Acceptable Loss - Anne Perry [50]
“Like wot?” Scuff was balancing the bread in his hands, ready to cut more when he was free to concentrate on it.
“I’m not quite sure,” she admitted. “Self-defense is one. And sometimes it’s an accident, maybe a real accident, or maybe you’re partly to blame because you were being very careless, not so much that you didn’t mean to kill anyone so much as you just didn’t care.”
He looked at her, biting his lips anxiously. “ ’E could a done that? I mean, killed ’im by accident, like?”
“No,” she said honestly. “I don’t think so. Actually, his father said that he claimed he didn’t do it at all. And lots of people must have hated Parfitt.”
“D’yer believe ’im, then?”
“I don’t know. His father said he has behaved pretty badly in the past, but not as badly as that. I need to know more about him, perhaps things his father doesn’t know about because Rupert was too ashamed to say. I’ll be out for quite a while, I think.”
“ ’Oo are ye gonna ask, then? Other toffs, an’ the like? Will ’is friends tell yer? I wouldn’t tell on a friend, specially not to a copper’s wife.” Then he realized that was silly. “ ’Ceptin’ I don’t s’pose you’ll tell ’em ’oo yer are.”
She smiled, taking the now steaming kettle off the stove and warming the teapot before putting the leaves in. “Of course not. I’m going to the clinic first to ask a few questions of the women we’ve got in at the moment. There, at least, I have something of an advantage. Then tomorrow I’ll move a little farther afield.”
He nodded. “Yer think as mebbe ’e done a good thing, killin’ Mickey Parfitt, an’ all?”
“I wouldn’t push it quite that far,” she said cautiously. “But not totally bad.”
“Ye’re right.” Scuff nodded again, more vehemently. “We gotter chip in. Yer gonna make that tea? It’s steamin’ its ’ead off. An’ there’s more jam.”
WHEN HESTER ARRIVED AT the clinic, she began by going over the books with Squeaky Robinson.
“We’re doing well,” he said with considerable satisfaction. He pointed to the place on the page where the final tally was. Even his lugubrious nature could not but be pleased by it. “And we don’t need much,” he added. “Just new plates as they got broke. We’ve got sheets, even spare nightshirts, towels. Got medicines—laudanum, quinine, brandy, all sorts.”
Hester avoided his eyes. “I know. It’s excellent.”
“What are you going to do, then?” he asked.
She thought of pretending that she did not know what he meant. “Use it wisely,” she replied.
“Yeah, you better,” he agreed. “In’t no more where that come from. Poor bastard’s gonna hang, by all accounts. ’Less, of course, someone does something about it?”
“What did you have in mind, Squeaky?” Then immediately she regretted asking. Whatever he had was probably illegal. He had not lost his connections in the criminal underworld, nor had his nature changed, only his loyalties. He had not needed to go looking for Claudine Burroughs when she had gone on the wild adventure that had ended with her seeing a man she thought was Arthur Ballinger, in the alley outside a shop that sold pornography, but he had done so out of loyalty to Claudine. Because Ballinger had been looking at a picture so obscene it had horrified her, she had fled into the deeper alleys, finally to become totally exhausted and lost. Only Squeaky’s perseverance had saved her.
He had never been a hero before. He loved it.
“Well?” Hester pressed him.
“D’you reckon Cardew was framed?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“I don’t know,” she said frankly. “There are certainly plenty of other people who might have wanted Parfitt dead.”
“Yeah,” Squeaky agreed. “Thing is, how come Parfitt didn’t know that? What kind of an idiot stands alone on the deck of a boat and lets a man get on board he knows hates him? I wouldn’t! And believe me, if you’ve got a nice little business in the flesh trade, you know who your rivals are. You’re prepared. You keep folks around you as you can trust, to take care of your back, like.” He was watching