The Silent Cry (23 page)

There was a noise in the hall.

He swung round to face it just as she came through the door. She was dressed in dark grey with a white, lace collar. She looked very smart, very feminine, as if she had made a special effort for the occasion. He felt panic rise up inside him. This was not a social call, certainly the furthest thing from a romantic one! What on earth had Mrs. Duff told her?

"I only came for a moment!" he said hastily. "I did not wish to interrupt you! How are you?”

The colour burned up her cheeks.

"Quite well, thank you," she said sarcastically. "And you?”

"Tired, chasing an exhausting and un hopeful case," he answered. "It will be difficult to solve, even harder to prove, and I am not optimistic the law will prosecute it even should I succeed. Am I interrupting you?”

She closed the door and leaned against the handle.

"If you were I should not have come. The maid is perfectly capable of carrying a message.”

She might look less businesslike than usual, but she had absolutely no feminine charm. No other woman would have spoken to him like that.

"You have no idea how to be gracious, have you?" he criticised.

Her eyes widened. "Is that what you came for, someone to be gracious to you?”

"I would hardly have come here, would I?”

She ignored him. "What would you like me to say? That I am sure you know what you are doing, and your skill will triumph in the end? That a just cause is well fought, win or lose?" Her eyebrows rose. "The honour is in the battle, not the victory? I'm not a soldier. I have seen too much of the cost of ill-planned battles, and the price of loss.”

"Yes, we all know you would have fought a better war than Lord Raglan,” he snapped. "If the War Office had had the good sense to put you in charge instead!”

"If they had picked someone at random off the street, they would have,” she rejoined. Then her face softened a little. "What is your battle?”

"I would rather tell you somewhere more comfortable, and more private,” he replied. "Would you like to dine?”

If it was a surprise, she hid it very well… too well! Perhaps it was what she had expected. It was not what he had intended to say! But to retreat now would make it even worse. It would draw attention to it, and to his feelings about it. He could not even pretend he thought she was busy, Mrs. Duff had told him she was not.

"Thank you," she said with an aplomb he had not expected. She seemed very cool about it. She turned and opened the door, leading the way out into the hall. She asked the footman for her cloak, and then together she and Monk went outside to the bitter evening, again dimmed by fog, the streetlamps vague moons haloed by drifting ice, the footpaths slippery.

It took just under ten minutes to find a hansom and climb into it. He gave directions to an inn he knew quite well. He would not take her to an expensive place, in case she misunderstood his intent, but to take her to a cheap one would find her thinking he could not afford better, and possibly even offering to pay.

"What is your battle?" she repeated when they were sitting side by side in the cold as the cab lurched forward then settled into a steadier pace. It was miserably cold, even inside. There was very little to see, just gloom broken by hazes of light, sudden breaks in the mist when outlines were sharp, a carriage lamp, a horse's head and forequarters, the high, black silhouette of a hansom driver, and then the shroud of fog closed in again.

"At first, just women being cheated in Seven Dials," he answered. "To begin with it was no more than using a prostitute and refusing to pay…”

"Don't they have pimps and madams to help prevent that?" she asked.

He winced, but then he should have expected her to know such things.

She had hardly been sheltered from many truths.

"These were amateurs," he explained. "Mostly women who work in factories and sweatshops during the day, and just need a little more now and again.”

"I see.”

"Then they were raped. Now it has escalated until they are being beaten… increasingly violently.”

She said nothing.

He glanced sideways at her; as they passed close to another carriage, the light from the lamps caught her face. He saw the pity and anger in it, and suddenly his loneliness vanished. All the times of resentment and irritation and self-protectiveness telescoped into the causes they had shared, and disappeared, leaving only the understanding. He went on to describe to her his efforts to elicit some facts about the men, and from his questioning of the cabbies and street vendors, in order to learn where they had come from.

