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She drew in her breath to argue, and found that she had no idea how to tell him that she did not really need him. The silence grew until it became impossible, and by default she had accepted that she did.
As it transpired, he helped her find most of the people she eventually wished to speak to. It was long and tiring walking from one narrow, crowded street to another, arguing, asking, pleading for information and then trying to sort out the lies and the mistakes and find the elements of truth. Scuff was better at that than she was. He had a sharp instinct for evasion and manipulation. He was also more prepared than she to threaten or call a bluff.
“Don't let ‘em get away with nothin’!” he said to her urgently as they left one smooth-tongued man with a wispy black mustache. “That's a load o’ …” He bit his tongue to avoid the word he had been going to use. “I reckon as it were Mr. Durban ‘as pulled ‘im out o’ the muck, an’ ‘e's too … mean ter say it. That's wot that is.” He stood in the middle of the narrow pavement looking up at her seriously.
A costermonger wheeled his barrow past them, knowing at a glance that she would not buy.
“Yer din't ought ter b'lieve every stupid sod as tells yer,” Scuff continued. “Well, yer din't,” he granted generously. “I'll tell yer if it's true or not. We better go and find this Willie the Dip, if ‘e's real.”
Two washerwomen barged past them, sheets tied around dirty laundry bouncing on their ample hips.
“You don't think he is?” Hester asked.
Scuff gave her a skeptical look. “Dip means ‘e picks pockets. ‘Oo don't, round ‘ere? I reckon ‘e's all guff.”
And so it turned out. But by the end of the day they had heard many stories of Durban from a variety of people up and down the dockside. They had been discreet, and Hester believed with some pride that they had also been inventive enough not to betray the reason for their interest.
It was well after dusk with the last of the light faded even from the flat surface of the water when they finally made their way up Elephant Stairs just a few yards along from Princes Street. The tide was running hard, slapping against the stone, and the sharp river smell was almost pleasant in the air after the closed-in alleys they had walked all day, and the heavy, throat-filling odors of the docks, where men
were unpacking all manner of cargoes, pungent, clinging, some so sweet as to be rancid. The quiet movement of water was a relief after the shouting, clatter of hooves, and clank of chains and winches and thus of heavy loads.
They were tired and thirsty. Scuff did not say that his feet were sore, but possibly he regarded it as a condition of life. Hester ached all the way up to her knees, and beyond, but in the face of his stoicism, she felt that it would be self-indulgent to let it be known.
“Thank you,” she said as they started to walk up in the direction of Paradise Place. “You are quite right. I do need you.”
“S'all right,” he said casually, giving a little lift of his shoulder visible as he passed under the street lamp.
He took a deep breath. “‘E weren't a bad man,” he said, then looked sideways at her quickly.
“I know, Scuff.”
“Does it matter if ‘e told a few lies about ‘oo ‘e were or where ‘e come from?”
“I don't know. I suppose it depends what the truth is.”
“Yer think it's bad, then?”
They came to the end of Elephant Lane and turned right into Church Street. It was completely dark now and the lamps were like yellow moons reflected over and over again right to the end. There was a faint mist drifting up in patches from the water, like castaway silk scarves.
“I think it might be. Otherwise why would he lie about it?” she asked. “We don't usually lie about good things.”
He was quiet.
“Scuff?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“You can't go on calling me ‘miss’! Would you like to call me ‘Hester’?”
He stopped and tried to look at her. “Hester?” he said carefully, sounding the H. “Don't you think Mr. Monk might say I'm bein’ cheeky?”
“I shall tell him I suggested it.”
“Hester,” he said again, experimentally, then he grinned.
Hester lay awake and thought hard about what steps she should take next. Durban had tried for a long time, well over a year, to find Mary Webber. He was a skilled policeman with a lifetime of experience in learning, questioning, and finding, and he had apparently failed. How was she to succeed? She had no advantages over him, as far as she knew.
Beside her, Monk was asleep, she thought. She lay still, not wanting to disturb him, above all not wanting him to know that she was thinking, puzzling.
