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“Hot, I’d eat anything. Yes, I do.”
Scuff hesitated, as if considering whether to strike a bargain, then his charity got the better of his business sense. “I’ll take yer,” he offered magnanimously. It was clear that Monk needed all the help he could get.
“Thank you,” Monk accepted. “Perhaps you would join me?”
“I don’ mind if I do.”
THREE
The Portpool Lane clinic was a large establishment, not with the open wards that made nursing easy, but with numerous separate bedrooms. However, it had the greatest advantage any establishment that was devoted to the treatment of the penniless could have: it was rent-free. It had once been a highly disreputable brothel run by one Squeaky Robinson, a man of many financial and organizational skills. He haxd in the past made one serious technical error, and it was that upon which Hester, with the help of the brilliant barrister Oliver Rathbone, had capitalized on. It was then that the brothel had been closed down, its extortion business ended, and the building turned into a clinic for the treatment of any street woman who was either injured or ill.
Some of its former occupants had remained to work at the more tedious but far safer occupations of cleaning and laundering sheets. Squeaky Robinson himself lived on the premises, and under vociferous and constant complaint kept the books and managed the continuing finances. He never allowed Hester to forget that he was there under duress and because he had been tricked. In turn, she was aware that he had actually, against his better judgment, developed a fierce pride in the whole enterprise.
After the terrible period during which Claudine Burroughs had come, and experienced such a change in her life, Margaret Ballinger had also finally accepted Sir Oliver’s proposal of marriage. Both women were working at the clinic and fully intended to remain so, leaving Hester with far less responsibility for its welfare, either in the raising of funds to pay for the food, fuel, and medicines or in the day-to-day chores.
The same bitter morning that Monk began i
nvestigating the death of James Havilland, Hester was checking the account books in the office at the clinic for the last time.
After the appalling weeks of the previous autumn, when Hester had so nearly died, Monk had demanded that she give up working at the clinic. Although it meant far more to her than a simple refuge for street women who were ill or injured and it filled a need in her to heal, she ultimately acquiesced to Monk’s wishes. Even so, she dragged out the last duties in the clinic, putting off the moment of having to leave.
She would greatly have preferred to perform this task in the familiar kitchen, where the stove kept the whole room warm and the lamps gave a pleasant yellow glow on old pans polished with use, and odd china of varying colors and designs. Strings of onions hung from the bare beams along with bunches of dried herbs, and at least one airing rack was festooned with laundered bandages ready for use on the next disaster.
But the ledgers, bills, and receipts as well as the money itself were all in the office, so she sat at the table, feet cold and hands stiff, adding up figures and trying to make the results hopeful.
There was a brisk knock on the door, and as soon as she answered it, Claudine came in. She was a tall woman, narrow-shouldered and broad at the hips. Her face had been handsome in her youth, but years of unhappiness had taken the bloom from her skin and marked her features with an expression of discontent. A couple of months of dedicated purpose and the startling realization that she was actually both useful and liked had only just begun to change that. She still wore her oldest clothes, which were of good quality but out of fashion now. The newer ones were left at home to be worn on her increasingly rarer forays into society. Her husband was annoyed and puzzled by her preference for “good work” over the pursuit of pleasure, but she no longer believed he had earned the right to inflict further unhappiness upon her, and very seldom spoke of him. If she had any friends of her own aside from those at the clinic, she did not refer to them, either, except insofar as they might be persuaded to donate to the cause.
“Good morning, Claudine,” Hester said, trying to sound cheerful. “How are you?”
Claudine still did not take pleasantries for granted. “Good morning,” she replied, even now unsure whether to address Hester by her Christian name. “I’m very well, thank you. But I fear we can expect a good deal of bronchitis in this weather, and pneumonia as well. Got a stab wound in last night. Stupid girl hasn’t got the wits she was born with, working out of a place like Fleet Row.”
“Can we save her?” Hester asked anxiously, unintentionally including herself in the cause.
“Oh, yes.” Claudine was somewhat smug about her newly acquired medical knowledge, even if it came from observation rather than experience. “What I came about was new sheets. We can manage for a little longer, but you’ll have to ask Margaret about more funds soon. We’ll need at least a dozen, and that’ll barely do.”
“Can it wait another few weeks?” Hester regarded the column of figures in front of her. She ought to tell Claudine that she was going, but she could not bring herself to do it yet.
“Three, perhaps,” Claudine replied. “I can bring a pair from home, but I don’t have twelve.”
“Thank you.” Hester meant it. For Claudine to provide anything out of her own home for the use of street women was a seven-league step from the wounding distaste the woman had felt only three months earlier. The charity work Claudine had been used to was of the discreet, untroublesome kind where ladies of like disposition organized fêtes and garden parties to raise money for respectable causes, such as fever hospitals, mission work, and the deserving poor. Some profound disruption to her personal life had driven Claudine to this total departure. She had not confided in anybody what it had been, and Hester would never ask.
“Breakfast will be ready in half an hour,” Claudine responded. “You should eat.” And without waiting for a reply, she went out, closing the door behind her.
Hester smiled and returned to her figures.
The next person to come in was Margaret Ballinger, her face pink from the cold, but with nothing of the hunched defense against the weather that one might expect. There was a confidence about her, an unconscious grace, as of one who is inwardly happy, all external circumstances being merely peripheral.
“Breakfast’s ready,” she said cheerfully. She knew Hester was going, but she refused to think of it. “And Sutton’s here to see you. He does look a little…concerned.”
Hester was surprised. Sutton, a ratcatcher by trade, occasionally did odd jobs for Hester. She stood up immediately. “Is he all right?”
“He’s not hurt,” Margaret began.
“And Snoot?” Hester was referring to the ratcatcher’s eager little terrier.
Margaret smiled. “In excellent health,” she assured Hester. “Whatever concerns Sutton, it is not Snoot.”
Hester felt immeasurably relieved. She knew how Sutton loved the animal. He was possibly all the family he had, certainly all he spoke of.
