“Hester—” he began.

  “I know,” she said, cutting him off. She was facing him now, looking straight into his eyes, and he saw her fear. “He could be guilty. But I have to try. William, there is no way I can sacrifice him to my own peace of mind, just because he might be guilty. I don’t believe he is, I really don’t. But if I’m wrong, then something has happened to him that is not his fault. Would you have me prejudge him and walk away to preserve my own comfort?”

  “Take Scuff with you, when you do—I mean Will! Please?”

  She nodded, too filled with emotion to speak. Then she leaned forward and kissed him.

  —

  MONK WOKE UP THE next morning to the sound of knocking on the front door. Beside him, Hester was still asleep. It was warm and the sunlight lay in bright patterns on the floor.

  The knocking continued.

  Monk slipped out of bed and grasped his robe, then went down the stairs as quickly as he could without slipping. He opened the front door and saw Hooper standing on the step, his face white, his shirt buttoned crookedly and his hair askew.

  He did not wait for Monk to ask.

  “There’s been another. A man called Viktor Rosza. Early fifties. Widower. In banking. Just like the others, skewered through the chest, more candles saturated in blood. It’s even more violent than the others.”

  For a moment Monk froze. Why should he have thought it was over? Hooper’s shoulders and the grief in his face spoke the reality.

  “Who found him?” Monk asked. “Has the police surgeon got there yet? Is there anything new?”

  “Police surgeon’s probably there by now,” Hooper replied. “He wasn’t yet when I left. I doubt he’ll be much use. He wasn’t before. He’ll give us a guess at the time of death, but since it was almost certainly before dawn…”

  “What time were you called?”

  “Half-past four. Just coming dawn,” Hooper answered bleakly.

  Monk glanced at the clock in the hallway. It read almost quarter to six. “I’ll get dressed and come. Make yourself a cup of tea—and one for me.” He pointed toward the kitchen. Hooper was familiar with it. Once, when he had been badly injured, he had made his way here, and Hester had dressed his injuries and kept him here until he was well enough to care for himself.

  Fifteen minutes later Monk was washed and shaved, and both had hastily eaten two pieces of toast Hooper had made and drunk a cup of tea, although it was still rather too hot.

  When they were outside in the street, loping down the hill toward the dockside and the ferry, Monk asked for details.

  “You didn’t say who found him,” he prompted. “Don’t tell me it was Dobokai again.”

  “Not this time. It was the constable on patrol,” Hooper said grimly. “The door to Rosza’s house in Sheridan Street was partly open, so he knew there was something wrong. He knocked, and when there was no answer, he pushed it completely open, and flashed his lantern around. Poor devil. Saw the body skewered to the floor, blood everywhere and candles set all around the room, seventeen of them again, all smeared with blood. Even an icon of the Virgin Mary still hanging on the wall, but with blood on that too. Whoever this damned lunatic is, he’s getting worse. I don’t know why they make a god out of the Virgin Mary, but what if they do? It’s their business. It’s not like she wasn’t one of the best people who ever lived. You could do a lot worse.” He shook his head. “If God trusted her to raise Jesus, you can’t place more on a person than that!”

  Monk had not given the matter any thought, but when put that way, he was obliged to agree.

  “None of my business anyway,” he replied. “As long as they don’t try to make the Pope more important to obey than the government of our own country, I don’t care what they believe.”

  Hooper gave him a quick, startled glance.

  “History,” Monk said briefly. “Can’t have a Catholic on the throne, because his first loyalty would be to Rome, not to England. So I learned at school…”

  “Remember that, do you?” Hooper asked with sudden interest. He knew of Monk’s amnesia.

  “Actually, I do,” he replied, as casually as he could. “So much terror and hatred seemed idiotic, until you read about the fires and blood it brought, the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, the trials and betrayals, and the fear.”

  Hooper’s reply was lost in the sound of the waves on the steps going down to the water, and Monk’s shout as he hailed the ferry about twenty yards away.

