Acceptable Loss

CHAPTER 6

Hester felt awkward standing on the steps of Lord Cardew’s beautiful house in Cheyne Walk at ten o’clock the following morning. It was a bright, windy day, and the river was choppy as the tide came in. Pleasure boats were bobbing up and down, people clutching hats, ribbons flying. The russet-colored sails of a barge billowed out, the hull listing over.

She had brought news of death before, and of maiming, burning, disfigurement. There was never an easy way to deal with grief, nothing to say that could make it any different. If there was healing with time, then it came from within.

It was difficult to speak with someone whose only living child was accused of something as hideous as this. If he had killed someone in a fight or, more cold-bloodedly, in revenge, it would have been bad enough. But to be tied in the mind with a man as fearful as Mickey Parfitt, to have known him, used his services, and said nothing-that left a stain that would be indelible.

And yet it seemed unacceptably cruel to ignore the father’s pain as if it were of no importance, or an embarrassment one would rather avoid.

The door was opened by a butler whose expression was guarded, his eyes already showing the strain.

“Good morning, madam. May I help you?”

“Good morning.” She produced her card. “Mr. Rupert Cardew has been extremely generous to me and to the clinic for the poor that I run. It seems an appropriate time to offer Lord Cardew any service I can perform for him.” She smiled very slightly, sufficient only to show goodwill.

The stiffness in the butler’s face eased. “Certainly, madam. If you care to come inside, I will inform his lordship that you are here.”

She dropped her card onto the small silver tray, then followed the butler through the hall with its carved mantel and exquisitely wrought plaster ceiling and cornices. He left her in the firelit morning room with its faded carpets and the seascapes on the walls, the numerous bookcases, the spines lettered in gold, but of odd sizes. She knew at a glance that they were bought to read, not for show.

The butler excused himself, closing the door. In other circumstances Hester might have looked at the titles of the books. It was always interesting to know what other people read, but she could not keep her mind on anything at the moment. Even in the silence, she kept imagining footsteps in the hall; her mind raced to find words that would sound anything but futile.

She paced from the bookcase to the window and back again. She was staring at the garden when the door finally opened, catching her by surprise.

“I apologize for keeping you waiting, Mrs. Monk,” Lord Cardew said quietly, closing the door behind him.

“It is gracious of you to see me at all,” she answered. “I would not have been surprised had you declined. Especially since, now that I am here, I hardly know what to say that makes any sense-only that if I can be of service to you, then I wish to be.”

Cardew looked exhausted. His skin was papery, as if there were no blood in the flesh beneath it. But it was the emptiness in his eyes that she found the most painful. There was a kind of shapeless panic in them, a despair too big for him to handle.

“Thank you, but I have no idea what anyone can do,” he replied. “But your kindness is a small light in a very large darkness.” He was a slender man, but he must once have been elegant, supple, like a military man. He reminded her of the soldiers she had known in the past. The whole Crimean War seemed to belong to another age now. He also made her think of her own father, perhaps only because he also had looked older than he was, as if the weight of failure were crushing him.

She had not been at home when her father had most needed her. He had died alone while she was nursing strangers in Sevastopol. He had trusted where he should not have; a man with every appearance of honor had deceived him totally. Her father was one of many so betrayed, but the debts he could not meet had broken his spirit. He had believed that taking his own life was the only course left him.

That too, Hester had not been at home to prevent, or to aid her mother’s grief. What she could have done had never been spoken of; it was simply her absence at the time of need that wounded.

“We can find out what really happened,” she said impulsively. “It can’t be as simple as it seems. Either it was someone else altogether who killed Parfitt, and Rupert doesn’t know who, or he does know but he is defending them because he believes that is the right thing to do. Or possibly he did kill Parfitt, but for a reason that would make it understandable.” She waited for Cardew to answer.

He struggled with an emotion so sharp, the pain of it was visible in his face. “My dear Mrs. Monk, for all the help you give to the poor women who come to you in their distress, you can have no idea what kind of world men like Parfitt inhabit. I cannot be responsible for your stumbling into such abomination, even by accident. But your kindness is most touching. Your compassion is-”

“Pointless,” she interrupted him gently, “if you will not permit me to be what help I can. I have been a nurse on the battlefield. I walked among the dead and the dying after Balaklava. I was in the hospital in Sevastopol, with the rats, the hunger, and the disease. I have nursed in a fever hospital in the slums here in London, and I have waited in a locked house for the bubonic plague to run its course. Please don’t tell me what I can or cannot do for a friend who is clearly in trouble.”

He had no idea how to answer her. She was an example of all the compassion he idealized in women, and at the same time she broke the only mold with which he was familiar.

She seized the chance to continue. “I know at least something of what they did on such boats, Lord Cardew. I was there when they arrested Jericho Phillips, and he escaped, and then was murdered also. If Mickey Parfitt was of the same nature, there is much to argue in defense of anyone who rid the world of him. But to defend Rupert before a court, we need to know the truth. You are quite right in supposing such a creature is well beyond the knowledge of most people fit to sit on a jury.”

“Surely the police-,” he began.

“It is not their job to find mitigating circumstances, only to prove what happened. Did Rupert tell you what that was? I imagine he may not have wished to.”

“It is a little late to spare my feelings,” Cardew said drily, the ghost of a smile in his eyes. “He said he did not kill Parfitt. I would give everything I have to be able to believe him, but …” He looked away from her, then back again, his eyes slowly filling with tears. “But his past choices make that impossible. I’m sorry, Mrs. Monk, but I do not see how you can help. I would prefer that you did not risk any danger to yourself, either in person or in the form of the distress such knowledge would cause you. The things one sees, one cannot afterward forget.”

She gave him a tiny smile, an echo of the one he had given her. “I will not do anything against my will, Lord Cardew. Thank you for your kindness in receiving me.”

She returned home deep in thought, weighing Lord Cardew’s words. He longed to believe in Rupert’s innocence, and yet could not. Perhaps it was his fear that prevented him, like the vertigo that draws one to the edge of a precipice, and would have one plunge over it, simply to be free from the terror.

But according to Monk’s description of the knotted cravat, the crime had not been committed in fear or panic. It takes more than a few seconds to tie half a dozen tight knots in a silk cravat. Who would create such a weapon, thereby ruining a beautiful garment, unless they intended to use it? No argument of self-defense would stand against that kind of reasoning, unless Rupert were held prisoner somewhere, with time unobserved, and with his hands free to do such a thing.

