Acceptable Loss (22 page)

Now, having questioned the boys, it was Monk who had dreams he could not bear. He woke in the night, his body aching and drenched in a sweat, tears on his face. He lay in the dark, staring up at the faint shadow patterns on the ceiling as the wind moved in the trees outside. He wanted to waken Hester, even if he did not tell her why, just so he would not be alone with what was in his mind. Even if he just touched her, felt the warmth of her …

But she would hurt for him. She would need him to explain it, at least a little, and how could he do that? If he gave it words, it would re-create the reality in his mind—the white faces, the frightened eyes, the small bodies shivering with memory, self-loathing, and the terror of new pain.

And she would think of Scuff. She would wonder about all the other children, and that was a burden, selfish of him to share just to lighten it a fraction for himself.

Could he tell her without weeping? Perhaps not. She could not heal his sense of horror for him. He would keep it closed inside him. She would always know it was there, because she had seen Phillips’s boat, but she did not need to hear it again and see it through his eyes. Memory was a necessary tool in life; sometimes it was a blessed thing, and sometimes it was a curse.

If he even got up, he would disturb her. He might pretend there was nothing wrong, but his need, his pain, would creep through. She would unravel it all.

He turned over, as if he were half-asleep, and lay on his other side. He would go back to sleep in some time, and, if he were lucky, the dreams would be different.

H
E WOKE EXHAUSTED THE
following morning, his eyes gritty and his head aching. Hester did not even ask him how he was. She looked at him, her face bleak and tender, and words would have been superfluous anyway.

She got up and went to the kitchen, raked out the ashes, and lit the stove, banking it up to get hot quickly. It was early, and she did not waken Scuff. Today was Sunday. They could stay here together, perhaps even go to church, like a regular family. Scuff liked that because everyone could see them together, see that he belonged.

She gave Monk piping hot tea and fresh toast with his favorite jam, then sat opposite him at the table. There was no sound in the kitchen, and the only light was from the gas bracket on the wall casting a yellow glow, shadows everywhere.

When he had said nothing for several minutes, she prompted him.

“Do you really want to find who killed Parfitt?” she asked quietly, pushing the toast across the table toward him.

“Yes, of course I do!” he said vehemently, then looked at her face. He knew he had to be more honest; even a half lie to her built a barrier
he could not live with. “No, not entirely. Parfitt was vile, and if it was one of his victims, I’d be happy to let him go. If it was one of the boys, or even two or three of them, I don’t even know if I’ll arrest them. Even if I could prove which ones, I might not try to.”

She said nothing.

He took the toast and buttered it.

“But if it’s the man behind the whole trade, probably behind Phillips as well, then yes, I want to find him. And I want to hang him.”

Monk fished the note out of his inside pocket where he carried it, carefully, in an envelope. It was both a talisman and a weight dragging him down. He took the note out of the envelope and put it on the table between them, well away from the jam or the teapot. “This was written by a literate person, adult. It’s a strong hand, used to writing.”

She looked at him, then down at the torn piece of paper. She picked it up and read it. “But you have no idea who wrote it?”

“No. It’s good-quality paper and perfectly ordinary pencil. The envelope’s mine.”

She turned the note over in her hands. The silence seemed to stretch until he could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantel over the stove. Her shoulders were stiff; a tiny muscle clenched in her jaw was flickering.

“Hester?” His voice was quiet and yet filled the room.

She looked up at him. “The words are Latin. They’re medicines. This is part of a list of things we order regularly for the clinic.”

He stared at her. This was the last thing he had expected her to say.

“You recognize the handwriting?” he asked.

“Claudine’s,” she said. “But she could have given the list to several people.”

“Margaret,” he replied. “Isn’t she the one who keeps the money, and buys such things?”

“Yes. But so does Squeaky, sometimes.” Her voice was tight, full of grief.

He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. He knew what she was afraid of. Squeaky had kept a brothel when they’d first
met him. He had seemed on the surface to have reformed his ways, under duress, perhaps, but still quite genuinely. He had even taken a kind of pleasure in his respectability. Had it all been an act to cover an even darker side? Had they been too blinded by hope and wish to look at him more closely? How big a descent was it from running a brothel for women to investing in pornography with boys?

