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‘What happened?’ she asked huskily.
‘You were so tired I let you sleep,’ he replied. ‘But you cried out. You must have been dreaming . . . something pretty bad, from the fear in your voice.’ He touched her gently, brushing the tangled hair off her forehead. He did not ask what she had dreamed. Perhaps he thought that like most nightmares, it disappeared a moment or two after you were awake. But this one didn’t. It was still very real, there in her body, in the smell of blood in her nose and throat.
She lay back on the pillow. ‘I dreamed someone was bleeding me,’ she said quietly, then told him exactly what it had felt like.
‘Hester!’ He took hold of her firmly, almost tightly enough to hurt. ‘Stop it! It was a dream. I won’t leave you alone again. Not when you’re asleep. Sit up.’ He pulled her forward a little and up. His hands were warm. ‘I’ll put the kettle back on and Scuff can bring you a cup of tea.’
‘No!’ she said, reaching out to hold on to him. ‘Don’t go . . . not just yet.’
He did not argue, just moved her gently across further to her own side of the bed. Then he lay down and put his arms around her.
‘I understand why Radnor was so afraid of dying,’ she said quietly, trying to explore the jungle of thoughts in her mind. ‘Maybe most of us are. We just don’t think about it because it would cripple us. I felt . . .’ the horror came back to her vividly so her whole body clenched, ‘. . . I felt as if I were tied up so I couldn’t move. And I was getting weaker all the time. Do you think Rand has any idea what he’s doing to people? Maybe he only sees the ones he’s helping?’
‘That isn’t an excuse,’ Monk said grimly. ‘It’s a child’s answer. I would take that from Worm. From Scuff I’d tell him he must do better.’
‘I know.’ She was silent for a few moments. She was warm now, comfortable. She remembered the room with the contraption that held the bottle of blood and very carefully fed it, a drop at a time to Radnor. Rand’s machine was cleverly designed and made. ‘It was exactly balanced, William,’ she said aloud.
‘Being a good engineer doesn’t excuse anything,’ he replied.
‘That wasn’t what I was thinking. How long do you suppose it took him to make it?’
‘Why? What does it matter?’
‘Months? Years, to get the design exactly right? All the weights and balances?’
He sat up slowly to look at her, his face filled with the darkness of his thoughts. ‘Hester?’
‘A long time,’ she whispered. ‘How many other people’s blood did he try with? And what happened to them? Obviously he wasn’t caught for it, or he’d not still be free.’
He stared at her. ‘What are you saying, Hester? That he took other people to the cottage to experiment on them?’
She met his eyes. ‘Yes, I think so. The place was all prepared and set up when we got there. I think he took us on the spur of the moment, when he realised you were looking into it all too closely. He bolted. It wasn’t planned. He decided it right then when I was in his office. He put ether over my face. It was a sudden decision. The children said they were taken in a hurry, after I was already there. They couldn’t remember much, but all of it was hurry, and secrecy. He didn’t have time to plan.’ She took a break and rushed on. ‘It wasn’t the same machine in the cottage as the one he used in the hospital. It was already there, set up and ready to use. William, he’d used it before! How many times? How long? And what happened to those people?’
For several seconds Monk did not answer.
Hester said nothing more, lapsing into thought herself. She allowed her mind to go back to the time in the cottage. Now, instead of fighting it, she was actively trying to remember.
‘The room was ready for the children,’ she said aloud. ‘There were four beds there, not three, all made up with sheets and blankets. You can’t do that in a short time. Either Rand was planning to go there anyway, but was pushed into it before he had intended, or . . . or it was a place he had used before.’
‘You said the machine, the contraption, was complicated. Could they have made that quickly?’
‘No. And the screws were tight, jammed, as if they’d been there for a long time. I know because I tried to undo one with a spanner, so I could adjust the arm. I couldn’t budge it.’
‘Then I think I have no alternative but to go out there again, maybe take Hooper, and see what we can find.’
Monk sat up again, moving his arm away from her. ‘And before Patterson recalls the court and tries to get some order back into the trial. God knows how he’ll do it. And I’ll take Worm back to Claudine at the clinic. I think he’s safe enough now.’
‘Are you . . .?’ Then she stopped. She had been going to ask if he were sure Worm would be all right at the clinic, but then she remembered how frantic Claudine would be without him. To her he was unique. Every child should be special to someone: needed, not just accepted.
‘Good idea,’ she agreed. ‘I must get up. What would you like for breakfast? There’s—’
He pushed the hair back off her brow again, smiling. ‘How about lunch?’ he asked.
‘Is it that time?’
‘Almost. By the time you’re dressed it will be.’
When Scuff heard what Monk was going to do, he immediately volunteered to come along as well. ‘We’ll find twice as much if there are two of us,’ he pointed out reasonably.
