Anne Perry - Dark Assassin

"We have addresses," Hester replied. "We find a cup of tea, or better, chocolate, if we can. Then we go and see some of these people and find out which of them, if any, Mary Havilland asked also."

Fortified by a cup each of thick, rich cocoa and a ham sandwich bought from a peddler, then hot chestnuts a hundred yards farther on, they set out to the nearest of the addresses. The early afternoon turned colder. The sleet changed into intermittent snow, but still the street was too wet for it to stick except on the windowsills and lower eaves. Of course the roofs were white except for around the chimneys, where the heat melted the snow and sent it in dribbles down the slates. Cab horses looked miserable. Peddlers shivered. The wind flurried, scattering newspapers, and gray smoke hung in the air like shadows of the night to come.

At the first house the woman refused to allow them in. At the second there was no answer. At the third, the woman was busy with three children, the oldest of whom looked barely five.

Hester glanced at Rose and saw the pity in her eyes. However, Rose masked it before the woman could recognize its nature.

"I in't got time ter talk to yer," the woman said bitterly. "Wot d'yer think I am? I got washin' ter do wot in't never gonna dry in this weather, an' summink ter find fer tea. Wot's a member o' Parliament ter me? I in't got no vote, nor's any o' me fam'ly. We in't never 'ad an 'ouse wot's ours, let alone big enough ter let us vote. Anyway, me man's crippled." She started to push the door closed, pushing the small girl behind her and moving her skirts awkwardly.

"We don't want your vote," Hester said quickly. "We just want to talk to you. I'll help. I'm good at laundry."

The woman looked her up and down, disbelief growing into anger at being mocked. "I 'ear yer, misses. Ladies 'oo talk like you, all proper, don' know a scrubbin' brush from an 'airbrush." She pushed the door again.

Hester pushed it back. "I'm a nurse and I keep a clinic for street women in Portpool Lane." She remembered too late that it was no longer true. "I'll wager you a good dinner I've done more dirty washing than you have!" she added.

The woman's hand went slack with surprise, allowing the door to swing open, and Rose took full advantage of it.

Inside, the house was bare and cold with the sort of poverty that teeters on the edge of starvation. Hester heard Rose draw in her breath, then very carefully let it out silently while she tried to compose her face as if she saw such things every day.

It was like the Collards again, only worse. This man was sickly pale, his eyes hollow and defeated. He had been crushed from the waist but his legs were still there, deformed and-from the way he lay and the pinching around his mouth-a constant agony.

Patiently and with trembling gentleness Rose tried to elicit facts from him, and he refused. No one was to blame. It was an accident. Could have happened to anyone. No, there was nothing wrong with the machines. What was the matter with them that they could not understand that? He had told the others the same.

Hester half listened as she started on the laundry with lye soap and water that was almost cold. The physical misery of it did nothing to assuage her sense of guilt. Even as she did it she knew that was ridiculous. Her hour or two of discomfort would be pointless. But the biting cold on her skin pleased her, and the drag on her shoulders when she heaved the wet sheets out and tried to wring them by hand. At the clinic at least they had a mangle.

It was the fourth house after that before they learned anything further. Mary Havilland had been there also.

"You are certain?" Hester said to the handsome, weary woman busy sewing shirts. All the time she was talking to them her fingers never stopped. She barely needed to look at what she was doing.

"Course I am. Don' forget summink like a young lady, an' she were a lady, comin' an' askin' about sewers an' drains an' water wot runs under the ground. Knowed about it, too, she did-engines, too. Knew one from another."

Rose stiffened, glancing at Hester, then back at the woman.

"She knew about underground streams?" Hester asked, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice.

"Summink," the woman replied. "Queer, though." She shook her head. "She wanted ter know more. I said me pa'd bin a tosher, afore 'e got took, an' she wanted ter know if I still knew any toshers now. Or gangers. I tol' 'er me bruvver were a tosher, but I in't seen 'im in years. She asked me 'is name. Now wot'd a nice young lady like that wanna find a tosher fer?"

"To learn more about hidden streams?" Rose suggested.

The woman's eyes opened wide. "Wot fer? Yer don' think one o' them's gonna break through, do yer?"

"Did she say that?"

"No! Course she din't! D'yer think I'd be sittin' 'ere wi' a needle in me 'and if she 'ad? Me sister's 'usband's down there diggin'." She made no reference to her own husband, one-armed, who was out somewhere in the streets trying to earn a living running errands for people. "Is this wot yer on about? Wot 'appened to 'er, anyway? Why are yer 'ere?"

Hester debated only for an instant. "She fell off Westminster Bridge and drowned. We are concerned it may not have been an accident. We need to know what she learned."

"Nothin' from 'ere that'd get her topped, I swear that on me muvver's grave!

They stayed another ten minutes, but the woman could add nothing.

Outside it was dark and the snow was beginning to accumulate, even though it was only shortly after six.

"Do you suppose she went looking for toshers?" Rose said unhappily. "What for? To tell her where the underground streams were? Surely Argyll would have done all that. He can't want a disaster-it would ruin him most of all."

"I don't know," Hester admitted, beginning to walk towards the omnibus stop. Moving was better than standing still. "It doesn't make any sense, and she must have known that. But she learned something. What could it be, other than that they are somehow using the machines dangerously, in order to be the fastest, and therefore get the best contracts? Are Argyll's machines different from other people's? We need to find out. Could they be more dangerous?"

Rose stopped, shuddering with cold. "It seems they work faster-so maybe they are. What can we do? These men won't tell us anything-they daren't!" There was anguish in her cry.

"I don't know," Hester answered. "All we can do is find out what happened to Mary… maybe. If she found proof of some sort-I mean something that would have shut down the works until the machines were made safe, even if it were slower-whom would she have told?"

"Morgan," Rose said straightaway. "She didn't. She never came back."

They started walking again, as it was too cold to stand.

"Perhaps she wasn't certain," Hester suggested. "If it was almost complete, perhaps lacking one point…?"

They reached the bus stop and stood side by side, moving their weight from one foot to the other to prevent themselves from freezing.

"Toby?" Hester pressed. "She might have told him?"

Rose shook her head. "She didn't trust him. He and Alan were very close."

"Toby worked in the company?"

"Yes. She said he was very ambitious, and at least as clever as Alan, with engineering, at any rate. Perhaps not as good at handling men and as quick in business."

Half an idea flashed into Hester's mind, but it dissolved before she grasped hold of it. "So he would understand the machines?"

"Oh, yes. So others said." Rose's eyes widened. "You mean she might have been… been deliberately playing him… drawing information from him to get her final proof?"

"Mightn't she?" Hester asked. "Would she have had the courage to do that?"

Rose did not hesitate. "Yes-by heaven, she would! And he was playing her, to see how much she knew! But it was too much! He had to kill her, because in the end his loyalty was to his brother."