princess Mary
was sunk not to have some kind of revenge, or create a political horror, but to kill one person …”

Orme could not conceal the look of disbelief on his face. “Who’d do a thing like that?” he asked, shaking his head.

“I don’t know. It’s just an idea William had, after he was hit by Sabri’s boat when he was on the ferry. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is,” Orme agreed reluctantly. “But how would we find such a person? It could be anybody.”

She had been thinking about it on the omnibus while coming here.

“If you needed to get rid of someone, you would pick the best way you could to do it. One that was certain, and that did not make you a suspect. One that looked like an accident would be best, but if that were not possible, then at least one that hid your involvement in it.”

He pursed his lips, but nodded agreement. “This was no accident, but I see what you mean. With near two hundred dead, we don’t look for one that matters more than the others.”

“Exactly. We look for a really big motive, probably political, or with a lot of money involved, fortunes made or lost.”

“So how do we look for one?” he said grimly.

She had given that some thought also. “Someone who had to be killed this way because no better way was possible. And perhaps someone who had to be killed urgently, and was vulnerable right there and then.”

Orme began to smile. “I see. And it needed to be certain; so the person would have been at the party below deck. That must exclude a lot of people.”

“Also anyone who went as a last-minute decision,” she added.

He nodded his head. “The sinking must’ve taken planning. That dynamite stuff isn’t that easy to get hold of.”

“Where did it come from?” she asked quickly.

“Stolen from a quarry twenty miles away, we reckon.”

“Reckon?”

“You can’t tell one lot of dynamite from another. But there isn’t that much of it around.”

“So we can narrow it down by taking out all the people who were not at the party below deck because they wouldn’t be certain victims.” She winced a little at the thought. She was doing it logically, deducing
the one intended victim as if she were speaking of something quite casual, not mass and indiscriminate death.

“We must think of who was vulnerable only this way,” she continued. “It was dangerous. Either Sabri was paid a lot, or else he cared about it enough to take the risk for his own reasons.”

“We looked at that,” Orme told her. “We couldn’t find any connection between Sabri and anyone on the
Princess Mary
.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I’m only doing this because if we don’t find a motive I think Pryor’s going to win. Sabri will get off and the verdict against Beshara will stand. And, maybe even worse, whatever corruption or incompetence there was will be covered up, and for all we know, could happen again. And the very worst of it is that most other people will know it too. And when the law is held in disrespect, we don’t know what other things we trust may also fail.”

Orme’s wind-burned face was pale beneath the superficial color. “Then we’d better be getting on with it,” he said quietly. “We’re looking for a victim who couldn’t be killed any other way without it being obvious who did it. In fact someone who had to be killed then and there. Maybe this was the only way the killer could eliminate his victim without casting suspicion on himself. That cuts it down a lot. Let’s go through that list again.”

An hour later they had reduced it to a dozen people, excluding anyone who had booked passage after the dynamite was stolen, or who would have been just as vulnerable in a less dramatic and dangerous way.

“Soldiers,” Orme said, looking at her carefully. “Men on their way home on leave, celebrating with a party on the river. An’ most of them were here anyway. Could’ve been got at other ways.”

“I know. I’ve got six names to follow up. Thank you very much, Mr. Orme.” She rose to her feet, realizing how long she had been there only when she felt the stiffness in her back. “I’ll start tomorrow morning.”

He stood also. “You’re welcome, ma’am. If I can do anything more, please tell me.”

“I will,” she promised, then turned and walked out onto the dockside, and the steps to catch a ferry home.

She did not tell Monk about her intention. She arrived home late, but he did not know that, being even later himself, and Scuff was too tactful to comment. They sat talking in the parlor. She tried to sound positive as he told her of the rest of his day in court. She wanted to be encouraging, but she knew meaningless comfort was worse than none at all. In the face of what he told her, and Pryor’s extraordinary confidence, her own ideas sounded foolish and she did not mention them.

Next day she began by visiting an old commanding officer she had nursed on the battlefield in the Crimea. He seemed frail now, aged before his time by pain. He was delighted to see her, pleased to recall the past, although it was filled with loss. Even the concept of that war far away on the Black Sea looked in hindsight to be purposeless. So many men had died or been maimed, health lost forever; the memories they shared were full of sadness.

She had no time to spare recalling the cold and the endless journeys with cartloads of wounded, the sound of gunfire in the distance, the makeshift field surgeries where she had worked to exhaustion. But she could not find the heart to tell him that she needed to go. Each time she drew in her breath to say it, the loneliness in his eyes stopped her from being blunt. Another memory came back to him, another face filled with courage, laughter, and pain. So many of them would be dead now it seemed like another life.

“Egypt?” he said at last, returning to the subject she had raised initially. “You should see young Kittering. Good man. On leave at the moment. Injury. Not critical, but enough to need several months to recover. He could tell you about the forces in Egypt. Served with them for a while. Lives just around the corner. See him now and then, if it’s a decent day and I’m sitting outside.” He smiled. “I’ll give you his address. Tell him I asked after him, will you?”

She met Kittering at lunchtime, after not finding him at home and having to make several enquiries. He was walking slowly back from the local inn, limping badly and stopping every now and then to catch his
breath. He was nice-looking, with a trim mustache, and square shoulders—even if they were a little lopsided right now.

“Major Kittering?” she asked, meeting his eyes.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with surprise. He was clearly embarrassed because he could not place her, and thought that he should.

