him caring. He had never been afraid to commit his friendship.
"No," Monk answered. "She described three men, one tall and fairly slight, one shorter and leaner built, and one of average height and thin. She did not see or remember their faces."
"That could be Rhys Duff, and Duke and Arthur Kynaston, but it's not proof," Evan argued. "A decent defence lawyer would tear that apart."
Monk linked his fingers together in a steeple and stared at Evan. "When this defence lawyer you have in mind asks why on earth Rhys Duff should murder his father," he said. "He was a decent, well-bred young man who, like any other of his age and class, occasionally took his pleasures with a prostitute. Simply because his father was a trifle straight-laced about such things, even a little pompous perhaps, is not cause for anything beyond a quarrel, and perhaps a reduction in his allowance. This provides their answer: because Leighton Duff interrupted his son and his friends raping and beating a young woman.
He was horrified and appalled. He would not accept it as part of any young man's natural appetites. Therefore he had to be silenced."
Evan followed the reasoning perfectly. A possible motive had been the one thing lacking before. A quarrel was easy to understand, even a few blows struck. But a fight to the death over the issue of using a prostitute was absurd. The issue of a series of rapes of increasing violence, by three of them together, and caught red-handed, was another matter entirely. It was repellent, and it was criminal. It was also escalating to the degree when sooner or later it would become murder.
To imagine three young men, fresh from the victory of violence against a terrified victim, beating to death the one man who threatened their exposure, was sickening but not difficult to believe.
"Yes, I see," he agreed with a sudden sadness. They were hideous crimes, so ugly he should have been overwhelmed with revulsion and a towering anger against the young men who had committed them. Yet what filled his mind was the picture of Rhys as he had seen him on the cobbles, soaked with blood, insensible, and yet still breathing, still just barely alive.
And then leaping to his mind came the sight of him in the hospital bed, his face swollen and blue with bruising as he opened his eyes and tried desperately to speak, choking in horror, gagging, drowning in pain.
Evan felt no sense of victory, not even the usual loosening of tension inside himself that knowledge brought. There was no peace in this.
"You had better take me to these witnesses," he said flatly. "I presume they will tell me the same thing? Will they swear in court, do you suppose?" He did not know what he hoped. Even if they would not, nothing could alter the truth of it.
"You can make them," Monk answered with impatience in his voice. "The majesty of the law will persuade them. Once in the witness box they have no reason to lie. That is not your decision anyway."
He was right. There was nothing to argue about.
"Then I'll take it to Runcorn," Evan went on. He smiled with a downward turn of his lips. "He won't be amused that you solved the case."
A curious look crossed Monk's face, a mixture of irony and something which could have been regret, or even a form of guilt. Evan was aware of uncertainty in him, a hesitation as if there were something else he wanted to talk about, but was unsure how to begin. He was making no move to rise from his comfortable chair.
"I know he refused to pursue the rapes," Evan started. "But with this it's different. No one will bother prosecuting that when there is the murder. That's what we'll charge them with. We will only prove the rapes to establish motive. The ones in Seven Dials will be by implication."
"I know."
Evan was puzzled. Why did Monk's contempt for Runcorn run so deep?
Runcorn was pompous at times, but it was his manner of defending himself from the triviality he felt in his life, perhaps the loneliness. He was a man who seemed to know little else but the concern of his work, the value it gave him, even his relationships with others. Evan realised he knew nothing whatever of the man Runcorn was when he left the police station, except that he never spoke of family or other friends, other pastimes. Had Monk ever considered such things?
"Do