“You did, Hester.”

  “No, I didn’t…not like Fitz. He was on the battlefield far more than I was. There were piles of bodies, some dead, some dying, and there was little anyone could do. But he never gave up trying. He was left on the field for dead. He woke up when everyone else was gone, terribly wounded, but with enough knowledge and strength left to save himself.”

  Rathbone’s face was pale as he imagined it, or tried to.

  “We left him because we thought he was dead—I did. I saw him in the pile of bodies. He was cold to the touch. And I left him there…”

  Would Rathbone understand why she had done that? How terrible that mistake was, and how easy to make? Scuff had not—until Fitz himself had told him.

  “He had to try to survive alone,” she went on. “It took him ages to heal, but when he did he made his way slowly westward until he ended up in Hungary. He stayed there because he liked it, and they were good to him. He was still weak and he had a lot of healing left to do. He only got back home to England half a year ago.”

  She searched Rathbone’s face, and saw no condemnation in it. What did he think? It did not matter now. Only his help was important.

  “He told you this?” he asked.

  “Yes…”

  “I will have to verify it, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.” He was making notes as they spoke. “Did he know these people who were killed? Or perhaps I should be asking whether they knew him?”

  “He didn’t know them; that we can trace. But he could still be guilty. I don’t know, and he doesn’t either. But he knows of no reason why he would hurt anyone. He is still a great doctor. He worked with Crow and Scuff, and I helped. He hasn’t changed much, not in medicine. The years have been very hard. I’ve seen him having nightmares. He’s…he’s back there in the Crimea, seeing men die all around him. I don’t know if he sees the Hungarians in Shadwell as Russian soldiers on the battlefield—I don’t know anything. But I knew Fitz when he was one of the best and bravest doctors in the whole British Army, when he would stay up operating on shattered men all day and all night, and all the next day, trying desperately to save lives, mend bodies, save limbs.”

  She took a deep breath. “It wasn’t only the soldiers who were close to starvation sometimes, it was us too. He’d give me the last piece of bread, having to pretend it wasn’t. We laughed at nothing, at terrible jokes, and wept in each other’s arms when we lost man after man, friends who were whole the day before, and now just…just…” She could see the bodies in her mind, torn apart, almost robbed of dignity, even of humanity, left nothing but a sea of pain.

  “Don’t!” Rathbone said abruptly. “Hester, stop it! You don’t need to persuade me. I’ll do everything I can.”

  She let out a long, slow breath. “Thank you…”

  He hesitated, on the verge of telling her something, then changed his mind.

  “I don’t know what I can pay you, much less what he can…”

  “Stop. I don’t need money. I can well afford to defend a man because he needs it. And from what you say, he has already given his country—my country—more than most men give in a lifetime. He deserves everything we can do to save him from injustice, if that’s the case, and from far crueler punishment than he deserves, if he did indeed kill these unfortunate men. What I do need is everything you can tell me about him: his success in the army, his medical character now. That you can do. You may be the only person involved in the case, on either side, who was there, and saw, most intimately, what he endured. If I cannot prove him innocent, then his suffering may be our only resort. Either way, I will need you to create the setting for us.”

  “Of course.”

  “I know it will be painful, but we have to see it. The prosecutor, whoever he is, will make everything he can of the horror of the murders. Fitzherbert’s experience in the Crimea must be equally wrenching.”

  “Of course.” She said it automatically, but she knew already that it would be bitterly painful, the dragging up of things she had long ago buried in the necessity of forgetting. She had not realized until she saw Fitz again that forgetting was a blessing not everyone had. And Rathbone would spare her nothing, however much he hated doing it. She knew that from long experience. His loyalty would be toward Fitz, as it should be. One of the things dearest to her in his character was his utter commitment.

  “And I shall need all Monk can tell me,” he added.

  “He’ll do that. He…he tried to save Fitz, very nearly at the cost of his own life.” What sounded like disgust permeated her voice, but it was actually a cold burst of terror at how close it had been. Admiration and fear did not always sound as such.

  Rathbone smiled bleakly. He also knew Monk well. They had shared most of their best and worst cases.

  “Thank you for trusting me with this,” he said quietly. “I can only imagine how much it matters to you. Now, please tell Monk, and have him get ready for me all he can. I will go and meet Fitzherbert.”

  She nodded, then impulsively reached forward and kissed him on the cheek.

  —

  EVEN BEFORE THE INITIAL exhaustion had worn off, and while his body was still stiff from the chase, Monk redoubled his efforts to solve the crimes. On the assumption that Fitz was not guilty, he sent Hooper to trace everything he could about the doctor: his arrival in Shadwell, the people he had treated and all the movements he could verify and collate. It was just possible that a pattern would emerge, even something that would prove his innocence.

  He had one of his other men check the saber that had been used in the fourth murder. It was a military weapon. Did anyone have a collection of such things? Was someone missing a saber and had been afraid to report it? Question harder. Who had access to such a thing? When was it last seen? Was anything else missing, from anywhere?

  Monk had a third man check for any connection at all between the victims. Did they have more than a passing acquaintance? Were there family connections that had been overlooked? Business between them? Did they belong to the same clubs, the same church? Had they courted the same woman or wanted the same job?