  They did not speak again until they were on top of the dock at Wapping. It was quicker to walk to Shadwell than to the High Street and look for a hansom. On the way, Monk told Hooper what he had learned from Scuff about Fitz. It felt like a betrayal, yet he could not keep it to himself if there was the slightest suspicion that Fitz was involved in the murders. And maybe, he hoped, if Hooper knew, he could help to prove Fitz’s innocence.

  Even before they reached Sheridan Street they saw the gathering crowd of angry, frightened people. Carts were stopped, blocking the road, men in work clothes shouted in protest, arms waving, some with fists in the air. Women carrying laundry, others with brooms and buckets, come from scrubbing down doorsteps, joined them. Fear was turning to anger against those who should have protected them from this horror.

  Monk saw Antal Dobokai almost immediately. It was not that he was taller than those surrounding him, it was something about his stance, and perhaps the feeling that those near him were turned to watch him.

  Fifty yards away there was another knot of people around a different man. He stood with his arms raised, fists tight. He stopped shouting only as he realized that Dobokai had halted and was facing Monk and Hooper. The scene was ugly. Anger was on the surface, because it was less painful than fear, less debilitating, and there was no shame attached to it.

  “Gaspar Halmi,” Hooper said, indicating the man who was now slowly lowering his fists. “Aspirations to lead the community, hence the confrontation with Dobokai, who seems to have the same goal in mind.”

  Monk was about to dismiss this as local town politics; then he realized that even if it was not the principal cause of the unrest, it would still be wound through the people’s actions and reactions afterward. Passions as deep as these were never static.

  Dobokai ignored Monk as if he were just one more member of the crowd. They were close enough now to hear what he was saying, and they got a bystander to translate what they could not understand.

  “Keep calm, my friends!” Dobokai’s voice carried extraordinarily well. “Can’t you see that dividing us and scattering us in all directions is exactly what our enemies want?”

  “Passive is what our enemies want!” Halmi shouted back, his tone less clear, far less penetrating. “They would be delighted if we all go home quietly and huddle in corners. They can pick us off one by one!”

  There was a cry of agreement from several listeners. An old man brandished a walking stick in the air. Somewhere out of sight, a woman was weeping.

  Dobokai responded immediately. “We have to find who it is that is doing these terrible things. We are intelligent, civilized people. We are not barbarians, or panicky schoolgirls. We must use our brains, our knowledge. We must help the police. We are in England now: we live within a law and order where crime is punished.” He glanced at Monk, then back at the crowd.

  “But the law cannot punish people if they don’t catch them. Think! Use your knowledge and your intelligence. Who is doing this terrible thing to us, and why? What are they frightened of?” He swung his arm wide. “Do we have more money than they? Are we bigger, stronger, better armed? Of course not! Are we cleverer? Perhaps…” He stopped to allow a few smiles and the odd shout of approval. “Are we landowners?”

  There was a burst of laughter.

  Dobokai shrugged. “Well, some of us may be. I’m not. Are we funnier, more charming? Of course! Are we introducing new food that tastes better?”

  That was greeted with shouts and applause, even a few ribald remarks.

  “Then let us show them how to cook! Sell them your cakes and pastries, your soups and stews. Make friends. Make profits. Don’t listen to the men like Mr. Haldane, who say we are trying to change their ways. He is jealous. I don’t know why. We eat their food—occasionally…”

  Again he was greeted by laughter, but Monk could hear the raw edge of fear behind it. They laughed only because they wanted a release of the tension crackling in the air.

  Perhaps Dobokai knew that.

  “We must help the police,” Dobokai repeated. “Think of all you know that could assist them in finding who is doing this. It is up to us. They don’t know us as we do. Prove to them it is not one of the community, by helping to find who it is.”

  Halmi tried to cut across him, but no one was paying attention to him now.

  “Come on,” Monk said to Hooper. “Where’s the house?”

