Read William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession for Free Online Page B

manner. He took Monk to a small, chaotic room with books and papers piled everywhere, and cleared a chair by lifting everything off it and putting it all on the floor. He invited Monk to sit down, then perched on the windowsill, the only other space available.
    “Right!” he said with a smile. “What do you wanter know about Gilmer, poor devil?”
    “Everything you know,” Monk said. “Or as much as you have time and inclination to tell me.”
    “Ah! Well.” Walters settled himself more comfortably. It seemed he often sat on the sill. This was apparently the normal state of the room. How he found anything was a miracle.
    Monk leaned back hopefully.
    Walters stared at the ceiling. “About twenty-nine when he died. Tubercular. Thin. Haunted sort of look to his face, but good features. Not surprised artists wanted to paint him. That’s what he did, you know? Yes, I suppose you do know.” He seemed to be waiting for confirmation.
    Monk nodded. “I was told that.”
    “Only saw him when he was dead,” Walters went on. He spoke quite casually, but his eyes never left Monk’s face, and Monk formed the very clear impression that he was being measured and nothing about him taken for granted. Hecould imagine Walters writing notes on him the moment he was gone, and adding them to the file on Gilmer, and that Walters would know exactly where in this chaos the file was.
    Monk already knew the name of the artist from Casbolt, but he did not say so.
    “Fellow called FitzAlan,” Walters went on when Monk did not speak. “Quite famous. Found Gilmer in Edinburgh, or somewhere up that way. Brought him down here and took him in. Paid him a lot. Then grew tired of him, for whatever reason, and threw him out.” He waited to see Monk’s reaction to this piece of information.
    Monk said nothing, keeping his expression bland.
    Walters understood, and smiled. It was a measuring of wits, of professionalism, and now they both acknowledged it.
    “He drifted from one artist to another,” Walters said with a little shake of his head. “Downhill all the time. Be all right for a while, then he seemed to quarrel and get thrown out again. Could’ve left of his own choice, of course, but since he had nowhere to go, and his health was getting worse, seems unlikely.”
    Monk tried to imagine the young man, alone, far from home and increasingly ill. Why would he keep provoking such disagreements? He could not afford it, and he must have known that. Was he a man of ungoverned temper? Had he become an unusable model, the ravages of his disease spoiling his looks? Or were the relationships those of lovers, or by then simply user and used, and when the user grew bored the used was discarded for someone else? It was a sad and ugly picture, whichever of these answers was true.
    “How did he die?” he asked.
    Walters watched him very steadily, his eyes almost unblinking. “Doctor said it was consumption,” he replied. “But he’d been knocked around pretty badly as well. Not exactly murder, not technically, but morally I reckon it was. I’d find a way to beat the daylights out of any man who treated a dog like that man’d been used. I don’t care what he did to get by or what his nature was.” Under the calm of his manner therewas an anger so hot he dared not let it go, but Monk saw it behind his eyes, and in the rigid set of his shoulders and in his arms where the fingers were stiff on the windowsill, knuckles white.
    He had found Walters instantly agreeable. Now he liked him the more.
    “Did you ever get anybody for it?” he asked, although he knew the answer.
    “No. But I haven’t stopped looking,” Walters replied. “If you find anybody in your … help for your friend … I’d be obliged.” He looked at Monk curiously now, trying to assess where his loyalties lay and exactly what sort of “friend” he had.
    Monk himself was not sure. The blackmail letter Alberton had shown him was comparatively innocuous. It was