They arrived at the hostelry where he planned to eat. They alighted, paid the driver, and went in. He was barely aware of the street, or the noise and warmth once they were inside. He ordered without realising he had done it for both of them, and she made a very slight face, but she did not interrupt, except to ask for clarification as he omitted a point, or was vague on an issue.

"I'm going to find them," he finished with hard, relentless commitment.

"Whether Vida Hopgood pays me for it or not. I'll stop them, and I'll make damned sure everyone like them knows they've paid the price, whether it's the justice of the law, or of the streets." He waited, half expecting her to argue with him, to preach the sanctity of keeping the civilised law, of the descent into barbarism, if it were abandoned, whatever the cause or the provocation.

But she sat in thoughtful silence for several minutes before she replied.

The room around them swirled with the clatter of crockery, the sound of voices and laughter. The smells of food and ale and damp wool filled the air. Light glinted on glass and was reflected on faces, white shirt fronts and the white of plates.

"The young man I'm nursing was beaten, nearly to death, in St. Giles,” she said at last. "His father did die." She looked across at him.

"Are you sure enough you can get the right man? If you make a mistake, there can be no undoing it. The law will try them, there will have to be proof, weighed and measured, and someone to speak in their defence.

If it is the streets, then it will simply be execution. Are you prepared to be accuser, defender, and jury… and to let the victims judge?”

"What if the alternative is freedom?" he asked. "Not only freedom to enjoy all the pleasures and rewards of life, without hindrance or answer ability for wrong, but the freedom to go on committing it, creating new victims, on and on, until someone is murdered, maybe one of the young ones, twelve or fourteen, too weak to fight back at all?”

He stared at her, meeting her clear eyes. "I am involved. I am the jury, whatever I decide. Omission is a judgement as well. To walk away, to pass on the other side, is as much a decision.”

"I know," she agreed. "Justice may be blindfolded, but the law is not.

It sees when and whom it chooses, because it is administered by those who see when and whom they choose." She was still frowning.

He broached the subject which was hanging unspoken between them. He knew it, and he thought perhaps she did also. With anyone else, he would have let the moment pass. It was too delicate and had all the possibilities of being too painful as well. With Hester, to have thought it was almost the same as to have spoken it to her.

"Are you sure it cannot be your young man, and his father, or his friends? Tell me about him…”

Again she waited several moments before she replied. At the next table an old man broke into a fit of coughing. Beyond him a woman laughed, they could hear her but not see her. It was a high, braying sound. The room was getting warmer all the time.

"No, I'm not sure," she said so quietly he had to lean forward to hear her, ignoring the last of his food. "Evan is investigating the case. I assume you know that. He has not been able to find out what they were doing in St. Giles. It is hardly likely to be anything admirable." She hesitated, unhappiness profound in her face. "I don't think I believe he would do such a thing, not willingly, not intentionally…

.”

"But you are not sure?" he said quickly.

Her eyes searched his face, longing to find some comfort there, and failing.

"No… I'm not sure. There is a cruelty in him which is very ugly to see. I don't know why. It seems directed largely at his mother…

.”

"I'm sorry…" Without thinking he reached forward and put his hand over hers where it lay on the table. He felt the slenderness of her bones, a strong hand, but so slight his own covered it.

"It doesn't have to be anything to do with this," she said slowly, and he thought it was more to convince herself than him. "It's just… it could be… because he cannot speak. He's alone…" She looked at him with an intensity oblivious of the room around her, or anything else. "He's utterly alone! We don't know what happened to him, and he can't tell us. We guess, we talk to each other, we work at the possibilities, and he can't even tell us where we are wrong, where it is ludicrous or unjust. I can't imagine being more helpless.”

He was torn whether to say what was in his mind or not. She looked so hurt, so involved with the pain she saw.

But this was Hester, not a woman he needed to protect, gentle and vulnerable, used only to the feminine things of life. She had already known the worst, worse than he had.

"Your pity for him now does not alter what he may have done before," he answered her.

She drew her hand away.

