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She rose to her feet. “I’ll go and see Claudine. Thank you, Squeaky. I appreciate your discretion.” She did not mention that she also wanted to make sure that Worm was all right, and had had breakfast that morning.
Squeaky grunted his assent.
She need not have worried. Worm was well fed and occupied sufficiently to justify lunch and even dinner as well. He gave her an enormous grin, and then ran off to his duties, full of importance.
HESTER ARRIVED HOME IN Paradise Place after ten o’clock that night. She found Monk sitting in the parlor with a cup of tea, but looking tired and extremely uncomfortable. Scuff, sitting opposite him and watching anxiously, shot to his feet the moment he heard Hester’s footsteps.
He took a look at her face and must have seen the exhaustion in the droop of her shoulders, but relief at seeing her at all overwhelmed everything else.
“You all right? I’ll get yer a cup o’ tea. Can I …” He gulped at his own temerity. “Can I get yer something to eat? There’s still pie an’ …” He could not think what else.
She sat down, leaning back into the chair, ease washing through her. “Yes, please, that would be very good. Pie and a cup of tea would be perfect.”
Scuff glanced at Monk. “ ’E’s all right … I think,” he assured her.
“Thank you,” she nodded. She waited for him to go so she could look more closely at Monk, and see whether he was feverish or just sore and frustrated with being a prisoner of his own debility.
Scuff disappeared and Monk stared at her, speaking in a low, urgent voice. “I need to get back into the case.” He leaned forward a little and winced. “The more I think about it, the more certain I am that that boat rammed us on purpose. Ferries go across at that point all the time. Anyone on the river would know that and keep a watch. He wasn’t even in the usual lane for the tide. It was only dusk, and we had riding lights. I’m close to something.”
“We’ll see how you are tomorrow—” she began.
“You don’t understand!” he cut across her. “I must have—”
“Yes, I do,” she assured him with as much calm as she could, but she heard the fear in her own voice. “Someone rammed you on purpose, which means they want you out of the way. Maybe they even think you’re stupid enough to come after them when you’re wounded and at less than half your usual strength. Fortunately they’re wrong. You aren’t.”
Giving her a twisted smile, he moved slightly, winced, and decided it was a bad idea. “Hester, it won’t work! Where have you been all day, anyway?”
“Getting Crow into the prison to see Beshara,” she replied.
He stiffened. “What? You went to the prison? Hester, I told you …” He stopped, crippled by his own helplessness.
She saw the pain, the emotional momentarily deeper than the physical, in his face.
“No, I didn’t,” she said levelly. “Just sit back and let me look at how that wound is coming on.”
“It hurts. It’ll get better,” he retorted. “Did you tell Scuff where you were going?”
“No, I didn’t. If I’d told anyone, it would have been you. Now sit still!”
“Do you realize what could have happened to you?” he demanded.
“Of course,” she assured him with a touch of sarcasm. “I could have been rammed in a ferry, and nearly drowned. But fortunately I wasn’t. Now will you please sit still?” That last came out sounding like an order.
“Hester—”
“And be quiet! I need to concentrate on binding your ribs again. And I want to be finished by the time Scuff gets back with my tea.”
He started to speak again, but he was too tired and too sore to argue.
She smiled at him gently, hiding her own anxiety. “It’ll get better,” she promised.
His eyes searched hers for a long moment, and then he relaxed and smiled back.
TWO DAYS LATER SHE received a letter from Crow, asking her to meet him at his new surgery the following morning.
Monk was considerably better by then, although still in some pain. He was expecting Orme to come to see him, as he had the day before. Hester made sure she told him her own plans while he was busy deliberating what he would ask the men at Wapping to do in furtherance of the case.
It was another hot, still morning and the river was full of traffic. It took her longer than she expected to reach the surgery off Wharf Road, and Crow was waiting for her impatiently. He looked eager, his face alive with anticipation of her reaction, and his own increasing interest in the case. He did not even offer her tea but plunged straight into his report.
