William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

she had spent in the chair beside Scuff’s bed when he had been injured hunting the assassin in the sewers.
    He bent down and spoke her name softly, not to startle her.
    “Hester.”
    She opened her eyes and sat up, smiling, pushing her hair back off her face where it had fallen out of its pins. “He didn’t do it,” she said with intense pleasure.
    Monk was confused and too tired to think. “Who didn’t?”
    “Rupert Cardew.” She stood up, so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her and smell her skin and her hair, clean cotton and,very faintly, soap. “I’m sorry,” she went on. “I know that leaves the case open and you have to go back and start again. But I’m just so glad it wasn’t Rupert.”
    “He told you that?” he asked. “I’m surprised they let you in to see him. Did his father take you?”
    A look of disgust flickered across her face. “William, for heaven’s sake! I’m not a complete simpleton. No, I haven’t been to see him, nor would I expect him to say anything different.” She smoothed her skirts without much effect; they were creased beyond any help but a flat iron. “With help from Crow, I found a prostitute Rupert visited earlier that day, and she admits that she stole his cravat and gave it to someone else, but she’s terrified to say who. But if Rupert didn’t have it, then he couldn’t have used it to strangle Mickey Parfitt, and that’s the only real evidence against him. All the rest just bears that up. He never denied having been on the boat, or having been blackmailed for it. But so have many other people.”
    She had just broken his case against Cardew. He should have been disconcerted, even angry, but instead he felt an absurd sense of relief.
    She saw it in his eyes and put her arms around his neck, pulling his head down gently and kissing him.
    M ONK WOKE LATE, AND Hester was already up. It was a moment or two before he remembered what Hester had told him about the cravat. When it came back, he leaped out of bed, washed, shaved, and dressed as fast as he could. He had a new idea forming in his mind, and he had to draw the pieces of it together, prove them one by one.
    He ate the most perfunctory breakfast, and left the house with only a brief word to Scuff and a quick moment of meeting Hester’s eyes, touching her cheek, and then going out of the door.
    As he crossed the river again, in the rhythmic movement of the ferry, his mind was absorbed in what this new revelation meant. He had no doubt of what Hester had said, but later he would go and see this young woman and make certain that she had not been influenced to swear she’d taken the cravat. Her testimony might have to standup in court. Was it conceivable that Lord Cardew had hired someone to find her and had possibly even paid her to come up with such a lie? He did not believe it, but it was necessary that he be thorough. If they ever found anyone else to accuse, that person would no doubt hire a barrister to defend him who was something like as clever as Oliver Rathbone. The question would be asked.
    But Monk would put it off until he had explored other possibilities. Orme had gone over Parfitt’s financial records, such as they were, and had found nothing to suggest that Parfitt had withheld any of the proceeds from the man who had given him the boat. If he had, then it was well hidden, and certainly not spent on his own pleasure. He lived no more comfortably than could be accounted for by the obvious takings of the boat’s trade, without the blackmail. Whoever was behind it had had no apparent motive to get rid of Parfitt. He would only have to be replaced with someone just like him.
    Did he already have someone in mind? A friend, a relative, a creditor to whom he owed some favor?
    That was the man Monk wanted to catch so intensely that he could taste it like a bitter flavor in his mouth. Was it Ballinger? Or was it even possible that Ballinger was another victim, like Sullivan had been, except turned to recruit more victims, perhaps as the price of his own survival? A dangerous tactic. Ballinger was not a man whose flaws one could manipulate.
    Before anything else, Monk needed to know as much as possible of the facts. Where had Ballinger been on the night of Parfitt’s death?
    Hester had told him of the ferryman rowing a man resembling Ballinger across the river and then later bringing him back. It would not be difficult to ascertain if it had been Ballinger. If he had been visiting