by Anne Perry
Hester stood up and walked over to Monk. She kissed him on the cheek, gently, then on the mouth. He slid his arms around her and held her until she pulled back.
“I know,” she said softly. “Crow came and told us. Someone murdered Ballinger in his cell.”
Monk looked past her at Scuff. The boy was watching him, waiting, the crumpet held in his hand, dripping butter onto his clothes. His eyes were wide.
“It isn’t the way I would have chosen,” Monk replied. “But maybe that’s an end of it. It’s hideous for Rathbone, and for Margaret, but there was never anything we could have done to change that.”
Scuff was still watching Monk.
Monk smiled at him. “No more river trade on those boats,” he said.
“What about them pictures yer was lookin’ fer?” Scuff asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re destroyed, maybe not. But they’re only pictures. If the people in them get blackmailed, we’ll worry about that if we ever get to know. Finish your crumpet before it’s cold.”
Scuff grinned and took a big bite of it, scattering crumbs onto the floor, and onto Monk’s chair.
“Next time the chair’s mine,” Monk said with a nod.
Scuff hitched himself a little farther back against the cushions and continued smiling.
EPILOGUE
Codicil to the last will and testament of Arthur Hall Ballinger.
To my son-in-law Oliver Rathbone I leave all my photographic equipment: cameras, tripods, lighting, and such photographic plates and negatives as have already been exposed.
They are to be found in my bank, in my private safety deposit.
I trust there is some heaven or hell from which I may observe what he does with them.
Arthur Hall Ballinger
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNE PERRY is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, most recently Treason at Lisson Grove and Buckingham Palace Gardens, and the William Monk novels, including Acceptable Loss and Execution Dock. She is also the author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet, Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, At Some Disputed Barricade, and We Shall Not Sleep, as well as ten Christmas novels, most recently A Christmas Odyssey. Her standalone novel The Sheen on the Silk, set in the Byzantine Empire, was a New York Times bestseller. Anne Perry lives in Scotland.
www.anneperry.net