Acceptable Loss: A William Monk Novel

by Anne Perry

  “That can’t be right,” she agreed. She turned to Scuff. “If you go to the kitchen, you’ll find Bessie there. Tell her that I said you could have a piece of the plum cake in the third jar along. Don’t forget, the third jar. Then she’ll know that you are telling the truth. No one else knows it is there.”

  Scuff drew in his breath, and then let it out again. “I’ll ’ave it later,” he replied, taking a step closer to Hester. “Ye’re gonna tell ’er who opened the door an’ let ’Attie out ter get killed. I gotta be ’ere. Thank yer.”

  Claudine looked at him, then at Hester. “Is he right?”

  Hester nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so. She had strict instructions not to go out for any reason at all, not even to go into the main rooms where other people come and go. She knew she was in danger, and she was scared stiff that they would kill her.”

  Claudine’s face filled with misery. “And did they?”

  “Yes. Claudine, I have to know who persuaded her to go out.”

  “What good will it do now?” Claudine asked. “The poor girl is beyond help.”

  “It seems it was just a piece of stupid behavior. But if she was lured out on purpose, then I need to tie it together. The trial is going badly. It looks as if nothing will be proved, and Ballinger will get off on reasonable doubt. We will be back where we started.” She did not add that the trade in pornography would begin again exactly as before, as soon as the man behind it had replaced Mickey Parfitt. Although, she feared that leaving this unsaid would not deceive Scuff for long.

  Claudine looked at her, and her eyes were suddenly tired and bitterly unhappy. “Then you had better ask Lady Rathbone. She was here that morning, working in the laundry and the medicine room, just checking on supplies. She will know who is lying.”

  Hester was stunned. “Margaret was here?”

  Claudine’s face was unreadable. “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “About an hour, that I know of.” Claudine watched her steadily.

  “In the laundry?”

  “Yes. Hester … I don’t believe any of the women here would lie to you. In addition to their gratitude, and perhaps fear for their future chances of treatment, why would they? They’d lie to anyone else to protect you, as easily as breathing, but not this. They all knew you wanted Hattie protected.”

  Hester knew that was true. It was Margaret who’d had every reason to fear Hattie’s testimony. It had just never occurred to Hester that she would do this. In fact, for Hattie to have gone back to Chiswick and ended in the river, Margaret must have done far more than simply getting Hattie to leave.

  “She done it?” Scuff asked, looking from Hester to Claudine and back again.

  “Not killed her,” Hester said quickly. “But, yes, it does look as if she took her away from here.”

  “Then, who killed ’er?” he said, his eyes full of disbelief.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what she did, or what she meant to happen. But I’m going to find out.” She turned to Claudine. “Thank you. I think it’s best if you don’t say anything more to people here, even if they ask you. Please?”

  “Of course I won’t.”

  Claudine seemed about to add something more, then changed her mind. Hester guessed that it was some kind of warning, and from the troubled gentleness of her face, a sympathy. She smiled back, not needing words.

  AFTER A SHORT, VERY firm discussion in which she told Scuff he was definitely not coming with her, Hester put him in a hansom and paid the driver to take him to the Wapping police station. She gave him fare for the ferry home, and she went on to the court.

  Even the pavement outside was bustling with people, all eager to catch any word about what was going on inside. It was only with the help of an usher who knew her that Hester managed to get in at all. He escorted her through the hallway, and with some use of his authority, into the very back of the courtroom.

  She had not long to wait—just a few minutes of Winchester’s argument—and then the judge adjourned the court for luncheon. Hester was buffeted by the crowd pouring out, first from the back of the gallery, and then at last from the front. She saw Lord Cardew, pale-faced, looking a decade older than he had just a few weeks ago. She was ashamed of being so relieved that he did not see her. What could she say to him that would even touch the pain he must be feeling? How much courage did it cost just to come out of the house, let alone to sit here and listen as the horror grew deeper, and the doubt ate into all that had once been so bright and safe?