  And what about the rare purple candles? They had all been fine beeswax. Were they bought, or stolen? Candles had been stolen from a chandler—was there any way of knowing if the ones used in the murders came from that box? Even asking might turn up something.

  He considered the facts. Sickening as they were, they were the same in all the cases, essentially identical. The newspapers had not released all of the details. That was only common sense.

  Surely the murders were too much alike, even in the most trivial aspect, to be the work of more than one person? The symbolism was not common enough for multiple people to have used it. He had thought deeply about what the various signs might mean to whoever had done this.

  Candles dipped in blood? Religious? Sacrifice in payment of some sort? Something more personal? And why always seventeen?

  The smashing and desecration of icons such as the statue of the Virgin Mary—was that specifically against Roman Catholicism? Or incidental, and nothing to do with religion?

  Piercing through the chest, leaving the weapon in the wound?

  Broken fingers, a hand disabled?

  Was there some common thread he was missing? He had talked it over with Hooper, and learned nothing.

  There was hatred in it, violent and bestial. It was hard to imagine that any man could have such hatred within him, yet outwardly look just like anyone else. Surely he must appear different in some way to the intelligent eye, at least enough to make him uncomfortable.

  It was a deeply frightening thought that there was nothing at all to distinguish such a man from the friends you knew, the colleagues you worked with every day, even your own family.

  The murderer could not be Antal Dobokai. Monk had been over his account of where he had been at the time of Fodor’s death. He had walked the route Dobokai had taken, checked every fact he had given. He could find no fault in it anywhere, and he had dearly wanted to. He did not admire himself for that, but there was something in Dobokai that made him uneasy.

  He must go back to the crimes to check each one individually. He had been concentrating on what they had in common, but this had not got him far. Perhaps he should consider what they did not have in common?

  He knew the crime scenes far too well. They were, as far as he or anyone else could see, absolutely the same. What was the meaning of each feature that the killer had to repeat it so absolutely the same, over and over, with such outwardly different victims?

  The key was not in the victims, it was in him!

  Candles? Drury had said purple was for power, but he thought, from what Monk told him, that any kind of ritual with the candles showed signs of being hurried and incomplete. Perhaps it had nothing to do with religion at all.

  Was it merely a number? Seventeen. No one had been able to find any group in Britain or in Hungary—religious, cultural or anything else—to whom the number seventeen had any particular significance.

  Was it of meaning to the killer only? Seventeen people? Seventeen things of value? Something done seventeen times?

  Time—seventeen years ago?

  Where had Fodor been seventeen years ago? Here in Shadwell. Who else had been here then?

  It took Monk half an hour of rereading to know that none of the other victims had been here seventeen years ago. But Roger and Adel Haldane had been here, two years married. Dobokai had been in England, but not in Shadwell. According to all Monk could find, he had been in Leeds, in Yorkshire—miles away, as he himself had said.

  It was late afternoon, but he called Hooper anyway, and together they went to Fodor’s house. The streets were hot and dusty, filled with the traffic of people on their way home.

  “What are we looking for?” Hooper asked, keeping step with Monk. Until now he had been silent.

  “I’m not certain,” Monk replied. “History. I’m looking for something that happened seventeen years ago.”

  “And has just come to the surface now?” Hooper kept the disbelief from his voice with obvious difficulty. “An old hatred so violent, and it waited this long?”

  “The injury was seventeen years ago,” Monk corrected him, thinking it through as he spoke.

  “And we’re going to look for some record of it still in Fodor’s house?”

  “Can you think of anywhere better to look for it?” Monk snapped. “If it were generally known, don’t you think somebody would have mentioned it by now?”

  Hooper did not answer. They reached Fodor’s house, and Monk produced the keys. Though Fodor had died at his office on the docks, the house still bore the mark of tragedy. No one had been in or out since the police had originally searched it, and found nothing of help.

  Monk closed the door behind them. The air was stale. There was a fine layer of dust on the hall table. A fly had been trapped inside, and lay on the once polished floor.

  “Where shall we begin?” Hooper said quietly. His voice held regret, as if he felt he were trespassing on the dead.

  Monk understood. He felt the same sense of intrusion. They were not here about the crime itself; they were here to dig into the past, to uncover what Fodor had intended to be kept secret.

  “Bedroom,” Monk answered. “Least likely to find much there. We’ll get the simple ones done first. Finish with wherever he kept books, mementoes, personal things. I don’t know what we’re looking for. Either of us might recognize it—or not.”

  They looked in near silence for over an hour, learning nothing unexpected. They ended in the sitting room, where the desk and the bookshelves were. They took out the books one by one, holding them open so anything between the leaves would fall out.

  Hooper had said nothing, just worked methodically. His extreme forbearance irritated Monk, because he was feeling increasingly that they were on a fool’s errand. Either they had seen it, and not known its meaning, or there was nothing to find.

  “Sir?” Hooper interrupted Monk’s thoughts.

  “Yes?”

  Hooper had a book in one hand, and held up an old photograph in the other. He turned it toward Monk.

