William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

court on another case for the last two weeks, but it’s finished now and I can’t put it off any longer.”
    “Are you sure he needs to know?” she pressed. “The pain of it would be intolerable, and he would have no choice but to do something about it.”
    “That’s not like you,” he said ruefully.
    “To want to avoid someone else’s pain?” She was momentarily indignant.
    “To be evasive,” he corrected her. “You are too good a nurse to want to put a bandage on something that you know needs surgery. If it’s gangrene, you must take off the arm, or the patient will die. You taught me that.”
    “Am I being a coward?” She winced as she said the word. She knew that to a soldier, “coward” was the worst word in any language, worse even than “cheat” or “thief.”
    Monk leaned forward and kissed her, lingering only a moment. “You don’t need courage if you aren’t afraid,” he answered. “It takes a little while to be certain you have no alternative. Scuff needs to know that we care enough for the truth itself, not just to rescue him and then turn away. I think Rathbone would want that too, whatever the cost.”
    “Whatever?” she questioned.
    He hesitated. “Maybe not at any cost, but that doesn’t change the reality of it.”
    H ESTER WENT TO THE clinic that she had set up to treat and care for prostitutes and other street women who were sick or injured. It survived on charitable donations, and Margaret Rathbone was by far the most dedicated and the most able among those who sought and obtained such money. Margaret also spent a certain amount of time actually working there, cooking, cleaning, and practicing the little light nursing that she had learned from Hester. Of course she had done rather less of such work since her marriage, and no longer did nights. Still, Hester did not look forward to seeing her today and hoped it would be one of those times when Margaret was otherwise engaged.
    She walked from Paradise Place down the hill to the ferry. The autumn wind was blustery, salt-smelling. From Wapping she took an omnibus westward toward Holborn. It was a long journey, but it was necessary that they live near Monk’s work. His was a reasonably newposition, back in the police again after years of being a private agent of inquiry, when he’d lurched from one case to another with no certainty of payment. For less than a year he had been head of the River Police in this area, which was a profoundly responsible position. There was no one in England with better skills in detection, or more courage and dedication—and, some might say, ruthlessness. But his art in managing men and placating his superiors in the political hierarchy was altogether another matter.
    If the circumstances caused Hester a little more traveling, it was a small enough contribution to his success. Added to which, she really did like the house in Paradise Place, with its view over the infinitely changing water, not to mention the freedom from financial anxiety that a regular income gave them.
    She walked briskly along Portpool Lane under the shadow of the Reid Brewery, and in at the door of the house that had once been part of a huge brothel. It was Oliver Rathbone who had helped her obtain the building, quite legally, but with considerable coercion of its previous owner, Squeaky Robinson. Squeaky had remained here, a partially reformed character. To begin with he had stayed because he had had nowhere else to go, but now he took a certain pride in the place, oozing self-righteousness at his newfound respectability.
    Squeaky was in the entrance as she came in, his face gaunt, his stringy gray-white hair down to his collar as usual. He was wearing an ancient frock coat and today had on a faded silk cravat.
    “We need more money,” he said as soon as Hester was through the door. “I dunno how you expect me to do all these things on sixpence ha’penny!”
    “You had fifty pounds just a week ago,” she replied. She was so used to Squeaky’s complaints that she would have worried if he had said that all was well.
    “Mrs. Margaret says we’re going to need new pans in the kitchen soon,” he retaliated. “Lots of ’em. Big ones. Sometimes I think we’re feeding half London.”
    “Lady Rathbone,” Hester corrected him automatically. “And pans do wear out, Squeaky. They get to the point where they can’t be mended anymore.”
    “Then, you tell her ladyship to come up with some money for ’em,” he