Anne Perry - Acceptable Loss

“No point in even looking,” Monk agreed. “Murder by persons unknown.” He took a deep breath. “But we’d better make certain. There’ll be rooms for them below, and a galley of some sort. They have to feed them.”

Orme said nothing.

They found the ladder down and descended to the deck below. Immediately it was different. The heavier, more fetid air closed over them, and the lantern shone on darker walls only a couple of feet away. Monk felt the sweat break out on his skin, and then chill instantly. His heart was knocking in his chest.

Orme pushed at the first door, but it held fast. He lifted his foot and kicked it with all his weight. It burst in, and there was a cry from behind it. He held the lantern higher and the yellow light showed four small boys, thin, narrow-chested, half-naked, and cowering together in the corner.

Monk wiped his hand over his face, forcing himself to focus.

“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Parfitt is dead. We’re going to take you away from here.” He stepped forward.

They all shrank farther back, flinching, though his hand was several feet away from the closest of them.

He stopped. What could he tell them that they could believe? They probably didn’t know anything but this. Where was he going to send them, anyway? Back into the streets? Some orphanage, where they would be looked after? By whom? Perhaps Hester would know.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated, feeling useless. They wouldn’t believe him; they shouldn’t. Perhaps they shouldn’t believe anyone. “Are there more of you?”

One nodded slowly.

“We’ll get you all, and then take you ashore.” Where to? How many boats would they need? It was night already; what was he going to do with them? A dozen or more small boys: frightened, hungry, possibly ill, certainly hideously abused. Then he thought of Durban, his predecessor, and remembered his work with the Foundling Hospital. “We’ll go where they’ll look after you,” he said more firmly. “Give you warm clothes, food, a clean bed to sleep in.”

They looked at him as if they had no idea what he was saying.

It took Monk and Orme the rest of the night to find all of the fourteen boys and take them ashore, a boatload at a time, persuade them they were safe, and then get them to the nearest hospital that would accept them. Later the hospital would send them on to a proper institution specifically for foundlings. Technically, of course, they were too old for that, but Monk trusted in the charity of the matrons in charge.

Dawn was coming up, pale over the east and lighting the water, clean and chill, soft colors half bleached away, when Monk stood with Orme on the dock outside the Wapping station of the River Police. He was so tired, his bones ached. He realized that in the three weeks since Jericho Phillips’s death he had slowly let go of at least part of the horror of it. Now it was back as though it had been only yesterday. It was the sweat and alcohol in the air, the claustrophobia belowdecks. But sharper and more real than anything else, filling his nose and throat, it was the smell of fear and death.

Mickey Parfitt was another Jericho Phillips, one that catered to an upriver clientele, away from the teeming closeness of the docks. Instead it was the quiet reaches of the river where deserted banks were marshy, mist-laden at morning and evening, and stretches of silver water were tree-lined. But in the night the same twisted brutality was enacted upon children. Probably the same blackmail of men addicted to their appetites, to the danger of illegal indulgence, the adrenaline pumping through their blood at the fear of being caught. It was the same obliviousness to what they were doing to others, perhaps because the others were children of the streets and docksides, already abandoned by circumstance.

Did Monk want to know who had killed Mickey Parfitt? Not really. It was a case in which he would be happier to fail. But could he simply not try? That was a different thing. Then he would be acting as both judge and jury. About Parfitt he was sure, but what about the murderer’s next victim, and the one after that? Could Monk really set himself up to decide whose murder was acceptable and whose deserved trial and probably punishment? He had made too many mistakes in the past for such certainty. Or was that the coward’s fear of responsibility? Leave it to someone else; then it can’t be your fault.

“Where do we begin?” Orme said quietly as the light broadened in the sky.

A string of barges was coming slowly up the river, their wash barely disturbing the surface.

Monk glanced sideways once, seeing the anger and the grief in Orme’s blunt face. They faced a long, slow journey barely begun, and Orme’s trust mattered to Monk intensely.

“Find out more about him,” he replied slowly, searching for the words. “Perhaps his death was justified, perhaps not. It could have been a rival. Who was behind him? Who put in the money-or took it out? Was he blackmailing people too?”

Orme nodded slowly. He looked quickly at Monk, then back again at the river.

“Have some breakfast first, and a little sleep. Get warm,” Monk added with a slight smile.

Oliver Rathbone waited in the withdrawing room for Margaret to come downstairs. They were going to dine with her parents, and as usual, it was a somewhat formal affair. Her two sisters and their husbands would also be present.

He walked to the windows and stared out at the darkening garden. The September sun was warm on the last of the flowers in the herbaceous border: purples and golds, autumn colors. It was the richest season; soon even the leaves would flame. Berries would ripen. Blue wood smoke and early morning frosts were not far away. For him the glory of autumn always held an echo of sadness, a knowledge that beauty is a living thing, delicate, capable of injury, even of death.

This would be the first time he would dine with Arthur Ballinger since the drownings at Execution Dock. Rathbone was dreading it, yet of course it was inevitable. Ballinger was his father-in-law, and Margaret was unusually close to her family.

Sullivan had made it hideously clear that he blamed the man behind the child-abuse racket for his downfall, from beginning to end, but he had offered no proof that it was Ballinger, so legally and morally there was nothing Rathbone could do about it. Sullivan’s words had been no more than those of a desperate man, disgraced beyond recall.

Outside, a flock of starlings swirled up into the evening sky, and clouds drifted in from the south.

For Margaret’s sake, Rathbone knew he must pretend. It would be difficult. He did not find family gatherings easy anyway. He was very close to his own father, but their dinners together had the quiet comfort of old friends, conversation about art and philosophy, law and literature, gentle amusement at the oddities of life and human nature. There were companionable silences while they ate bread and cheese, good pate, drank a little red wine. Sometimes they had apple pie and cream by the fireside in the evening, and shared a joke or two.

The door opened and Margaret came in. She saw Rathbone standing and immediately apologized, assuming she had kept him waiting. She looked lovely in a gown of rich, soft green, the huge crinoline skirt bordered with a pattern of Greek keys in gold.

“I was early,” he replied, finding it easier to smile than he had expected. “But I would have been happy to wait. You look wonderful. Is the gown new? Surely I couldn’t have forgotten it?”

The stiffness disappeared from her back and became the grace he had first seen in her when he had been drawn to her sense of humor, and the innate dignity that was her loveliest gift.