Acceptable Loss: A William Monk Novel

by Anne Perry

  She looked at him, then down at the torn piece of paper. She picked it up and read it. “But you have no idea who wrote it?”

  “No. It’s good-quality paper and perfectly ordinary pencil. The envelope’s mine.”

  She turned the note over in her hands. The silence seemed to stretch until he could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantel over the stove. Her shoulders were stiff; a tiny muscle clenched in her jaw was flickering.

  “Hester?” His voice was quiet and yet filled the room.

  She looked up at him. “The words are Latin. They’re medicines. This is part of a list of things we order regularly for the clinic.”

  He stared at her. This was the last thing he had expected her to say.

  “You recognize the handwriting?” he asked.

  “Claudine’s,” she said. “But she could have given the list to several people.”

  “Margaret,” he replied. “Isn’t she the one who keeps the money, and buys such things?”

  “Yes. But so does Squeaky, sometimes.” Her voice was tight, full of grief.

  He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. He knew what she was afraid of. Squeaky had kept a brothel when they’d first met him. He had seemed on the surface to have reformed his ways, under duress, perhaps, but still quite genuinely. He had even taken a kind of pleasure in his respectability. Had it all been an act to cover an even darker side? Had they been too blinded by hope and wish to look at him more closely? How big a descent was it from running a brothel for women to investing in pornography with boys?

  Monk felt a little sick. He knew how much Hester had believed in all the people in the clinic, considered them friends, colleagues, people she trusted with a common passion.

  “I have to ask him,” he said. “I can’t—”

  “No,” she cut across his words. “I will. I won’t let him dupe me, I promise.”

  “Hester …”

  She stood up. “I will. Now—today.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “I know.”

  He looked at her stiff, straight back, the way she walked, the very careful manner in which she picked up the plates and put them into the basin to wash, deliberately, as if in a moment’s absence of mind she might grip them so hard she would break one.

  Perhaps he should let her speak to Squeaky. Then she would not feel so powerless, so incapable.

  “I’ll wait outside,” he told her.

  She was standing at the basin, and she turned to give him a swift look, something close to a smile. “I’ve got to leave bread out for Scuff, and butter and jam. I’ll waken him, and then I’m ready.”

  SQUEAKY LOOKED UP FROM his ledger as Hester came into his room and closed the door behind her.

  “You look as if you lost sixpence and found nothing,” he said dourly. “Her ladyship giving you difficulties?”

  “No, not at the moment,” she replied. She took the envelope out of her pocket, and then the list as well. She put them both on the table in front of him, but kept her finger on the list, leaning forward a little so her weight was on her hand.

  There was not a flicker in his face.

  “It’s torn,” he observed. “In’t no use like that. What’re you giving it to me for? Get Claudine ter make it out again.”

  “Is it Claudine’s hand?” she asked.

  “Course it is! You gone blind or summink?” He squinted up at her. “You look sick. What’s wrong?” Now he was anxious, even concerned for her.

  She turned the paper over.

  He frowned, looking at it, reading it. “What in hell’s that?” he demanded. “It means summink, or you wouldn’t be looking at it with a face on you like a burst boot. Who’s supposed to go … Oh, jeez!”

  The usual trace of color vanished from his sallow face. “It’s to do with that bleeding murder, isn’t it? You can’t think Claudine had anything to do with it? That’s just stupid. You’ve taken leave of your wits if you think she’d even know about things like that. You think she went up there and done in Mickey Parfitt? With Cardew’s necktie, and all? You think he left it behind here, and she—”

  “No, Squeaky, I don’t. But did you?” Even as she said it, she thought of Hattie Benson safe downstairs in the laundry, with Claudine apparently looking after her, and Squeaky supposed to keep everyone else from going down and seeing her.

  His face was full of conflicting emotions: anger, hurt, fear, and also a kind of gentleness. “No, I didn’t. I s’pose I had that coming, for my past life, and if I’d’ve known what Parfitt was, I might have. I’d also have more sense than to write him a note on paper from here!”

