MONK WENT TO OLIVER Rathbone’s office in the city late in the morning, and was informed courteously by his clerk that Sir Oliver had gone to luncheon. Monk duly returned at half past two, and was still obliged to wait. It might have been simpler to catch Rathbone with time to spare at his home in the evening, but Monk needed to speak with him when Margaret was not present.

At quarter to three Rathbone came back, entering with a smile on his face and the easy elegant manner he usually had when the taste of victory was still fresh on his tongue.

“Hello, Monk,” he said with surprise. “Got another case for me already?” He came in and closed the door quietly. His pale gray suit was perfectly cut and fitted to his slender figure. The sunlight shone in through the long windows, catching the smoothness of his fair hair and the touches of gray at the temples.

“I hope I don’t,” Monk answered. “But I can’t let this go by default.”

“What are you talking about?” Rathbone sat down and crossed his legs. He appeared reasonably comfortable, even if in fact he was not. “You look as if you have just opened someone’s bedroom door by mistake.”

“I may have,” Monk said wryly. The reference was meant only as an illustration, but it was too close to the truth.

Rathbone regarded him levelly, his face serious now. “It’s not like you to be oblique. How bad is it?”

Monk hated what he had to say. Even now he was wondering if there were some last, desperate way to avoid it. “That night on Phillips’s ship, after we found Scuff, and the rest of the boys, you told me that Margaret’s father was behind it—”

“I told you that Sullivan said so. He told me while you were occupied with Phillips.” Rathbone cut across him quickly. “Sullivan had no proof, and he’s dead by his own hand now. Whatever he knew, or believed, is gone with him.”

“The proof may be dead”—Monk did not move his eyes from Rathbone’s—“but the question isn’t. Someone is behind it. Phillips hadn’t the money or the connections in society to run the boat and find the clients who were vulnerable, let alone blackmail them afterward.”

“Could it have been Sullivan himself?” Rathbone suggested, and then looked away. Monk did not bother to answer—they both knew Sullivan had not had the nerve nor the intelligence it would have required. He’d been a man ruined by his appetite, and eventually killed by it. In the end, he’d been one more victim.