She had offered to help, remembering only his kindness, his wit, the unostentatious generosity with which he’d given so much money. But how well did she really know him? All kinds of people could be charming. It required imagination, understanding, the ability to know what pleases others, and perhaps a certain sense of humor, an ease of wit. It did not need honesty or the will to place others before oneself. And as she looked back now, picturing him in her mind, she also remembered an anxiety in him, a sudden avoidance of her eyes, which she had taken for embarrassment at being in a place like the clinic. But perhaps it had been shame at the memory of his own acts, uglier than anything those women had endured.

What she could not tell Lord Cardew was that, for her own reasons, she needed to know the truth of what had happened to Mickey Parfitt. If some victim such as Rupert had killed him, then his trade was over. But if it were a rival, or even the man who had staked him the original price of the boat, then as soon as Parfitt’s murder was solved, and the hue and cry had died down, the whole hideous business would begin again exactly as before. The only difference would be the men running it for the giant behind the scenes, and probably another site to moor the boat. She needed to know it was over, for Scuff’s sake. The dreams would not leave him until he had seen more than Jericho Phillips dead, or Mickey Parfitt.

Was Rupert Cardew no more than another victim, one who’d struck back and would die for it?

When she reached home, she found Scuff in the kitchen eating a thick slice of bread spread with butter and piled with jam. He stopped chewing when he saw her, his mouth full, the bread held tightly in both his hands.

She tried to hide a smile. At last he was feeling sufficiently at home to take something to eat when he wanted it. She must watch to make certain it did not extend to more than bread-for example, the cold pie put aside for tonight’s supper.

“Good idea,” she said casually. “I’ll have a piece too. Would you like a cup of tea with it? I would.” She walked past him to fill the kettle and put it on the cooktop.

He swallowed. She heard the gulp.

“Yeah,” he said casually. “Shall I cut it for yer?”

“Yes, please. But I’ll have a little less jam, if you don’t mind.” She did not turn to watch him do it, but concentrated on the task of making tea.

“Where yer bin?” he asked, elaborately unconcerned. She heard the sawing of the knife on the crust of the bread.

She knew he was thinking about Mickey Parfitt. Monk had told him elements of the truth; the details did not matter.

“To see Lord Cardew,” she replied, putting the blue and white teapot on the edge of the stove to warm. “I’m afraid I let my feelings run away with me, and I offered to help him do something for Rupert.” Now she turned to look at him, needing to know how he felt about it. She saw a wince of fear in his face, then the immediate hiding of it. Was he afraid for her, of losing the new, precious safety he had?

“ ’Ow could we ’elp ’im, if ’e done Mickey Parfitt?” he asked, his eyes fixed on hers. “They’ll ’ang ’im, never mind as Parfitt should a bin chucked in the river the day ’e were born.”

“Well, there must have been lots of people who would like to see Parfitt dead,” Hester began. “It is just possible it wasn’t Rupert who actually killed him. But even if he did do it, there might have been something that made it not as bad as straight murder.”

“Like wot?” Scuff was balancing the bread in his hands, ready to cut more when he was free to concentrate on it.

“I’m not quite sure,” she admitted. “Self-defense is one. And sometimes it’s an accident, maybe a real accident, or maybe you’re partly to blame because you were being very careless, not so much that you didn’t mean to kill anyone so much as you just didn’t care.”

He looked at her, biting his lips anxiously. “ ’E could a done that? I mean, killed ’im by accident, like?”

“No,” she said honestly. “I don’t think so. Actually, his father said that he claimed he didn’t do it at all. And lots of people must have hated Parfitt.”

“D’yer believe ’im, then?”

“I don’t know. His father said he has behaved pretty badly in the past, but not as badly as that. I need to know more about him, perhaps things his father doesn’t know about because Rupert was too ashamed to say. I’ll be out for quite a while, I think.”

“ ’Oo are ye gonna ask, then? Other toffs, an’ the like? Will ’is friends tell yer? I wouldn’t tell on a friend, specially not to a copper’s wife.” Then he realized that was silly. “ ’Ceptin’ I don’t s’pose you’ll tell ’em ’oo yer are.”

She smiled, taking the now steaming kettle off the stove and warming the teapot before putting the leaves in. “Of course not. I’m going to the clinic first to ask a few questions of the women we’ve got in at the moment. There, at least, I have something of an advantage. Then tomorrow I’ll move a little farther afield.”

He nodded. “Yer think as mebbe ’e done a good thing, killin’ Mickey Parfitt, an’ all?”

“I wouldn’t push it quite that far,” she said cautiously. “But not totally bad.”

“Ye’re right.” Scuff nodded again, more vehemently. “We gotter chip in. Yer gonna make that tea? It’s steamin’ its ’ead off. An’ there’s more jam.”

When Hester arrived at the clinic, she began by going over the books with Squeaky Robinson.

“We’re doing well,” he said with considerable satisfaction. He pointed to the place on the page where the final tally was. Even his lugubrious nature could not but be pleased by it. “And we don’t need much,” he added. “Just new plates as they got broke. We’ve got sheets, even spare nightshirts, towels. Got medicines-laudanum, quinine, brandy, all sorts.”

Hester avoided his eyes. “I know. It’s excellent.”

“What are you going to do, then?” he asked.

She thought of pretending that she did not know what he meant. “Use it wisely,” she replied.

“Yeah, you better,” he agreed. “In’t no more where that come from. Poor bastard’s gonna hang, by all accounts. ’Less, of course, someone does something about it?”

“What did you have in mind, Squeaky?” Then immediately she regretted asking. Whatever he had was probably illegal. He had not lost his connections in the criminal underworld, nor had his nature changed, only his loyalties. He had not needed to go looking for Claudine Burroughs when she had gone on the wild adventure that had ended with her seeing a man she thought was Arthur Ballinger, in the alley outside a shop that sold pornography, but he had done so out of loyalty to Claudine. Because Ballinger had been looking at a picture so obscene it had horrified her, she had fled into the deeper alleys, finally to become totally exhausted and lost. Only Squeaky’s perseverance had saved her.

He had never been a hero before. He loved it.

“Well?” Hester pressed him.

