by Anne Perry
“Course!” Scuff said eagerly. “Yer sittin’ in a boat, an’ the ferryman’s gotta see yer, eh? So if ’e don’t wanna be seen an’ ’ave folks remember ’im, ’e’d row up the river ’isself. Or if ’e couldn’t, then ’e’d cross where ’e’d least likely be noticed a ’ole lot.”
“Definitely,” she agreed. “Let’s try the ferrymen in Chiswick first.”
It took them well into the afternoon to get from the eastern end, nearer the sea and the great wharfs and docks, right across the city by omnibus to the statelier, greener western edge, and then beyond that again into the lush countryside, and over the river to the southern bank. There was no omnibus across Barn Elms Park to the little township of Barnes itself and finally to the High Street right on the water’s edge. They were both tired and thirsty, and had sore feet, by the time they stopped at the White Hart Inn, but Scuff never complained.
Hester wondered if his silence was in any way because he was thinking about this utterly different place—green, well kept, almost sparkling in the bright, hard light off the water. On the surface, it seemed a world away from the dark river edge where Jericho Phillips had kept his boat. There the tide carried in and out the detritus of the port, the broken pieces of driftwood, some half-submerged, bits of cloth and rope, food refuse and sewage. There was the noise of the city even at night, the clip of hooves on the cobbles, shouts, laughter, the rattle of wheels, and of course always the lights—streetlamps, carriage lamps—unless the mist rolled in and blotted them out. Then there were the mournful booms of the foghorns.
Here the river was narrower. There were shipbuilding yards on the northern bank farther down. The shops were open, busy; occasional carts went by; people called out; but it was all smaller, and there was no smell of industrial chimney smoke, salt and fish, no cry of gulls. A single barge drifted upriver, sails barely arced in the breeze.
Scuff could not help staring around him at the women in clean, pale dresses, walking and laughing as if they had nothing else to do.
Hester and Scuff ate first, a very late luncheon of cold game pie, vegetables, and—as a special treat—a very light shandy.
Scuff finished his glass and put it down, licking his lips and looking at her hopefully.
“When you’re older,” she replied.
“ ’Ow long do I ’ave ter get older?” he asked.
“You’ll be doing it all the time.”
“Afore I can ’ave another one o’ these?” He was not about to let it go.
“About three months.” She had difficulty not smiling. “But you may have another piece of pie, if you wish? Or plum pie, if you prefer?”
He decided to press his luck. He frowned at her. “ ’Ow about both?”
She thought of the errand they were on, and what had driven them to it. “Good idea,” she agreed. “I might do the same.”
When there was nothing at all left on either plate, she paid the bill. Scuff thanked her gravely, and then hiccuped. They walked down to the river and started looking for ferries, fishermen, anybody who hung around the water’s edge talking, pottering with boats or tackle, generally observing the afternoon slip by.
It was more than two hours, pleasant but unprofitable, before they found the bowlegged ferryman who said he had carried a gentleman from the city over late on the night before the morning Mickey Parfitt’s body was found in Corney Reach.
“Aw, I dunno ’is name, lady,” the ferryman said dubiously. “Never ask folks’s names—got no reason ter, ’ave I? Don’ ask where they’re goin’ neither. ’Tain’t none o’ my business. Jus’ be civil, talk a little ter pass the time, like, an’ get ’im ter the other side safe an’ dry. I recall, though, as this gent were a real toff, knowed all kinds o’ things.”
Hester felt the grip tighten in the pit of her stomach, and suddenly the possibility of profound tragedy was real. “Truly? How old would you say he was?”
The man bent his head a little to one side and looked at her, then at Scuff, then back at her again. “Why yer wanna know, missus? ’E done yer wrong some’ow?”
She knew what he was thinking, and she played on it without a moment’s shame. “I don’t know, unless I know if it was he,” she answered, keeping the amusement out of her eyes deliberately. She wanted to laugh. Then she thought of all the women of whom it would be true, and the amusement vanished. A knot of shame pulled tight inside her for her callousness.
