“What do you know of Fodor yourself, Mr. Dobokai?” Monk asked. “Do you know where he came from in Hungary, and when?”

  “Yes, of course. Do you wish me to spell it for you? Our spelling is…unlike yours.”

  “I would be obliged,” Monk answered. “In fact, perhaps you would tell me some of what you know of most of the members of the community who have come here in the last few years.”

  “Fodor has been here for twenty years or more,” Dobokai told him. “But of course I will tell you of those who have come recently.”

  They went to Monk’s office in the Wapping Station. It was quite a long morning’s work, but Dobokai gave them a list of all the main families in the community, with their occupations and the approximate dates of their arrival. In most cases, he could also give the town or the area in Hungary from which they had come.

  “You are surprised?” Dobokai said with a twist of his mouth. “If you were obliged to begin your life over again in a strange country, one with no ties to your own, and not speaking your language, would you not seek out men who could advise you, help you find a place to live, at least some kind of work to pay your rent, to eat? Would you not ask where to buy the food you like? Where to get decent secondhand furniture? Where to rent rooms; who was honest; where, now and then, to hear news from home?”

  When they had finished discussing the fifty or so families that made up the core of the Shadwell Hungarians, Monk and Hooper went with Dobokai, at his suggestion, to eat lunch at a small Hungarian restaurant.

  The menu was not large, but on Dobokai’s advice, Monk chose a stew with both pork and beef, unusually spiced with bay leaf, garlic and several flavorings he could not distinguish. Dobokai explained to him, with some pride, that Hungarians often mixed meats, and were expert with dozens of spices.

  For dessert they were offered Dobos torte, a layered sponge cake with chocolate buttercream inside and a thin slice of caramel on top. Telling himself that he was being polite, Monk accepted a second helping.

  Dobokai took them to meet Ferenc Ember, the immigrant doctor who treated the medical ills of most of the community. As they went into his surgery, and waited the half hour or so necessary while he saw his patients, Monk imagined the misery of being ill in an unfamiliar place and trying to explain your symptoms to someone who was impatient with your stumbling attempts to find the words to describe intimacies few people discussed at all, let alone with strangers. Pain, fear or simple embarrassment made many people tongue-tied. To have someone familiar to speak for you would be a godsend.

  Ember was quite a young man, no more than in his late thirties, but he looked tired. His fair-skinned face had little color, and he kept nervously pushing his hair off his brow.

  “Antal!” he said with relief when he saw that Dobokai was with Monk and Hooper. “What can I do for you?”

  Dobokai introduced them, then spoke quietly to Ember in Hungarian. Monk had no idea what he was saying. There was not a single familiar word in his speech, nothing of Latin or Germanic root.

  Ember offered his hand. “I will do what I can to help, but I’m afraid it will be very little. I cannot tell you anyone’s illnesses—that is confidential…” He regarded Monk anxiously. “You have the same here, yes?”

  “You might be able to narrow the possibilities a little,” Monk suggested.

  “I’ll…I’ll try,” Ember promised. “I don’t know that…”

  Dobokai shook his head. He ignored Monk completely and began asking Ember questions about chronic illnesses that seemed to be totally irrelevant. He moved to asking about some of the children in the area and what Ember might need in order to treat them successfully.

  Hooper shifted position impatiently.

  Monk agreed. This was wasting time and had little more to offer than Dobokai had already provided in his knowledge of the community. Monk drew a breath to break the rambling discussion, but Dobokai held up his hand to stop him. It was an arrogant gesture, and Monk felt his temper rise. Ember answered in Hungarian, and Monk sat back, but he could not tolerate it much longer. It was a display of Dobokai’s importance in his own circle, and so far of no use at all.

  As if sensing a greater tension, Ember stopped, turning to Monk.

