William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

few words of welcome. Should she ask him if he were hungry or had eaten, or make some enquiry after his success that could be answered on the surface—or honestly, as he chose? She could not let it slide by. If he were not going to break the barrier, then she must.
    “Did you find anything more about the fraud?” she asked, not casually, but as if she were waiting for and required an answer.
    “Nothing helpful,” he replied, taking his jacket off and hanging it up on the hook. “There’s dubious profit in land sales, but nothing more than I imagine most companies make. There are some losses as well.”
    She felt as if he had closed a door. There seemed little more that she could ask, but she refused to let go. She watched him, but he moved around the room restlessly, without looking directly at her, touching things, straightening, putting away. Was she mithering him just at the time when he needed the silent understanding of a friend? Was she being selfish, expecting him to give her his attention, listen to her, think of her problems when he was exhausted?
    Or was she breaking a barrier while it was still thin enough to be penetrated easily, before it became habit?
    “We need to find out who killed Nolan Baltimore,” she said very clearly.
    “Do we?” There was doubt in his voice. He was standing near the mantelshelf staring down at the embers of the fire. It was a sharp evening, and she had lit the fire for company as well as warmth. “I don’t see that his personal weaknesses have anything to do with railway fraud, if there is any.”
    “If he defrauded somebody of money, then Leather Lane seems an excellent place to kill him,” she retorted, wishing he would look at her. “A perfect situation to blame someone else, and exact a rather painful revenge on his reputation as well.”
    This time he did look up and smile, but it was without pleasure. There was an openness that flickered for an instant in his eyes, as if there had been no shadow, then it was gone again. The anxiety was back, and with it the distance between them.
    “Actually, when I said ’we,’ “ she corrected herself, “I meant Margaret Ballinger and me. Or perhaps I meant everybody in Coldbath. More women are getting beaten because they can’t pay their debts. The police are all over the place so nobody’s doing any trade.”
    “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