  “Is it from here?” Hester asked.

  He looked at it again. “No. We don’t spend that sort of money on paper. Even the ledger isn’t that good. But just ’cos it’s quality don’t mean Claudine had anything to do with it. She may be an odd old article, but when you get to know her, she’s solid. She’s got guts, and she don’t never tell no lies. You can’t think that of her. It’s wrong.”

  “I didn’t,” she admitted.

  He winced. “You thought I did it.” It was a statement. “Well, I could have. He needed doing, best at the end of a rope. And I wouldn’t help you catch whoever did do it. But it weren’t me.”

  She believed him.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Tomorrow I’ll ask Claudine if she remembers writing this, and what she did with it.”

  “Don’t you let her feel you think as she done it!” he warned. “It’d hurt her something terrible, and she don’t deserve that.”

  In spite of herself, Hester smiled. She could remember very clearly how Claudine and Squeaky had hated each other in the beginning. She had thought him obscene, both physically and morally. He had seen her as arrogant, useless, and cold, a middle-aged woman sterile of mind and devoid of passions. It had been her crazy pursuit of Phillips’s pornographic photographs, at fearful risk to herself, that had finally changed his mind. And it was his effective, if rather quixotic, rescue of her that had changed her mind about him.

  “I won’t,” she promised.

  HESTER WAS IN EARLY on Monday morning, but a brief and businesslike meeting with Margaret in the pantry delayed her meeting with Claudine.

  “We are rather short of laundry supplies,” Margaret warned. “I have just been down there and cautioned them to be a little less generous in their use. We cannot afford to replace them at this rate.”

  “Thank you,” Hester said briefly. “Is there anything else?”

  Margaret hesitated, seemingly on the edge of saying something more, then changed her mind and went out of the room. Hester heard her footsteps on the wooden floor, brisk and purposeful.

  She found Claudine in the medicine room and showed her the paper, holding out only the side with the list on it.

  Claudine frowned, then looked up and met Hester’s eyes. “What happened to it? I wrote it out for Margaret, and she got me all those things. That list is several weeks old.”

  Hester felt bruised, suddenly tired. “How many weeks?”

  “I don’t know. Four, maybe five. Why? It hardly matters,” Claudine replied.

  “You’re sure you gave it to Margaret?” Hester insisted.

  “Yes, of course I am.”

  “She actually got all those things for you?”

  “Yes. If she hadn’t, I would have written it out again. But I didn’t have to. What is this about, Hester? Is something missing?”

  “No. Nothing at all. It doesn’t have to do with the clinic.”

  “I don’t understand.” Claudine looked thoroughly puzzled.

  Hester shook her head a little. “You don’t want to,” she said gently. “It’s the message on the other side that’s important, not this. What happened to the list after she brought you the items on it?”

  “I’ve no idea. I didn’t see it again after I gave it to her.”

  “You didn’t check off the items against it?” Hester suggested.

>   “I had the receipts from the apothecary. Those are all I need for the ledger.”

  “Are you quite sure you didn’t ever see the list again?”

  “Not until now. Why?”

  “Thank you.” Hester gave her a tiny smile, almost more of a grimace, and went out of the room, closing the door softly.

  She gave the list back to Monk.

  He waited.

  “It’s Claudine’s list for Margaret to shop from,” she told him. “Margaret never gave it back, because Claudine took the prices from the apothecary’s receipts.” She swallowed hard. “I wish it weren’t.”

  “I know,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. I can’t leave it. If it’s Ballinger, I must still find him, not for Parfitt’s sake but because of the children.”

  She nodded. “Oliver will defend him. He can’t refuse.” She watched Monk’s face. “We’ll have to have irrefutable proof.”

  RUPERT CARDEW CLOSED THE door of the morning room behind him and stared at Monk. He still looked tired, as if the shock of arrest had not completely left him, even though he was now free. However, he was composed and courteous, and, as always, beautifully dressed.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Monk?” he asked.