“D’you reckon Cardew was framed?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

“I don’t know,” she said frankly. “There are certainly plenty of other people who might have wanted Parfitt dead.”

“Yeah,” Squeaky agreed. “Thing is, how come Parfitt didn’t know that? What kind of an idiot stands alone on the deck of a boat and lets a man get on board he knows hates him? I wouldn’t! And believe me, if you’ve got a nice little business in the flesh trade, you know who your rivals are. You’re prepared. You keep folks around you as you can trust, to take care of your back, like.” He was watching her, waiting to see her reaction.

“Yes, I suppose you would. So he must have been attacked by someone he thought was safe.”

“Yeah. Like someone what had come to pay him money for something they’d want more of in another little while. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

She let out her breath slowly. “Unless you have a temper you can’t control and you don’t think very far ahead. And also you are used to having someone else clean up behind you so you get out of paying the consequences. I think I had better find out a lot more about Rupert Cardew, if I can.”

“And help him,” Squeaky confirmed. “I don’t mind dealing in women what wants to be in the business anyway, but kids is another thing. And blackmail’s bad for business. Charge a fair price, and when it’s paid, you’re square, I say.”

She gave him a weary look.

He shrugged. “Fair’s fair,” he retorted. “You save Mr. Cardew for any reason you like. I say save him because Mickey Parfitt needed putting away anyhow. He gives the business a bad name, and ’cos Mr. Cardew was very generous to us. We could get used to living this way. Does a lot of good to them that can’t get nobody else to help them.”

“Very pious, Squeaky,” Hester said.

“Thank you,” he replied. It had indeed been a compliment, rather than sarcasm, but there was a gleam in his eye that was definitely understanding, and might even have been humor.

There was a brief knock on the door, and before Hester could reply, it opened and Margaret Rathbone came in. She was dressed in very smart deep green, but there was little color in her face, and her eyes were cold.

“Good morning, Hester. Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all,” Hester assured her. “I was about to leave.” She felt more awkward than she could explain to herself, as if she were being devious in intending to help Rupert Cardew as much as was possible. Why? It had nothing to do with Margaret’s father, except that in her mind she still at least half believed that he had some interest in the boat, even if only to find the vulnerable men who would participate.

“I wouldn’t consider buying any more new crockery than necessary,” Margaret continued. “I’m afraid our source of funds has been radically reduced.” There was a look in her face that might have been pity, but Hester felt it was distaste.

“I am aware of that,” she responded as expressionlessly as she could manage, but there was still a touch of asperity in her voice. “But it is only an accusation so far. It has yet to be proved.”

Margaret’s brows rose. “Surely you don’t think Mr. Monk is mistaken?” She too was trying to keep the irony from her tone, and like Hester was not entirely successful.

“I don’t think he is mistaken,” Hester retorted. “But I am aware, as he is, that it is always a possibility. Evidence can be interpreted more than one way. New facts emerge. Sometimes what people say proves to be untrue.”

Margaret gave a tight little smile. “I’m sorry, Hester, but you are deluding yourself. I understand that you found Rupert charming, but I’m afraid he is a thoroughly dissolute young man. If you could see him as he really is, I cannot believe that you would have such pity for him. It belongs far more to his victims.”

“Like Mickey Parfitt?” Hester snapped back. “I cannot agree with you.” She turned briefly to Squeaky Robinson. “However, Lady Rathbone is quite correct about the funds. In the meantime we shall spend only as necessary, and then with due caution.” She swept past Margaret on the way out, without inquiring whether it was she or Squeaky whom Margaret had come to see, disliking herself for her anger, and unable to control it.

She went first to the kitchen for a mug of tea, then back upstairs into the first room along the corridor. In it was Phoebe Weller, a woman somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, with lovely auburn hair, a lush body, and a face disfigured by the scars of pox.

“How are you, Phoebe?” Hester said conversationally.

Phoebe was lying back in the bed, her eyes half closed, a tiny smile on her face. She was not in a half coma, as a casual observer might have thought, but was half-asleep, dreaming that she might always sleep alone, in a clean bed, and need do nothing hard or dangerous to assure the next cup of hot tea or slice of bread and jam.

She woke up when she heard Hester saying her name. “Oh … I don’t think as I’m well yet,” she whispered.

“Probably not,” Hester agreed, tongue in cheek. “Would a fresh cup of tea help?”

Phoebe opened her eyes and sat up smartly, ignoring the bruised leg and wrenched ankle and the heavily dressed wound on her leg that had brought her here. “Ye’re right, an’ all, so ’elp me, it would.”

Hester passed it to her, and she took the tea with both hands.

Hester sat down in the chair next to the bed and made herself comfortable, smoothing her gray skirts, as if she meant to stay.

“I’m gonna get better!” Phoebe said. “I just need another few days.”

“I’m sure you are,” Hester agreed amiably. “You’ve worked in one or two different places, haven’t you?”

“Yeah …” The answer was guarded.

“In some of the posh areas, Chelsea way, and farther up the river?”

“Yeah …”

“Ever heard anything about Rupert Cardew, Lord Cardew’s son? I need to know, Phoebe, and I need the truth.”

Phoebe stared at her.

“Just a friendly warning,” Hester went on. “I don’t care what the truth is, good or bad, but if you lie to me and I catch you, next time someone beats you, you’ll be in the street, and the cabs’ll run over you before I stretch out a hand to help. Do you understand? The truth is what I need.”

Phoebe considered it, clearly weighing one possibility against the other.

Hester waited.

“Wot d’yer wanna know?” Phoebe said at last.

“Do you know girls who’ve slept with him, for money?”

“Course, fer money,” Phoebe said patiently. “Don’t matter if ’e’s ’andsome as the devil ’isself, an’ kind, an’ makes yer laugh, a girl’s still ter eat, and there’s yer protectors wot needs their share.”

“Do you know anyone who slept with Rupert Cardew?”

“Yeah! Told yer! Dunnit meself, couple o’ times.”

Hester squashed the flicker of revulsion. It was stupid. What had she imagined Rupert had done that he knew the street women so well, even cared enough to give money to someone helping them?

“What is his character like?” she said.

“Cripes! Yer in’t thinkin’ o’-”

“No, I’m not,” Hester assured her tartly. “But if I were?”

“Yer in’t!”

“I told you. But why not?”