  Then she saw Margaret and her mother, side by side, just behind two other couples, pale-faced and tense. They also looked neither to right nor left, as if they could see no one. The resemblance in the women—something in the angle of the head, a shape of eyebrow—made Hester believe that they were Margaret’s sisters and their respective husbands.

  But it was Margaret she needed to speak to, and alone.

  She stepped forward, blocking Mrs. Ballinger’s way. It was discourteous, to say the least, but she had no better alternative.

  Mrs. Ballinger stopped abruptly, her face filled with alarm. But Margaret hesitated only an instant, then, grasping the elements of the situation, turned to her mother.

  “Mama, it seems Mrs. Monk needs to speak to me. Something must have occurred at the clinic.”

  “Then, it can wait!” Mrs. Ballinger said between her teeth. “It is not even imaginable that anything there could be of importance to us now.”

  “Mama—”

  “Margaret, I do not care if the place has burned to the ground! Does she expect us to pass buckets of water?” She swiveled away from Margaret to glare at Hester.

  “It is regarding evidence, Mrs. Ballinger,” Hester replied, needing a considerable effort to keep her voice level and polite. “I would prefer not to take it to Mr. Winchester, but that is my alternative.”

  The last vestiges of color drained from Mrs. Ballinger’s face. “Are you threatening me, Mrs. Monk?”

  Hester felt the anger brew inside her. “I am trying to gain your attention, Mrs. Ballinger. Or to be more accurate, Margaret’s attention. The matter in hand is more important than our personal feelings.”

  Margaret took her mother’s arm briefly. “I shall find you when court resumes, Mama. Go with Gwen and Celia.” And without waiting for her mother’s reply, she let go of her and faced Hester. “We had better go to Oliver’s rooms. Whatever you have to say need not be made a spectacle of out here. Come.” Then, walking as briskly as possible through the last few people still in the corridors, she led the way to the room where Rathbone was permitted, for the duration of the trial, to keep his papers and to speak with anyone he might need to. The clerk recognized Margaret and, without question, allowed her in, and Hester because they were clearly together.

  Margaret swung round as soon as the door was closed.

  “Well, what is it? After your husband’s accusations against my father, you can hardly expect me to be pleased to see you, or to imagine you have my welfare in mind.”

  It was not so long since they had been close friends, sharing laughter, dreams, even the excitement of Margaret’s courtship with Rathbone, and her anxieties that he would never actually propose to her. She had not said so in as many words, but there had been a time when Margaret had feared that he would always love Hester, and had secretly imagined that Hester would have made him happier. It had been some time before she had realized that was not true.

  Now they faced each other, several feet apart in the small room with its table, chairs, and bookcases, a world apart in emotion.

  There was no time to waste in prevarication, or in an attempt to smooth the way to any kind of understanding.

  “You were at the clinic the morning Hattie Benson left,” Hester stated.

  Margaret was stiff, her shoulders high and straight, a very faint color in her cheeks.

  “You came here to tell me that?” she said with surprise. “You’ve lost your evidence. I know that. She won
’t testify to save your friend. Although how you can be a friend to Rupert Cardew is beyond my imagination. But, then, you have not been in court, and perhaps that is some excuse. I assure you, your loyalty is misplaced.”

  All kinds of bitter retorts rose to Hester’s lips, especially as Margaret herself had not been in court the previous day, but Hester did not speak them. It would break the frail thread of contact between them, and she needed to know the truth.

  “I want to know what happened to Hattie, Margaret; that’s all I’m concerned with at the moment. I promised to look after her. I want to know why I failed, regardless of what she might have said on the stand.”

  “What she might have said is that she lied to you,” Margaret answered. “You were kind to her, and she wanted to please you. I imagine she also had a very good idea of where her best future interests lay, should she ever be sick or injured, or need your help for any kind of problem. And she wouldn’t be the first who lied to please the police, out of fear, or for revenge, or simply because it’s easier than keeping up a resistance. You know as well as I do that street women survive by pleasing others, frequently those they are afraid of.” She made a slight gesture, half pity, half disgust. “They know what people want, and they give it to them. It’s their trade.”

