Anne Perry - A Sudden, Fearful Death

"You're right," she said aloud in the silence. "Some women need a far better help than the law lets us give them. You have to admire a man who risks his honor, and his freedom, to do something about it."

Dora relaxed, the ease washing through her visibly. Slowly she smiled.

Hester clenched her fists in the folds of her skirts.

"If only he did it for the poor, instead of rich women who have simply lost their virtue and didn't want to face the shame and ruin of an illegitimate child."

Dora's eyes were like black holes in her head.

Hester felt the stab of fear again. Had she gone too far?

" 'E didn't do that," Dora said slowly. " 'E did poor women, sick women… them as couldn't take no more."

"He did rich women," Hester repeated gravely, in little more than a whisper, her hand on the stair rail as if it were some kind of safety. "And he took a lot of money for it." She did not know if that was true or not-but she had known Prudence. Prudence would not have betrayed him for doing what Dora believed. And Sir Herbert had killed her…

" 'E didn't." Dora's voice was plaintive, her face beginning to crumple like a child's. " 'E didn't take no money at all." But already the doubt was there.

"Yes he did," Hester repeated. "That's why Prudence threatened him."

"Yer lyin'," Dora said simply and with total conviction. "I knew her too, an' she'd never 'ave forced 'im into marryin' 'er. That don't make no sense at all. She never loved 'im. She'd no time for men. She wanted to be a doctor, Gawd 'elp 'er! She'd no chance-no woman 'as, 'owever good she is. If you'd really knew 'er, you'd never 'ave said anything so daft."

"I know she didn't want to marry him," Hester agreed. "She wanted him to help her get admittance to a medical school!"

Slowly a terrible understanding filled Dora's face. The light, the element of beauty, left it and was replaced by an agony of disillusion-and then hatred, burning, implacable, corroding hatred.

" 'E used me," she said with total comprehension.

Hester nodded. "And Prudence," she added. "He used her too."

Dora's face puckered. "Yer said 'e's goin' t' get orf?" she asked in a low, grating voice.

"Looks like it at the moment."

"If 'e does, I'll kill 'im meself!"

Looking into her eyes, Hester believed her. The pain she felt would not let her forget. Her idealism had been betrayed, the only thing that had made her precious, given her dignity and belief, had been destroyed. He had mocked the very best in her. She was an ugly woman, coarse and unloved, and she knew it. She had had one value in her own eyes, and now it was gone. Perhaps to have robbed her of it was a sin like murder too.

"You can do better than that," Hester said without thinking, putting her hand on Dora's great arm, and with a shock feeling the power of the rocklike muscle. She swallowed her fear. "You can get him hanged," she urged. "That would be a much more exquisite death-and he would know it was you who did it. If you kill him, he will be a martyr. The world will think he was innocent, and you guilty. And you might hang! My way you'll be a heroine- and he'll be ruined!"

" 'Ow?" Dora said simply.

"Tell me all you know."

"They won't believe me. Not against "im!" Again the rage suffused her face. "Yer dreamin'. No-my way's better. It's sure. Yours ain't."

"It could be," Hester insisted. "You must know something of value."

"Like what? They in't goin' ter believe me. I'm nobody." There was a wealth of bitterness in her last words, as if all the abyss of worthlessness had conquered her and she saw the light fading out of her reach with utter certainty.

"What about all the patients?" Hester said desperately. "How did they know to come to him? It isn't something he would tell people."

" 'Course not! But I dunno 'oo got 'em fer 'im."

"Are you sure? Think hard! Maybe you saw something or heard something. How long has he been doing it?"

"Oh, years! Ever since 'e did it for Lady Ross Gilbert. She were the first." Her face lit with sudden, harsh amusement, as if she had not even heard Hester's sudden, indrawn breath. "What a thing that were. She were well on-five months or more, and in such a state-beside herself she were. She'd just come back in a boat from the Indies-that would be why she was so far gorn." She let out a low rumble of laughter, her face twisted in a sneer of contempt. "Black, it were-poor little sod! I saw it plain- like a real baby. Arms an' legs an' 'ead an' all." Tears filled her eyes and her face was soft and sad with memory. "Fan- made me sick to see it took away like that. But black as yer 'at it'd 'ave been. No wonder she din't want it! 'Er 'usband'd 'ave turned her out, and all London'd 'ave thrown up their 'ands in 'orror in public-and laughed theirselves sick be'ind their doors arterwards."

Hester too was amazed and sick and grieved for a helpless life, unwanted and disposed of before it began.

Without any explanation she knew Dora's contempt was not that the child was black but that Berenice had got rid of it for that reason, and it was mixed with her sense of loss for what was so plainly a human being on the brink of form and life. Anger was the only way she knew to defuse the horror and the pity. She had no children herself, and probably never would have. What emotions must have racked her to see the growing infant, so nearly complete, and dispose of it like a tumor into the rubbish. For a few moments she and Dora shared a feeling as totally as if their paths through life had been matched step for step.

"But I dunno 'oo sends women to 'im," Dora said angrily, breaking the mood. "Maybe if you can find some of them, they'll tell yer, but don't count on it! They in't goin' ter say anything." Now she was twisted with anger again. "You put 'em in court an' they'll lie their 'eads off before they'll admit they done such a thing. Poor women might not-but the rich ones will. Poor women's afraid o' 'avin more kids they can't feed. Rich ones is afraid 'o the shame."

Hester did not bother arguing that rich women could be just as physically exhausted by confinement after confinement. Every woman gives birth in the same way-all the money on earth cannot alter the work of the body, the pain or the dangers, the tearing, the bleeding, the risk of fever or blood poisoning. That surely is the one place where all women are equal. But this was not the time to say so.

"See what you can remember," she argued. "I will reread all Prudence's notes again, just in case there is anything else there."

"You won't get nowhere." There were hopelessness back in Dora's voice and in her face. " 'E'll get off-and I'll kill 'im, the same as 'e killed 'er. I might 'ang fer it-but I'll go gladly if I'm sure 'e's in 'Ell too." And with that she pushed her way past Hester, tears suddenly spilling over her eyes and coursing down her ugly face.

Monk was elated when Hester brought him her news. It was the solution. He knew precisely what to do. Without hesitation he went to Berenice Ross Gilbert's home and commanded the reluctant footman to let him in. He accepted no protests as to the hour, which was approaching midnight. This was an emergency. It mattered not a jot that Lady Ross Gilbert had retired for the night. She must be awakened. Perhaps it was something in his bearing, an innate ruthlessness, but after only a moment's hesitation the footman obeyed.

Monk waited in the withdrawing room, an elegant expensive room with French furniture, gilded wood, and brocade curtains. How much of it had been paid for by desperate women? He had no time even to look at it now. He stood in the center facing the double doors, waiting for her.

She threw them open and came in, smiling, dressed in a magnificent aquamarine robe which billowed around her.