The Shifting Tide

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The Shifting Tide Page 28

by Anne Perry


  “Pretty much,” she replied, dropping the clothes on the floor. The real answer was too long, and she was too tired, and perhaps Sutton did not really want to hear it anyway.

  “Iggerant an’ mad, in’t we?” he said with startling gentleness. “Makes you wonder why we bother wi’ ourselves, don’t it? ’Ceptin’ we in’t got nob’dy else, an’ yer gotter care ’bout summink.” He shook his head and turned to walk away. “Snoot!” he called when he was outside in the passage. “Where are yer, yer useless little article?”

  There was an enthusiastic scampering of feet. Hester smiled as the little dog shot out of the shadows and caught up with his master.

  After putting the clothes into cold water she went back to Martha’s room. There was not much she could do for Martha except sit with her, make sure the bandages did not work loose, give her water if she woke, bathe her brow with a cool cloth, and try to keep the fever down.

  Five minutes later Claudine came to the door with a hot cup of tea and passed it to her. “It’s ready to drink,” she said simply.

  It was. It was just cool enough not to scald. It was also so powerfully laced with brandy that Hester felt she should be careful not to breathe near the candle flame.

  “Oh!” she said as the inner fire of it hit her stomach. “Thank you.”

  “Thought you needed it,” Claudine replied, turning to go, then she stopped. “Want me to watch her for a bit? I’ll call you if anything happens, I swear.”

  Hester’s head was pounding and she was so tired her eyes felt gritty. If she closed them for longer than a second she might drift off to sleep. The thought of letting go and allowing herself to be carried away into unconsciousness, without fighting, was the best thing she could imagine, better than laughter, good food, warmth, even love—just to stop struggling for a while. “I can’t.” She heard the words and wondered how she could make herself say them.

  “I’ll get another chair to sit here,” Claudine replied. “Then if she needs you I can wake you just by speaking. I wouldn’t have to leave her.”

  Hester accepted. She was asleep even before Claudine sat down.

  She sat up with a gasp an hour later when Claudine woke her to say that Martha was very restless and seemed to be in a lot of pain. One of the wounds was bleeding again.

  They did what they could to help her, working with surprising ease together, but it was little enough. Hester was grateful not to be alone, and she told Claudine so as they sat down again to watch and wait.

  Claudine was embarrassed. She was not used to being thanked; to be praised twice in one night was overwhelming, and she did not know how to answer. She looked away, her face pink.

  Hester wondered what the other woman’s marriage was like that she apparently lived in such bitter loneliness, uncomplimented, without laughter or sharing. Was it filled with quarrels, or silence, two people within one house, one name, one legal entity, who never touched each other at heart? How could she reach out to Claudine without making it worse, or ask anything without prying and perhaps exposing a wound which could be endured only because no one else saw it? She remembered Ruth Clark’s cruel words and the mockery and contempt in them, as if she really had known something about Claudine, not just guessed at it. Perhaps she had, and perhaps it was bitter and wounding enough that Claudine had seen the chance to kill her and protect herself. But Hester refused even to allow that into her mind. One day she might have to, but not now.

  “Would you like Sutton to have another message sent to your home?” Hester asked aloud. “You could let them know you are all right, but that with so many ill we can’t do without you. That would be more or less the truth, or at any rate it’s not a lie.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Claudine replied, her eyes fixed steadily on Martha. “I said that in the first message.” She was silent for a moment or two. “My husband will be annoyed because it is a break in his routine, and he was not consulted,” she went on. “There may be social events he would like me to have attended, but otherwise it will not matter.” Her voice caught for a moment. “I don’t wish to appear to be explaining myself. For the first time in my life I am doing something that matters, and I don’t intend to stop.”

  She had said little, and yet beneath the surface it was an explanation of everything. Hester heard the emptiness behind the words, a whole bruised and aching lifetime of it. But there was no answer to give, nothing to make it different or better. The only decent response was silence.

