a bewilderment of happiness.
Finally he turned to Hester. “You haven’t been home for over a week. I’ll take you now.” It was not a question.
She smiled at him, shaking her head. “Thank you, Oliver, but-”
“No,” he cut across her. “Margaret will stay here now; you must go home. Even if you don’t think you deserve it, Monk does.”
“I’ll go home,” she said meekly. “I’ll just go with Sutton, if you don’t mind.”
He hesitated only an instant. “Of course I don’t mind,” he replied. “Mr. Sutton deserves that honor.”
So Hester walked home beside Sutton, pulling the rat cart, smiling all the way. Snoot sat upright in the front, quivering with excitement at all the new sights and smells, and the infinite possibility of ratting ahead of him.
Sutton put down the cart in Fitzroy Street and turned to Hester.
“Thank you,” she said with profound sincerity. “That is far too small a word for what I feel, but I don’t know any large enough.” She offered him her hand.
He took it a little awkwardly. “Yer don’t need ter thank me, Miss ’Ester. We done well together.”
“Yes we did.” She shook his hand, then let it go and turned to walk up to the step. She would have to knock, or look for her key. She had thought Rathbone had said Monk was home, but perhaps she only wanted to believe that. How absurd it would be if he were not!
The door opened, as if Monk had been watching for her. He stood just inside the hall looking thin and ashen- faced, his eyes shining with joy so intense he could not speak.
Rathbone had planned this-she knew it now-but there was no time even to think of him. She walked straight into Monk’s arms and clung to him so fiercely she must have bruised his body. She felt him shudder, holding on to her with such passion he could scarcely breathe, his tears wetting her face.
It was the rat catcher who softly closed the door, leaving them alone.
FOURTEEN
Monk stood in the bedroom in the wan morning light looking at Hester still sleeping. He wanted to stay, simply to be as close to her as he could. He would like to wait until she woke, however long it was, and light the fire downstairs, regardless of expense. He would make the room warm for her, bring her whatever she wanted, tea, toast, go out in the rain and buy whatever else she would like and bring it back for her. Then when she was ready, talk about everything, tell her all that had mattered to him, and learn more than the few bare facts she had told him of her time in Portpool Lane. He wanted to hear the details, how she had felt in all the victories and the pain, so he could be closer to her.
Before that he had one more idea to pursue. He knew nothing about any of the missing crewmen except Hodge. He was apparently the only one married. It was perhaps intrusive to go to his widow now, but it was just possible that Hodge might have told her something about one of the missing men: a woman, a place, anything at all to help find them.
He went downstairs and cleaned out the grate, clumsily. It was not a job he was accustomed to doing, and at the end he found himself with rather more cleaning up to do than he had expected. Then he laid a new fire and lit it. When it was drawing nicely, he damped it down so it would last. He filled the coal buckets to the top and wrote a note for Hester, saying simply that he loved her. At any other time he would have thought it ridiculous, but today it was the most natural thing to do. He only became self-conscious after he had propped it up on the table and had gone as far as the door, coat collar turned up. He smiled for a moment, then went out into the wind and sleet.
He had no idea of Hodge’s widow’s address; Louvain’s office was the obvious place to ask. However, the surgeon or the morgue attendant might know, and he would far rather ask them. He had too much other business to address with Louvain: the death of his sisters, the whereabouts of his missing crew, and his own black rage with him for deliberately sending Ruth Clark to Hester, knowing she had plague, and to use it to manipulate Monk. He dared not even think of that; the raw emotion it woke in him robbed him of reason, of any kind of judgment. He wanted to beat Louvain with his own hands until he was a bloody pulp and too helpless even to ask for mercy. And that blind rage frightened him; it woke old memories of another rage which had ended in murder, and only by the grace of God had he not been guilty.
So instead he set out to look for the attendant at the morgue. He was walking along the Embankment when he heard a scampering of feet. The next moment Scuff’s voice was demanding to know what was the matter with him.
“In’t yer talkin’ ter me no more?”
Monk stopped, taken aback at how pleased he was to see him. “I was thinking,” he excused himself.
“Think that ’ard an’ you’ll walk straight inter the river,” Scuff said disgustedly. “Wot yer lookin’ fer now?”
Monk smiled at him. “How about a hot pie? Then I need to find where the widow of the man from the ship lives, the one who was killed.”
“Wot fell down the ’ole an broke ’is ’ead?” Scuff asked. “ ’Odge?”
“Yes.”
“ ’Ow yer gonna do that?”
“Ask the man at the morgue, where she came to see the body.”
Scuff gave an exaggerated shudder. “ ’e won’t tell yer. In’t none o’ yer business. But we could ask Crow. ’E’d find out for yer!” Now he was eager.
“Do you think so?”
“Yeah! C’mon. We’ll get a pie, eh?” Scuff looked acutely hopeful.
Monk did as was expected of him, with pleasure. Three quarters of an hour later they were walking back along the street towards the river, the wind in their faces. Crow was concocting a vivid and rather unlikely story in order to obtain the necessary information from the morgue attendant. He did not once ask Monk why he wanted it. He seemed to consider it some kind of professional courtesy.
They reached the morgue, and Monk and Scuff remained outside while Crow went in. He emerged fifteen minutes later, black hair flying in the wind, and a smile of triumph showing brilliant teeth. “Got it!” he said, waving a piece of paper in his hand.
Monk thanked him, took the paper and read it, then put it in his pocket.
“Now what?” Crow asked with interest.
“Now I treat you to the best pie I can afford and a hot cup of tea, then I go about my business and leave you to go about yours,” Monk replied with a smile.
“You’re almighty pleased with yourself,” Crow said suspiciously.
“Only half,” Monk replied with sudden honesty. “I’ve still got the rest to do. Do you want that pie or not?”
He treated them handsomely, but refused to allow either of them to go with him. Scuff objected strongly, insisting that Monk was not safe on his own and unquestionably needed someone to advise him and watch his back. While Monk reluctantly agreed with him, nevertheless he still would not allow him to come. With a show of suffering fortitude, Scuff finally resigned himself to going with Crow instead, just this once.
It took Monk little more than an hour to find the right small brick house. It was in the middle of a long row of exactly similar houses built back to back near the docks in Rotherhithe. When he knocked on the door she opened it and he recognized her immediately, as much for her resemblance to Newbolt as for his memory of her at the morgue.
“Yeah?” she said suspiciously. He knew she was trying to remember where she had seen him before.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hodge,” he said respectfully. “I am hoping that you can help me-”
“Can’t ’elp no one,” she replied without hesitation, beginning to close the door.
“I should not be ungrateful for it.” He forced himself to smile at her. She was graceless and abrupt, but she must also be frightened, and whatever her relationship with her husband had been, she must still be raw from his loss and the implied disgrace that he had died of his own drunken carelessness. “I regret your loss, Mrs. Hodge,” he added quite genuinely. “It is a terrible thing when a husband or wife dies. I don’t think anyone else can comprehend it.”