“Don’t think so, love,” he said sadly, biting his lower lip. “This feller’d be a bit too old fer you.”
“Too old?” she said with surprise. She gulped. It could not be Rupert. He was not much more than thirty, younger than she. “Are you sure?” She was fishing for time, trying to think of an excuse for asking him to describe the man in more detail.
The ferryman sucked in his cheeks and then blew them out again. “Mebbe I shouldn’t a said that. Still an ’andsome enough figure of a man.”
“Fair hair?” Hester asked, thinking of Rupert standing in the sun in the doorway of the clinic. “Slender, but quite tall?”
“No,” the ferryman said decisively. “Sorry, love. ’E’d a bin sixty, like as not, dark ’air, near black, close as I could tell in the lamplight, like. But a big man, ’e were, an’ not tall, as yer might say. More like most.”
Considering that the ferryman was unusually short, Hester wondered what he considered was average. However, it might only insult him to ask, and apart from anything else, she needed his help.
“Did he come back again later?” she asked, changing the subject. She felt awkward, now that she had established that it was not the mythical deserting husband she had suggested. Then a new idea occurred to her. “You see, I’m afraid it could have been my father. He has a terrible temper, and …” She left the rest unsaid, a suggestion in the air. “He wasn’t … hurt, was he?”
“Yer do pick ’em, don’t yer?” The ferryman shrugged. “But ’e were fine. Bit scruffed up, like ’e ’ad a bit of a tussle, but right as rain in ’isself. Walked down the bank an’ leaped inter his boat. Don’t you worry about ’im. Don’t know about the young feller with the fair ’air. I never see’d ’im.”
“Perhaps he wasn’t here.” She said it with an upsurge of relief. She knew it was foolish even as she welcomed it. It meant nothing, only one difficulty avoided of a hundred.
“Wot does it mean?” Scuff asked as they thanked the man and walked away along the path. “Is it good?”
“I’m not sure,” Hester replied. That at least was true. “It certainly wasn’t Rupert. Even in the pitch dark you couldn’t mistake him for sixty. And if this man were scruffed up, he would have been in a fight, which, from the sound of it, he won.”
“Like chokin’ Mickey Parfitt and sending ’im over the side?”
“Yes, something like that,” she agreed.
He shivered. “Was there other people in the boat?”
“Not that evening, apparently, except for the boys, locked in belowdecks.”
He hesitated. “Where are they now?”
Hester heard the strain in his voice, saw the memory bright and terrible in his eyes.
“They’re all safe,” she told him unwaveringly. “Looked after and clean and fed.”
It was a moment or two before he was satisfied enough to believe her. Gradually the stiffness eased out of his back and shoulders. “So ’oo were it, then? Were it the man ’oo killed Mickey Parfitt?”
“Quite possibly.”
“ ’Ow do we find out ’oo ’e is?”
“I have an idea about that. Right now we are going home.”
“We in’t gonna look fer ’im?” He was shivering very slightly, trying to stand so straight that it didn’t show. He pulled his coat tighter deliberately, although it was not any colder.
“I need to ask William a few questions before that. I don’t think I will get two chances to speak to him about this, so I need to do it properly the first time.”
“ ’E in’t gonna let yer,” Scuff w
arned. “I wouldn’t, if I was ’im.”
“I dare say not.” She did not bother to hide her smile. “Which is why I won’t ask him, and neither will you.”
“I might.”
She looked at him. It wasn’t a threat. He was afraid for her. She saw it in his eyes, like a hard, twisting pain. He had found some kind of safety for the first time in his life, and it was threatened already. He was used to loss. Although this was too deep for him to handle alone, he was too used to loneliness to be able to share, too vulnerable even to acknowledge it.
“I’ll come wif yer,” he said, watching her face, waiting for her to refuse him.
“Thank you,” she accepted. It was rash. Perhaps it would cost them both. “If William is angry later, I’ll tell him you came only to make sure I was safe.”
He smiled and pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “Right,” he agreed, overwhelmed with relief.