“ ’Cos ’e’s funny, makes yer laugh till yer burst yer stays, an’ ’e in’t never mean about payin’, but ’e’s got a temper like a cornered rat, ’e ’as.”

“Did he hit you?” Hester felt cold, and there was a churning in the pit of her stomach.

Phoebe opened her eyes wide. “Me? No! But ’e beat the shit out o’ Joe Biggins fer crossin’ ’im up. Not only ’im. Spoiled, I reckon. In’t used ter bein’ told no by anyone, an’ din’t take it kindly. I ’eard say ’e near killed some bleedin’ pimp wot got on the wrong side of ’im. Dunno wot about. Beat one other poor sod once, jus’ another bleedin’ punter wot got up ’is nose. Paid ’im a lot o’ money not ter make a fuss.”

“Why? Do you know?”

Phoebe shrugged pale, smooth shoulders. “No. Could a bin any-thin’. ’Eard it were bad. ’Alf killed the stupid sod. Broke ’is arms an’ ’is face, an’ cracked ’is ’ead. Told yer, ’e’s got a temper like yer wouldn’t credit someone wot acts the gentleman most o’ the time. Treats yer right, like yer worth summink. Please an’ thank yer. On the other ’and, never takes less than his money’s worth neither! ’Ealthy as an ’orse.” She gave a shrug and a smile, woman to woman.

Hester nodded, trying to keep her expression one of mild interest, no more. There were things she would prefer not to have known. It was peculiarly embarrassing. “Does he drink a lot?”

“Pretty fair. Seen worse.”

“Do you know other girls he’s … been with?”

“Dozen or so. Wot’s this about? Wot’s ’e done?”

“He’s accused of killing someone.”

“If it’s a pimp, then I reckon as they’re probably right. Never growed up, that one. Loses ’is ’ead an’ smashes things, like a child wot no one ever walloped when they should ’ave. My pa’d ’ave tanned me backside till I ate standin’ up fer a week if I carried on like ’e does sometimes. Sorry, miss, but yer wanted the truth, an’ that’s it.”

“He used lots of different women? Why, do you think? Why not stick to the same ones?”

“Bored, I s’pec. Some o’ them toffs bore easy.”

“Ever like little girls, really young?”

“Wot?” Phoebe looked horrified. “Not as I knows of. Perhaps go fer older, ’e would. More experience. Filthy temper, like I said, but ’e could be kind too. Wouldn’t do nothin’ filthy with little girls, like. Never took advantage o’ no one new or scared, far as I know. An’ yer get to ’ear who ter be careful of. We got ter take care o’ each other.”

“And boys?”

“Wot yer mean, ‘boys’? Jeez!” She looked genuinely shocked. “Yer never sayin’ ’e’s doin’ it wi’ boys. ’Ell, not ’im! It’s against the law, but that don’t stop them as want ter-girls or boys. But not ’im.”

“Are you sure?”

“Course I’m sure! Jeez!”

Hester thanked her, and went to ask several other patients for their opinions also. Then, armed with names, she went to other street corners where she found old patients who knew her name and reputation, and were willing to speak to her.

Most had never heard of Rupert Cardew, but those who had bore out what Phoebe had said: funny, honest, at times kind, but with an uncontrollable temper, for which he seemed to take no responsibility. They believed him perfectly capable of killing in a rage, but no one had heard even a murmur that his taste ran to anything except women: well-endowed ones rather than thin, and certainly not childlike. He appreciated laughter, a little spirit, and most definitely good conversation. All of that she reluctantly recognized in them, and thus she could not help but believe them.

She went home late in the evening, tired and hungry, her feet sore. She had a whole lot more information, but she was not sure that she was really any wiser. Rupert could certainly have killed someone in a rage; in fact he was very fortunate that he had not already done so. But the more she learned of him, the less he seemed to have any reason to kill Mickey Parfitt in particular. Lord Cardew had paid his son’s debts when they must have outgrown his allowance. Time and time again he had rescued Rupert from the consequences of his self-indulgence and lack of discipline. Surely Parfitt, of all people, he would have paid off?

Or had there been some quarrel between Rupert and Parfitt that was deeper than blackmail money? Parfitt made his living from pornography and blackmail; he would know just how far to push before he drove any of his victims to despair. And after Jericho Phillips’s death, wouldn’t he have been even more careful, erring on the side of caution rather than ruthlessness? A blackmail victim driven to either murder or suicide is of no use.

Monk was quiet and sunk in his own thoughts over their late supper. He mentioned only that he was still trying to examine the trade on the boat and see if there were any other witnesses who would be useful. Under Orme’s supervision, the Foundling Hospital matron had spoken to the boys from the boat, but they were too frightened and bewildered to say anything of use, and she had very quickly drawn the interviews to a close. The matron understood what was in the balance, but her first care was to the children she had there, not future victims. White-faced and holding a child in her arms, she had told Orme to leave.

He had understood and had gone out silently, sick with grief.

Now Hester cleared away the dishes and said nothing. Scuff looked from one to the other of them, troubled, but he asked no questions. He went upstairs to bed early.

Monk had already gone the next morning by the time Hester served breakfast for Scuff and herself. She had made porridge because she knew he liked it, and it kept him from being hungry, well up to midday.

“Did ’e do it, then?” he asked when his bowl was empty and he was ready for the toast, jam, and tea. His face was earnest. His eyes searched hers, trying to understand, looking for something to stop the fear growing inside him.

She hung up the striped dish towel she had been drying the dishes with and came back to the table. She sat down and poured herself a cup of tea.

“You know, I’m still not sure,” she said honestly. “It’s very difficult to be certain that you know all the things you need to in order to be right.”

Scuff nodded slowly, as if he understood, but she could see from the trouble in his eyes that he didn’t.

“Wot’s Mr. Monk doin’? Why’s ’e all angry?” His voice dropped. “Did I do summink?”

“No,” Hester said, keeping her voice level with difficulty, trying to swallow back the emotion. “We’re all upset because we like Rupert, and we don’t want him to have done it, but we can’t help thinking that he did.”

“Oh!” His face cleared only slightly. “Would yer still like ’im, even if it turns out ye’re right, an’ ’e did?”

“Yes, of course we would. You don’t stop caring about people because they make mistakes. But that wouldn’t save him from the law.”

