William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

“How did you come to know her?”
    Gladys rolled her eyes at Hester’s stupidity. “ ’Eard about ’er ’cos she got wot we all want, din’t she? One real nice gent wot only needed ter see ’er once a month, treated ’er like she were a lady, an’ paid all ’er bills. If that ’appened ter me, I’d reckon as I’d died an’ gone ter ’eaven. ’Ow’d she do it, that’s wot I’d like ter know. It weren’t ’cos she knew ’ow ter make a man laugh, or feel as if ’e were the most interestin’ man as she ever met, or the ’andsomest, neither.”
    “Did Dr. Lambourn love her, do you think?” Hester asked. “Was she especially gentle, or kind?”
    Gladys shrugged. “ ’Ow’d I know? I reckon as she must ’ave been willin’ ter do some real strange things fer ’im. All I can think. An’ ’e looked as decent as yer like, jus’ straightforward. Goes ter show, yer never know wot’s be’ind them ordinary faces.”
    It was a possibility Hester had already thought of, distasteful as it was. She had never even met Dinah Lambourn. Why did it trouble her so much that she might have deeply loved a man with deviant tastes? Perhaps it was her own imagination of how she would feel were she to discover such a thing of Monk.
    If it were so, would she want to kill the woman who had catered to him, as Dinah was accused of having killed Zenia? Possibly. Not as violently, as brutally, but kill her? It was strange and disturbing that murder was something that she could even imagine.
    Now the whole situation looked different—sad, ugly, and unimaginably painful.
    “Do you think Zenia loved him?” she asked Gladys. Was that a question that even made sense to the woman? Gladys lived, worked, and thought only to survive. Love was a luxury she would probably never be able to afford. Perhaps she had not even allowed herself to dream of it. In a hundred different disguises, that was probably true of millions of women of all ranks, from servant to aristocrat. Children would have much to do with it; neither Hester nor Gladys would have children, but Hester had love. She was perfectly sure of that.
    But then many women believed they had love. Maybe even Dinah Lambourn.
    She looked at Gladys again. She was sitting with her brow furrowed, a look of deep concentration on her face.
    Hester waited.
    Gladys looked up at last. “Mebbe. Don’t really matter,” she said slowly. “It were terrible wot ’appened to ’er. I don’t care wot she done, that weren’t right.”
    Hester was not sure what to say. “Did she do something so bad?” she asked. She was afraid she would drive Gladys back into silence, but she was increasingly conscious that the other woman knew more than she had said.
    “That’s it,” Gladys bit her lip. “She were kind o’ secretive, sometimes a bit la-di-da, like she were better’n the rest of us, but she were kind, in ’er own way. She acted like she’d come down in the world, but I thought that mebbe she ’ad. Something she said once. Tillie Biggs were drunk ’alf out of ’er mind. Lyin’ in the gutter like it were the only place left for’er. Couldn’t fall out of it, likely. An’ Zenia were the only one wot ’ad time ter pick ’er up. Rest of us said the stupid cow brought it on ’erself, but Zenia wouldn’t ’ave it. Said we all brought things on ourselves, don’t mean we didn’t need ’elpin’.”
    “What did she do?” Hester felt a tightening in her throat, the beginning of an emotion she could not control.
    Gladys made a small, sad gesture. “ ’Eaved ’er up an’ dragged ’er into an alley doorway where it were dry, an’ nobody’d fall over ’er. Propped ’er up there, an’ left ’er. In’t nothin’ else yer can do. She knew that.” She stopped, struggling with whether to say more.
    Hester did not know whether to encourage her or not. She drew in her breath to speak, then changed her mind.
    “Reckon as maybe she’d fallen in a few gullies ’erself,” Gladys said quietly. “She told me once that she’d bin married. Mebbe ’e left ’er ’cos o’ the drink. Or she left ’im. Dunno.” She shook her head. “But she weren’t one o’ us, like from round ’ere.”
    “Where did she come from, do you know?” Hester asked gently. Gladys’s answers had made Zenia far too real: a woman with dreams and sudden kindnesses, capable of feeling grief and pain.
    “She never said. She were an odd one. Liked flowers. I mean she knew ’ow ter