WHAT HESTER ACTUALLY WANTED to know from Monk was what he had been told about where Arthur Ballinger had been on the night of Parfitt’s death. The ferryman’s description fitted him extraordinarily well—although, of course, it also fitted several thousand other men closely enough. She hated even thinking that it might’ve been Ballinger, because of how it would hurt Rathbone, and of course Margaret, but for Scuff’s sake, whoever was behind the boats run by men like Phillips and Parfitt, he had to be stopped, and to be hanged for murder was as good as being imprisoned for the kidnapping and abuse of children. Blackmail she doubted could ever be proved, because no one would admit to being a victim. That was part of the blackmailer’s skill.
“Why?” Monk said immediately.
They were standing side by side with the French doors ajar in the calm late evening, the smell of earth and damp leaves in the air. Dusk had fallen, and there was little sound outside in the small garden except for the wind through the leaves, and once or twice the hoot of an owl flying low. The sky was totally clear, the last light on the river below like the sheen on a pewter plate. Up here the noise of boats was inaudible, no shouts, no foghorns. A single barge with a lateen sail moved upriver as silently as a ghost.
“Why?” Monk repeated, watching her.
Hester had never intended to deceive him, just to keep her own counsel a little. “Because I was speaking to Crow this morning, in case he can help.”
“Help whom?” he asked softly. “Rupert Cardew? I can’t blame him for killing Mickey Parfitt, but the law won’t excuse him, Hester, no matter how vile Parfitt was. Not unless it was self-defense. And honestly, that’s unbelievable. Can you imagine a man like Parfitt standing by while Cardew took off his cravat and put half a dozen knots in it, then looped it around Parfitt’s throat and pulled it tight?”
“Didn’t he hit him over the head first?” she argued. “If Parfitt were unconscious, he wouldn’t be able to stop him. Rupert might …” She stopped. It was exactly the argument Monk was making. “Yes, I see,” she admitted. “If he was unconscious, then he was no danger to Rupert, or anyone else.”
“Precisely. You can’t help him, Hester.” There was sorrow in his voice, and defeat, and in his eyes a bitter humor. She knew he was remembering with irony their crossing swords with Rathbone when he had defended Jericho Phillips in court, and they had been so sure of victory, taking it for granted because they’d been convinced of his total moral guilt.
She wanted to argue, but every reason that struggled to the surface of her mind was pointless when she tried to put it into words. It all ended the same way: She didn’t want Rupert to be guilty. She liked him, and was grateful for his support of the clinic. She was desperately sorry for his father. She knew perfectly well that Rupert was not the power nor the money behind Parfitt’s business, and she wanted to destroy the man who was. She was trying to force the evidence to fit her own needs, which was not only dishonest, it was in the end also pointless.
“No, I suppose not,” she conceded.
He reached out his hand and took hers gently. There was nothing to add.
SINCE SCUFF’S RESCUE FROM Phillips’s boat—hurt, frightened, and very weak—he had made a point of going out during most days, as soon as he was well enough, just to prove that he was still independent and quite able to look after himself. Both Monk and Hester were careful to make no remark on it.
It was the evening of the third day after Hester had met with Crow that Scuff came in well before supper, sniffing appreciatively at the kitchen door as the aroma of a hot pie baking greeted him and he saw Hester take down the skillet and set it on the top of the stove.
“Crow got summink for yer,” he said cheerfully. “Said ter tell yer ’e’ll meet yer at the riverside opposite the Chiswick Eyot termorrer at midday, wi’ wot yer asked fer. Cheapest’d be if we got the train ter ’Ammersmith, an’ then an ’ansom ter the ’Ammersmith Bridge, an’ along that way. I know where it is.” He inhaled deeply. “ ’S that apple pie?”
Hester and Scuff were at the appointed place a quarter of an hour early the following day, standing watching the boats on the river. There was a movement Hester caught almost at the corner of her vision, and she turned to see Crow’s lanky figure striding along the quayside, his coat flapping, his black hair flying in the wind.
She started toward him.
He glanced at Scuff as she reached him, but he was still standing a few paces away, staring upriver.