“They’ll ’ang ’im?”

“Probably.” The idea was so horrible, she found her throat tight and the tears stinging hard behind her eyes. She tried to force the picture out of her head, and failed.

Scuff took a deep breath. “Then we’d better do summink, eh?” he said, his eyes steady on her face.

“Yes. I’d intended to start this morning.”

He stuffed the rest of his toast into his mouth and stood up.

She started to say that he shouldn’t come because it could be dangerous, and because he really couldn’t help. Then she knew that both were wrong. Instead she took the last swallow of her tea and stood up as well. He needed to be part of this.

She already knew all she could learn of Rupert, and none of it helped. Now she needed to know more of Mickey Parfitt, the business in general and his part in it in particular. Her first instinct was to protect Scuff from the details of such a trade. Then she remembered with misery that he was already more familiar with them than she was. The only question was how much reminding him of them might increase his nightmares.

Or would he ever get over them if he always looked the other way? Might they even grow larger and larger, fed by her belief that they were too terrible to be faced?

“Where are we gonna begin?” he asked, standing by the front door.

“That’s the problem,” Hester admitted. “There are a lot of ‘maybes’ and not much certainty. It might be useful to speak to Rupert’s friends, but I doubt they would say anything to me if it made them look bad, which most of it would.”

Scuff’s face was creased up with disgust.

“We can try other prostitutes,” she suggested. “There may have been talk that we could follow up, but I think that could take a long time. Squeaky Robinson gave me a few names we can begin with.”

Scuff looked at her guardedly. “Wot kind o’ people?”

“People who owe Squeaky a favor or two. And I know some like that myself-a couple of brothel-keepers, an abortionist, an apothecary.”

“I could go an’ ask Mr. Crow? If yer like?” he offered.

“We could go and ask,” she corrected him. “I think that’s an excellent idea. But do you know where to find him?”

“Course I do, but it in’t no decent place fer a lady ter come.” Now he looked worried.

“Scuff,” she said seriously, “I’ll make a bargain with you …”

He stared at her dubiously.

“I’ll look out for you, but not look after you, if you do the same for me.” She held out her hand to shake on it.

He considered for a moment or two, then gripped it in his small, thin fingers and shook. “Deal,” he confirmed.

They went straight from Paradise Place to Princes Stairs and took the ferry across to Wapping, past the police station that Monk commanded. Then they turned west along the High Street, at Scuff’s direction, toward the Pool of London and the biggest docks.

They did not talk. Scuff seemed to be watching and listening. His jacket was buttoned right up to his chin, and his cap was jammed hard onto his head. He had on new boots, his first that were actually a pair. Hester was sunk in her own contemplation of what she needed to learn and how much she could ask without endangering both of them. Pornography and prostitution were vast trades, and there was a great deal of money to be made in either of them. And of course there was a corresponding danger from the law. Not only profit but survival depended on knowing what not to say, and particularly who not to say it to.

It took them most of the morning amid the noise and traffic, the wagons and cranes and piles of cargo and timber, before they eventually found Crow in a tenement building on Jacob Street. It was just inland from St. Saviour’s Wharf, on the south side of the river.

Crow was a lanky man in his midthirties, with coal-black hair, which he wore thick, swept back off his high forehead, and long enough for it to sit on his collar at the back. He had a lugubrious face until he smiled-a broad, flashing grin showing excellent teeth.

They had only just caught him. He was coming down the steps with his black gladstone bag in his hands. He was dressed in a shabby frock coat and black trousers barely adequate to cover his long legs. He was clearly delighted to see Scuff, and his eyes went to him first, before he greeted Hester.

“Hello, Mrs. Monk! What are you doing in these parts? Trouble?”

“Of course,” she replied, holding out her hand.

He spread his own lean fingers and looked at them in distaste. “I’m filthy,” he said, shaking his head. His glance went to Scuff again, as if to reassure himself as to his well-being. Crow had dropped every other business to help search for Scuff when the boy had been kidnapped by Jericho Phillips.

Hester dropped her hand, smiling back at him. “You heard about the murder of Mickey Parfitt?” she asked, falling in step beside him as they walked back along the narrow street toward the river, stepping carefully to avoid the gutter.

“Of course,” Crow acknowledged. “No ill will, Mrs. Monk, but I hope you don’t find the poor sod that did for him. If you’ve come to ask me to help you, sorry but I’m too busy. You’d be surprised the number of sick people there are around here.” He looked up at the dense tenement buildings to the left and right of them, grimed with smoke and constantly dripping water from the eaves.

She glanced at him. His face was set in hard lines, the easy smile vanished. She had known him off and on since Monk’s first case on the river, nearly a year ago now, but she realized she had seen only the thinnest surface of his character. He was a man who never spoke of his background, but he had had a good deal of medical training and used it to help those on the edge of the law-animal or human-or in the iron grip of poverty. He took his payment in whatever form was offered-a debt in hand, if necessary, and kindness in return when it was needed.

She had no idea what had happened to prevent him from gaining his qualifications and practicing as a full doctor. His speech was not from the dockland area, but she could not place it. He cared for Scuff, and that was all that mattered. One knew far less about most people than one imagined. Parents, place and date of birth, education, all told less of the heart than a few actions under pressure when the cost was high.

“I’m afraid we already have a very good idea who it was.” She answered his challenge while watching her step as she picked her way over broken cobbles. “I’m trying to find a reason to cast doubt on his guilt, or if not that, then at least to show that he doesn’t deserve the rope.”

Crow was surprised. “You want him to get off?”

Hester would not have put it quite so bluntly, and she drew in her breath to deny it. Then she saw Scuff looking at her and realized that perhaps Crow was right, that that was what she wanted. It was difficult to answer the question honestly with Scuff between them, grasping every word.

“I want the trade finished, wiped out,” she said. “To do that I need to break the man behind it-the one with the money. I’d rather not sacrifice Rupert Cardew in the process.”

Crow’s eyes widened incredulously. “Would you like the crown jewels at the same time, maybe, just as a nice finish?” He skirted around a pile of refuse, and a rat scuttled away.

“Not particularly,” Hester answered, keeping her face perfectly straight. “I haven’t sufficient use for them. One would have to walk terribly upright to keep a crown from falling off. I don’t think I could do that.”

Scuff was puzzled.

