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He had finished his tea, and Hester poured him some more. He thanked her for it. She got upset about please and thank you if he forgot them.
“I been thinking about Sir Oliver,” he said tentatively.
Hester looked up at him, waiting for him to continue.
“I don’t understand why everyone’s so upset that ’e let them know about the photograph o’ Mr. Drew. You said as Sir Oliver’s there to see that everyone plays by the rules, so no one gets to win by cheating.”
“More or less,” Hester agreed cautiously.
“But if you lose the game, they get to ’ang you?”
“Only if you’ve done something terribly serious, like killing people,” she explained. She was looking at him more closely now, listening with attention. “What made you think about this?”
There it was, the question he did not want to answer. Now he either had to lie or plunge straight in. He chose the latter. “I went to the court to listen.” He said the words quickly, as if speed might make her miss the meaning of them. “I gotta do something to help,” he added. “A different judge were up there, keeping the rules. ’e ’ad a face like one o’ them bad-tempered little dogs, all white whiskers an’ sharp eyes.”
Hester hid a smile almost completely. He saw only the briefest light of it, but he felt the warmth. “So why don’t they make different rules?” he hurried on. “Instead o’ making it a game so the cleverest one wins, why don’t they make it like a treasure hunt-whoever finds the truth wins? Or maybe everybody does. Then as long as it were truth, you wouldn’t get in trouble ’cos o’ the rules. Sir Oliver wouldn’t be in trouble then, would ’e?”
“No, I don’t think he would,” she agreed. She put out her hand and placed it gently on his cuff, just over his wrist. “It might be a very good idea, but unfortunately we can’t get anybody to change the rules fast enough for us.”
“But we are going to do something, aren’t we?” he asked a little shakily. At what point did you get so bad that people stopped loving you? Even thinking about the word “love” pained him like a knife cut. It was a dangerous word, too big, too precious. He shouldn’t even think it. He was asking for trouble.
He was waiting for her to answer. What would she say? Hester never lied.
“We’re trying desperately to think of something,” she said at last.
“You still like him, don’t you?” He ignored the tea. “I mean … you’re still friends … you’ll still be friends, even after this?”
“Of course,” Hester said fiercely. “We all do wrong things now and then. There aren’t any perfect people, and if there were, they probably wouldn’t be very nice. It’s only by making mistakes yourself and learning how much it hurts, and how sorry you are, that you get to understand other people and really forgive them. And you hope people will offer you the same forgiveness. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay for your mistakes.”
“Does that mean we let Sir Oliver pay?” he asked.
She smiled, a really warm, sweet smile, as if she were laughing at herself inside. “Not if we can help it,” she said. “He’s already had almost as much of a fright as he can take. And he’ll never do anything like this again. Besides, I’m not sure how really wrong it was-though it’s not up to me to judge, in court anyway.”
He felt a lot better. Perhaps if he did something really wrong, she wouldn’t stop loving him either? She might get angry, but she wouldn’t send him away. And he would make a mistake one day; he was bound to. “Maybe he didn’t mean to do wrong,” he said softly.
“You’re quite right,” she agreed, pushing the butter across the table toward him. “I don’t think he did. And to be honest, I’m not sure what I would have done in his place. Taft and Drew had to be stopped.”
“Why’d Mr. Taft do that?” Scuff asked. “I mean, why’d he kill ’is wife an’ ’is girls too?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, frowning at the thought. “Have some more toast. You haven’t eaten enough. You won’t get anything more until lunchtime.”
He buttered his toast and put marmalade on it, but he didn’t bite into it yet. “And Mr. Drew’s going to get away with it, isn’t ’e, even with the photo?” he pressed. “That in’t right.”
“Maybe,” Hester admitted. “But it isn’t over yet.”
Monk had been standing outside the kitchen door for several moments, not wanting to interrupt the conversation and deny Scuff the chance to say what he clearly needed to. He was taken aback by the weight of Scuff’s feelings. He realized that for the last two or three days he had been so absorbed in the desperation of Rathbone’s situation that he had succeeded in making Scuff feel excluded. He heard in his questions that continuing, underlying fear that loyalty was subject to keeping up a certain standard, and failure to do that could mean that love ended. He was talking of Rathbone, but, deeper than that, he was thinking of himself.
Monk was consumed by the need to reassure him.
He walked in casually, as if he had caught only the last couple of words of their conversation.
“I am going to go to
Mr. Taft’s house to take a long and very careful look at all his belongings,” he said, to no one in particular.
“When?” Hester asked instantly. “This afternoon? Sooner?”
Monk smiled. “The police have already been there and searched thoroughly. I’m looking for something they missed,” he told them both. “It’s the scene of three murders and a suicide. They won’t have treated it lightly, but it’s possible they saw something without realizing its significance. I’ll have to get permission first, but I can do that.”
