Death of a Stranger (14 page)

“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.

If you won’t look after yourself for your own sake, or for mine, at least do it for theirs. If you are injured, or worse, to whom could they turn?

You have in the past eloquently criticized the Crimean generals who wasted their troops in quixotic gestures. And rightly. You have often said a woman would have been more practical and less glory seeking-now prove it!

I hope to see you minding your business-and not mine-when I return, when, if I can, I shall help you to find whoever killed Nolan Baltimore-if the police have not already done so.

Even if it does not always seem as if I do, I love you profoundly, and I admire you far more than you realize.

William

She held the paper in her hands as if it could bring her some part of him, or he would know the emotions inside her, the love and the need, the loneliness for him, the longing to be able to help with whatever private battle he was fighting.

Why could he write so much, and yet not tell her face-to-face? She knew the answer even as the question formed. It was obvious-because she could hold a letter in her hands, read it and reread it, carry it with her, but she could not demand any further answers of it. Monk himself was gone… alone.

And she was here… equally alone. He loved her, certainly. But why was it he could not trust her also-her loyalty, her understanding, her courage? What was it in her he feared might fail him?

It hurt too much to think of. She would go back to Coldbath Square and work. There would be something to do, even if it were only to seek more ideas for raising money. Perhaps they should start to look for other premises? Margaret’s friendship was valuable, although it no longer had quite the uncomplicated ease she had thought it did before they had gone to Rathbone’s office.

She must not show jealousy. That would be small-minded and unbelievably ugly! She would despise herself for that.

And of course she must try to learn all she could about Nolan Baltimore’s death, taking reasonable care not to antagonize anyone.

Margaret was late in to Coldbath, but that was of no importance at the moment. Tempers were short throughout the area so there were many quarrels and several people lashed out in frustration and fear, but it was more often men who were the victims, and the injuries were of the nature that heal with time and very little care-mostly bruises, shallow cuts, and sore heads. Pimps were getting more careful about scarring or bruising their women, their only asset in a shrinking market.

Of course everyone knew it would not go on indefinitely, but it had already been long enough to blow a chill of bitter reality into the lives of all manner of people. The end of it still lay in some unknown time in the future. They lived from day to day.

“How is Fanny?” Hester asked as she came in out of the fine rain, taking off her cloak and hat. “And Alice?”

“Fair enough,” Bessie answered, looking at her balefully from where she was sitting by the empty table, apart from her half-drunk cup of tea. “Quiet, it is. Like a bleedin’ graveyard. ’Ad two girls come in wi’ disease, that’s all. Can’t do much fer ’em, poor cows. Miss Ballinger in’t in yet. Out showin’ ’erself off ’round the swell ’ouses, I shouldn’t wonder. Never seen such a change in anyone in me life!” She said it with fierce satisfaction and not the shadow of a smile. “Wouldn’t say boo to yer w’en she first come ’ere. Now she’s as bold as brass. Ask anyone fer money, she would. Wager yer sixpence she’ll come waltzin’ in ’ere wi’ a grin all over ’er face an’ tell us she’s got a few pound more fer us.”

Hester did smile, in spite of the gloom of the morning. It was true, Margaret had found a confidence, even a happiness, in work. That in itself was an accomplishment, whoever else they were able to heal, and whether or not their patients would slip back to exactly the same debt and abuse afterwards.

Bessie was right; half an hour later Margaret did come in carrying satisfaction with her like a burst of sunlight.

“I have another twenty guineas!” she said proudly. “And promise of more!” She held it out for Hester, her eyes bright, her face glowing.

Hester forced herself to warm to the success, even though she felt all she could taste in her own mouth was failure. “That’s excellent,” she said appreciatively. “It will keep Jessop at bay for a while, and that gives us time. Thank you very much.”

Margaret looked pained. “You’re not going to give him more than our agreement, are you?”

Hester relaxed a little; she almost laughed. “No, I am most certainly not!”

Margaret smiled back and started to take off her jacket and hat. “What can we do today? How are Fanny and Alice?” She glanced towards the beds as she spoke.

“Asleep,” Bessie answered for Hester. “Nowt ter do fer ’em now, ’ceptin keep the roof over their ’eads, an’ feed ’em now an’ then.” She frowned at the rain spattering the window. “I s’pose I’d best be doin’ some marketin’.”