  She drifted back into sleep again, and Claudine woke her a little before four. Martha was slipping into deeper unconsciousness. Claudine stared at Hester, the question in her eyes, the answer already known. Martha was dying.

  “Is it the plague or the dogs?” Claudine asked in a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” Hester said honestly. “But if it is the dogs, perhaps that isn’t a bad thing. I—”

  “I know,” Claudine interrupted. “Best thing not to linger.”

  Martha was struggling for breath. Every few moments she stopped altogether, then gasped again. Hester and Claudine looked at each other, then at Martha. Finally it was the last time, and she lay still.

  Claudine shivered. “Poor soul,” she said softly. “I hope there’s some kind of peace for her now. Do . . . I mean, should we . . .” She blinked rapidly. “Say something?”

  “Yes, we should,” Hester answered without any doubt at all. “Will you say it with me?”

  Claudine was startled.

  “I don’t know what!”

  “How about the Lord’s Prayer?”

  Claudine nodded. Together they pronounced the familiar words slowly, a little huskily. Then Claudine folded the dead woman’s hands, and Hester went to fetch Sutton and ask for his help.

  He was in the laundry, rewarding Snoot for having found a rat’s nest. He looked up as Hester came in. His face was grave, expectant. He saw her expression. “She go?” he asked. “Poor soul. ’Oo knows?”

  “Just Claudine and I,” she replied.

  “Good. We better get ’er out before light.” He straightened up. “Go ter bed, Snoot. Good boy. You stay there like yer told.” He turned back to Hester. “I’ll get the fellers ter take ’er. Sorry but we’ll ’ave ter wind ’er in a sheet. I know yer can’t afford ter lose no more, but there in’t no better way. ’Ceptin’ a blanket, mebbe, if yer got a dark one? Less easy seen.”

  “I’ll find you a dark gray blanket,” she promised. “But what will they do with her? She can’t just be . . . I mean, she has to be buried too.” She thought of the silent, miserable business of taking Ruth Clark’s body out and leaving it on the cobbles in the rain for the men to take to an unknown grave. She had not asked where then; it was more than she wanted to know.

  No doctor had seen Ruth, nor could they see Martha, not even an undertaker: he would see the throat and think she had been murdered. There was an irony in that she had not, not morally anyway. Ruth had, but there were hours at a time when Hester forgot that, and she had barely turned her mind to the question of who had done it, or why. Now it was poor, stupid, terrified Martha who mattered. That hysteria lay close under the surface in all of them. She licked her lips. They were so dry they hurt. “In hallowed ground?” she asked tentatively. “Is that impossible? I just can’t bear to think of her being pushed away somewhere in a drain or something.”

  “Don’ worry,” Sutton said gently. “I got friends as can do all sorts o’ things. There’s graves in corners o’ proper places as got more bodies in ’em than they ’ave names on the stones. The dead don’ care if they share a bit. She won’t be left unblessed or unprayed for. Nor Ruth Clark neither.”

  She felt the tears prickle in her eyes, and the sheer weight of exhaustion, loneliness, pity, and fear overwhelmed her. His kindness sharpened it almost beyond bearing. She wanted to thank him, but her throat was choked.

  He nodded, his face hollow in the candlelight. “Go find the blanket,” he told her.

  Claudine helped her roll t
he body and very quickly stitch the makeshift shroud around her, catching it in places so it would not fall undone if she were carried hastily, and perhaps with little skill. They did not speak, but every few moments their eyes met, and a kind of understanding made them move in unison, each reaching to help the other.

  Squeaky came upstairs again. The three of them took her with stumbling steps, awkwardly, their backs aching, along the passage and to the back door, then outside into the yard. Hester raised her arm in signal to the men. In the faint light of street lamps twenty yards away they looked huge and untidy, coats flapping in the rising wind, bareheaded, hair plastered down. The rain made their skins shiny, almost masklike in the unnatural shadows. They acknowledged Hester and Claudine, but waited until they had gone back inside before they approached.