“Is it something he shouldn’t know?” Hester asked quickly. “I can send him off on an errand. He insisted on coming. He’s … looking after me.” Surely she did not need to explain that to Crow?
“It’s an even worse business than I thought,” he said quietly. “But I don’t know what good that’ll do your friend. If I’d known what that bastard did to little boys, I’d have killed him myself, and not as nicely as a quick blow on the head.” His face was hard, lips tight. “I’d have practiced a spot of surgery he wouldn’t have approved of, and made damn sure he saw and felt every bit of it. He’d have watched himself bleed to death.” He looked at Scuff, and as Scuff turned and saw him, the rage was wiped from Crow’s eyes. He made himself smile back, the wide grin that was so characteristic of him.
“You got summink for us?” Scuff asked expectantly, crossing over to them.
“Of course,” Crow replied. “D’you think I’d come all the way up here to the end of the world if I hadn’t? It’s this way.” And without any further explanation he led them along the road, ships and taverns on one side, the steep drop to the river on the other.
After about a hundred yards he crossed the street, dodging the few carts there were, and went into the narrow entrance of a lane running inland between shops and houses. Then he led them past a stretch of open green, and into a small alley off Chiswick Field. He knocked on the door of one of the houses, then, after a slight hesitation, knocked again with exactly the same pattern.
It was opened immediately by a girl of about nineteen or twenty. She was plump with very fair skin, completely without blemishes, and hair so pale as to be almost white in the dark hallway. She saw Crow, and her face tightened with fear, but she made no attempt to close the door again.
Crow gave his huge smile, all shining teeth, and pushed the door wider so it almost touched the wall behind it.
“Hello, Hattie,” he said cheerfully. “Good time to call, is it? I brought someone to see you.” Without looking back he beckoned to Hester and Scuff to follow him in.
Scuff closed the door and trailed behind, looking from one side to the other, almost treading on Hester’s heels.
Hattie took them to a narrow kitchen, where a small fire kept a cooktop hot and a pump in the corner dripped water into a tin bowl.
“Wot yer want?” she said, gulping with tension. She had wide, light blue eyes, and she kept them on Crow as if there were no one else in the room.
“Tell Mrs. Monk what you told me about Rupert Cardew,” Crow replied. His voice was gentle, almost coaxing, but there was a quality of power in it that belied his easy expression.<
br />
Hattie gulped. Hester saw that her hands were shaking. “I took it,” she said, not to Hester as directed, but still to Crow.
“You took what, Hattie?” he pressed.
She put her white hand up to her throat. “ ’Is tie. ’E ’ad it orff any’ow, an’ when ’e weren’t lookin’, I ’id it. ’E were stupid drunk, an’ ’e never noticed ’e’d gone wifout it.”
“His cravat. What color was it, Hattie?”
“Blue, wi’ little yeller animals on it.” She made a faint squiggle in the air with her finger.
“Why did you take it?”
“I dunno.”
“Yes, you do. Was it Mickey Parfitt who told you to?”
“No! It …” She gulped again. “It were the night before ’e were found in the river.”
“Who did you take it from, Hattie?”
“Mr. Cardew. I told you.”
“And who for? Who did you give it to?”
She shook her head, and her body stiffened until her muscles seemed to lock. “No … I dunno who got it. I in’t sayin’ nothin’! It’s more ’n me life’s worth.”
Crow turned to Hester. “I can’t get any more out of her than that. I’m sorry.”
Hester looked at the girl again. Perhaps it would place her life in jeopardy. That was not difficult to believe. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “All that is important is that Rupert didn’t have it, so he couldn’t have been the one who knotted it and put it around Mickey Parfitt’s neck. Thank you. That makes all the difference.” She smiled back at Crow, and felt her smile grow wider and wider on her face. Of course she would have to press Hattie later as to whom she had given the cravat to, but it might be possible to find out through someone else. There would be others around who would have seen a stranger—or any visitor, for that matter. For the moment the relief that Rupert was not guilty was all she needed.
The identities of the murderer of Mickey Parfitt and the man behind the pornographic business on the boats were next, a piece at a time. She smiled across at Hattie and thanked her again.
