The Dark Assassin (9 page)

"I'm a
perfectly regular policeman!" Monk defended himself.

Scuff treated
that assertion with the silence it deserved. In his opinion Monk was a
dangerous novice who had taken Durban's position out of a misguided idea of
loyalty. He was miserably unsuited for it and was much in need of the guidance
or protection of someone who knew what they were doing, such as Scuff himself.
He had been born on the river, and at nine years old-or possibly ten, he wasn't
sure-he knew an enormous amount, and was not too proud to learn more every day.
But it was a heavy responsibility to look after a grown man who thought he knew
so much more than he did.

"Is there
going to be a fight over the new stretches?" Monk asked.

"Course
there is," Scuff replied, sniffling. "An lots o' folk gotta move
their places. 'Ow'd yer like it if some bleedin' great machine came an' crashed
your 'ole street down wi'out a word, eh?"

Scuff was
referring to the entire communities on the edge between honest poverty, close
to destitution, and the semi-criminal underworld who lived nearly all their
lives in the sewers, tunnels, and excavations beneath London. To drive a new
tunnel through the old was like putting a hot poker into a wasps' nest. That
had been Orme's analogy.

"I
know," Monk replied. "Mr. Orme has already warned me. I'm not doing
this alone, you know." He looked from left to right through the thickening
fog to see if he could see the lights of any kind of food or hot-drink
peddlers. The cold was like a tightening vise around them, crushing the heat
out of their bodies. How did an urchin like Scuff-so thin he was merely skin
and bone-survive? The baleful cry of the foghorns was growing more frequent on
the water, and it was impossible to place the sound in the distortion of the
mist.

"
'Ot-chestnut seller that way," Scuff said hopefully, sniffing again.

"Tonight?"
Monk doubted it. It would be a bad night for barrows; no one would be able to
see them in this.

"Charlie,"
Scuff said, as if that were explanation enough.

"Do you think
so?"

"Course."

"I can't
see anything. Which way?"

"Don need
ter. I know where 'e'll be. Yer like chestnuts?" There was a definite lift
in Scuff s voice now.

"Hot, I'd
eat anything. Yes, I do."

Scuff hesitated,
as if considering whether to strike a bargain, then his charity got the better
of his business sense. "I'll take yer," he offered magnanimously. It
was clear that Monk needed all the help he could get.

"Thank
you," Monk accepted. "Perhaps you would join me?"

"I don'
mind if I do."

THREE

The Portpool
Lane clinic was a large establishment, not with the open wards that made
nursing easy, but with numerous separate bedrooms. However, it had the greatest
advantage any establishment that was devoted to the treatment of the penniless
could have: it was rent-free. It had once been a highly disreputable brothel
run by one Squeaky Robinson, a man of many financial and organizational skills.
He had in the past made one serious technical error, and it was that upon which
Hester, with the help of the brilliant barrister Oliver Rathbone, had
capitalized on. It was then that the brothel had been closed down, its
extortion business ended, and the building turned into a clinic for the
treatment of any street woman who was either injured or ill.

Some of its
former occupants had remained to work at the more tedious but far safer
occupations of cleaning and laundering sheets. Squeaky Robinson himself lived
on the premises, and under vociferous and constant complaint kept the books and
managed the continuing finances. He never allowed Hester to forget that he was
there under duress and because he had been tricked. In turn, she was aware that
he had actually, against his better judgment, developed a fierce pride in the
whole enterprise.

After the terrible
period during which Claudine Burroughs had come, and experienced such a change
in her life, Margaret Ballinger had also finally accepted Sir Oliver's proposal
of marriage. Both women were working at the clinic and fully intended to remain
so, leaving Hester with far less responsibility for its welfare, either in the
raising of funds to pay for the food, fuel, and medicines or in the day-to-day
chores.

The same bitter
morning that Monk began investigating the death of James Havilland, Hester was
checking the account books in the office at the clinic for the last time.

After the
appalling weeks of the previous autumn, when Hester had so nearly died, Monk
had demanded that she give up working at the clinic. Although it meant far more
to her than a simple refuge for street women who were ill or injured and it
filled a need in her to heal, she ultimately acquiesced to Monk's wishes. Even
so, she dragged out the last duties in the clinic, putting off the moment of
having to leave.

She would
greatly have preferred to perform this task in the familiar kitchen, where the
stove kept the whole room warm and the lamps gave a pleasant yellow glow on old
pans polished with use, and odd china of varying colors and designs. Strings of
onions hung from the bare beams along with bunches of dried herbs, and at least
one airing rack was festooned with laundered bandages ready for use on the next
disaster.

But the ledgers,
bills, and receipts as well as the money itself were all in the office, so she
sat at the table, feet cold and hands stiff, adding up figures and trying to
make the results hopeful.

There was a
brisk knock on the door, and as soon as she answered it, Claudine came in. She
was a tall woman, narrow-shouldered and broad at the hips. Her face had been
handsome in her youth, but years of unhappiness had taken the bloom from her
skin and marked her features with an expression of discontent. A couple of
months of dedicated purpose and the startling realization that she was actually
both useful and liked had only just begun to change that. She still wore her
oldest clothes, which were of good quality but out of fashion now. The newer
ones were left at home to be worn on her increasingly rarer forays into
society. Her husband was annoyed and puzzled by her preference for "good
work" over the pursuit of pleasure, but she no longer believed he had
earned the right to inflict further unhappiness upon her, and very seldom spoke
of him. If she had any friends of her own aside from those at the clinic, she
did not refer to them, either, except insofar as they might be persuaded to
donate to the cause.

"Good
morning, Claudine," Hester said, trying to sound cheerful. "How are
you?"