  Sutton went out alone and spoke to the men.

  The larger of the two nodded and beckoned his companion. Carefully they picked up the corpse, and without speaking they turned and walked slowly in the rain. They stood very upright with the weight balanced between them as if they were used to such a thing.

  Hester and Claudine stood side by side at the doorway, so close their bodies touched, watching as the men passed under the street lamp. For a moment the rain was lit above them in bright streams. Then it glimmered pale on their backs as they retreated into the darkness. The van at the end of the street was little more than a greater denseness in the shadows.

  No one spoke. It was quite unnecessary, and there was nothing to say. In a few hours another day would begin.

  TWELVE

  Rathbone had been to visit Gould in prison because he had promised Monk that he would. He had expected to find a man he was morally obliged to defend, not for the man’s sake, or because he was moved by any conviction that he was innocent, but because it was a clear duty. He realized as he left that he was inclined towards accepting Gould’s story that he really had found Hodge unconscious but not apparently injured. He admitted freely that he had stolen the ivory, but his indignation at the charge of murder had a ring of honesty that Rathbone had not expected.

  However, on speaking to the undertaker who had buried Hodge, there could be no doubt whatever that he had suffered an appalling blow to the head. It had crushed the back of his skull, and was presumably the cause of his death. The undertaker had done as he was asked in burying Hodge, being assured both by Louvain and by Monk that all evidence had been recorded under oath and would be passed to the appropriate authorities. The perpetrator of the crime was being sought, and when found would be brought to justice.

  Rathbone returned to his office and began to consider what possible courses were open to him. He was thus occupied when Coleridge informed him that Monk was at the door. It was a little after half past eight in the morning.

  “Now?” he said incredulously.

  Coleridge’s face was studiously without expression. “Yes sir. I daresay he is also concerned about the case.” He had no idea what the case was, and he was apparently offended by the omission. He also desired Rathbone to realize that Monk was not the only person working long and remarkable hours.

  “Yes, of course,” Rathbone acknowledged. He had no intention of telling Coleridge what the case was; he could not afford to until it was absolutely necessary. Even then, it would be only what he was going to say in court, and not include the reason for any of his extraordinary silences. But Coleridge did deserve to be treated with consideration. “He would be,” he said, referring to Monk. “It is a grave matter. Will you show him in, please.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Sir Oliver? Mr. Monk looks unusually . . .” The clerk searched for an adequate phrase. “In need of one,” he finished.

  Rathbone smiled. “Yes, please. That is most thoughtful of you.”

  Coleridge retreated, mollified.

  Monk came in a moment later, and Rathbone saw immediately what Coleridge had meant. Monk was wearing the same clothes he had had on last time and his face looked even hollower, as though he had neither eaten nor slept well since then. He came into the office and closed the door behind him.

  “Coleridge is coming back with tea in a few minutes,” Rathbone warned. “Have you found any of the crew yet? You’ll have to tell them, even if you keep them by force. You can’t put them into the clinic, can you?”

  “We haven’t found them,” Monk replied, his voice low and rasping with exhaustion. “Not any of them. They could be anywhere in the country, or back at sea on other ships going God knows where.” He remained standing. Rathbone noticed that Monk’s body was rigid. His right hand flexed and unflexed and the muscles of his jaw twitched in nervous reaction. He must be in agony over Hester alone in Portpool Lane. He would have no idea whether there were more people dead, plague raging through the place with all its horror and its obscenity. Or if they were cooped up waiting, dreading every cough, every chill or flush of heat, every moment of faintness whether mere exhaustion or the beginning of the measured agony of fever, swelling, pain, and then death.

  Rathbone was overcome with relief that Margaret was not in there; it welled up inside him like an almost physical escape from pain, like the fire of brandy felt in the stomach and the blood when one has been numb with cold.

  He stood facing Monk, who was gray with dread of losing all that mattered most to him and gave his life purpose and joy. If Hester died, he would be alone in a way that would be a constant ache inside him, increasing every burden, dulling any possible happiness. And Rathbone was awash with relief at his own safety. It filled him with shame.

