Everyone he saw was drinking, showing off, always with a roving eye looking for more and greater pleasure. When Monk demanded their attention, they were annoyed and disinclined to look at the drawing for more than a second or two before denying having seen such a cravat before.

Monk’s temper began to fray. He was still not sure he wanted to find whoever had wrapped this beautiful piece of silk around Parfitt’s neck and tightened it until he was dead. If the law had done it with an ordinary piece of hempen rope, they would have called it justice.

What he wanted was the man who’d put up the money to buy and furnish the boat, who befriended those with weaknesses. It was he who had brought men to that dark place on the river, where they could feel the excitement of danger, where the lazy blood suddenly pumped harder with horror, the scent of pain, and the knowledge that they were flirting with ruin. He had carefully photographed the obscenity. Then, when the blood was cold, clogging again in the veins with familiar safety, he would tell them that there was an indelible record of what they had done, and their own private dabbling in hell would cost them money—for the rest of their lives.

Monk followed a winding gravel pathway to a graceful pavilion under the trees, and stood watching men and women parade by, their faces garish for a moment under the lights. A short man with a black mustache linked arms with a girl half his age. Her ample flesh strained at her bodice. Her laughter sounded vaguely tinny, as if it were forced through her throat. Many of those women were paid for what they did.

Another couple strolled past; his hat was askew, her red skirts swaying. The men were buying pleasures they could not win at home. Perhaps they were clumsy, greedy, or inadequate? Perhaps the sanctity of the home prevented the passion they had been taught a lady did not enjoy? It was more likely that love of any kind was the last thing in their hearts. They might need pain, danger, or simply endless variety.

They were all around him, laughing too loudly, the women too brightly colored.

In all of it Monk could sense a pervasive loneliness, a compulsion, not an enjoyment.

He approached a man selling tickets to one of the dance floors.

“I want to be discreet,” he said with a very slight smile. “There are gentlemen here who would rather not have it known that they take their pleasures in such a place. Or should I say, they perhaps prefer the darkness, if you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said guardedly. “Can’t say as I can do anything about that.”