  “Mr. Monk will want to know,” Dobokai assured him. He too looked at Monk. “Dr. Ember is telling me of a very nasty incident a couple of weeks ago. A teenage woman, Eva Galambos, was accosted by a young man. She was not badly hurt, but she was very frightened. Her brothers paid the young man a visit, and advised him that he might come to a great deal of harm if he did that again. The matter became worse. Relations have gone downhill. It is not unusual, but others have taken it up and now more people are involved. It reminds them of other matters, older quarrels. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Hooper agreed quickly. He looked at Ember. “I imagine you know who among your people has been injured.”

  “It happens,” Ember said, nodding. “We are strangers here—guests, if you like. It is better we don’t make trouble. We are not going to win. But it is a small thing. Just young ones being…unwise. Young men fight. It happens. What happened to Fodor was quite different. That comes from old wounds. Very deep.”

  “Do you know of such wounds?” Monk asked, expecting no more of an answer than he could read in the man’s eyes.

  “I see only bits and pieces,” Ember replied. “I do not put them together necessarily. I do not want a story I cannot help or heal. These people will not trust me, and I can do nothing, no good. I must consider all.”

  “Does the number seventeen mean anything to you?” Monk asked. “Perhaps to do with a ritual of some sort?”

  Ember looked blank. “No. Why?”

  “There were seventeen candles in the room where Mr. Fodor’s body was found.”

  Ember shook his head.

  Dobokai made a little sound in his throat, as if he were choking. When Monk turned to look at him, his face was pale.

  “Seventeen!” Dobokai gasped, forcing the word out of his mouth. His hands were clenched in front of him. “Are you saying there were seventeen candles?”

  “Yes. You saw them.”

  “I…” Dobokai took a deep breath. “I didn’t count.”

  “What does seventeen mean?” Monk asked more sharply.

  “There is…or I heard there is…a secret society, and ‘seventeen’ is their…watchword, password, whatever you like. I know very little about them, and I don’t want to know. But they are believers in the occult. Were any of the candles different colors?” His blue eyes were brilliant, almost luminous.

  “Yes,” Monk answered slowly, recalling what he had seen. “Two were dark, I think a blue or violet color. Why?”

  “Purple,” Dobokai said, as if the very word were laden with meaning. “Purple for power, to use it over people…dark power. I don’t know anything more, and I don’t want to find out. As soon as I knew even that, I stopped. There are things it is better not to know.” He started to shake his head.

  “Hungarian or English?” Monk asked urgently.

  “I don’t know,” Dobokai answered. “Perhaps it is everywhere.”

  “Did you hear of this secret society in England, or before you came here?”

  “Here, in London. But from a Hungarian. But…maybe this is a perversion of it.” He shook his head. “And before you ask me, the man I learned that much from has left London, and I have no idea where he has gone.”

  “Thank you. Please let me know if you think of anything more.”

  “I want to do everything I can to help you,” Dobokai assured Monk, looking not at him but straight ahead. “These are my people. I need you to understand them, as much as you can. It is a terrible thing that happened to Fodor. Forget what I said about seventeen, please! One of us is a devil—or one of your own devils is loose here. Perhaps it is some deranged creature who feels he has suffered an injustice at the hands of one of us and is determined to take his revenge.”

  Monk considered those possibilities for several moments without replying. Finally, he simply acknowledged Dobokai’s help again, and repeated his thanks to Ember.

  “What do you think about this ‘seventeen’ business?” Hooper asked as he and Monk turned to walk away.

  Monk was shaken. He hated secret societies of any sort. They gave people a power they almost always abused. Even Dobokai, who had otherwise appeared very steady, seemed to be frightened by the thought.

  “There might be something in it, or possibly it’s just a coincidence. Let’s stay with the usual greed, jealousy and revenge for the moment.”

  —

  OVER THE NEXT TWO days, as he spoke to most of the families in the community, both Hungarian and English, Monk began to form a much clearer picture of their relationships with each other. They felt a natural closeness to those who shared their roots and memories and, above all, understood the complicated nature of the hope for a new life in a new country. Under the superficialities, London was still so different from the places they had left. They had lost the certainties they once had, the shared familiarity of environment and histories, without always realizing the good in their new lives, along with the bad.