Monk felt a little sick. He knew how much Hester had believed in all the people in the clinic, considered them friends, colleagues, people she trusted with a common passion.

“I have to ask him,” he said. “I can’t—”

“No,” she cut across his words. “I will. I won’t let him dupe me, I promise.”

“Hester …”

She stood up. “I will. Now—today.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“I know.”

He looked at her stiff, straight back, the way she walked, the very careful manner in which she picked up the plates and put them into the basin to wash, deliberately, as if in a moment’s absence of mind she might grip them so hard she would break one.

Perhaps he should let her speak to Squeaky. Then she would not feel so powerless, so incapable.

“I’ll wait outside,” he told her.

She was standing at the basin, and she turned to give him a swift look, something close to a smile. “I’ve got to leave bread out for Scuff, and butter and jam. I’ll waken him, and then I’m ready.”

S
QUEAKY LOOKED UP FROM
his ledger as Hester came into his room and closed the door behind her.

“You look as if you lost sixpence and found nothing,” he said dourly. “Her ladyship giving you difficulties?”

“No, not at the moment,” she replied. She took the envelope out of her pocket, and then the list as well. She put them both on the table in front of him, but kept her finger on the list, leaning forward a little so her weight was on her hand.

There was not a flicker in his face.

“It’s torn,” he observed. “In’t no use like that. What’re you giving it to me for? Get Claudine ter make it out again.”

“Is it Claudine’s hand?” she asked.

“Course it is! You gone blind or summink?” He squinted up at her. “You look sick. What’s wrong?” Now he was anxious, even concerned for her.

She turned the paper over.

He frowned, looking at it, reading it. “What in hell’s that?” he demanded. “It means summink, or you wouldn’t be looking at it with a face on you like a burst boot. Who’s supposed to go … Oh, jeez!”

The usual trace of color vanished from his sallow face. “It’s to do with that bleeding murder, isn’t it? You can’t think Claudine had anything to do with it? That’s just stupid. You’ve taken leave of your wits if you think she’d even know about things like that. You think she went up there and done in Mickey Parfitt? With Cardew’s necktie, and all? You think he left it behind here, and she—”

“No, Squeaky, I don’t. But did you?” Even as she said it, she thought of Hattie Benson safe downstairs in the laundry, with Claudine apparently looking after her, and Squeaky supposed to keep everyone else from going down and seeing her.

His face was full of conflicting emotions: anger, hurt, fear, and also a kind of gentleness. “No, I didn’t. I s’pose I had that coming, for my past life, and if I’d’ve known what Parfitt was, I might have. I’d also have more sense than to write him a note on paper from here!”

“Is it from here?” Hester asked.

He looked at it again. “No. We don’t spend that sort of money on paper. Even the ledger isn’t that good. But just ’cos it’s quality don’t mean Claudine had anything to do with it. She may be an odd old article, but when you get to know her, she’s solid. She’s got guts, and she don’t never tell no lies. You can’t think that of her. It’s wrong.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted.

He winced. “You thought I did it.” It was a statement. “Well, I could have. He needed doing, best at the end of a rope. And I wouldn’t help you catch whoever did do it. But it weren’t me.”

She believed him.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Tomorrow I’ll ask Claudine if she remembers writing this, and what she did with it.”

“Don’t you let her feel you think as she done it!” he warned. “It’d hurt her something terrible, and she don’t deserve that.”

In spite of herself, Hester smiled. She could remember very clearly how Claudine and Squeaky had hated each other in the beginning. She had thought him obscene, both physically and morally. He had seen her as arrogant, useless, and cold, a middle-aged woman sterile of mind and devoid of passions. It had been her crazy pursuit of Phillips’s pornographic photographs, at fearful risk to herself, that had finally changed his mind. And it was his effective, if rather quixotic, rescue of her that had changed her mind about him.

“I won’t,” she promised.