“Stay inside and keep dry for a while.” Hester made her decision. “Margaret and I have an errand in half an hour or so. It’s important.”

Bessie was suspicious. “Oh, yeh?” She did not trust Hester to look after herself, but she was not quite bold enough to say so in so many words. “Wot yer gonna do that I can’t do fer yer, then?”

Hester had not been going to confide in Bessie, simply as a precaution, and also at least in part because she was not sure if her plan had any chance of success. Now, suddenly, she thought better of secrecy and decided to be frank.

“If we are to solve this problem of police all over the place, and therefore no trade for the women,” she said briskly, before she should lose her nerve, “we have to find out what happened to Nolan Baltimore.” She ignored Margaret’s look of incredulity and Bessie’s sucking her breath in between the gap in her teeth. “I intend to start asking a few questions, at least. People may speak to me who would not speak to the police,” she finished.

“ ’Ow yer gonna do that?” Bessie said with dismissal in her voice. “ ’Oo’s gonna tell yer anythin’ about it? Come ter think, ’oo’d yer even ask?”

“The people in Leather Lane, of course,” Hester replied, spreading out her cape so it would dry. “We need to know if Baltimore went there regularly or if it was his first visit. If he went there often, then someone will know something about him, who else he knew, what kind of a man he was away from his home and family. I would like to know whether he went there simply to use the women or if he could have had some other business. Maybe somebody from his life at home followed him there? His death might have nothing to do with the people who live in the Coldbath area.”

Bessie’s face brightened. “Cor! That’d be summink, eh?”

“But the people of Leather Lane might not know his name,” Margaret pointed out. “I don’t suppose he used it.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Hester agreed, realizing her point. “What we need is a picture to show people.”

Margaret’s eyes widened. “A picture! How on earth could we get a picture? Only the family would have one, and they’re hardly likely to give it to us.”

Hester took a deep breath and plunged in. “Actually… I have an idea for that. I am not very good at drawing, but you are.”

“Oh!” Margaret’s voice shot up in denial, and she started shaking her head, but her eyes did not leave Hester’s. “Oh, no!”

“Do you have an idea which would serve better?” Hester asked with an attempt at innocence.

Bessie understood with dawning horror. “You never are!” she said to Hester. “The morgue! Yer gonna draw a dead body?”

“Not I,” Hester corrected her. “Nobody would recognize their own mother from anything I drew, but Margaret is very good. She can really catch a likeness, even if she is too modest to say so herself.”

“It’s not that…” Margaret began, then tailed off, staring at Hester as disbelief slowly turned into understanding. “Really?” she whispered. “Do you think… I mean… would they allow us to…”

“Well, we may require one or two embellishments of fact,” Hester admitted wryly. “But I intend to try as hard as possible.” She became very grave. “It really does matter.”

“As long as you do the embellishments,” Margaret said, making a last attempt at reason.

“Of course,” Hester agreed, not yet with any very clear idea of what she would say. There would be plenty of time to think about it as they walked the mile or so to the closest morgue, where Baltimore would have been taken.

“I don’t have a pencil or paper,” Margaret said. “But I’ve got a couple of shillings of my own… I mean, not supposed to be for the house…”

“Excellent,” Hester approved. “We’ll get what you need at Mrs. Clark’s shop on the corner of the Farringdon Road. And I daresay an eraser as well. We may not have time to start over and over again.”

Margaret shrugged, then gave a nervous laugh, almost a giggle. Hester heard a note of hysteria in it.

“It’s all right!” Margaret said quickly. “I was just thinking what my drawing master would say if he knew. He was such an old woman it would be worth it just to see his face. He used to like me to draw demure young ladies. He made my sisters and me draw each other. He wasn’t even sure if we should draw gentlemen. The idea of that would be bad enough-he’d have a seizure if he knew I was going to draw a corpse! I do hope he’ll be wearing a sheet, or something?”

“If not, you have my express instruction to draw one in,” Hester promised with an answering bubble of laughter, not because she found any pleasure in it, but because to think of the absurd was the only way to make it all bearable.

They put on their outdoor clothes again and set off, walking briskly in the rain. They purchased a block of paper, pencils and an eraser, and hurried on to the morgue, an ugly, slab-sided building set a little back from the street.