She had no idea what had happened to prevent him from gaining his qualifications and practicing as a full doctor. His speech was not from the dockland area, but she could not place it. He cared for Scuff, and that was all that mattered. One knew far less about most people than one imagined. Parents, place and date of birth, education, all told less of the heart than a few actions under pressure when the cost was high.
“I’m afraid we already have a very good idea who it was.” She answered his challenge while watching her step as she picked her way over broken cobbles. “I’m trying to find a reason to cast doubt on his guilt, or if not that, then at least to show that he doesn’t deserve the rope.”
Crow was surprised. “You want him to get off?”
Hester would not have put it quite so bluntly, and she drew in her breath to deny it. Then she saw Scuff looking at her and realized that perhaps Crow was right, that that was what she wanted. It was difficult to answer the question honestly with Scuff between them, grasping every word.
“I want the trade finished, wiped out,” she said. “To do that I need to break the man behind it-the one with the money. I’d rather not sacrifice Rupert Cardew in the process.”
Crow’s eyes widened incredulously. “Would you like the crown jewels at the same time, maybe, just as a nice finish?” He skirted around a pile of refuse, and a rat scuttled away.
“Not particularly,” Hester answered, keeping her face perfectly straight. “I haven’t sufficient use for them. One would have to walk terribly upright to keep a crown from falling off. I don’t think I could do that.”
Scuff was puzzled.
“She’s joking,” Crow told him, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “At least I hope she is.”
“Half,” Hester conceded. Then she smiled. “I might be able to, but if I dropped anything, somebody else would have to pick it up for me.”
“If you were wearing a crown, I expect they’d feel obliged,” Crow answered.
Scuff laughed, but the fear of being lost again, separated from her, was tight underneath, as sharp as a knife point.
They all walked in silence for a couple of hundred yards past more boxes, barrels, and piles of wood. Finally they reached the steps to the ferry to the north bank. The tide was turning and the water was choppy. Strings of lighters were making their way upriver laden with coal, timber, and round wooden barrels lashed together. A coastal barge passed by, sails full-set, billowing out. The light was bright on the water, and the wind caught the edges of the waves, whipping up a fine spray.
“I want to know the details the police won’t be able to find,” Hester told Crow after they were ashore on the north bank. “Any whispers.” She did not really know what she was asking for. The facts said that Rupert was guilty. But might a jury be persuaded to ask for leniency? Or when they heard what bestiality Parfitt sold, might they believe that any man who’d become involved, no matter how ignorant he’d been initially, was little better than Parfitt himself?
Or was it just that she liked Rupert, and for Scuff’s sake she was desperate to find the man behind Parfitt’s business, so she could prevent him from starting up again with someone new? Scuff needed to see them succeed, to believe it really could happen, and that he was a part of it.
“Crow …”, she began. “Do you think it could be something as simple as a business rivalry? Parfitt must have earned a lot of money from that boat. If someone else took over his trade and his clients, they’d make just as much, wouldn’t they? Perhaps what I really need to know is how the business was run. Who profits from his death, in a business way? Never mind the blackmail or the moral side of it. Let’s look at the money.”
He nodded very slowly, his smile widening. “Give me a couple of days.” He tilted his head a little to one side. “I suppose you want the details, rather than just my conclusions?”
“Yes, please. My conclusions might be different.”
He did not answer that, but a brief flash of amusement lit his eyes. “It’ll be ugly,” he warned.
“Of course it will. Thank you.”
There was really nothing more to be added now, and she thanked Crow and left.
“Where we goin’ now?” Scuff asked, keeping up with her by adding an extra skip into his step now and then. “We in’t just leavin’ it to ’im, are we?”
“No,” Hester answered decisively. “We are going to see if someone else with an interest in the boat’s profits might have been there the night Parfitt was killed.”
“ ’Ow’re we gonna do that?”
“Well, if it is one of the people I think it might be, he will have to have come up the river from his home. If I can find someone who saw him, it would be a start.”
She had not told Scuff anything about what Sullivan had said of Arthur Ballinger, and she assumed Monk hadn’t either. If there was really anything behind it, ignorance would be the safest shield for him.
“Like a cabby?”
“I think I’ll begin with the ferryman. Cabbies don’t see a lot of people’s faces, especially after dark.”
“Course!” Scuff said eagerly. “Yer sittin’ in a boat, an’ the ferryman’s gotta see yer, eh? So if ’e don’t wanna be seen an’ ’ave folks remember ’im, ’e’d row up the river ’isself. Or if ’e couldn’t, then ’e’d cross where ’e’d least likely be noticed a ’ole lot.”
“Definitely,” she agreed. “Let’s try the ferrymen in Chiswick first.”
It took them well into the afternoon to get from the eastern end, nearer the sea and the great wharfs and docks, right across the city by omnibus to the statelier, greener western edge, and then beyond that again into the lush countryside, and over the river to the southern bank. There was no omnibus across Barn Elms Park to the little township of Barnes itself and finally to the High Street right on the water’s edge. They were both tired and thirsty, and had sore feet, by the time they stopped at the White Hart Inn, but Scuff never complained.
Hester wondered if his silence was in any way because he was thinking about this utterly different place- green, well kept, almost sparkling in the bright, hard light off the water. On the surface, it seemed a world away from the dark river edge where Jericho Phillips had kept his boat. There the tide carried in and out the detritus of the port, the broken pieces of driftwood, some half-submerged, bits of cloth and rope, food refuse and sewage. There was the noise of the city even at night, the clip of hooves on the cobbles, shouts, laughter, the rattle of wheels, and of course always the lights-streetlamps, carriage lamps-unless the mist rolled in and blotted them out. Then there were the mournful booms of the foghorns.
Here the river was narrower. There were shipbuilding yards on the northern bank farther down. The shops were open, busy; occasional carts went by; people called out; but it was all smaller, and there was no smell of industrial chimney smoke, salt and fish, no cry of gulls. A single barge drifted upriver, sails barely arced in the breeze.
Scuff could not help staring around him at the women in clean, pale dresses, walking and laughing as if they had nothing else to do.
Hester and Scuff ate first, a very late luncheon of cold game pie, vegetables, and-as a special treat-a very light shandy.
Scuff finished his glass and put it down, licking his lips and looking at her hopefully.
“When you’re older,” she replied.
“ ’Ow long do I ’ave ter get older?” he asked.
“You’ll be doing it all the time.”
“Afore I can ’ave another one o’ these?” He was not about to let it go.
“About three months.” She had difficulty not smiling. “But you may have another piece of pie, if you wish? Or plum pie, if you prefer?”
He decided to press his luck. He frowned at her. “ ’Ow about both?”
She thought of the errand they were on, and what had driven them to it. “Good idea,” she agreed. “I might do the same.”
When there was nothing at all left on either plate, she paid the bill. Scuff thanked her gravely, and then hiccuped. They walked down to the river and started looking for ferries, fishermen, anybody who hung around the water’s edge talking, pottering with boats or tackle, generally observing the afternoon slip by.
It was more than two hours, pleasant but unprofitable, before they found the bowlegged ferryman who said he had carried a gentleman from the city over late on the night before the morning Mickey Parfitt’s body was found in Corney Reach.
“Aw, I dunno ’is name, lady,” the ferryman said dubiously. “Never ask folks’s names-got no reason ter, ’ave I?
