William Monk 16 - Execution Dock

thought of that for myself. Of course you are.”
    He could see Scuffs grin, even in the dark.
    When a bed had been made up for Scuff and he was sound asleep in it, Hester and Monk sat in the kitchen over a very late supper—really no more than two large pieces of fruitcake and two cups of tea.
    “I can't let him go back until Phillips is arrested and locked up,” he said anxiously, watching her face.
    “It's as much my responsibility as yours,” she answered. Then she smiled. “Of course we can't. And that might be quite a while, so you had better get him some clean clothes. I'm much too busy to wash these every night, even supposing I could dry them. You might even get a pair of boots that fit him—and really are a pair.”
    She wanted to talk about something that was worrying her. He could see it in her eyes, in a kind of hesitation, as though she were still looking for a way to avoid saying it at all.
    He told her about hearing of Mary Webber, but not of Durban's violence towards the pawnbroker, or his use of rank to prevent the constable from charging him. He realized with surprise that it was not Hester he was protecting—it was Durban. Because he himself cared so intensely what Hester thought of him, he was imagining that Durban would too.
    “Why are you smiling?” she asked him, puzzled and a little off balance.
    “I don't know,” he admitted. “At Scuffs help, I suppose.”
    Suddenly she was profoundly serious.
    “Be careful, William,” she warned. “Please? I know he's looked after himself for years, but he's only a child. Lots of people die on the river …” She left the rest unsaid. There were more like Fig than like Scuff, and they both knew that.
    He looked down at her hands on the table. They were very slender, like a girl's, but strong. Their beauty lay not in soft, white skin or delicate nails, but in grace; they were quick and gentle, and their touch was light. They would be broken before they would let a drowning man go, but they would allow a butterfly to leave as simply as it had come. He loved her hands. He wanted to reach out and touch them, but he felt self-conscious when there was so much more urgent business at hand.
    “Durban was being blackmailed,” she said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “I don't yet know what for. Could that be to do with this Mary Webber, whoever she is?”
    “I don't know,” he confessed. He wished he did not have to know. He was overburdened with knowledge already, and the more there wasof it, the more it hurt. What was it that drove people on and on to seek the truth, to unravel every knot, even when it was the ignorance and the peace of heart that made it all endurable? Was truth going to heal anything? How much of it could any one person grasp?
    She stood up. “That's enough for today. Let's go to bed.” She said it gently, but she was not going to accept an argument, and he had no wish to offer any.
    Hester was concerned for Durban's reputation too, not so much for himself as for what the discoveries could do to Monk. Her husband had had few friends, at least that he could remember. At one time he and Runcorn had been more than allies. They had shared the involvement and the tragedy of police work, and the dangers.
    But Monk's abrasive tongue and his ambition had driven Runcorn to a bitter jealousy He was a narrower man in both his vision and his ability. The rivalry had brought out the meanest spirit in him. Friendship had eventually become enmity.
    Of course she did not explain any of this to Sutton when she met him to take up the search again. He would think their purpose was to find some evidence to prove Phillips guilty of something for which they could try him. He must know that the death of Fig was closed to them now, even if he had been tactful enough to refrain from saying so.
    They rode the bus in companionable silence, Snoot by Sutton's feet as always.
    Hester sat in the top of the bus watching the narrow, closely crammed houses with the stained walls and sagging roofs as they moved closer to Limehouse and the printer Sutton had told her they were going to. He had helped in many things, and she knew he would do all he could now. He would call in favors, incur more, spend all day away from his own work to help her find what she was seeking.
    But Sutton could not tell her what it was that she wanted to find, or what she hoped it would prove. They could not undo the failure of Phillips's trial, nor the fact that Rathbone had