“It is a marvelous work,” Hester was saying enthusiastically.
Scuff tried to listen. If she cared about all this, there had to be a reason, and he should pay attention too.
“Indeed it is,” Mrs. Taft agreed with a sweet smile. “And we find so much support, it is most heartening. You would be amazed how much even the poorest people manage to give. Surely God will bless them for it. They will have joy in heaven.” She looked as if she really meant it. Her eyes were shining, and there was a faint flush of pink in her cheeks. She wore a lovely hat decked with flowers in all sorts of colors. Scuff knew they weren’t real, but they almost looked it. Hester would look prettier than this woman in a hat like that, but it probably cost more than a week of dinners for all of them.
“Do you not worry about them though?” Hester asked anxiously.
Mrs. Taft looked puzzled.
“What will happen to them, between here and heaven, I mean,” Hester added in explanation.
“God will take care of them,” Mrs. Taft replied with gentle reproof.
Hester bit her lip. Scuff had seen that expression before. He knew she wanted to say something but had decided against it.
They were joined by two girls, a few years older than Scuff and looking a lot like grown-ups already, proper ladies’ shapes, their hair in ringlets, and straw hats with ribbons on their heads. They were introduced as Mrs. Taft’s daughters, Jane and Amelia. The conversation continued about generous donations to the wonderful work the church was doing for the unfortunate, especially in some distant and unnamed part of the world.
Scuff was extremely bored and his attention wandered again, this time toward some of the other members of the congregation. A lot of the women were older than Hester and rather fat. Those closest to him creaked a little when they moved, like the timbers of a ship on the tide. They looked unhappy. He supposed they might be late for luncheon and resented being kept in pointless conversations. He sympathized with them. He was hungry too-and tired of this. One of them caught his eye, and he smiled at her tentatively. She smiled back at him, then her husband glared at her and she stopped instantly.
Why was Hester still here? She didn’t know these people, and she certainly wasn’t talking to God, or listening to him. Yet she still looked very interested.
She looked even more interested when she was introduced to a good-looking man with thick, dark hair and a rather prominent nose. His name was apparently Robertson Drew, and he spoke to Hester in a condescending manner. His glance took in her costume and her new hat, and then her reticule and the fact that her boots were a little worn at the toes.
Scuff disliked him immediately.
“How do you do, Mrs. Monk?” Drew said with a smile that barely showed his teeth. “Welcome to our congregation. I hope you will join us regularly. And this is your son?” He looked momentarily at Scuff and then back to Hester. “Perhaps your husband will be able to be with us in future?”
Scuff thought the likelihood of that was about the same as the chances of finding a gold sovereign in the drain.
“I shall do all I can to persuade him,” Hester said smoothly. “Please tell me more about your charitable work, Mr. Drew. I confess it was report of that which brought me here. I live some distance away, but it seems to me most pastors speak a great deal about charity, but practice very little.”
“Ah! How perceptive you are, Mrs. Monk,” Drew agreed fervently. Suddenly he was all interest. He put out his hand as if to take Hester by the arm. Scuff was ready to kick his shins hard if he actually touched her, but he took his hand away again at the last minute and started to speak intently about all that the church had done for the needy.
Hester listened as if she were spellbound. Even to Scuff, who knew that it couldn’t be entirely real, it looked as if she genuinely cared.
Then Scuff realized that she was not precisely pretending. She was asking questions. She wanted to know but not for the reasons he had first assumed. A tingle of excitement ran through him. They were not here to sing hymns and repeat prayers-she was investigating something!
Now he began to listen closely, even though he did not yet understand what she was looking to find out.
Drew noticed his attention with pleasure, and he began to direct his speech to both of them.
They escaped at last outside into the sunlight, walking rapidly toward the nearest main street where they could catch an omnibus to the river and then the ferry home. Scuff challenged Hester almost at once. “Ye’re detecting, aren’t yer?”
She hesitated, then gave up and smiled. “I’m trying to. Thank you for helping me.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“Anything,” she corrected him automatically.
“I still didn’t. What did any of ’em do, ’side from being about as straight as a pig’s tail?”
“Was that your impression?” she said curiously. “What makes you think that?”
“I seen that look on an opulent receiver’s face, one who’s trying to sell yer gold when ’e knows it’s pinchbeck,” he replied.
“That’s very unkind, Scuff-and probably true,” she said, trying to keep the amusement out of her face and failing. An opulent receiver was the slang term for a receiver of stolen goods who specialized in expensive and hard-to-sell things.
“Now what are we going ter do?” he asked, taking it for granted that he was part of the plan.
She walked several yards without answering.
He kept pace with her. His legs were long enough now. He was almost the same height as her, and in a year or two he would definitely be taller. He wondered what that would feel like. He was still wondering when she answered.
“I shall weigh up all I know, which I admit is not a lot, and then I shall go and see Squeaky Robinson, at the clinic.”
“Why?” He knew Squeaky Robinson a little. He used to be a brothel keeper, until Sir Oliver Rathbone had tricked him out of the buildings he owned and used. Now those buildings were the clinic Hester ran for street women. Squeaky had had nowhere else to go and no means of earning his living. Protesting indignantly all the way, he had accepted their offer to earn his lodgings by keeping the accounts of the new establishment-which he did remarkably well. He certainly knew about money, and he understood that his survival depended on being honest to the farthing.
“Because if they really have been dishonest, Squeaky Robinson is the one person who might catch them,” she replied.
“How will ’e know?”
“I’m not certain yet,” she said reasonably. “But because they are a charity, they must account for their money. It won’t be easy to catch them out if they are doing something dishonest with it, but it’s worth trying.”
“Why?” he asked. “I mean, why are we doing it?”
“Because they have ruined the father of someone I like,” she told him. “Someone who seems quite a lot like me when I was younger. And I suppose because a long time ago, someone did that to my father too, and I wasn’t there to help him.”
He looked at her face and saw the sadness and the guilt in it. He knew this was not the time to ask anything more.
“Righto,” he replied. “I’ll ’elp.”
“Thank you. Now let’s hurry up and get the next omnibus home to lunch.”
Hester went to the clinic in Portpool Lane on Monday morning as usual, and, as usual, attended first to the urgent medical matters, then the household ones. Lastly she went into Squeaky Robinson’s office to inquire about the state of the finances.
Squeaky was a scrawny, cadaverous man of uncertain years, somewhere between fifty and sixty. He greeted her with his usual dour expression. “Could always use more money,” he answered her question. “But we aren’t desperate … not right today.”
“Good.” She dismissed the subject as dealt with. She pulled out the chair opposite his desk and sat down. “Squeaky, I need your advice, possibly your help.”