  Hooper led the way, silently. They passed the crowd, but they could still hear the voices a hundred yards away. They turned one more corner onto Sheridan Street and saw immediately where the mortuary wagon was waiting. The front door of the house was open.

  Monk increased his pace. He did not want the police surgeon to leave before he’d had a chance to speak to him. He hated having to go to the morgue. And he wanted to see the body where it had been found. Being told about it, even accurately and vividly, was still not the same as seeing it for himself, seeing the peripheral things as well, things that might seem irrelevant to someone else, or even to him, until later when something jogged his memory.

  He strode up the path, Hooper at his heels now, and went in through the front door. This house was nicer than those of the two earlier victims; the furnishings were expensive, the wallpaper pristine, as if it had only just been hung.

  He was met immediately by a constable, who started to tell him he could not come in, then realized who he was.

  “This way, sir. Poor Mr. Rosza is in the back kitchen.”

  “Did you know him?” Monk asked.

  The constable was pale and he looked wretched, but the crime itself could account for that. It was the ease with which he had pronounced the man’s name that caught Monk’s attention.

  “Yes, sir. He was a good man.” The constable’s voice wavered a little with the stress of his emotion. “He used to…” He stopped, coloring uncomfortably.

  “What’s your name?” Monk asked more gently.

  “Holloway, sir.”

  “What did Mr. Rosza do, Holloway?”

  “Give us a cup of hot soup on a winter’s morning, sir. Always had it ready, if there was ice on the street.”

  “Tell me about him. Did he do this for everybody?”

  Holloway hesitated.

  “I don’t care if you had a hot breakfast here every morning,” Monk said impatiently. “All I care about right now is finding who did this to him. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.” Holloway straightened up a little. “No, sir, he just did it for some of us younger ones. Said we reminded him of his own son. He said he was killed in Vienna when they had a revolution, way back in ’forty-eight, or about then. Said his wife never really got over it. That was part of why they were here. But she died a few years ago. He used to like to show us some of the things that were hers. Teapots and dishes and the like.”

  Monk felt a sharp stab of pity. If Hester died, would he keep her small possessions, things she had handled every day, take them out and show them to other people, as if they could see some essence of her in them? Perhaps.

  He forced his mind back to the present, and what he had to find out now.

  “He didn’t remarry?”

  “Oh, no, sir. Kept his house like it were still hers. Put new wallpaper up like she would have done. I’ve been trying to think who would do this to him, and I can’t. It has to be because he’s Hungarian. He did tell me once that some children had been throwing things, broke a few windows, like, and wrote rotten words on the walls. If I’d have caught them I’d have made them clean it up—and pay for new glass.”

  Monk imagined he would indeed. Holloway might have cleaned it up himself, but he would not tell Monk that. He just stared back very steadily.

  “And did you ever find out who did it?” Monk asked almost casually.

  The constable stood very straight. “Yes, sir, but the locals wouldn’t swear to it, even though they knew.” He hesitated only a moment, then added with a slight smile. “Mind, they did help us clean it up, and put toward getting the glass all replaced, sir.”

  Before Monk could find an answer, Hyde appeared in the doorway. He looked tired and harassed. His thinning hair stood up in spikes as if he had run his hands through it over and over. His face was almost as pale as one of the corpses.

  “You took your time!” he snapped at Monk. “Where the devil have you been?”

  “Watching the crowds in the streets, hoping they weren’t going to turn into a riot,” Monk answered. “And then listening to young Holloway here, who apparently knew the victim quite well. You look as if you’ve been down a rat-hole backward.”

  “I didn’t find the bloody rat!” Hyde said waspishly. “And neither have you, apparently. What the hell are you doing, Monk? This is the worst damn mess I’ve seen in years. You’ve got a lunatic here. For God’s sake, catch him, man! He must be raving, slavering at the mouth. If you don’t believe me, come into the kitchen and see what he’s done. Don’t just stand there waiting for me to conduct you.” He swung around on his heel and strode back down the passage and into the kitchen, leaving the door swinging behind him.