  It was Dobokai who drew out all this information for him, whether it was intentional or not. He had an odd way of questioning people. It took Monk all of the two days they spent together to understand his method. It was very indirect, often seeming pointless.

  “How are you today?” he asked one middle-aged man, Lorand Gazda, sitting on a riverside bench, gazing shortsightedly at the water.

  Gazda shook his head. He had a long nose and a halo of graying hair. “Good of you to ask,” he said slowly.

  “Hard times,” Dobokai commiserated. He turned to Monk. “Lorand used to be a wealthy man, but he lost his lands in the revolution of ’forty-eight. Backed the fighters for freedom.” He put his hand briefly on the man’s shoulder. “Like a lot of people. Got more freedoms from Austria now, but it’s been too long in coming for some.”

  Monk had enough history to be aware that most of Europe had risen in rebellion against oppression of one sort or another. In some places the attempt had come close to succeeding. For a brief moment it had seemed to be the beginning of a golden age. Then the old order had crushed the uprisings, one after another. Paris, Rome, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna—all had entered a new oppression, worse than before. Only England seemed to have remained unscathed, a haven for so many fugitives. But he knew that only from the history books, and word of mouth. It was back in the time he could not remember. And circumstances had taught him that he himself had been in California during the height of the civil unrest, in the gold rush of ’49.

  But that did not matter now. He had not had to leave the place of his youth. It was still there, he simply could not remember it.

  Dobokai was still commiserating with Gazda, pointlessly, it seemed.

  “Still, you like to go down and watch the river,” he said conversationally.

  Gazda’s eyes lit up. “It’s a good river,” he agreed. “A great port.” He spoke straight back to Dobokai, as if Monk were beyond the periphery of his sight. Perhaps he was.

  “Shadwell Dock,” Dobokai said as he nodded.

  The muscles in Gazda’s face tightened.

  Monk started to pay attention.

  “I expect you were very upset about poor Fodor’s death,” Dobokai went on, a note of sympathy in his voice.

  Gazda winced and turned away, staring into the distance, although how far he could see was questionable. Monk doubted that as an actual witness he would be any use, even if he had been on the dock at the time.

  Dobokai lowered his voice even more. “We have to do something about it, Lorand. We can’t let such a terrible thing happen again. What do you think?”

  Monk stirred impatiently. Dobokai was frightening the man for no reason. This was an isolated incidence of hatred. Nothing like this had happened before and there was no reason to think it would ever be repeated. He was about to interrupt when Gazda did instead.

  “He was a good man, Fodor was. Had his faults, of course. Everyone does. But he was generous and he never spoke ill of anyone else. We’re not taking people’s jobs, Dobokai. You’ve got to make them see that. We’re just taking care of ourselves, like everybody. We’ve got a right to do that. Englishmen have gone all over the world, where they had no business. Can’t they make room for us here?” He shivered, although he was sitting in the sun. “I don’t understand it. Why Fodor? And why so…so savage? Are they barbarians?”

  Dobokai glanced momentarily at Monk, then back at the older man.

  “We must help the police catch whoever it was, Lorand,” he said gently. “They don’t want him to get away with it any more than we do.”

  “Don’t they? Why should they care? Fodor wasn’t one of them!”

  “Because they’re civilized people,” Dobokai answered with conviction. “This will make news everywhere. Do you think they want other people to believe that’s the kind of country this is? That this happens to people who come here? Pride, Lorand! Pride. Would you want people to think we Hungarians are like that?”

  Gazda stiffened. “You show me who I can tell, and I’ll tell them.”

  “You tell what you can to Mr. Monk here. He’s a policeman. Too important to wear a uniform anymore. Talk to him.”

  Monk relaxed. Perhaps he had misunderstood Dobokai. He was a far better judge of human nature than Monk had given him credit for.

