Scuff was extremely bored and his attention wandered again, this time toward some of the other members of the congregation. A lot of the women were older than Hester and rather fat. Those closest to him creaked a little when they moved, like the timbers of a ship on the tide. They looked unhappy. He supposed they might be late for luncheon and resented being kept in pointless conversations. He sympathized with them. He was hungry too-and tired of this. One of them caught his eye, and he smiled at her tentatively. She smiled back at him, then her husband glared at her and she stopped instantly.
Why was Hester still here? She didn’t know these people, and she certainly wasn’t talking to God, or listening to him. Yet she still looked very interested.
She looked even more interested when she was introduced to a good-looking man with thick, dark hair and a rather prominent nose. His name was apparently Robertson Drew, and he spoke to Hester in a condescending manner. His glance took in her costume and her new hat, and then her reticule and the fact that her boots were a little worn at the toes.
Scuff disliked him immediately.
“How do you do, Mrs. Monk?” Drew said with a smile that barely showed his teeth. “Welcome to our congregation. I hope you will join us regularly. And this is your son?” He looked momentarily at Scuff and then back to Hester. “Perhaps your husband will be able to be with us in future?”
Scuff thought the likelihood of that was about the same as the chances of finding a gold sovereign in the drain.
“I shall do all I can to persuade him,” Hester said smoothly. “Please tell me more about your charitable work, Mr. Drew. I confess it was report of that which brought me here. I live some distance away, but it seems to me most pastors speak a great deal about charity, but practice very little.”
“Ah! How perceptive you are, Mrs. Monk,” Drew agreed fervently. Suddenly he was all interest. He put out his hand as if to take Hester by the arm. Scuff was ready to kick his shins hard if he actually touched her, but he took his hand away again at the last minute and started to speak intently about all that the church had done for the needy.
Hester listened as if she were spellbound. Even to Scuff, who knew that it couldn’t be entirely real, it looked as if she genuinely cared.
Then Scuff realized that she was not precisely pretending. She was asking questions. She
Now he began to listen closely, even though he did not yet understand what she was looking to find out.
Drew noticed his attention with pleasure, and he began to direct his speech to both of them.
They escaped at last outside into the sunlight, walking rapidly toward the nearest main street where they could catch an omnibus to the river and then the ferry home. Scuff challenged Hester almost at once. “Ye’re detecting, aren’t yer?”
She hesitated, then gave up and smiled. “I’m trying to. Thank you for helping me.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“Anything,” she corrected him automatically.
“I still didn’t. What did any of ’em do, ’side from being about as straight as a pig’s tail?”
“Was that your impression?” she said curiously. “What makes you think that?”
“I seen that look on an opulent receiver’s face, one who’s trying to sell yer gold when ’e knows it’s pinchbeck,” he replied.
“That’s very unkind, Scuff-and probably true,” she said, trying to keep the amusement out of her face and failing. An opulent receiver was the slang term for a receiver of stolen goods who specialized in expensive and hard-to-sell things.
“Now what are we going ter do?” he asked, taking it for granted that he was part of the plan.
She walked several yards without answering.
He kept pace with her. His legs were long enough now. He was almost the same height as her, and in a year or two he would definitely be taller. He wondered what that would feel like. He was still wondering when she answered.
“I shall weigh up all I know, which I admit is not a lot, and then I shall go and see Squeaky Robinson, at the clinic.”
“Why?” He knew Squeaky Robinson a little. He used to be a brothel keeper, until Sir Oliver Rathbone had tricked him out of the buildings he owned and used. Now those buildings were the clinic Hester ran for street women. Squeaky had had nowhere else to go and no means of earning his living. Protesting indignantly all the way, he had accepted their offer to earn his lodgings by keeping the accounts of the new establishment-which he did remarkably well. He certainly knew about money, and he understood that his survival depended on being honest to the farthing.
“Because if they really have been dishonest, Squeaky Robinson is the one person who might catch them,” she replied.
“How will ’e know?”
“I’m not certain yet,” she said reasonably. “But because they are a charity, they must account for their money. It won’t be easy to catch them out if they are doing something dishonest with it, but it’s worth trying.”
“Why?” he asked. “I mean, why are we doing it?”
“Because they have ruined the father of someone I like,” she told him. “Someone who seems quite a lot like me when I was younger. And I suppose because a long time ago, someone did that to my father too, and I wasn’t there to help him.”
He looked at her face and saw the sadness and the guilt in it. He knew this was not the time to ask anything more.
“Righto,” he replied. “I’ll ’elp.”
“Thank you. Now let’s hurry up and get the next omnibus home to lunch.”
Hester went to the clinic in Portpool Lane on Monday morning as usual, and, as usual, attended first to the urgent medical matters, then the household ones. Lastly she went into Squeaky Robinson’s office to inquire about the state of the finances.
Squeaky was a scrawny, cadaverous man of uncertain years, somewhere between fifty and sixty. He greeted her with his usual dour expression. “Could always use more money,” he answered her question. “But we aren’t desperate … not right today.”
“Good.” She dismissed the subject as dealt with. She pulled out the chair opposite his desk and sat down. “Squeaky, I need your advice, possibly your help.”
He squinted at her suspiciously. “There ain’t nothing to spare,” he said immediately.
“I don’t want money,” she replied, keeping her patience with difficulty. “I think there might be some fraud going on in a local church … at least, I hope there is.”
His straggly eyebrows shot up. “You what?”
“Fraud,” she replied, realizing she had not phrased it in the clearest way. “I suspect and hope it is fraud. I want to find out, and then I want to do something about it.” She explained what she knew of the victim, mentioning no names, and the little she had discovered on her own visit to the church.
“Leave it alone,” Squeaky said, almost before she had finished.
That was always his first reaction, so, as usual, she ignored it. She went on to describe Abel Taft and Robertson Drew, all the time watching Squeaky’s face crease up with greater and greater distaste. Finally, she mentioned that the victim she was concerned about was Josephine Raleigh’s father. She had kept that piece of information until last intentionally, knowing it would have the most effect. She knew Squeaky could be trusted to keep his mouth shut about it.
Squeaky glared at her balefully, quite aware that he had been manipulated. He liked Josephine, and Hester knew it.
“I don’t know what you think I’m going to do!” he said indignantly. “I ain’t going to church. It’s against my beliefs.”
“I think this particular church goes against my beliefs too,” Hester agreed. “Can’t you find a way to take a bit