  Monk felt churlish, and it put him at a disadvantage.

  “I apologize. What I have to ask you is extremely unpleasant, but this is a case I cannot afford to leave.”

  Rupert looked surprised. “Really? You care so much that Parfitt is dead?”

  “On the contrary. If that were all, I would be delighted to turn my time to something more important,” Monk admitted. “But I want to find the man behind the blackmail.”

  Rupert smiled very slightly, not in amusement but in self-criticism. “Are you going to warn me that I am still vulnerable? I assure you, I know that.”

  “I assumed you were aware of it, Mr. Cardew,” Monk told him. “That is not why I came.”

  “Oh?” Rupert looked surprised, but not worried.

  “I need to know a great deal more from you than you have told me so far,” Monk replied. “I’m sorry.” He meant the apology more than Cardew would understand, or believe.

  “I don’t know anything more,” Rupert said simply. “I really have no idea who killed Parfitt. For God’s sake, man, don’t you think I’d have told you already if I did?”

  “Of course, if you had realized, or thought for a moment that I would believe you. I think it was Arthur Ballinger who did it; if not personally, then by using one of Parfitt’s own men.” He saw Cardew start with surprise, and ignored it. “But I have to prove it beyond any doubt,” he continued. “If Ballinger is charged, he will be defended by Oliver Rathbone, and I know from experience that Rathbone could get even Jericho Phillips off. How hard do you imagine he is going to fight for his father-in-law?”

  Rupert’s mouth tightened, and the corners went down. “I see. But I still don’t know anything.”

  “You know about the trade,” Monk said grimly.

  Rupert blushed. “I don’t know about his side of it.”

  “I didn’t expect you to. I can deduce a good deal of that. I need to know his clients, how the blackmail was paid, the sort of amounts, and exactly what the performances were like and who attended.”

  Rupert went white.

  Monk ignored that also. “And I need to know about the suicide a few months ago. What led up to it?”

  “I can’t tell you that!” Rupert was appalled. “That would be a … betrayal.”

  “I knew you would see it that way,” Monk said quietly. “Yes. You would, in a sense, be betraying the other men who used the abuse of children for their entertainment.”

  He saw Rupert wince, the shame filling his face. He had expected it. It hurt Monk to have to be so blunt, but it changed nothing. “Whereas if you don’t tell me, you will be betraying the children on that boat—and all those like them. And if you think carefully and with absolute honesty, you’ll realize you will be betraying your father, and perhaps the better part of yourself.”

  Rupert shook his head slowly. “You don’t know what you’re asking …”

  “Really?” Monk raised his eyebrows. “Do you think your social class are the only people who feel loyalty toward their friends, or to those to whom they are bound by promises of conspiracy, and hiding their shame? You are ashamed of it, aren’t you?”

  A flame of anger lit Rupert’s eyes. “Yes, of course I am! You …” He struggled for words, and could not find them.

  “And you think embarrassment and an apology are enough to make the balance even again?”

  “No, I don’t! I’ll regret it the rest of my life!” Rupert was shouting now. “But I can’t undo it.”

  “Remorse is excellent,” Monk said levelly. “But it isn’t enough. Nor is money. If you want any kind of redemption, then you must help me stop at least some of it from happening again.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know who killed Parfitt!” Rupert said desperately. “It may well have been Ballinger, but I don’t know anything to help you prove it. I didn’t see him, and I wouldn’t recognize him if I had. I don’t even remember half that evening, except as a nightmare. Telling you the names of my friends who went there isn’t going to do anything except embarrass them and make me a social outcast.”

  “That’s the price,” Monk replied. “And is their friendship worth that much to you?”

  “Don’t be such a damn fool!” Rupert’s voice was high and angry again, touched with fear. “Everyone will despise me for ratting on friends, not just the men concerned, and their families, and their friends.”

