Don’ ask where they’re goin’ neither. ’Tain’t none o’ my business. Jus’ be civil, talk a little ter pass the time, like, an’ get ’im ter the other side safe an’ dry. I recall, though, as this gent were a real toff, knowed all kinds o’ things.”
Hester felt the grip tighten in the pit of her stomach, and suddenly the possibility of profound tragedy was real. “Truly? How old would you say he was?”
The man bent his head a little to one side and looked at her, then at Scuff, then back at her again. “Why yer wanna know, missus? ’E done yer wrong some’ow?”
She knew what he was thinking, and she played on it without a moment’s shame. “I don’t know, unless I know if it was he,” she answered, keeping the amusement out of her eyes deliberately. She wanted to laugh. Then she thought of all the women of whom it would be true, and the amusement vanished. A knot of shame pulled tight inside her for her callousness.
“Don’t think so, love,” he said sadly, biting his lower lip. “This feller’d be a bit too old fer you.”
“Too old?” she said with surprise. She gulped. It could not be Rupert. He was not much more than thirty, younger than she. “Are you sure?” She was fishing for time, trying to think of an excuse for asking him to describe the man in more detail.
The ferryman sucked in his cheeks and then blew them out again. “Mebbe I shouldn’t a said that. Still an ’andsome enough figure of a man.”
“Fair hair?” Hester asked, thinking of Rupert standing in the sun in the doorway of the clinic. “Slender, but quite tall?”
“No,” the ferryman said decisively. “Sorry, love. ’E’d a bin sixty, like as not, dark ’air, near black, close as I could tell in the lamplight, like. But a big man, ’e were, an’ not tall, as yer might say. More like most.”
Considering that the ferryman was unusually short, Hester wondered what he considered was average. However, it might only insult him to ask, and apart from anything else, she needed his help.
“Did he come back again later?” she asked, changing the subject. She felt awkward, now that she had established that it was not the mythical deserting husband she had suggested. Then a new idea occurred to her. “You see, I’m afraid it could have been my father. He has a terrible temper, and …” She left the rest unsaid, a suggestion in the air. “He wasn’t … hurt, was he?”
“Yer do pick ’em, don’t yer?” The ferryman shrugged. “But ’e were fine. Bit scruffed up, like ’e ’ad a bit of a tussle, but right as rain in ’isself. Walked down the bank an’ leaped inter his boat. Don’t you worry about ’im. Don’t know about the young feller with the fair ’air. I never see’d ’im.”
“Perhaps he wasn’t here.” She said it with an upsurge of relief. She knew it was foolish even as she welcomed it. It meant nothing, only one difficulty avoided of a hundred.
“Wot does it mean?” Scuff asked as they thanked the man and walked away along the path. “Is it good?”
“I’m not sure,” Hester replied. That at least was true. “It certainly wasn’t Rupert. Even in the pitch dark you couldn’t mistake him for sixty. And if this man were scruffed up, he would have been in a fight, which, from the sound of it, he won.”
“Like chokin’ Mickey Parfitt and sending ’im over the side?”
“Yes, something like that,” she agreed.
He shivered. “Was there other people in the boat?”
“Not that evening, apparently, except for the boys, locked in belowdecks.”
He hesitated. “Where are they now?”
Hester heard the strain in his voice, saw the memory bright and terrible in his eyes.
“They’re all safe,” she told him unwaveringly. “Looked after and clean and fed.”
It was a moment or two before he was satisfied enough to believe her. Gradually the stiffness eased out of his back and shoulders. “So ’oo were it, then? Were it the man ’oo killed Mickey Parfitt?”
“Quite possibly.”
“ ’Ow do we find out ’oo ’e is?”
“I have an idea about that. Right now we are going home.”
“We in’t gonna look fer ’im?” He was shivering very slightly, trying to stand so straight that it didn’t show. He pulled his coat tighter deliberately, although it was not any colder.
“I need to ask William a few questions before that. I don’t think I will get two chances to speak to him about this, so I need to do it properly the first time.”
“ ’E in’t gonna let yer,” Scuff warned. “I wouldn’t, if I was ’im.”
“I dare say not.” She did not bother to hide her smile. “Which is why I won’t ask him, and neither will you.”
“I might.”
She looked at him. It wasn’t a threat. He was afraid for her. She saw it in his eyes, like a hard, twisting pain. He had found some kind of safety for the first time in his life, and it was threatened already. He was used to loss. Although this was too deep for him to handle alone, he was too used to loneliness to be able to share, too vulnerable even to acknowledge it.
“I’ll come wif yer,” he said, watching her face, waiting for her to refuse him.
“Thank you,” she accepted. It was rash. Perhaps it would cost them both. “If William is angry later, I’ll tell him you came only to make sure I was safe.”
He smiled and pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “Right,” he agreed, overwhelmed with relief.
What Hester actually wanted to know from Monk was what he had been told about where Arthur Ballinger had been on the night of Parfitt’s death. The ferryman’s description fitted him extraordinarily well-although, of course, it also fitted several thousand other men closely enough. She hated even thinking that it might’ve been Ballinger, because of how it would hurt Rathbone, and of course Margaret, but for Scuff’s sake, whoever was behind the boats run by men like Phillips and Parfitt, he had to be stopped, and to be hanged for murder was as good as being imprisoned for the kidnapping and abuse of children. Blackmail she doubted could ever be proved, because no one would admit to being a victim. That was part of the blackmailer’s skill.
“Why?” Monk said immediately.
They were standing side by side with the French doors ajar in the calm late evening, the smell of earth and damp leaves in the air. Dusk had fallen, and there was little sound outside in the small garden except for the wind through the leaves, and once or twice the hoot of an owl flying low. The sky was totally clear, the last light on the river below like the sheen on a pewter plate. Up here the noise of boats was inaudible, no shouts, no foghorns. A single barge with a lateen sail moved upriver as silently as a ghost.
“Why?” Monk repeated, watching her.
Hester had never intended to deceive him, just to keep her own counsel a little. “Because I was speaking to Crow this morning, in case he can help.”
“Help whom?” he asked softly. “Rupert Cardew? I can’t blame him for killing Mickey Parfitt, but the law won’t excuse him, Hester, no matter how vile Parfitt was. Not unless it was self-defense. And honestly, that’s unbelievable. Can you imagine a man like Parfitt standing by while Cardew took off his cravat and put half a dozen knots in it, then looped it around Parfitt’s throat and pulled it tight?”
“Didn’t he hit him over the head first?” she argued. “If Parfitt were unconscious, he wouldn’t be able to stop him. Rupert might …” She stopped. It was exactly the argument Monk was making. “Yes, I see,” she admitted. “If he was unconscious, then he was no danger to Rupert, or anyone else.”
“Precisely. You can’t help him, Hester.” There was sorrow in his voice, and defeat, and in his eyes a bitter humor. She knew he was remembering with irony their crossing swords with Rathbone when he had defended Jericho Phillips in court, and they had been so sure of victory, taking it for granted because they’d been convinced of his total moral guilt.
She wanted to argue, but every reason that struggled to the surface of her mind was pointless when she tried to put it into words. It all ended the same way: She didn’t want Rupert to be guilty. She liked him, and was grateful for his support of the clinic. She was desperately sorry for his father. She knew perfectly well that Rupert was not the power nor the money behind Parfitt’s business, and she wanted to destroy the man who was. She was trying to force the evidence to fit her own needs, which was not only dishonest, it was in the end also pointless.