“She’s joking,” Crow told him, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “At least I hope she is.”

“Half,” Hester conceded. Then she smiled. “I might be able to, but if I dropped anything, somebody else would have to pick it up for me.”

“If you were wearing a crown, I expect they’d feel obliged,” Crow answered.

Scuff laughed, but the fear of being lost again, separated from her, was tight underneath, as sharp as a knife point.

They all walked in silence for a couple of hundred yards past more boxes, barrels, and piles of wood. Finally they reached the steps to the ferry to the north bank. The tide was turning and the water was choppy. Strings of lighters were making their way upriver laden with coal, timber, and round wooden barrels lashed together. A coastal barge passed by, sails full-set, billowing out. The light was bright on the water, and the wind caught the edges of the waves, whipping up a fine spray.

“I want to know the details the police won’t be able to find,” Hester told Crow after they were ashore on the north bank. “Any whispers.” She did not really know what she was asking for. The facts said that Rupert was guilty. But might a jury be persuaded to ask for leniency? Or when they heard what bestiality Parfitt sold, might they believe that any man who’d become involved, no matter how ignorant he’d been initially, was little better than Parfitt himself?

Or was it just that she liked Rupert, and for Scuff’s sake she was desperate to find the man behind Parfitt’s business, so she could prevent him from starting up again with someone new? Scuff needed to see them succeed, to believe it really could happen, and that he was a part of it.

“Crow …”, she began. “Do you think it could be something as simple as a business rivalry? Parfitt must have earned a lot of money from that boat. If someone else took over his trade and his clients, they’d make just as much, wouldn’t they? Perhaps what I really need to know is how the business was run. Who profits from his death, in a business way? Never mind the blackmail or the moral side of it. Let’s look at the money.”

He nodded very slowly, his smile widening. “Give me a couple of days.” He tilted his head a little to one side. “I suppose you want the details, rather than just my conclusions?”

“Yes, please. My conclusions might be different.”

He did not answer that, but a brief flash of amusement lit his eyes. “It’ll be ugly,” he warned.

“Of course it will. Thank you.”

There was really nothing more to be added now, and she thanked Crow and left.

“Where we goin’ now?” Scuff asked, keeping up with her by adding an extra skip into his step now and then. “We in’t just leavin’ it to ’im, are we?”

“No,” Hester answered decisively. “We are going to see if someone else with an interest in the boat’s profits might have been there the night Parfitt was killed.”

“ ’Ow’re we gonna do that?”

“Well, if it is one of the people I think it might be, he will have to have come up the river from his home. If I can find someone who saw him, it would be a start.”

She had not told Scuff anything about what Sullivan had said of Arthur Ballinger, and she assumed Monk hadn’t either. If there was really anything behind it, ignorance would be the safest shield for him.

“Like a cabby?”

“I think I’ll begin with the ferryman. Cabbies don’t see a lot of people’s faces, especially after dark.”

“Course!” Scuff said eagerly. “Yer sittin’ in a boat, an’ the ferryman’s gotta see yer, eh? So if ’e don’t wanna be seen an’ ’ave folks remember ’im, ’e’d row up the river ’isself. Or if ’e couldn’t, then ’e’d cross where ’e’d least likely be noticed a ’ole lot.”

“Definitely,” she agreed. “Let’s try the ferrymen in Chiswick first.”

It took them well into the afternoon to get from the eastern end, nearer the sea and the great wharfs and docks, right across the city by omnibus to the statelier, greener western edge, and then beyond that again into the lush countryside, and over the river to the southern bank. There was no omnibus across Barn Elms Park to the little township of Barnes itself and finally to the High Street right on the water’s edge. They were both tired and thirsty, and had sore feet, by the time they stopped at the White Hart Inn, but Scuff never complained.

Hester wondered if his silence was in any way because he was thinking about this utterly different place-green, well kept, almost sparkling in the bright, hard light off the water. On the surface, it seemed a world away from the dark river edge where Jericho Phillips had kept his boat. There the tide carried in and out the detritus of the port, the broken pieces of driftwood, some half-submerged, bits of cloth and rope, food refuse and sewage. There was the noise of the city even at night, the clip of hooves on the cobbles, shouts, laughter, the rattle of wheels, and of course always the lights-streetlamps, carriage lamps-unless the mist rolled in and blotted them out. Then there were the mournful booms of the foghorns.

Here the river was narrower. There were shipbuilding yards on the northern bank farther down. The shops were open, busy; occasional carts went by; people called out; but it was all smaller, and there was no smell of industrial chimney smoke, salt and fish, no cry of gulls. A single barge drifted upriver, sails barely arced in the breeze.

Scuff could not help staring around him at the women in clean, pale dresses, walking and laughing as if they had nothing else to do.

Hester and Scuff ate first, a very late luncheon of cold game pie, vegetables, and-as a special treat-a very light shandy.

Scuff finished his glass and put it down, licking his lips and looking at her hopefully.

“When you’re older,” she replied.

“ ’Ow long do I ’ave ter get older?” he asked.

“You’ll be doing it all the time.”

“Afore I can ’ave another one o’ these?” He was not about to let it go.

“About three months.” She had difficulty not smiling. “But you may have another piece of pie, if you wish? Or plum pie, if you prefer?”

He decided to press his luck. He frowned at her. “ ’Ow about both?”

She thought of the errand they were on, and what had driven them to it. “Good idea,” she agreed. “I might do the same.”

When there was nothing at all left on either plate, she paid the bill. Scuff thanked her gravely, and then hiccuped. They walked down to the river and started looking for ferries, fishermen, anybody who hung around the water’s edge talking, pottering with boats or tackle, generally observing the afternoon slip by.

It was more than two hours, pleasant but unprofitable, before they found the bowlegged ferryman who said he had carried a gentleman from the city over late on the night before the morning Mickey Parfitt’s body was found in Corney Reach.

“Aw, I dunno ’is name, lady,” the ferryman said dubiously. “Never ask folks’s names-got no reason ter, ’ave I? Don’ ask where they’re goin’ neither. ’Tain’t none o’ my business. Jus’ be civil, talk a little ter pass the time, like, an’ get ’im ter the other side safe an’ dry. I recall, though, as this gent were a real toff, knowed all kinds o’ things.”