  Monk felt the resolve harden in him, like a cold, gray stone in his gut. “Then, tell me about the ‘performances.’ ” He accentuated the word. “Where did you meet? Did you all go to Chiswick separately, or together? Shared a hansom, perhaps? You wouldn’t go in your own carriages—they might be recognized—or want your coachman to know, for that matter.”

  “Separately, mostly,” Rupert answered grimly. “What has that to do with Ballinger, or anything else?”

  Monk ignored the question. “How do you get from the shore to Parfitt’s boat?”

  “Someone rowed us. Either that revolting little man with the walleye—”

  “ ’Orrible Jones?”

  “If you say so. Or the other. Why?”

  Monk ignored that question too. “By agreement? How did you know he wasn’t just a ferryman? How did he know who you were, and that you wanted to go to that boat and not just to the other shore? How did he know you were one of Parfitt’s clients? You could even have been police.”

  “It’s not illegal,” Rupert said miserably.

  “Just immoral?” Monk asked sarcastically. “That’s why you do it up there in Chiswick, miles from home, and at night on the river?”

  Rupert glared at him. “I didn’t say I was proud of it, just that it isn’t anything to do with the police.”

  “Actually, torturing and imprisoning children is illegal,” Monk told him.

  “We didn’t do … that … to anyone!”

  “You just watched other people do it!” Monk’s disgust made his voice shake, his throat straining with the force of his emotions. “And homosexuality is illegal too.”

  Rupert’s face was scarlet.

  “Apart from the question of legality, Mr. Cardew,” Monk went on ruthlessly, “would you like to be forced to have anal intercourse with another man, for the entertainment of a crowd of drunken lechers? Did that happen to you when you were six or seven years old, and you screamed, and bled, and that’s why—”

  “Stop it!” Rupert shouted, his voice cracking. “All right! I understand. It was bestial, and I shall pay for it in shame for the rest of my life!”

  “And you will also tell me who else was there,” Monk said. “Every man whose face you recognized. I can’t arrest them for it, but I can question them for information. I’m going to hang the creature behind this, and I’m going to use every pe
rverted bastard I can find to do it.”

  “You’re going to talk to them?” Rupert whispered, horrified.

  “If I have to. And you are going to tell me step by step what happened, every filthy act, every scream, every injury and humiliation, every terrified and weeping child that was tortured for your amusement. I’ll have nightmares too, maybe for the rest of my life, but I’m going to paint such a picture that your friends will never doubt that I know what happened, as well as if I’d been there too.” He drew in his breath. He was shaking, and his body was covered with sweat.

  “And the jury will know exactly what those men were paying to hide. Perhaps they’ll wake up terrified as well, and they’ll be as passionate as I am in helping to get rid of at least some of the obscene trade. You’ll help me willingly or unwillingly, Mr. Cardew. I imagine, for your father’s sake, if nothing else, you would prefer to do it here and now, in private, while it is still a voluntary thing, and perhaps partially redeem yourself. Believe me, if you don’t and I have to force you in front of a jury, it will be a lot worse.”

  Rupert stared at him, defeat in his eyes and a depth of misery that for an instant almost weakened Monk’s resolve. Then Monk thought of Scuff, the trust that was just beginning between them, and the moment of indecision vanished.

  “Now,” he prompted. “Detail by detail. Make me feel as if I am there.”

  Rupert began haltingly, still standing motionless in the quiet morning room with its sun-faded carpet and old books. His voice was low and strained. Frequently he stopped, and Monk had to prompt him to go on. He hated doing it; he felt as if he were beating an animal. And he knew he would feel unclean afterward, tarnished with cruelty. But he did not stop until Rupert had told him every detail of the entire hideous business. His face was mottled and stained with tears. Perhaps he would never forget this either, and not ever be the same as he had been before.

  “And the man it broke?” Monk persisted. “The one who took his own life, shot himself alone in the small boat.”

  “Tadley …” Rupert whispered. “He couldn’t pay.”