She had tried to avoid coming to the conclusion, but it was inevitable: the only thing that would make them leave would be to solve the murder of Nolan Baltimore. If the police were going to succeed, they would almost certainly have done so by now. The community had closed against them, which was to be expected. No one would tell them anything of meaning in case it would implicate himself, in prostitution if nothing else. And most of the inhabitants of the Leather Lane area were involved, at least peripherally, in fencing stolen goods, a little forgery, of documents if not of money, in pickpocketing, burglary, cardsharping and a dozen other illegal pursuits.
She could ask Monk, at least for advice, if not practical help. He knew and understood murder and its investigation. And perhaps it was in the interest of his own case to learn everything he could of the man who, until a week or two ago, had been the head of Baltimore and Sons. If there had been fraud, he might have known of it; he might even have been the man who perpetrated it. Surely it was reasonable to suppose his death was connected?
In fact, the jarringly ugly thought was irrefutable that Michael Dalgarno could have followed him to Leather Lane and killed him, precisely because he knew of the fraud and would have exposed it.
Why had Monk not thought of that?
Because he was so caught up in investigating the exact nature of the fraud, and whether it could provoke a disaster, that he had ignored Nolan Baltimore’s murder.
She waited for him, barely thinking of what else she was doing. She found herself listening for the sound of horses in the street from six o’clock onwards, for the opening and closing of the door and his footsteps. When they finally came at nearly quarter to eight she was caught by surprise, and almost ran into the hall.
He saw her face, the expectation in it, and gave her a quick smile and then looked away. The weariness and anxiety in him were so easy to read she hesitated for a moment, uncertain whether to say anything more than a few words of welcome. Should she ask him if he were hungry or had eaten, or make some enquiry after his success that could be answered on the surface-or honestly, as he chose? She could not let it slide by. If he were not going to break the barrier, then she must.
“Did you find anything more about the fraud?” she asked, not casually, but as if she were waiting for and required an answer.
“Nothing helpful,” he replied, taking his jacket off and hanging it up on the hook. “There’s dubious profit in land sales, but nothing more than I imagine most companies make. There are some losses as well.”
She felt as if he had closed a door. There seemed little more that she could ask, but she refused to let go. She watched him, but he moved around the room restlessly, without looking directly at her, touching things, straightening, putting away. Was she mithering him just at the time when he needed the silent understanding of a friend? Was she being selfish, expecting him to give her his attention, listen to her, think of her problems when he was exhausted?
Or was she breaking a barrier while it was still thin enough to be penetrated easily, before it became habit?
“We need to find out who killed Nolan Baltimore,” she said very clearly.
“Do we?” There was doubt in his voice. He was standing near the mantelshelf staring down at the embers of the fire. It was a sharp evening, and she had lit the fire for company as well as warmth. “I don’t see that his personal weaknesses have anything to do with railway fraud, if there is any.”
“If he defrauded somebody of money, then Leather Lane seems an excellent place to kill him,” she retorted, wishing he would look at her. “A perfect situation to blame someone else, and exact a rather painful revenge on his reputation as well.”
This time he did look up and smile, but it was without pleasure. There was an openness that flickered for an instant in his eyes, as if there had been no shadow, then it was gone again. The anxiety was back, and with it the distance between them.
“Actually, when I said ’we,’ “ she corrected herself, “I meant Margaret Ballinger and me. Or perhaps I meant everybody in Coldbath. More women are getting beaten because they can’t pay their debts. The police are all over the place so nobody’s doing any trade.”
“You wish to find who killed Baltimore so the police will leave and the prostitutes can get back into business?” he said with an edge of mockery she could not miss. “You have strange moral convictions, Hester.”
Was that pain in his voice now? Did he feel she had let him down, that she should have taken a higher, more puritan stand? He was disappointed, and she felt rebuked.
“If I could change the world so no women ever went into prostitution, I would!” she said angrily. “Perhaps you can tell me where I should begin? Get every woman a decent living at something more respectable, perhaps? Or stop every man from wanting… or needing… to buy his pleasures outside his own home?” She saw his expression of surprise and ignored it. “Perhaps every man should be married, and every wife comply with her husband’s wishes? Or better still, no man should have wishes he can’t satisfy honorably… that would solve at least half of it! Then all we would have to do is change the economy… after that changing human nature should be relatively easy!”
“You have rather escalated your demands,” he said quietly. “I thought all you wanted was for me to solve Nolan Baltimore’s murder.”
Her anger vanished. She did not want to quarrel with him. She wanted intensely, fiercely, to hold him in her arms and share whatever it was that hurt him so much, to take at least half of it, if not all, to fight it with him, beside him.
It was better to try, and be rebuffed, than not to try at all. Even rejection would not hurt more than this distance, which was a kind of little death. She walked over to him and stopped just in front of him, forcing him either to meet her eyes or deliberately look away.
“All I want is for you to advise me,” she said. “What should I do? What questions should I ask? Some of the women will trust me, where they won’t trust the police.”
“Leave it alone, Hester.” He lifted one hand as if to touch her cheek, then let it fall again. “It’s too dangerous. You think they trust you, and they do, to take care of their injuries. But you aren’t one of them and you never will be.”
“But that’s just the point, William!” She caught hold of his hand, gripping it hard. “I could have been! These women who owe money were perfectly respectable only a short while ago. They were governesses, parlor maids, married women who were abandoned, or whose husbands got into debt. They could have been nurses! I earned my own living in other people’s houses before I married you. One mistake, one misfortune, and I could have borrowed money, and found myself on the streets to pay it back.” She pulled a self-mocking face. “At least if I were a trifle younger.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” he said very softly, but with absolute certainty. “You would never have lent yourself to that, at any age. You’d have led a rebellion, or taken ship to America, or even stuck a knife between his ribs, but you wouldn’t have gone meekly to the slaughter.”
“Sometimes you rate my courage too high,” she replied, but with a rush of warmth inside her at the strength of his admiration. “I don’t know what I would have done. Thank God I was never put to the test.”
He stood silently for a moment, then bent and kissed her long and with a tenderness so complete, so achingly profound, the emotion welled up inside her, bringing tears to her eyes.
Then he let go, and went into the room he used as a study, and closed the door.
She was asleep in exhaustion when he came to bed. She woke in the night and he was beside her, but he did not move or touch her, even when she turned closer to him.
In the morning he was gone. There was a note on the dresser:
Hester,
I am going to investigate more into land purchase for the railway, partly because it is the only fraud I can see in the Baltimore case, but mostly because I know that Arrol Dundas was convicted of land fraud in what seems to have been almost identical circumstances. It may even have been the same company, Baltimore and Sons. I don’t know that beyond question, but I am fairly certain. I hope you will understand why I need to know absolutely.
If there is anything at all I can do to make sure Dalgarno does not end up in prison as Dundas did, for something of which he is innocent, then I must do so. I will not fail him in the same way. I may have to return to the railway itself, in Derbyshire.
Please, Hester, be careful! It is enough that you work in the Coldbath area, helping people who are troubled and are incapable of repaying you, even by telling you the truth. Certainly they cannot protect you if you attract the interest of the kind of men who so abuse them.