  Monk followed. He did not bother retaliating. It was, in an odd way, quite comforting that at last Hyde’s composure was shaken. It made him human, and for the first time Monk wondered what he was like away from his profession. Did he have a family? He had never mentioned anyone. Perhaps he preferred to keep them separate from his work. Did he have pastimes he loved? Music, his garden, long walks alone, the sea in all its moods? Did he take time for himself?

  “Don’t just stand there!” Hyde snapped at him again.

  Monk concentrated on the scene. Now he understood why Hyde was so close to the point where he could no longer keep his professional control. Rosza lay on his back on the kitchen floor. He must have fought for his life. Not only was his chest pierced by the blade of an old and badly rusted sword but his hands were gashed as well, and his right arm, which had bled profusely. The artery must have been torn open. There was blood everywhere. Even his face had been slashed, taking his nose off and slicing open his cheek.

  As before, the room was crowded with candles dipped and pooled in blood, but this time they were carelessly placed, several together and many lying on their sides. Still, there were seventeen. Monk counted them. Two were purple.

  “He was in a hurry,” he said. His voice sounded hard, and absurdly irrelevant in the silence.

  Hyde turned to stare at him, then slowly the anger drained out of him, replaced by intense weariness.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “Maybe it was getting light and he was afraid of being seen. I’m not sure how that helps much.”

  “We’ll question everyone around here and ask if anybody was up early and saw something, even if they didn’t understand what it was,” Monk began.

  “What would that be? You mean someone they didn’t expect to see, or it didn’t make any impression, because it was the same as usual?”

  “It’s possible…” Monk agreed.

  “Do you think it’s one of the Hungarians?” Hyde said with disbelief.

  “I don’t know. But if we find anyone who was around, then we can ask them what they saw. At least account for one of them.”

  “Glad it’s your job, not mine,” Hyde responded. “These people have had more than enough already. They’re terrified and on the edge of losing control.”

  “I know that.” Monk thought for a moment before speaking again. “Are you sure they were all killed by the same person?”

  Hyde was incredulous. “God in heaven, man! Do you think there are two people on the loose in Shadwell doing this kind of thing?”

  “Are there any differences at all?” Monk insisted.

  “No. Down to the smallest detail, things not reported in the papers or known by the public, or even most of the police. They are identical.”

  “Damn.”

  “Why?”

  “Then Dobokai can’t be guilty.”

  “Dobokai? Why him?”

  “Because everywhere I turn I’m falling over him.”

  “Then fall over someone else,” Hyde said tartly. “Try some new thinking. Get your own prejudices out of the way. You’re stuck, man! Get over it and do your job!”

  Monk did not reply. Hyde was right, but he did not need to tell him so.

  CHAPTER

  10

  MONK AND HOOPER EXAMINED the body more closely, then the rest of the room, and finally the house itself. They found nothing they had not foreseen. Rosza was, outwardly at least, a quiet and unassuming man, who had built for himself a new life in England, succeeded in his banking career and made friends, not only within the Hungarian community but also with a number of native landowners.

  Monk felt a sadness at his loss. Small things about his house showed individual taste: a painting of flowers under the shade of a tree, woodland flowers such as violets and, in a splash of sunlight, a bank of primroses. Monk had no idea if such flowers grew in Hungary. Certainly it could have been England. There was also a very good personal drawing of a dog: a pet, judging from the eagerness in the animal’s face.

  The kitchen was also interesting. There were racks full of spices Monk had never even heard of. Perhaps they had contributed to the soup Rosza had given to the young constables on cold mornings.

  Monk’s body ached with a sudden twinge when he moved, and he realized that he was rigid with anger at this new, further bestial crime.

  “What do they have in common, Hooper?” he said. “Why these men? Why not others? They’re all in Shadwell, but otherwise well apart. They’re all comfortable, successful but not rich. They’re all from Hungary, but different towns. They’ve been here different lengths of time. They knew each other, but only slightly. They were not close. Most of the Hungarians here know each other—so why these three?”