  Monk stayed with Lorand Gazda for well over an hour and learned a great deal about the community. He heard who had lent money and who had borrowed it, and what the interest had been. He struggled to write down names he could barely spell, and had to wait for instruction. There were love affairs, some illicit, some in which three people were involved. He heard of kindnesses and petty revenges, marking in his notes those he considered worthy of looking at more closely. They probably meant nothing, but it was somewhere to begin. Gazda answered all his questions, Dobokai translating where it was needed, the odd memory, a concept for which the man did not know the words in English.

  At last Monk rose to his feet and thanked him.

  “You’ll find him, won’t you?” Gazda said eagerly. “You’ll stop whoever did this?”

  Monk drew in his breath to warn that it would not be easy, but he would do his best. Then he looked at Gazda’s weary face, and felt the fear in him. He had been a stranger in a strange land that did not really want him for far too many years. He was clinging to his pride with a desperate hold.

  “Yes, Mr. Gazda,” he said, making a rash promise he only hoped to keep. There was no certainty. “I hope it will be soon, but however hard it is, we won’t give up. You belong here, and he doesn’t.”

  Dobokai did not say anything, but after they had excused themselves and left Lorand Gazda, he gave Monk the addresses of the families he thought it most profitable to speak with. By the time Monk checked in at the Wapping Police Station before going home, he had a better knowledge of the Hungarian community at Shadwell than he had of the neighborhood across the river, where he had lived for years. But he still could not like Dobokai—there was something about the man that made him unforgettable, a kind of restlessness, a hunger. He was annoyed with himself for it. It was unfair. It was the very prejudice that he despised in others. He, of all people, should know better than that.

  He thought about it again on the ferry across to the south bank, as he sat in the stern and watched the light on the water, soft, feeling the air cool a little. There were gulls circling above. The skyline of the city was so familiar he could have recognized a single crane out of place, a ship larger than usual, taller masts against the sky.

  And yet not so long ago it had been new to him. When he woke up in the hospital, everything was new, strange, even his own face in the looking glass. He’d had to learn friend from enemy, and there were so few of the former, and too many, well earned, of the latter.

  But at least he spoke the language, and the patterns of his profession were woven deeper than conscious knowledge.

  Yet for how many years had he been afraid of the unknown, always expecting the worst? How many times had he been caught by surprise by his own ignorance of what everyone else seemed to know? He should understand these people and their suspicions of unjust judgment, disliked simply because they looked and sounded different. Of course they stayed together! Who wouldn’t? The constant wariness was exhausting. You couldn’t know how much until you had to learn everything anew; take nothing for granted; never assume; think, watch, listen all the time.

  Dobokai did not know that of him. No one did except Hester, and, more recently, Hooper. He’d had to tell Hooper or lie to him. And he cared too much what Hooper thought of him to do that, which surprised him. From everything he had learned of himself during the past, he had not cared what anyone thought of him. Runcorn, once a friend, then an enemy, and now a deeper friend again, had told him as much.

  Could he keep his promise to Lorand Gazda, and, by implication, to Dobokai?

  Why Fodor? Why now? Hooper had spent the day learning all he could about him, and it amounted to very little. If anyone knew ill of him, they were not willing even to hint of it. Loyalty? Fear? Blindness, willful or otherwise? Or was there really nothing to know? Was he simply a victim of opportunity?

  And the seventeen candles? Was there really a secret society, or was that Dobokai’s superstitious imagination? Where did one begin to look for such a group? Even the idea of it made him uncomfortable. His inquiries would have to be discreet. He would ask the Metropolitan Police, privately.

  That was something else to have one of his men do: contact all the police stations along the banks of the river and see if there had been any similar crimes. Not likely, or they would have come forward. The evening papers had been full of Fodor’s murder, demanding that the police do their job and find the monster. More than one had suggested it was some Hungarian vendetta, and sooner or later all London would be at risk.