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“Toby?” Hester pressed. “She might have told him?”
Rose shook her head. “She didn’t trust him. He and Alan were very close.”
“Toby worked in the company?”
“Yes. She said he was very ambitious, and at least as clever as Alan, with engineering, at any rate. Perhaps not as good at handling men and as quick in business.”
Half an idea flashed into Hester’s mind, but it dissolved before she grasped hold of it. “So he would understand the machines?”
“Oh, yes. So others said.” Rose’s eyes widened. “You mean she might have been…been deliberately playing him…drawing information from him to get her final proof?”
“Mightn’t she?” Hester asked. “Would she have had the courage to do that?”
Rose did not hesitate. “Yes—by heaven, she would! And he was playing her, to see how much she knew! But it was too much! He had to kill her, because in the end his loyalty was to his brother.”
“And to his own ambition,” Hester retorted. She saw lights along the road and prayed it was the omnibus at last. Her teeth were chattering with the cold.
“How will we ever know?” Rose said desperately. “I absolutely refuse to let them get away with it, whatever it costs!”
The omnibus stopped and they climbed on, being obliged to stand jammed between tired workmen and women with bags of shopping followed by exhausted children with loud voices and sticky hands.
At the changeover to the second omnibus Rose gave a wry, blisteringly honest smile as she climbed onto the next platform and inside. “I shall never be rude to a coachman again!” she whispered fiercely. “I shall never insult the cook, outrage the maids, or argue with the butler. And above all, I shall never let the fire go out, even if I have to carry the coal in myself!”
Hester swallowed a laugh that was a little on the edge of hysteria.
“What are we going to do?” Rose demanded.
Hester’s mind raced, struggling between the practical and the safe. Safety won, at least for Rose. “You are going to see what chances there are of passing some kind of law to help the injured. Mary might have thought of that. It was probably why she approached Mr. Applegate in the first place. I’ll attempt to locate the toshers Mary spoke to and see what they told her. If anyone knows where the old sunken rivers are, or if anything’s changed course, it’ll be them.”
“Be careful!” Rose warned.
“I will,” Hester assured her.
But she did not tell Monk anything other than that she had visited some of those injured in past cave-ins and other machine accidents. She certainly did not reveal her plans. And she lost no time in composing a brief letter to Sutton, telling him of her need to learn more from the toshers who knew the old system best. Only after she had sent it did she realize that she had no idea whether Sutton could read or not! He did all his business in cash. Perhaps even the best houses did not wish a bill or a receipt from a ratcatcher.
She waited all day for an answer, busying herself with chores, cleaning up after the plasterer.
Sutton came just after dark, at about half past four.
“Yer sure?” he asked carefully, studying her face in the kitchen gaslight. He sipped a steaming cup of tea, and had accepted a piece of fruitcake. He was scrupulous to give Snoot a tiny portion, just so he felt included. It probably amounted to no more than a couple of raisins. Snoot took them delicately and licked his chops, waiting hopefully for more.
“That’s yer lot!” Sutton told him, shaking his head, then turned back to Hester.
“Well if yer sure yer really want ter know wot’s ’appened, someone as’ll tell yer the truth, we’d best go under the Thames Tunnel an’ find some o’ the folks wot’s not still ’opin’ fer work, or got loyalties to them as is.” He looked her up and down anxiously. “But yer can’t come like that. If I take yer with me, yer gotta look like yer belong. If I bring yer the clothes, can yer come as me lad wot I’m teachin’?”
She was taken aback for a moment, amusement replaced by the sudden jar of reality. “Yes,” she said soberly. “Of course I can. I’ll tie my hair back and put a cap on.” It was an unreasonably displeasing thought that with a change of attire she could be taken for a ratcatcher’s apprentice. And yet had she been more buxomly built, with a rounder, more womanly face, then she would not have been able to go at all.
Then she thought of the faces of the women she had seen yesterday, worn out and old long before their time, color and softness taken from them. Suddenly self-regard seemed not only ridiculous but disgusting. “I’ll be ready,” she said firmly. “What time shall we begin?”
“I’ll come ’ere,” he said, still uncertain of himself. “At breakfast. We’ll start early. Not as it makes much difference under the…ground.”
She knew he had been going to say river but stopped himself at the last moment, in case the thought should be too much for her, especially since they had been talking of cave-ins, floods, and gas.
“I’ll be here,” she said with a smile, catching his eye and see
ing the answering humor in it, and a flicker of admiration that pleased her quite unreasonably.
He nodded and rose to his feet.