  “I saw Gould,” he said aloud, trying for his own sake almost as much as Monk’s to occupy their minds with the practical. Pity would be no help. “I believed him.” He saw the slight lift of surprise in Monk’s face. “I didn’t expect to,” he said. “He’ll make a good witness, if I have to put him on the stand. The trouble is, I don’t know what the truth is, so I’m afraid of what I’ll uncover.”

  Monk was pensive. “Well, so far as we know there was no one on board the ship apart from the skeleton crew and Gould, so the only defense can be that if Gould didn’t kill him, then one of the crew did, or else it was an accident.”

  “If it was an accident then it can only have happened if he fell and cracked his head open, possibly breaking his neck,” Rathbone reasoned. “And if that were the case, it should have been apparent to whoever found him. Was his neck broken? You didn’t say so.”

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “And you said there was so little blood you thought he was actually killed somewhere else,” Rathbone went on. “You said . . .”

  “I know what I said!” Monk snapped. “That was before I knew about the plague.”

  “Don’t say that word!” Rathbone said sharply, his voice rising. “Coleridge will be back any minute!”

  Monk winced, as though he had been caused sudden pain.

  Rathbone drew in his breath to apologize, although he knew it was the truth which hurt Monk, not his words. Just at that moment there was a brisk tap on the door and Coleridge opened it, carrying in a tea tray and setting it on the table.

  Rathbone thanked him and he withdrew again.

  “Are you saying he died of . . . illness?” Rathbone asked, passing the tea as he spoke.

  “It fits the facts if Gould is telling the truth,” Monk replied, sitting down at last. He looked so weary it was going to be an effort for him to stand up again. “Hodge had to be accounted for. They couldn’t just get rid of the body, so someone took a shovel to the back of his head to make that seem the cause of death.”

  Rathbone believed it. “But that’s no use as a defense for Gould,” he pointed out. “All I can think of so far is reasonable doubt, and I don’t know how to raise that without going too close to the truth.” He shivered and put his hands into his pockets. It was an uncharacteristic gesture because it pushed his trousers out of shape. “Who can I call?” he went on. “The prosecution will call the crew, who will say they know nothing. I daren’t cal
l any medical experts, because if I question them, we would raise the issue of whether he was dead already, and if so, what caused it. His neck wasn’t broken, there was nothing to suggest heart attack or apoplexy, and the last thing on earth we can afford is to have them dig Hodge up again.”

  Monk shook his head slowly, like a man in a fog of thought, too harried on every side to find his way. “You’ll have to play for time,” he said unhappily. “I need to find something to raise a doubt.”

  Rathbone hated forcing the issue. Monk was exhausted, and Rathbone could barely guess at the fear which must be eating him alive. Margaret was safe. Rathbone had everything to look forward to. If he lost her, it would be his own doing: his cowardice, moral or emotional. The solution lay in his own hands. But Monk was powerless. There was nothing he could do to help. He did not even know from hour to hour if Hester was alive, still well, or already infected, suffering terribly. She was imprisoned with virtual strangers. Would they even care for her in her moments of extremity? Would they stay to nurse her, as she had nursed so many others? Would they run away in terror or inadequacy? Or would they be too close to death themselves to be able to raise a hand to fetch water, or whatever one did to ease the terror or pain of the dying? The thought made him sick with misery.

  “What is it?” Monk demanded, cutting across his thoughts.

  Rathbone recalled himself. “To raise reasonable doubt I have to suggest a believable alternative,” he answered. “If Gould didn’t kill him, either someone else did or it was an accident. Can you get evidence to back your original decision? Louvain wrote that paper swearing to get Hodge’s killer if you found the ivory. That’ll come out, because the undertaker will swear to it to protect himself. I can’t afford to question the medical evidence at all. They would dig the body up, and that’s a nightmare I don’t even want to imagine.”

 

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