H
ESTER WAS IN EARLY
on Monday morning, but a brief and businesslike meeting with Margaret in the pantry delayed her meeting with Claudine.

“We are rather short of laundry supplies,” Margaret warned. “I have just been down there and cautioned them to be a little less generous in their use. We cannot afford to replace them at this rate.”

“Thank you,” Hester said briefly. “Is there anything else?”

Margaret hesitated, seemingly on the edge of saying something more, then changed her mind and went out of the room. Hester heard her footsteps on the wooden floor, brisk and purposeful.

She found Claudine in the medicine room and showed her the paper, holding out only the side with the list on it.

Claudine frowned, then looked up and met Hester’s eyes. “What happened to it? I wrote it out for Margaret, and she got me all those things. That list is several weeks old.”

Hester felt bruised, suddenly tired. “How many weeks?”

“I don’t know. Four, maybe five. Why? It hardly matters,” Claudine replied.

“You’re sure you gave it to Margaret?” Hester insisted.

“Yes, of course I am.”

“She actually got all those things for you?”

“Yes. If she hadn’t, I would have written it out again. But I didn’t have to. What is this about, Hester? Is something missing?”

“No. Nothing at all. It doesn’t have to do with the clinic.”

“I don’t understand.” Claudine looked thoroughly puzzled.

Hester shook her head a little. “You don’t want to,” she said gently. “It’s the message on the other side that’s important, not this. What happened to the list after she brought you the items on it?”

“I’ve no idea. I didn’t see it again after I gave it to her.”

“You didn’t check off the items against it?” Hester suggested.

“I had the receipts from the apothecary. Those are all I need for the ledger.”

“Are you quite sure you didn’t ever see the list again?”

“Not until now. Why?”

“Thank you.” Hester gave her a tiny smile, almost more of a grimace, and went out of the room, closing the door softly.

She gave the list back to Monk.

He waited.

“It’s Claudine’s list for Margaret to shop from,” she told him. “Margaret never gave it back, because Claudine took the prices from the apothecary’s receipts.” She swallowed hard. “I wish it weren’t.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. I can’t leave it. If it’s Ballinger, I must still find him, not for Parfitt’s sake but because of the children.”

She nodded. “Oliver will defend him. He can’t refuse.” She watched Monk’s face. “We’ll have to have irrefutable proof.”

R
UPERT
C
ARDEW CLOSED THE
door of the morning room behind him and stared at Monk. He still looked tired, as if the shock of arrest had not completely left him, even though he was now free. However, he was composed and courteous, and, as always, beautifully dressed.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Monk?” he asked.

Monk felt churlish, and it put him at a disadvantage.

“I apologize. What I have to ask you is extremely unpleasant, but this is a case I cannot afford to leave.”

Rupert looked surprised. “Really? You care so much that Parfitt is dead?”

“On the contrary. If that were all, I would be delighted to turn my time to something more important,” Monk admitted. “But I want to find the man behind the blackmail.”

Rupert smiled very slightly, not in amusement but in self-criticism. “Are you going to warn me that I am still vulnerable? I assure you, I know that.”

“I assumed you were aware of it, Mr. Cardew,” Monk told him. “That is not why I came.”

“Oh?” Rupert looked surprised, but not worried.

“I need to know a great deal more from you than you have told me so far,” Monk replied. “I’m sorry.” He meant the apology more than Cardew would understand, or believe.

“I don’t know anything more,” Rupert said simply. “I really have no idea who killed Parfitt. For God’s sake, man, don’t you think I’d have told you already if I did?”

“Of course, if you had realized, or thought for a moment that I would believe you. I think it was Arthur Ballinger who did it; if not personally, then by using one of Parfitt’s own men.” He saw Cardew start with surprise, and ignored it. “But I have to prove it beyond any doubt,” he continued. “If Ballinger is charged, he will be defended by Oliver Rathbone, and I know from experience that Rathbone could get even Jericho Phillips off. How hard do you imagine he is going to fight for his father-in-law?”

Rupert’s mouth tightened, and the corners went down. “I see. But I still don’t know anything.”

“You know about the trade,” Monk said grimly.