make a clean cut, and sew it up,” she told him. “And sometimes you have to take somebody's arm or leg off, if it's gone bad with gangrene, which is sort of like rotten meat. If you don't, it will go all through them, and they'll die.”
He stared at her. He felt as if he were seeing her for the first time, with all the lights on. Before it had been almost as if they were in the half dark. She was not as pretty as some of the women he had seen, certainly not as fancy as some of the ladies; in fact, the clothes she wore were downright ordinary. He'd seen just as good on women near the docks when they went out on Sundays. But there was something extra in her face, especially in her eyes, and when she smiled, as if she could see things other people didn't even think of.
He always used to think that women were nice, and certainly useful in the house, the best of them. But most of them had to be told what to do, and they were weak, and scared, when it came to fighting. Looking after important things was men's work; protecting, fighting, seeing that nobody stepped out of line had to be done by a man. And for clever things, it was always men, of course. That went without anybody needing to say it.
Hester was smiling at him, but there were tears in her eyes, and she blinked quickly when she talked about the soldiers dying, the ones she couldn't help. He knew what that felt like, the ache in your throat so big you couldn't swallow, the way you kept gulping breath, but it didn't get any better, nor did the tightness go out of your chest.
But she didn't cry. He hoped to goodness Mr. Monk looked after her properly. She was a bit thin. Usually real ladies had a bit more… softness… about them. Somebody should take care of her.
“Yer gonna ‘ave another piece o’ toast?” he asked.
“Would you like one?” She misunderstood him. He was not asking for himself.
“Will yer ‘ave one?” he changed his approach. “I'll make it fer yer. I know ‘ow ter make toast.”
“Thank you,” she accepted. “That would be very nice. Perhaps I should boil the kettle again?” She began to rise.
“I'll do it!” He stepped in her way so she had to sit down. “All I gotta do is move it over on ter the ‘eat.”
“Thank you,” she said again, slightly puzzled, but willing to accept.
Very carefully indeed he cut two more slices of bread, a little thick, a trifle crooked, but good enough. He put them on the toasting fork and held them to the open door of the stove. This was not going to be easy, but he could look after her. It needed doing, and it was his new job. He would see to it from now on.
The toast started to smoke. He turned it round just before it burnt. He had better concentrate.
Hester had debated whether to take Scuff with her or not when she went back to look further into Durban 's history and whether the charges against him were in any part true. The matter was taken out of her hands by Scuff himself. He simply came.
“I'm not sure…” she began.
He smiled at her, continuing to look oddly important. “You need me,” he said simply, then fell in step beside her as if that settled the matter.
She drew in her breath to argue, and found that she had no idea how to tell him that she did not really need him. The silence grew until it became impossible, and by default she had accepted that she did.
As it transpired, he helped her find most of the people she eventually wished to speak to. It was long and tiring walking from one narrow, crowded street to another, arguing, asking, pleading for information and then trying to sort out the lies and the mistakes and find the elements of truth. Scuff was better at that than she was. He had a sharp instinct for evasion and manipulation. He was also more prepared than she to threaten or call a bluff.
“Don't let ‘em get away with nothin’!” he said to her urgently as they left one smooth-tongued man with a wispy black mustache. “That's a load o’…” He bit his tongue to avoid the word he had been going to use. “I reckon as it were Mr. Durban ‘as pulled ‘im out o’ the muck, an’ ‘e's too… mean ter say it. That's wot that is.” He stood in the middle of the narrow pavement looking up at her seriously.
A costermonger wheeled his barrow past them, knowing at a glance that she would not buy.
“Yer din't ought ter b'lieve every stupid sod as tells yer,” Scuff continued. “Well, yer din't,” he granted generously. “I'll tell yer if it's true or not. We better go and find this Willie the Dip, if ‘e's real.”
Two washerwomen barged past them, sheets tied around dirty laundry bouncing on their ample hips.
“You don't think he is?” Hester asked.
Scuff gave her a skeptical look. “Dip means ‘e picks pockets. ‘Oo don't, round ‘ere? I reckon ‘e's all guff.”
And so it turned out. But by the end of the day they had heard many stories of Durban from a variety of people up and down the dockside. They had been discreet, and Hester believed with some pride that they had also been inventive enough not to betray the reason for their interest.
It was well after dusk with the last of the light faded even from the flat surface of the water when they finally made their way up Elephant Stairs just a few yards along from Princes Street. The tide was running hard, slapping against the stone, and the sharp river smell was almost pleasant in the air after the closed-in alleys they had walked all day, and the heavy, throat-filling odors of the docks, where men were unpacking all manner of cargoes, pungent, clinging, some so sweet as to be rancid. The quiet movement of water was a relief after the shouting, clatter of hooves, and clank of chains and winches and thus of heavy loads.
They were tired and thirsty. Scuff did not say that his feet were sore, but possibly he regarded it as a condition of life. Hester ached all the way up to her knees, and beyond, but in the face of his stoicism, she felt that it would be self-indulgent to let it be known.
“Thank you,” she said as they started to walk up in the direction of Paradise Place. “You are quite right. I do need you.”
“S'all right,” he said casually, giving a little lift of his shoulder visible as he passed under the street lamp.
He took a deep breath. “‘E weren't a bad man,” he said, then looked sideways at her quickly.
“I know, Scuff.”
“Does it
“I don't know. I suppose it depends what the truth is.”
“Yer think it's bad, then?”
They came to the end of Elephant Lane and turned right into Church Street. It was completely dark now and the lamps were like yellow moons reflected over and over again right to the end. There was a faint mist drifting up in patches from the water, like castaway silk scarves.
“I think it might be. Otherwise why would he lie about it?” she asked. “We don't usually lie about good things.”
He was quiet.
“Scuff?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“You can't go on calling me ‘miss’! Would you like to call me ‘Hester’?”
He stopped and tried to look at her. “Hester?” he said carefully, sounding the
“I shall tell him I suggested it.”
“Hester,” he said again, experimentally, then he grinned.
Hester lay awake and thought hard about what steps she should take next. Durban had tried for a long time, well over a year, to find Mary Webber. He was a skilled policeman with a lifetime of experience in learning, questioning, and finding, and he had apparently failed. How was she to succeed? She had no advantages over him, as far as she knew.
Beside her, Monk was asleep, she thought. She lay still, not wanting to disturb him, above all not wanting him to know that she was thinking, puzzling.
Durban must have searched for all the families named Webber who lived in the area and gone to them. He would even have traced any who had lived there and moved, if it were possible. If he had not found Mary that way, then Hester would not either.
Then just as she was finally drifting off towards sleep, another thought occurred to her. Had Durban gone backwards? Had he found out where they had come from before that?
The idea did not seem nearly as clever in the morning, but she could think of nothing better. She would try it, at