“Mrs. Monk,” she introduced herself. “I’ve just been calling on Colonel Haydon, and he mentioned your name as someone who might be able to assist me.”

“Ah … yes. I mean to call on him myself, as soon as I’m a little more … mobile.” It was an excuse, and he did not like making it. “Fine man.”

She smiled. “He said as much of you.”

“You know him … well? You are family, perhaps?”

“No. Before I was married I nursed, in the Crimea,” she began, and saw the sudden light in his face. She judged him to be of an age when he might have been just beginning his career then. “I need your help, Major Kittering. May I walk with you?” she asked as a matter of courtesy. She had no intention whatever of accepting a refusal.

He was puzzled, but he began moving again, as if to oblige her. Actually she guessed he had no wish to stand any longer than was necessary.

“Of course. What can I do to assist you?” he asked.

He probably imagined it was something to do with nursing. She should tell him the truth quickly.

“My husband is Commander Monk of the Thames River Police,” she explained. Then she went on to tell him first about Beshara, and now Gamal Sabri, and why it mattered so much that the police find the truth. When she at last finished they were sitting in the sun in his small parlor. His sister, who cared for him, had made them tea, even though it was far too early in the afternoon for it to be customary. He had introduced Hester proudly as one of Miss Nightingale’s nurses. It was something Hester never boasted of, but it was true, and she could not afford to refuse any help she might receive.

“And you are sure this man, Gamal Sabri, is guilty?” he asked very
quietly, as if he did not wish his sister, now in the kitchen, to overhear him.

“Yes.”

“May I ask you why you now have no doubt, when earlier everyone was equally sure it was Habib Beshara? I don’t wish to be offensive, but a great deal hangs in the balance.”

She looked at the fear and the grief in his face, now more powerful than the weariness of constant physical pain.

She told him the evidence as she was aware of it, and the fact that none of it rested on the accuracy of eyewitnesses, frightened, confused, and too willing to help, too eager to see justice, to separate wish from memory.

“Why do you feel that Sabri will not be convicted?” he asked.

“Pryor is very skilled. We don’t want to accept that we could have been wrong in convicting Beshara and sentencing him to death. If we could make that terrible mistake so easily, who may be next? It seems inescapable that it included not only bad police work, bad conduct of the law, but also deliberate corruption. If that is so, is anyone safe?”

“But Beshara was murdered in prison,” Kittering pointed out. “If he was innocent, and knew nothing, was that no more than a coincidence?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It seems he was an unpleasant man, quite apart from the sinking of the
Princess Mary
. But it was wrong, regardless of his nature. And I did not say he had nothing to do with the sinking. He may have helped, but he did not place the dynamite or light the fuse.”

Kittering appeared to be deep in thought, struggling with some awful conflict in his mind.

“And we can find no reason why Sabri should have done such a terrible thing,” she added. “Nearly two hundred completely innocent people were killed. Why would anyone do that?”

He was silent for so long she thought perhaps he was not going to answer. She was about to make her argument stronger when finally he spoke.

“Revenge,” he said huskily, his eyes full of pain. “For the destruction of Shaluf et Terrabeh. It was a small village that was wiped out in a raid by mercenaries, just about a year ago.” His face was pale. “A small band of mercenaries, four dozen or so, fell on it at night. It was just a village, a couple of hundred men, women, and children. But if they had sentries, they were picked off first, before they could raise an alarm.”

Hester did not interrupt him. There was nothing useful to say about such a horror as he went on to describe in halting sentences, short, simple words broken as he struggled for breath. She thought of the terror, the darkness, women desperate to protect their children, the old and the frightened stumbling over one another, the screaming, the smell of blood.

“They counted over two hundred bodies,” he said softly, his voice cracking a little. “Including babes in arms.”

“For the two hundred on the
Princess Mary
,” she answered. “Equally innocent. Did Sabri come from that village? Or was he paid to do it, do you think?” She tried to hold in the grief that all but suffocated her. “Why did no one say anything? What sort of revenge is it if the guilty don’t know?” She gave a tiny shrug. “My husband had an idea that perhaps it was to kill one person on the ship. The rest were just … part of the plan. Expendable. If you are right, then he was mistaken. Perhaps this isn’t as terrible, as frighteningly insane.” Then she asked the question she had to, no matter how much it hurt. “Were they British mercenaries?”

“Not specifically,” the major replied, his voice grating with the effort of controlling it. “A bit of all sorts. But the commander was British. That’s what counts.”

“Who?”

“A man named Wilbraham. I don’t know much more about him. Don’t look at me like that, Mrs. Monk. I really don’t.”

“How do you know any of it?”

“From a man who was there and tried to stop it.”

“Obviously he failed …”

“He was badly injured trying to prevent it, and was left for dead by the man in command.” His voice dropped a little lower, but his eyes never left hers. “He was rescued by the great courage of one of his own men, an Egyptian who saw it all.”

“But he didn’t testify to any of it?” She would rather not have said it, but it hung in the air between them like a tangible thing.

“I don’t know why,” Kittering admitted. “But I imagine it was to protect his family. If he had done, vengeance on them would have been swift, and complete. Would you?”

She thought of Monk, then of Scuff. “No.” She took the paper out of her pocket that had the six names on it and passed it over to him. “Is he one of these?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Who are they?”

“Among the dead,” she replied.

“Then your husband was right,” Kittering said quietly. “The
Princess Mary
was sunk to be sure of silencing one man.”

CHAPTER