William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

something about it.”
    Dora relaxed, the ease washing through her visibly. Slowly she smiled.
    Hester clenched her fists in the folds of her skirts.
    “If only he did it for the poor, instead of rich women who have simply lost their virtue and didn’t want to face the shame and ruin of an illegitimate child.”
    Dora’s eyes were like black holes in her head.
    Hester felt the stab of fear again. Had she gone too far?
    “ ’E didn’t do that,” Dora said slowly. “ ’E did poor women, sick women … them as couldn’t take no more.”
    “He did rich women,” Hester repeated gravely, in little more than a whisper, her hand on the stair rail as if it were some kind of safety. “And he took a lot of money for it.” She did not know if that was true or not—but she had known Prudence. Prudence would not have betrayed him for doing what Dora believed. And Sir Herbert had killed her….
    “ ’E didn’t.” Dora’s voice was plaintive, her face beginning to crumple like a child’s. “ ’E didn’t take no money at all.” But already the doubt was there.
    “Yes he did,” Hester repeated. “That’s why Prudence threatened him.”
    “Yer lyin’,” Dora said simply and with total conviction. “I knew her too, an’ she’d never ’ave forced ’im into marryin’ ’er. That don’t make no sense at all. She never loved ’im. She’d no time for men. She wanted to be a doctor, Gawd ’elp ’er! She’d no chance—no woman ’as, ’owever good she is. If you’d really knew ’er, you’d never ’ave said anything so daft.”
    “I know she didn’t want to marry him,” Hester agreed. “She wanted him to help her get admittance to a medical school!”
    Slowly a terrible understanding filled Dora’s face. The light, the element of beauty, left it and was replaced by an agony of disillusion—and then hatred, burning, implacable, corroding hatred.
    “ ’E used me,” she said with total comprehension.
    Hester nodded. “And Prudence,” she added. “He used her too.”
    Dora’s face puckered. “Yer said ’e’s goin’ t’ get orf?” she asked in a low, grating voice.
    “Looks like it at the moment.”
    “If ’e does, I’ll kill ’im meself!”
    Looking into her eyes, Hester believed her. The pain she felt would not let her forget. Her idealism had been betrayed, the only thing that had made her precious, given her dignity and belief, had been destroyed. He had mocked the very best in her. She was an ugly woman, coarse and unloved, and she knew it. She had had one value in her own eyes, and now it was gone. Perhaps to have robbed her of it was a sin like murder too.
    “You can do better than that,” Hester said without thinking, putting her hand on Dora’s great arm, and with a shock feeling the power of the rocklike muscle. She swallowed her fear. “You can get him hanged,” she urged. “That would be a much more exquisite death—and he would know it was you who did it. If you kill him, he will be a martyr. The world will think he was innocent, and you guilty. And
you
might hang! My way you’ll be a heroine—and he’ll be ruined!”
    “ ’Ow?” Dora said simply.
    “Tell me all you know.”
    “They won’t believe me. Not against ’im!” Again the rage suffused her face. “Yer dreamin’. No—my way’s better. It’s sure. Yours ain’t.”
    “It could be,” Hester insisted. “You must know something of value.”
    “Like what? They in’t goin’ ter believe me. I’m nobody.” There was a wealth of bitterness in her last words, as if all the abyss of worthlessness had conquered her and she saw the light fading out of her reach with utter certainty.
    “What about all the patients?” Hester said desperately. “How did they know to come to him? It isn’t something he would tell people.”
    “ ’Course not! But I dunno ’oo got ’em fer ’im.”
    “Are you sure? Think hard! Maybe you saw something or heard something. How long has he been doing it?”
    “Oh, years! Ever since ’e did it for Lady Ross Gilbert. She were the first.” Her face lit with sudden, harsh amusement, as if she had not even heard Hester’s sudden, indrawn breath. “What a thing that were. She were well on—five months or more, and in such a state—beside herself she were. She’d just come back in a boat from the Indies—that would be why she was so far gorn.” She let out a low rumble of laughter, her face twisted in a sneer of contempt. “Black, it were—poor