“You have explored every other possibility than the one that Caleb killed him, because you think it more likely.” She leaned back in her chair again, and finally became aware of her skirt near the fender and almost automatically tweaked it away. “And I suppose I cannot blame you. Every day I daresay some man deserts his wife and children, either for money or another woman. But I knew Angus. He was a man to whom dishonor was not only abhorrent, it was frightening. He avoided it as another might have the touch of leprosy or the plague.” Her voice at last lost its steadiness and cracked with the effort of control. “He was a truly good man, Mr. Monk, a man who knew evil for the ugliness and the ruin it is. It had no disguise of charm for him.”

His intelligence told him it was a bereaved woman speaking with the hindsight of love, and his instinct told him it was the truth. This is how he had always looked in her eyes, and although she admired it wholeheartedly, it also exasperated or oppressed her at times.

“Now so many days have passed,” she said very quietly, “I fear it may be beyond anyone's ability to prove what has happened to him.”

He felt guilty, which was unreasonable. Even if he had followed Angus on the very day he disappeared, he might still not have been able to prove murder against Caleb. There were enough ways of disposing of a body in Limehouse. The river was deep there, with its ebb tide to carry flotsam out and its cargo boats coming and going. At the moment there were also the common graves for the victims of typhoid, to name only a few. He put half a dozen more coals on the fire.

“You do not always need a body to presume death,” he said carefully, watching her face. “Although it may be a good deal harder to prove murder- and Caleb's guilt.”

“I don't care about Caleb's guilt.” Her eyes did not deviate from his face.

“God will take care of him.”

“But not of you?” he asked. “I would have thought you a great deal more deserving . . . and more urgent.”

“I cannot wait for charity, Mr. Monk,” she answered with some asperity.

He smiled. “I apologize. Of course not. But I should like to deal with Caleb before waiting for God. I am doing all I can, and I am much closer than I was last time we spoke. I have found a witness who saw Angus in Limehouse, on the day of his disappearance, in a tavern where he might easily have met Caleb. I'll find others. It takes time, but people will talk. It is just a matter of finding the right ones and persuading them to speak. I'll get Caleb himself, in the end.”