And yet it seemed unacceptably cruel to ignore the father’s pain as if it were of no importance, or an embarrassment one would rather avoid.
The door was opened by a butler whose expression was guarded, his eyes already showing the strain.
“Good morning, madam. May I help you?”
“Good morning.” She produced her card. “Mr. Rupert Cardew has been extremely generous to me and to the clinic for the poor that I run. It seems an appropriate time to offer Lord Cardew any service I can perform for him.” She smiled very slightly, sufficient only to show goodwill.
The stiffness in the butler’s face eased. “Certainly, madam. If you care to come inside, I will inform his lordship that you are here.”
She dropped her card onto the small silver tray, then followed the butler through the hall with its carved mantel and exquisitely wrought plaster ceiling and cornices. He left her in the firelit morning room with its faded carpets and the seascapes on the walls, the numerous bookcases, the spines lettered in gold, but of odd sizes. She knew at a glance that they were bought to read, not for show.
The butler excused himself, closing the door. In other circumstances Hester might have looked at the titles of the books. It was always interesting to know what other people read, but she could not keep her mind on anything at the moment. Even in the silence, she kept imagining footsteps in the hall; her mind raced to find words that would sound anything but futile.
She paced from the bookcase to the window and back again. She was staring at the garden when the door finally opened, catching her by surprise.
“I apologize for keeping you waiting, Mrs. Monk,” Lord Cardew said quietly, closing the door behind him.
“It is gracious of you to see me at all,” she answered. “I would not have been surprised had you declined. Especially since, now that I am here, I hardly know what to say that makes any sense-only that if I can be of service to you, then I wish to be.”
Cardew looked exhausted. His skin was papery, as if there were no blood in the flesh beneath it. But it was the emptiness in his eyes that she found the most painful. There was a kind of shapeless panic in them, a despair too big for him to handle.
“Thank you, but I have no idea what anyone can do,” he replied. “But your kindness is a small light in a very large darkness.” He was a slender man, but he must once have been elegant, supple, like a military man. He reminded her of the soldiers she had known in the past. The whole Crimean War seemed to belong to another age now. He also made her think of her own father, perhaps only because he also had looked older than he was, as if the weight of failure were crushing him.
She had not been at home when her father had most needed her. He had died alone while she was nursing strangers in Sevastopol. He had trusted where he should not have; a man with every appearance of honor had deceived him totally. Her father was one of many so betrayed, but the debts he could not meet had broken his spirit. He had believed that taking his own life was the only course left him.
That too, Hester had not been at home to prevent, or to aid her mother’s grief. What she could have done had never been spoken of; it was simply her absence at the time of need that wounded.
“We can find out what really happened,” she said impulsively. “It can’t be as simple as it seems. Either it was someone else altogether who killed Parfitt, and Rupert doesn’t know who, or he does know but he is defending them because he believes that is the right thing to do. Or possibly he did kill Parfitt, but for a reason that would make it understandable.” She waited for Cardew to answer.
He struggled with an emotion so sharp, the pain of it was visible in his face. “My dear Mrs. Monk, for all the help you give to the poor women who come to you in their distress, you can have no idea what kind of world men like Parfitt inhabit. I cannot be responsible for your stumbling into such abomination, even by accident. But your kindness is most touching. Your compassion is-”
“Pointless,” she interrupted him gently, “if you will not permit me to be what help I can. I have been a nurse on the battlefield. I walked among the dead and the dying after Balaklava. I was in the hospital in Sevastopol, with the rats, the hunger, and the disease. I have nursed in a fever hospital in the slums here in London, and I have waited in a locked house for the bubonic plague to run its course. Please don’t tell me what I can or cannot do for a friend who is clearly in trouble.”
He had no idea how to answer her. She was an example of all the compassion he idealized in women, and at the same time she broke the only mold with which he was familiar.
She seized the chance to continue. “I know at least something of what they did on such boats, Lord Cardew. I was there when they arrested Jericho Phillips, and he escaped, and then was murdered also. If Mickey Parfitt was of the same nature, there is much to argue in defense of anyone who rid the world of him. But to defend Rupert before a court, we need to know the truth. You are quite right in supposing such a creature is well beyond the knowledge of most people fit to sit on a jury.”
“Surely the police-,” he began.
“It is not their job to find mitigating circumstances, only to prove what happened. Did Rupert tell you what that was? I imagine he may not have wished to.”
“It is a little late to spare my feelings,” Cardew said drily, the ghost of a smile in his eyes. “He said he did not kill Parfitt. I would give everything I have to be able to believe him, but …” He looked away from her, then back again, his eyes slowly filling with tears. “But his past choices make that impossible. I’m sorry, Mrs. Monk, but I do not see how you can help. I would prefer that you did not risk any danger to yourself, either in person or in the form of the distress such knowledge would cause you. The things one sees, one cannot afterward forget.”
She gave him a tiny smile, an echo of the one he had given her. “I will not do anything against my will, Lord Cardew. Thank you for your kindness in receiving me.”
She returned home deep in thought, weighing Lord Cardew’s words. He longed to believe in Rupert’s innocence, and yet could not. Perhaps it was his fear that prevented him, like the vertigo that draws one to the edge of a precipice, and would have one plunge over it, simply to be free from the terror.
But according to Monk’s description of the knotted cravat, the crime had not been committed in fear or panic. It takes more than a few seconds to tie half a dozen tight knots in a silk cravat. Who would create such a weapon, thereby ruining a beautiful garment, unless they intended to use it? No argument of self-defense would stand against that kind of reasoning, unless Rupert were held prisoner somewhere, with time unobserved, and with his hands free to do such a thing.
She had offered to help, remembering only his kindness, his wit, the unostentatious generosity with which he’d given so much money. But how well did she really know him? All kinds of people could be charming. It required imagination, understanding, the ability to know what pleases others, and perhaps a certain sense of humor, an ease of wit. It did not need honesty or the will to place others before oneself. And as she looked back now, picturing him in her mind, she also remembered an anxiety in him, a sudden avoidance of her eyes, which she had taken for embarrassment at being in a place like the clinic. But perhaps it had been shame at the memory of his own acts, uglier than anything those women had endured.
What she could not tell Lord Cardew was that, for her own reasons, she needed to know the truth of what had happened to Mickey Parfitt. If some victim such as Rupert had killed him, then his trade was over. But if it were a rival, or even the man who had staked him the original price of the boat, then as soon as Parfitt’s murder was solved, and the hue and cry had died down, the whole hideous business would begin again exactly as before. The only difference would be the men running it for the giant behind the scenes, and probably another site to moor the boat. She needed to know it was over, for Scuff’s sake. The dreams would not leave him until he had seen more than Jericho Phillips dead, or Mickey Parfitt.
Was Rupert Cardew no more than another victim, one who’d struck back and would die for it?
When she reached home, she found Scuff in the kitchen eating a thick slice of bread spread with butter and piled with jam. He stopped chewing when he saw her, his mouth full, the bread held tightly in both his hands.
She tried to hide a smile. At last he was feeling sufficiently at home to take something to eat when he wanted it. She must watch to make certain it did not extend to more than bread-for example, the cold pie put aside for tonight’s supper.
“Good idea,” she said casually. “I’ll have a piece too. Would you like a cup of tea with it? I would.” She walked past him to fill the kettle and put it on the cooktop.
He swallowed. She heard the gulp.
