Page 28 of A Sunless Sea (William Monk 17)

Scuff was upstairs struggling his way through a book, with a complex mixture of pride and frustration that Hester was sensitive enough to allow him privacy to deal with.

Maybe this evening Monk would be home in time to eat with them.

She had just finished chopping the onions when she heard his footsteps in the passage to the kitchen. There was heaviness in them, as if he was tired, and perhaps disappointed.

She put the knife down and washed her hands quickly to get rid of the onion smell. She was drying them on the towel hung over the rail of the oven door when he came in. He smiled when he saw her, but this could not disguise the weariness in his face. He walked over and kissed her gently.

“What is it?” she asked when he let her go. “What’s happened?”

“Where’s Scuff?” He evaded the question, glancing around.

“Upstairs reading,” she replied. “He’s not as good as he’s pretending to be, but he’s improving. Would you like a cup of tea before supper’s ready?”

He nodded and sat down on the chair at the head of the table, leaning forward a little to ease his back, and resting his elbows on the scrubbed wood.

“Nothing on the case?” she asked as she pulled the kettle into the center of the stovetop and took out the tea caddy from the cupboard. There was no need to stoke the oven. It was already full and burning well, ready to cook in.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “The only person Zenia seems to have had any real connection with is a very respectable doctor who was preparing a report for the government on opium use and sales.”

“Opium?” Hester stopped what she was doing and sat down at the table opposite him, her attention entirely caught. As a nurse, she knew a lot about the vast uses of opium. If one took it for a long time it could become addictive, only seriously so when taken as the Chinese did-not by eating it, but smoking it in clay pipes.

Briefly Monk explained Joel Lambourn’s connection with the proposed pharmaceutical bill.

“What has that to do with Zenia Gadney’s death?” she asked, not yet following his line of thought. “You don’t suspect him, do you?”

He smiled bleakly. “He committed suicide a couple of months ago.”

She was stunned. “That’s terrible. Poor man. Why did he take his own life? And if he was dead when she was killed, why are you concerned with him at all? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” he admitted. “I’m not even sure if there is a connection, except that he knew her and seems to have provided for her financially.”

Hester got up and made the tea and left it to sit for a moment or two to brew.

“Why did he kill himself?” she asked again. “You are sure it was suicide?”

“The official verdict is that he did it when the government rejected his report on the damage that unlabeled sales of opium can do. His reputation was destroyed and he couldn’t face it.”

“Was he so … fragile?” she said doubtfully. “If he really did kill himself, there must have been a better reason for it than that. Was he smoking opium himself? Or did Zenia Gadney end the affair, or threaten to make it public? Would she tell his wife-that he had very odd tastes, or something?” She leaned forward a little, frowning, the bubble and

squeak temporarily forgotten. “William, I don’t feel it makes sense, whether it has anything to do with Zenia Gadney’s murder or not.”

“I know.”

“Did you see this report Joel Lambourn wrote?”

“No. All the copies have been destroyed,” he replied. “And his wife, Dinah Lambourn, says she knew of his affair anyway.”

Hester was puzzled. “Do you believe her?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is she like?” she asked curiously, trying to picture a woman who had lost so much and was trying desperately to hold on to some kind of meaning in her life.

“Very emotional,” he said quietly. “But she has a kind of dignity you have to admire. She believed in him passionately, and still does. She thinks he was murdered.”

Hester was startled, and yet perhaps it was the obvious straw to grasp for.

“Could he have been?” she asked doubtfully.