  Hester shook her head fractionally, as if to rid herself of something. “Is that how you think of her, as someone who lies to please, that’s all?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hester, don’t be so self-righteous. This is the time for truth. Yes, that is what I think of girls like Hattie. Maybe if I had had the misfortune of being born into her lot in life, I would be the same. I wasn’t. I had fine parents, good health, good examples to follow, and I married a fine man. I show my gratitude for it in service to those less fortunate, but I’m not blinded by sentimentality regarding their nature, or their weaknesses. Sometimes I think you are.”

  Hester was overtaken by an anger that astounded her. She stood for a moment, trembling a little.

  “I imagine we both have thoughts about others that are less than flattering,” she said almost between her teeth. “Or even downright unkind. I want to know why you took Hattie at least as far as the door, and watched her go outside, when you knew that I had her in the clinic to keep her safe so she could testify at the trial. Why did you?”

  “You sound like a policeman,” Margaret said with a slight curl of her lip. “You are giving yourself airs to which you have no right. I gave my time to help at the clinic because I believe in the work you do there. I am not your servant to answer your questions.”

  “Either I ask you or William does,” Hester said grimly.

  “Then, William may try,” Margaret snapped back. “I do not have to account to you for where Hattie went, even did I know.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Hester began, furious with herself because her voice was shaking.

  “That is what I just said,” Margaret told her.

  “Because I already know!” Hester snapped. “She went back to Chiswick, where she was strangled and her body thrown into the river!”

  Now it was Margaret’s turn to blanch, and to find herself gasping for breath.

  “Now perhaps you can see my concern,” Hester added tartly. “Also why William may very well ask you where she went, and why you took her to the door.”

  Margaret regained her control with difficulty. “Obviously Rupert killed her! So she would not be called to the stand and say that she’d lied before, and she’d no more taken his cravat than I had. He kept it, as everyone supposes, and later strangled Mickey Parfitt with it, because he could not go on paying him blackmail. If you were a little less blinded by your own crusades, you would have seen that in the first place. I’m sorry Hattie had to die for you to face reality.”

  Hester could feel her fingernails dig into the palms of her hands. “The reality throughout is that Hattie was the one person who could have cleared Rupert,” she answered. “And you took her to the door and let her out into the street, out of the place where she was safe, and someone killed her. It might have been Rupert Cardew. It might just as easily have been your father. He was the one her testimony would have hurt. And you were the one who sent her out.”

  Margaret stared at her, her face white to the lips, her eyes glittering. “Are you likening my father—my father—to Rupert Cardew? Rupert is dissolute, weak, and perverted … a … a vile man, who, for some unknown reason, in your own morality, your memory, or your need, you don’t seem able to see for what he is.”

  “Of course I can see he’s weak!” Hester’s voice was rising in spite of her efforts to keep it level. “I don’t know how dissolute he is, and neither do you. But your loyalty to your father blinds you from seeing that he too could be just as greedy, as cruel, and in his own way as dissolute. He may not watch little boys being raped and abused, but is he any better if he imprisons them and causes it to happen, so he can blackmail the wretched men who do it? Is corrupting others any better, any nobler than being corrupt yourself? I think it’s worse!”

  “My loyalty makes me know it could not be true,” Margaret said between her teeth. “But you wouldn’t understand that. You were in the Crimea being noble, saving strangers when your own father needed you. He died alone in despair while you were off glory-hunting. And if that weren’t enough, who supported your mother in her grief? Not you! You didn’t even come home for his funeral.”

  Hester was speechless. She could not catch her breath. Her whole body hurt as if she had been beaten.

  “You don’t know what loyalty is,” Margaret went on, seeing her advantage and forcing it home. “I used to be sorry for you that you don’t have any children of your own, only that little urchin you’ve picked up from the dockside to fill your emptiness. When it comes down to it, you don’t understand what family is. You’re too selfish, too absorbed with the image of love to know what the reality is.” She took a gulp of air, then pushed past Hester and went out into the hallway again, leaving the door swinging on its hinges.