He felt vaguely hurt, as if she had withdrawn something of herself. She was so independent. She did not need anyone. She could give, but she could not take!

"I know," she said quietly.

"No, you don't!" He was answering his own thoughts. She did not know how arrogant she was, how so much of her giving was a form of taking; whereas if she had taken, it would have been a gift.

"Yes, I do!" She was angry now, defensive. "I just don't think it was Rhys. I know him! You don't.”

"And your judgement is clear, of course?" he challenged, sitting back in his chair. "You could not be biased, just a trifle?”

A couple passed by them, the woman's skirt brushing Hester's chair.

"That's a stupid remark!" Her voice was sharp, her face flushed.

"You're saying that if you know something about a thing, then you are biased and your judgement is no good, whereas if you know nothing, your mind is clear and so your judgement is fine. If you know nothing, your mind isn't clear, it's empty! By that standard we could do away with juries, simply ask someone who's never heard of the case, and they will give you a perfect, unbiased decision!”

"You don't think perhaps it could be a good idea to know something about the victims as well?" he said sarcastically. "Or even the crimes? Or is all that irrelevant?”

"You'vejust told me what the crimes are, and the victims," she pointed out, her voice rising. "And yes, in a way it is irrelevant in judging Rhys. The horror of a crime has nothing to do with whether a particular person is guilty or not. That is elementary. It only has to do with the punishment. Why are you pretending you don't know that?”

"And liking somebody, or pitying them, has nothing to do with guilt or innocence," he responded, his voice louder also. "Why are you pretending you've forgotten that? It doesn't matter how much you care, Hester, you can't change what has already happened.”

A man at the next table turned to look at them.

"Don't be so patronising!" she said furiously. "I know that! Don't you care any more that you find the truth? Are you so keen to take someone back to Vida Hopgood and prove you can do it, that you'll take anyone, right or wrong?”

He was hurt. It was as if she had suddenly and without warning kicked him. He was determined she should not know it.

"I'll find the truth, comfortable or uncomfortable," he said coldly.

"If it is someone we can all be happy to dislike and rejoice in his punishment, so much the easier." His voice dropped, the emotion tighter. "But if it is someone we like and pity, and his punishment will tear us apart along with him, that won't make me turn the other way and pretend it is not so. If you think the world is divided into those who are good and those who are bad, you are worse than a fool, you are a moral imbecile, refusing to grow up…”

She stood up.

"Would you be so kind as to find me a hansom so I may return to Ebury Street? If not, I imagine I can find one for myself.”

He rose also and bowed his head sarcastically, remembering their meeting earlier. "I am delighted you enjoyed your dinner," he replied cut tingly "It was my pleasure.”

She blushed with annoyance, but he saw the flash of acknowledgement in her eyes.

They went out in silence into the now dense fog in the street. It was bitterly cold, the freezing air catching in the nose and throat. The traffic was forced to a walk and it took him several minutes to find a hansom. He climbed in and they sat side by side in rigid silence all the way back to Ebury Street. She refused to speak, and he had nothing he wanted to say to her. There were hundreds of things in his mind, but none of them he was prepared to share, not now.

They parted with a simple exchange of 'goodnight', and he rode on to Grafton Street, cold, angry and alone.

In the morning he returned yet again to Seven Dials and the pursuit of witnesses who may have seen anything to do with the attacks, most particularly anyone who was a frequent visitor to the area. He had already exhausted the cabbies and was now trying street pedlars, beggars and vagrants. His pockets were full of all the small change he could afford. People often spoke more readily for some slight reward.

It was his own money, not Vida's.

The first three people he approached knew nothing. The fourth was a seller of meat pies, hot and savoury-smelling, but probably made mostly of offal and other cast-offs. He bought one, and overpaid, but without intention of eating it. He held it in his hand while talking to the man. There was a wind this morning. The fog had lifted, but it was intensely cold. The cobbles were slippery with ice. As he stood there the pie became more and more tempting and he was less inclined to consider what was in it.