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He winced, but then he should have expected her to know such things. She had hardly been sheltered from many truths.
“These were amateurs,” he explained. “Mostly women who worked in factories and sweatshops during the day and just needed a little more now and again.”
“I see.”
“Then they were raped. Now it has escalated until they are being beaten … increasingly violently.”
She said nothing.
He glanced sideways at her as they passed close to another carriage; the light from the lamps caught her face. He saw the pity and anger in it, and suddenly his loneliness vanished. All the times of resentment and irritation and self-protectiveness telescoped into the causes they had shared, and disappeared, leaving only the understanding. He went on to describe to her his efforts to elicit some facts about the men, and about his questioning of the cabbies and street vendors in order to learn where they had come from.
They arrived at the hostelry where he planned to eat. They alighted, paid the driver, and went in. He was barely aware of the street, or the noise and warmth once they were inside. He ordered without realizing he had done it for both of them, and she made a very slight face, but she did not interrupt, except to ask for clarification as he omitted a point or was vague on an issue.
“I’m going to find them,” he finished with hard, relentless commitment. “Whether Vida Hopgood pays me for it or not. I’ll stop them, and I’ll make damned sure everyone like them knows they’ve paid the price, whether it’s the justice of the law or of the streets.” He waited, half expecting her to argue with him, to preach the sanctity of keeping the civilized law, of the descent into barbarism if it were abandoned, whatever the cause or the provocation.
But she sat in thoughtful silence for several minutes before she replied.
The room around them swirled with the clatter of crockery, the sounds of voices and laughter. The smells of food and ale and damp wool filled the air. Light glinted on glass and was reflected on faces, white shirt fronts and the white of plates.
“The young man I’m nursing was beaten, nearly to death, in St. Giles,” she said at last. “His father did die.” She looked across at him. “Are you sure enough you can get the right man? If you make a mistake, there can be no undoing it. The law will try them, there will have to be proof, weighed and measured, and someone to
speak in their defense. If it is the streets, then it will simply be execution. Are you prepared to be accuser, defender, and jury … and to let the victims judge?”
“What if the alternative is freedom?” he asked. “Not only freedom to enjoy all the pleasures and rewards of life, without hindrance or answerability for wrong, but the freedom to go on committing it, creating new victims, on and on, until someone is murdered, maybe one of the young ones, twelve or fourteen, too weak to fight back at all?” He stared at her, meeting her clear eyes. “I am involved. I am the jury, whatever I decide. Omission is a judgment as well. To walk away, to pass on the other side, is as much a decision.”
“I know,” she agreed. “Justice may be blindfolded, but the law is not. It sees when and whom it chooses, because it is administered by those who see when and whom they choose.” She was still frowning.
He broached the subject which was hanging unspoken between them. He knew it, and he thought perhaps she did also. With anyone else, he would have let the moment pass. It was too delicate and had all the possibilities of being too painful as well. With Hester, to have thought it was almost the same as to have spoken it to her.
“Are you sure it cannot be your young man and his father, or his friends? Tell me about him.…”
Again she waited several moments before she replied. At the next table an old man broke into a fit of coughing. Beyond him a woman laughed; they could hear her but not see her. It was a high, braying sound. The room was getting warmer all the time.
“No, I’m not sure,” she said so quietly he had to lean forward to hear her, ignoring the last of his food. “Evan is investigating the case. I assume you know that. He has not been able to find out what they were doing in St. Giles. It is hardly likely to be anything admirable.” She hesitated, unhappiness profound in her face. “I don’t think I believe he would do such a thing, not willingly, not intentionally …”
“But you are not sure?” he said quickly.
Her eyes searched his face, longing to find some comfort there and failing.
“No … I’m not sure. There is a cruelty in him which is very ugly to see. I don’t know why. It seems directed largely at his mother.…”
“I’m sorry.” Without thinking he reached forward and put his hand over hers where it lay on the table. He felt the slenderness of her bones, a strong hand, but so slight his own covered it.
“It doesn’t have to be anything to do with this,” she said slowly, and he thought it was more to convince herself than him. “It’s just … it could be … because he cannot speak. He’s alone.…” She looked at Monk with an intensity that made her oblivious of the room around her or anything else. “He’s utterly alone. We don’t know what happened to him, and he can’t tell us. We guess, we talk to each other, we work at the possibilities, and he can’t even tell us where we are wrong, where it is ludicrous or unjust. I can’t imagine being more helpless.”
He was torn whether to say what was in his mind or not. She looked so hurt, so involved with the pain she saw.
But this was Hester, not a woman he needed to protect, gentle and vulnerable, used only to the feminine things of life. She had already known the worst, worse than he had.
“Your pity for him now does not alter what he may have done before,” he answered her.
She drew her hand away.
He felt vaguely hurt, as if she had withdrawn something of herself. She was so independent. She did not need anyone. She could give, but she could not take.
“I know,” she said quietly.
“No, you don’t.” He was answering his own thoughts. She did not know how arrogant she was, how so much of her giving was a form of taking; whereas if she had taken, it would have been a gift.
