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Enid let out her breath in a long sigh and the faintest shadow of a smile touched her lips and then faded away.
“Enid!” he cried out, taking her hand roughly.
Hester picked up the damp cloth again and wiped Enid’s brow, then her cheeks, then her lips and throat.
“That’s bloody useless, woman!” Ravensbrook said loudly, lurching backwards and standing up. “Don’t go through your damned rituals in front of me. Can’t you at least have the decency to wait until I am out of the room. She was my wife, for God’s sake!”
Hester held her hand on Enid’s throat, high, under the chin, and pressed hard. She felt the skin cooler, the pulse weak but steady.
“She’s asleep,” she said with certainty.
“I don’t want your bloody euphemisms!” His voice was cracking, but close to a shout, and filled with helpless rage. “I won’t be treated like a child by some damn servant, and in my own house!”
“She is asleep!” Hester repeated firmly. “The fever has broken. When she wakens she will begin to get better. It may take some time. She has been very ill, but with care she will make a full recovery. That is if you don’t distress her now and break her rest with your temper!”
“What?” he said, still angry, confused.
“Do you wish me to repeat it?” she asked.
“No! No.” He stood perfectly still—just inside the door. “Are you sure? Do you know what you are talking about?”
“Yes. I have seen a great deal of typhoid fever before.”
“In the East End?” he said derisively. “They’re dying like flies!”
“In the Crimea,” she corrected him. “And hundreds of the men died there too, but not all.”
“Oh.” His face ironed out. “Yes. I forgot about the Crimea.”
“You wouldn’t had you been there!” she snapped.
He made no remark, nor did he thank her, but went out, closing the door behind him.
She rang the bell, to tell Dingle that Enid was past the crisis and have her take away the bowl of used water. She also asked for a cup of tea. Until that moment she had not realized how devastatingly tired she was.
Dingle brought her tea, hot buttered toast, a fresh stone hot water bottle and a blanket warmed next to the kitchen fire.
“But you will stay with her, won’t you?” she asked urgently. “Just in case?”
“Yes I will,” Hester promised.
For the first time since Hester had arrived, Dingle’s face relaxed into a smile.
“Thank you, miss. God bless you.”
Monk was now certain in his own mind that there was no other course but to find Caleb Stone. None of his doubts about Genevieve warranted any delay or gave rise to anything more than a suspicion at the back of his mind, an awareness, haunting and painful, of other possibilities. But whatever they might be, they still led back to Caleb. There would be both time and need to apportion guilt once Angus’s fate was known, or so deeply implicated that the authorities were obliged to investigate it. He dressed in old clothes which he must have purchased some time ago for such a task. His own wardrobe was immaculate. He had the tailor’s bills from past years as testament to that, and to his vanity. The quality and cut of it, the perfectly fitting shoulders, the smooth, flat lapels made him wince at the expense, at the same time as giving him an acute satisfaction. The feel of the cloth pleased him every time he dressed, as did his elegant reflection in the glass.
However, today he was bound for Limehouse, and possibly the Isle of Dogs, in search of Caleb Stone, and he did not wish to be obvious as a stranger. As such he would be both disliked and despised, and most certainly lied to. Therefore he put on a torn striped shirt without a collar, then baggy, ill-fitting brownish-black trousers, and grimaced at the figure he cut. Then a stained waistcoat (largely for warmth) and an outer jacket of brown wool with several moth holes in it. He crowned it with a tall hat, and—refusing to look at himself again—he set out into the light drizzle of early morning.
He took a cab as far as the end of Commercial Road East in the heart of Limehouse, then continued on foot. He already knew it was going to be difficult to find Caleb. He had tried tentatively before. No one was eager to talk about him.
He turned his coat collar up and walked across Britannia Bridge over the dark water of Limehouse Cut, past the town hall and onto the West India Dock Road, then turned sharp right down Three Colt Street towards the river and Gun Lane. He had several places in mind to pursue the serious quest for Caleb. From what he had already learned of him, his life was a precarious balance on the edge of survival. He had been involved in various acts of violence and duplicity. He had a razor-edge temper and was spoken of in anxious and whispered tones. But so far, Monk had not been able to learn exactly how he made his money, nor where he lived, except most approximately that it was east, downriver from the West India Dock.
He began with the pawnbroker in Gun Lane. He had been there before. He could not remember anything about either the man himself or the small room no doubt crowded with domestic objects of every kind, grim reminders of the degree of poverty in the area. But the man’s expression of alarm when he stood over the counter and the light from the oil lamps caught his face, was proof that some time in the past they had met before, and Monk had had the best of it.
Of course, he no longer had the power of the police to use, and Wiggins, the proprietor, was a hard man. He could not have plied his trade for long if he were taken advantage of often.
“Yes?” he said guardedly as Monk came in empty-handed. Then he recognized him. “I dunno nuffink ter tell yer,” he said defensively. “I in’t got nuffin ’ot, an’ I don’ do no bis’ness wi’ thieves.” He set his fat jaw hard. It was a lie, and they both knew it. Proving it was the issue.