  Was it true? Only part of it! Hester had had no idea of her father’s despair, no idea he had been cheated, lied to, and betrayed. She heard of his suicide only after it had happened. Letters to and from the Crimea took weeks, and often she was away from Scutari when the ships from England landed.

  Could she have known? Should she have? Her brother James had kept it from her. Her younger brother had already been killed in action. Was there something else she should have done? Should she have stayed at home in the first place?

  No! She had followed not only her heart but her beliefs, in joining the nurses in the hellhole of Scutari, and even on the blood-soaked battlefields. She had eased pain, saved lives. And she had loved her father more than Margaret could ever know.

  And she loved Monk. She would have wanted children to please him, to give him everything love can ever give, but she did not ache for them for herself. Yes, she loved Scuff. Why should she deny that? But for who he was, not to ease an emptiness within herself. Monk alone was sufficient—companion, ally, lover, and friend.

  Had she made mistakes, perhaps even profound ones? Yes, of course. But never through indifference.

  She stood still, dizzy, the room blurring in her vision, and waited until she was sufficiently composed to return to the courtroom and observe the afternoon’s trial.

  RATHBONE WAS FIGHTING FOR the defense as Hester had known he must do. He had no choice, legally or emotionally.

  He called witnesses who, one by one, painted a picture of the trade Parfitt had run, and its patrons among the rich and dissolute, including, most pointedly, Rupert Cardew.

  “Only the rich?” He pressed the witness, an oily, devious-looking man who stood very straight in the witness box, his hands by his sides.

  “Course,” the man replied. “No point in blackmailin’ the poor!”

  There was a faint snicker around the gallery, which died immediately.

  “And the fashionable?” Rathbone continued.
“The socially prominent?”

  The witness regarded him witheringly. “In’t no need ter pay if yer got no position to lose. If yer nobody, yer tell ’im ter sod off an’ sell the pictures to whoever ’e wants.”

  “Quite,” Rathbone agreed succinctly. “Thank you, Mr. Loftus.” He turned to Winchester. “Your witness, sir.”

  Winchester rose to his feet. He moved just as elegantly as before, but Hester noticed the pallor of his face, and that the hand resting at his side was clenched.

  “Mr. Loftus, you seem to be very well informed about this whole business. Far more, for example, than I am, even though I have had to learn as much about it as I can, for this trial. How is that, sir?”

  “Oh, I know all sorts.” Loftus tapped the side of his nose, as if to suggest some extraordinary sensory awareness.

  “I accept that you do, sir, but how?” Winchester pressed. He smiled very slightly. “For example, how much are you involved in it yourself?”

  Loftus drew in his breath, then caught Winchester’s eye and apparently changed his mind. “Well … I see things.”

  “ ‘See things,’ ” Winchester repeated dubiously. “What things, Mr. Loftus? Well-dressed men coming from and going to a boat moored on the river, would you say?”

  “That’s right. Late at night, an’ believe me, they in’t there ter fish.”

  There was another titter of laughter around the gallery. A juror raised his hand to hide a smile.

  “Late at night?” Winchester said gently. “In the dark, then?”

  “O’ course,” Loftus sneered. “You don’t think they’re gonna be about when folks can recognize ’em, do yer? Yer in’t bin listenin’, sir.” He exaggerated the “sir” slightly. “They in’t there for any good.”

  “Too dark to be recognized. And yet you know who they were?” Winchester smiled back at him, eyebrows raised inquiringly.

  Loftus knew he had been trapped. “All right!” he said angrily. “I ’elped now an’ then. On the outside only! I never done nothing to those boys!”

  “You helped on the outside,” Winchester echoed him. “Out of the goodness of your heart? Or you were paid in kind, perhaps? A few pictures to sell on to others? After you’d had a good look at them yourself? Perhaps to sell back to the miserable wretches in them, caught in acts that would ruin them if their friends knew? Is that how you were so sure that Rupert Cardew was involved?”