  “Who is it?” Monk held out his hand.

  Hooper passed it to him, watching his reaction.

  Monk looked at it. It was a fair-haired young man of possibly twenty, good-looking, eager-faced, staring at the camera. He looked familiar. Monk tried to recall where he had seen him before.

  Then he remembered. “It’s Haldane’s son,” he said. “Odd that Fodor should keep it, and inside a book rather than an album.” He looked at Hooper questioningly.

  “No, it isn’t,” Hooper said. “Looks like him—a lot like him. But see the background, sir. The writing on the glass behind him is Hungarian. And the clothes. That’s in Hungary, sir, and a good while ago.”

  Monk looked at the picture again, then up at Hooper. An idea was beginning to take shape in his mind. “It’s Fodor, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m pretty sure it is. And from what you said, sir, Haldane’s son was born about seventeen years ago.”

  “And Haldane just discovered that? How?”

  “Well, if he somehow saw that picture, or one like it, it doesn’t take much putting together,” Hooper replied. “That would be why Mrs. Haldane was so keen to get the boy off to university somewhere.”

  Monk thought of Adel’s pride in her son, and now he could recall very vividly that Haldane had not had the same light in his face. In fact, there had been an anger in him that Monk had attributed to the murder, but perhaps it was more to do with the fact that he already knew the boy he had once been so desperately proud of was not his at all.

  “It’d be enough for some men to kill,” Hooper said, breaking into his thoughts. “You can’t wrong a man much more than that—especially when you’ve raised the boy yourself, not knowing, being happy, proud, maybe boasting a little. Mrs. Haldane’s lucky he didn’t go for her too.”

  “The reason would be too obvious,” Monk answered. “He wouldn’t want anyone to know. Her punishment is that she has to live with it.”

  “Can we prove it?” Hooper asked. “This photograph would pretty well prove the fact, but it wouldn’t prove that Haldane knew. And it has nothing to do with all the others.”

  “Haldane didn’t do the others,” Monk said quietly. “At least I don’t think so. Certainly he didn’t do the second one. Or the third.”

  “Who did? And in God’s name, why?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll start with Haldane. We need to prove it.”

  “I doubt he’ll argue, sir. I think the fact itself is what hurts more than anything else. Does Mrs. Haldane know, do you think?” Hooper asked.

  “Yes.” Monk remembered Adel’s face, the ashen, bloodless skin when she realized what the seventeen candles meant in the crime. “Yes,” he said aloud. “She knows, even if she won’t admit it to herself. This is going to be…hard.”

  Hooper did not answer.

  —

  THERE WAS NO WAY the confrontation could have gone well. Monk hated it, but there was no alternative, and now that he knew, he would be responsible for anything that happened, to Adel or to anyone else, if he didn’t act tonight.

  He and Hooper arrived at the Haldanes’ home, knowing that at this hour, Haldane himself would be there, having dinner.

  Haldane answered the door. He saw Monk and was about to speak, but seeing Hooper behind him, his face froze.

  “Mr. Haldane, I am arresting you for the murder of Imrus Fodor—only that crime, nothing else.”

  Haldane froze.

  Monk knew that at any moment he could lash out, attempt to run.

  Adel appeared at the entrance of the dining room, likely concerned as to who was at the front door.

  Monk did not take his eyes from Haldane.

  For an instant Haldane thought of resistance, perhaps even flight. It was there in his eyes. Then it died.

  “My wife knew nothing about it,” he said. “She has no fault.”

  Monk felt a moment of sharp pity for him. He saw the tears on Adel’s face, but dimly, only over Haldane’s shoulder.

  Haldane held out his hands.

  Monk slipped the manacles over them, in front of him, not behind. He might regret it later, but this was a humiliation that was unnecessary now. He hoped he would not be mistaken.

  CHAPTER

  12

  “ISN’T THERE SOMETHING WE can do to help Fitz?” Will asked Hester when she stopped by Crow’s clinic with a few supplies she knew they would need: cinchona bark, quinine, surgical spirit, camphorated wine, more bandages of all sorts. She put them down on the table. She felt the deep ache of helplessness at not being able to heal Fitz’s type of pain; he was lost in an abyss while the rest of them stood by, unable to reach him.

  Scuff took the bottles and packages to put them into the right cupboards, but made no move to begin.

  “We’ve got to be able to do something!” he protested.

  Monk had told him about Adel Haldane, and the strong probability that Fodor had been her son’s father. Monk had felt very little sense of victory in Haldane’s arrest, even though the man had, with a sudden dignity and unselfishness, submitted quietly. It was a solution to only the first murder, none of the others, and in spite of its ferocity, Monk had felt an intense pity for all of them. For a few terrible moments, Haldane had found the very worst in himself, and he would pay for it for what remained of his life.

  Hester thought briefly of telling Scuff that there was a chance the authorities would understand Fitz’s injuries, and his behavior. She looked at his face and remembered vividly, as if it had been only days ago, the boy he had been. How slight he had been, narrow-shouldered, slender-necked from years of foraging for food along the riverbank. Now he was taller than she, hard-muscled, already almost the man he would become.