Hester felt the grip tighten in the pit of her stomach, and suddenly the possibility of profound tragedy was real. “Truly? How old would you say he was?”

The man bent his head a little to one side and looked at her, then at Scuff, then back at her again. “Why yer wanna know, missus? ’E done yer wrong some’ow?”

She knew what he was thinking, and she played on it without a moment’s shame. “I don’t know, unless I know if it was he,” she answered, keeping the amusement out of her eyes deliberately. She wanted to laugh. Then she thought of all the women of whom it would be true, and the amusement vanished. A knot of shame pulled tight inside her for her callousness.

“Don’t think so, love,” he said sadly, biting his lower lip. “This feller’d be a bit too old fer you.”

“Too old?” she said with surprise. She gulped. It could not be Rupert. He was not much more than thirty, younger than she. “Are you sure?” She was fishing for time, trying to think of an excuse for asking him to describe the man in more detail.

The ferryman sucked in his cheeks and then blew them out again. “Mebbe I shouldn’t a said that. Still an ’andsome enough figure of a man.”

“Fair hair?” Hester asked, thinking of Rupert standing in the sun in the doorway of the clinic. “Slender, but quite tall?”

“No,” the ferryman said decisively. “Sorry, love. ’E’d a bin sixty, like as not, dark ’air, near black, close as I could tell in the lamplight, like. But a big man, ’e were, an’ not tall, as yer might say. More like most.”

Considering that the ferryman was unusually short, Hester wondered what he considered was average. However, it might only insult him to ask, and apart from anything else, she needed his help.

“Did he come back again later?” she asked, changing the subject. She felt awkward, now that she had established that it was not the mythical deserting husband she had suggested. Then a new idea occurred to her. “You see, I’m afraid it could have been my father. He has a terrible temper, and …” She left the rest unsaid, a suggestion in the air. “He wasn’t … hurt, was he?”

“Yer do pick ’em, don’t yer?” The ferryman shrugged. “But ’e were fine. Bit scruffed up, like ’e ’ad a bit of a tussle, but right as rain in ’isself. Walked down the bank an’ leaped inter his boat. Don’t you worry about ’im. Don’t know about the young feller with the fair ’air. I never see’d ’im.”

“Perhaps he wasn’t here.” She said it with an upsurge of relief. She knew it was foolish even as she welcomed it. It meant nothing, only one difficulty avoided of a hundred.

“Wot does it mean?” Scuff asked as they thanked the man and walked away along the path. “Is it good?”

“I’m not sure,” Hester replied. That at least was true. “It certainly wasn’t Rupert. Even in the pitch dark you couldn’t mistake him for sixty. And if this man were scruffed up, he would have been in a fight, which, from the sound of it, he won.”

“Like chokin’ Mickey Parfitt and sending ’im over the side?”

“Yes, something like that,” she agreed.

He shivered. “Was there other people in the boat?”

“Not that evening, apparently, except for the boys, locked in belowdecks.”

He hesitated. “Where are they now?”

Hester heard the strain in his voice, saw the memory bright and terrible in his eyes.

“They’re all safe,” she told him unwaveringly. “Looked after and clean and fed.”

It was a moment or two before he was satisfied enough to believe her. Gradually the stiffness eased out of his back and shoulders. “So ’oo were it, then? Were it the man ’oo killed Mickey Parfitt?”

“Quite possibly.”

“ ’Ow do we find out ’oo ’e is?”

“I have an idea about that. Right now we are going home.”

“We in’t gonna look fer ’im?” He was shivering very slightly, trying to stand so straight that it didn’t show. He pulled his coat tighter deliberately, although it was not any colder.

“I need to ask William a few questions before that. I don’t think I will get two chances to speak to him about this, so I need to do it properly the first time.”

“ ’E in’t gonna let yer,” Scuff warned. “I wouldn’t, if I was ’im.”

“I dare say not.” She did not bother to hide her smile. “Which is why I won’t ask him, and neither will you.”

“I might.”

She looked at him. It wasn’t a threat. He was afraid for her. She saw it in his eyes, like a hard, twisting pain. He had found some kind of safety for the first time in his life, and it was threatened already. He was used to loss. Although this was too deep for him to handle alone, he was too used to loneliness to be able to share, too vulnerable even to acknowledge it.

“I’ll come wif yer,” he said, watching her face, waiting for her to refuse him.

“Thank you,” she accepted. It was rash. Perhaps it would cost them both. “If William is angry later, I’ll tell him you came only to make sure I was safe.”

He smiled and pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “Right,” he agreed, overwhelmed with relief.

What Hester actually wanted to know from Monk was what he had been told about where Arthur Ballinger had been on the night of Parfitt’s death. The ferryman’s description fitted him extraordinarily well-although, of course, it also fitted several thousand other men closely enough. She hated even thinking that it might’ve been Ballinger, because of how it would hurt Rathbone, and of course Margaret, but for Scuff’s sake, whoever was behind the boats run by men like Phillips and Parfitt, he had to be stopped, and to be hanged for murder was as good as being imprisoned for the kidnapping and abuse of children. Blackmail she doubted could ever be proved, because no one would admit to being a victim. That was part of the blackmailer’s skill.

“Why?” Monk said immediately.

They were standing side by side with the French doors ajar in the calm late evening, the smell of earth and damp leaves in the air. Dusk had fallen, and there was little sound outside in the small garden except for the wind through the leaves, and once or twice the hoot of an owl flying low. The sky was totally clear, the last light on the river below like the sheen on a pewter plate. Up here the noise of boats was inaudible, no shouts, no foghorns. A single barge with a lateen sail moved upriver as silently as a ghost.

“Why?” Monk repeated, watching her.

Hester had never intended to deceive him, just to keep her own counsel a little. “Because I was speaking to Crow this morning, in case he can help.”

“Help whom?” he asked softly. “Rupert Cardew? I can’t blame him for killing Mickey Parfitt, but the law won’t excuse him, Hester, no matter how vile Parfitt was. Not unless it was self-defense. And honestly, that’s unbelievable. Can you imagine a man like Parfitt standing by while Cardew took off his cravat and put half a dozen knots in it, then looped it around Parfitt’s throat and pulled it tight?”

“Didn’t he hit him over the head first?” she argued. “If Parfitt were unconscious, he wouldn’t be able to stop him. Rupert might …” She stopped. It was exactly the argument Monk was making. “Yes, I see,” she admitted. “If he was unconscious, then he was no danger to Rupert, or anyone else.”

