A Sunless Sea by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online Page A

the river, searching for anyone who had seen her there, not only on the night of her death, but possibly at any other time. Why had she been on Limehouse Pier on a winter evening? It must have been cold, open to the wind off the water. Was she there as a prostitute, earning a quick shilling or two with someone who turned out to be a madman? The thought of it knotted Monk’s stomach with revulsion, as well as anger for the desperation of both the man and the woman.
    A group of men passed him, trudging along the road toward the docks. A vegetable cart passed the other way, piled with carrots and greens of one sort and another, and a few ripe apples.
    Monk knocked on the door of number twelve, next to Zenia Gadney’s house, and no one answered. He tried the next over and was sent briskly on his way by a woman in a long apron, already soiled and wet at the edges from the scrubbing of a floor. Now she was about to get busy with the front step, and told him smartly to take his great feet off it and let her get on with her job. No, she had never heard of Zenia Gadney and did not want to.
    He retraced his steps and tried number sixteen, on the other side of where Zenia had lived, and found an old woman sitting in a room crowded with ornaments and mementos. She had been looking out the window at the street, and he had noticed her curious glance. Her name was Betsy Scalford; she seemed lonely, happy to have a much younger man wanting to talk to her, and—even better—to listen when she reminisced about the past.
    She offered him a cup of tea, which he accepted because it gave him the excuse to stay at least half an hour. The longer they spent together, the more at ease she would feel.
    “Thank you,” he said appreciatively as she set the tray down and poured the steaming tea for him.
    “Welcome, I’m sure,” she answered, nodding vigorously. She was a gaunt woman, her bony shoulders making her look taller than she was. “In’t seen you before.” She looked him up and down, her eyes examining his face, the clean white collar of his shirt, the cut of his suit.
    He had always spent too much on his clothes. When he had first woken from the accident a decade ago, robbed of all his memory, he had had to learn everything about himself from the start, including his character in the eyes of others. He had been appalled at the evidence of his vanity presented by his tailor’s bills. At that time, necessity had made him trim them drastically. Now that he was head of the Thames River Police in Wapping, he indulged himself again. He smiled as he saw in the old woman’s eyes approval of his well-polished boots.
    “I haven’t been here before,” he said in answer to her question. “I’m River Police, not regular.”
    “River don’t flood this far,” she said with amusement in her eyes.
    “Sometimes its events do,” he countered. “And the currents of disaster it carries. You look to me like a very observant woman. I need information.”
    “An’ you think I got nothing to do but sit here an’ look out me window?” she retorted. She sat down opposite him. “You’re right. Used not to be that way, mind. Time was I did all kinds o’ business. Not now. Ask away, young man. But I’ll be careful wot I tell you, all the same. Don’t want a name fer tittle-tattle.”
    “Do you know the woman who lives next door at number fourteen?”
    “I know where number fourteen is,” she said a trifle sharply. “I ’aven’t lost me wits yet. That’d be Mrs. Gadney. Nice enough woman. Widow, I think. What about ’er?”
    Monk considered telling her immediately and decided against it. It might shock her too much to get any further help from her.
    “Do you know her?” he began. “Can you tell me what she is like?”
    “Why don’t you go an’ ask ’er yerself?” she asked. There was no criticism in her voice, just incomprehension and a sharpening curiosity.
    He was prepared for that. “We can’t find her. She seems to be