Claudine still
did not take pleasantries for granted. "Good morning," she replied,
even now unsure whether to address Hester by her Christian name. "I'm very
well, thank you. But I fear we can expect a good deal of bronchitis in this
weather, and pneumonia as well. Got a stab wound in last night. Stupid girl
hasn't got the wits she was born with, working out of a place like Fleet
Row."

"Can we
save her?" Hester asked anxiously, unintentionally including herself in
the cause.

"Oh,
yes." Claudine was somewhat smug about her newly acquired medical
knowledge, even if it came from observation rather than experience. "What
I came about was new sheets. We can manage for a little longer, but you'll have
to ask Margaret about more funds soon. We'll need at least a dozen, and that'll
barely do."

"Can it
wait another few weeks?" Hester regarded the column of figures in front of
her. She ought to tell Claudine that she was going, but she could not bring
herself to do it yet.

"Three,
perhaps," Claudine replied. "I can bring a pair from home, but I
don't have twelve."

"Thank
you." Hester meant it. For Claudine to provide anything out of her own
home for the use of street women was a seven-league step from the wounding
distaste the woman had felt only three months earlier. The charity work
Claudine had been used to was of the discreet, untrou-blesome kind where ladies
of like disposition organized fetes and garden parties to raise money for
respectable causes, such as fever hospitals, mission work, and the deserving
poor. Some profound disruption to her personal life had driven Claudine to this
total departure. She had not confided in anybody what it had been, and Hester
would never ask.

"Breakfast
will be ready in half an hour," Claudine responded. "You should
eat." And without waiting for a reply, she went out, closing the door
behind her.

Hester smiled
and returned to her figures.

The next person
to come in was Margaret Ballinger, her face pink from the cold, but with
nothing of the hunched defense against the weather that one might expect. There
was a confidence about her, an unconscious grace, as of one who is inwardly happy,
all external circumstances being merely peripheral.

"Breakfast's
ready," she said cheerfully. She knew Hester was going, but she refused to
think of it. "And Sutton's here to see you. He does look a little . ..
concerned."

Hester was
surprised. Sutton, a ratcatcher by trade, occasionally did odd jobs for Hester.
She stood up immediately. "Is he all right?"

"He's not
hurt," Margaret began.

"And
Snoot?" Hester was referring to the ratcatcher's eager little terrier.

Margaret smiled.
"In excellent health," she assured Hester. "Whatever concerns
Sutton, it is not Snoot."

Hester fait
immeasurably relieved. She knew how Sutton loved the animal. He was possibly
all the family he had, certainly all he spoke of.

Downstairs in
the kitchen there was porridge on the large cast-iron stove. Two kettles were
boiling, and the door to the toasting fire was closed while an entire loaf of
bread, sliced and browned on the fork, sat crisping in two wooden racks. There
was butter, marmalade, and blackcurrant jam on the table. The clinic was
obviously quite well-off in funds at the moment.

Sutton, a lean
man not much more than Hester's height, sat on one of the few unsplintered
kitchen chairs. He stood up the moment he saw her. The brown and white Jack
Russell terrier at his feet wagged his tail furiously, but he was too tightly
disciplined to dart forward.

Sutton's thin
face lit up with pleasure and what looked like relief. "Mornin', Miss
'Ester. 'Ow are yer?"

"I'm very
well, Mr. Sutton," she replied. "How are you? I'm sure you could
manage some breakfast, couldn't you? I'm having some."

"That'd be
very civil of yer." He watched her, sitting down as soon as she had.

Margaret had
already eaten at home; she never ate the clinic's rations unless she was there
for too long to abstain. She collected most of the clinic's funds through her
social acquaintances, and she was far too sensitive to the difficulty of that
to waste a farthing or consume herself what could be used for the sick. She
would make an excellent mistress of this in Hester's place.

Sutton devoured
his porridge and then toast and marmalade, while Hester had just the toast and
jam. They were both on their second cup of tea when Claudine excused herself
and they were left alone. Much against her own better judgment, Claudine had
given Snoot porridge and milk as well, and he was now happily asleep in front
of the hearth.

"She'll
spoil 'im rotten, that woman," Sutton said as Claudine closed the door.
"Wot good'll 'e be fer rattin' if 'e's 'anded 'is breakfast on a
plate?"

Hester did not
bother to answer. It was part of the slow retreat by which Claudine was going
to allow Sutton to understand that she granted him a reluctant respect. She was
a lady, and he caught rats. She would not bring herself to treat him as an
equal, which would have made both of them uncomfortable, but she would be more
than civil to the dog. That was different, and they both understood it
perfectly.

"What is
it?" Hester asked, before they should be interrupted again by some
business of the day.

He did not
prevaricate. They had come to know each other well during the crisis of the
autumn. He looked at her earnestly, his brow furrowed. "I dunno as there's
anythin' yer can do, but I gotta try all I can. We all knows about the Great
Stink an 'ow the river smells summink evil, an' they're doin' summink about it,
at last. An' that's all as it should be." He shook his head. "But
most folks 'oo live aboveground in't got no idea wot goes on underneath."

"No,"
she agreed with only a faint gnawing of concern. "Should we?"

"If yer
gonna go diggin' around in it wi' picks an' shovels an' great machines, then
yeah, yer should." There was a sudden passion in his voice, and a fear she
had not heard before. He had been so strong in the autumn. This was something
new, something over which he felt he had no control.

"What sort
of thing is there?" she asked. "You mean graveyards and plague
pits-that sort of thing?"

"There are,
but wot I were thinkin' of is rivers. There's springs and streams all over the
place. London's mostly on clay, yer see." His face was tense, eyes keen.
"I learned 'em from me pa. 'E were a tosher. One o' the best. Knew every
river under the city from Battersea ter Greenwich, 'e did, an' most o' the
wells too. Yer any idea 'ow many wells there is, Miss 'Ester?"