“Precisely. You can’t help him, Hester.” There was sorrow in his voice, and defeat, and in his eyes a bitter humor. She knew he was remembering with irony their crossing swords with Rathbone when he had defended Jericho Phillips in court, and they had been so sure of victory, taking it for granted because they’d been convinced of his total moral guilt.

She wanted to argue, but every reason that struggled to the surface of her mind was pointless when she tried to put it into words. It all ended the same way: She didn’t want Rupert to be guilty. She liked him, and was grateful for his support of the clinic. She was desperately sorry for his father. She knew perfectly well that Rupert was not the power nor the money behind Parfitt’s business, and she wanted to destroy the man who was. She was trying to force the evidence to fit her own needs, which was not only dishonest, it was in the end also pointless.

“No, I suppose not,” she conceded.

He reached out his hand and took hers gently. There was nothing to add.

Since Scuff’s rescue from Phillips’s boat-hurt, frightened, and very weak-he had made a point of going out during most days, as soon as he was well enough, just to prove that he was still independent and quite able to look after himself. Both Monk and Hester were careful to make no remark on it.

It was the evening of the third day after Hester had met with Crow that Scuff came in well before supper, sniffing appreciatively at the kitchen door as the aroma of a hot pie baking greeted him and he saw Hester take down the skillet and set it on the top of the stove.

“Crow got summink for yer,” he said cheerfully. “Said ter tell yer ’e’ll meet yer at the riverside opposite the Chiswick Eyot termorrer at midday, wi’ wot yer asked fer. Cheapest’d be if we got the train ter ’Ammersmith, an’ then an ’ansom ter the ’Ammersmith Bridge, an’ along that way. I know where it is.” He inhaled deeply. “ ’S that apple pie?”

Hester and Scuff were at the appointed place a quarter of an hour early the following day, standing watching the boats on the river. There was a movement Hester caught almost at the corner of her vision, and she turned to see Crow’s lanky figure striding along the quayside, his coat flapping, his black hair flying in the wind.

She started toward him.

He glanced at Scuff as she reached him, but he was still standing a few paces away, staring upriver.

“Is it something he shouldn’t know?” Hester asked quickly. “I can send him off on an errand. He insisted on coming. He’s … looking after me.” Surely she did not need to explain that to Crow?

“It’s an even worse business than I thought,” he said quietly. “But I don’t know what good that’ll do your friend. If I’d known what that bastard did to little boys, I’d have killed him myself, and not as nicely as a quick blow on the head.” His face was hard, lips tight. “I’d have practiced a spot of surgery he wouldn’t have approved of, and made damn sure he saw and felt every bit of it. He’d have watched himself bleed to death.” He looked at Scuff, and as Scuff turned and saw him, the rage was wiped from Crow’s eyes. He made himself smile back, the wide grin that was so characteristic of him.

“You got summink for us?” Scuff asked expectantly, crossing over to them.

“Of course,” Crow replied. “D’you think I’d come all the way up here to the end of the world if I hadn’t? It’s this way.” And without any further explanation he led them along the road, ships and taverns on one side, the steep drop to the river on the other.

After about a hundred yards he crossed the street, dodging the few carts there were, and went into the narrow entrance of a lane running inland between shops and houses. Then he led them past a stretch of open green, and into a small alley off Chiswick Field. He knocked on the door of one of the houses, then, after a slight hesitation, knocked again with exactly the same pattern.

It was opened immediately by a girl of about nineteen or twenty. She was plump with very fair skin, completely without blemishes, and hair so pale as to be almost white in the dark hallway. She saw Crow, and her face tightened with fear, but she made no attempt to close the door again.

Crow gave his huge smile, all shining teeth, and pushed the door wider so it almost touched the wall behind it.

“Hello, Hattie,” he said cheerfully. “Good time to call, is it? I brought someone to see you.” Without looking back he beckoned to Hester and Scuff to follow him in.

Scuff closed the door and trailed behind, looking from one side to the other, almost treading on Hester’s heels.

Hattie took them to a narrow kitchen, where a small fire kept a cooktop hot and a pump in the corner dripped water into a tin bowl.

“Wot yer want?” she said, gulping with tension. She had wide, light blue eyes, and she kept them on Crow as if there were no one else in the room.

“Tell Mrs. Monk what you told me about Rupert Cardew,” Crow replied. His voice was gentle, almost coaxing, but there was a quality of power in it that belied his easy expression.

Hattie gulped. Hester saw that her hands were shaking. “I took it,” she said, not to Hester as directed, but still to Crow.

“You took what, Hattie?” he pressed.

She put her white hand up to her throat. “ ’Is tie. ’E ’ad it orff any’ow, an’ when ’e weren’t lookin’, I ’id it. ’E were stupid drunk, an’ ’e never noticed ’e’d gone wifout it.”

“His cravat. What color was it, Hattie?”

“Blue, wi’ little yeller animals on it.” She made a faint squiggle in the air with her finger.

“Why did you take it?”

“I dunno.”

“Yes, you do. Was it Mickey Parfitt who told you to?”

“No! It …” She gulped again. “It were the night before ’e were found in the river.”

“Who did you take it from, Hattie?”

“Mr. Cardew. I told you.”

“And who for? Who did you give it to?”

She shook her head, and her body stiffened until her muscles seemed to lock. “No … I dunno who got it. I in’t sayin’ nothin’! It’s more ’n me life’s worth.”

Crow turned to Hester. “I can’t get any more out of her than that. I’m sorry.”

Hester looked at the girl again. Perhaps it would place her life in jeopardy. That was not difficult to believe. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “All that is important is that Rupert didn’t have it, so he couldn’t have been the one who knotted it and put it around Mickey Parfitt’s neck. Thank you. That makes all the difference.” She smiled back at Crow, and felt her smile grow wider and wider on her face. Of course she would have to press Hattie later as to whom she had given the cravat to, but it might be possible to find out through someone else. There would be others around who would have seen a stranger-or any visitor, for that matter. For the moment the relief that Rupert was not guilty was all she needed.

The identities of the murderer of Mickey Parfitt and the man behind the pornographic business on the boats were next, a piece at a time. She smiled across at Hattie and thanked her again.