William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

homely smells.
    “The surgeon said the mutilation was done after she was dead,” he went on. “The papers didn’t say that.”
    Hester looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as if she was going to ask him something. Then she changed her mind and served his breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast, carrying the hot plate with a tea towel and setting it down in front of him. The butter and marmalade were already on the table. She made the tea and brought it over, steam coming gently from the spout of the pot.
    Scuff arrived at the door, boots in his hands. He put them down in the hall and came in, looking first at Monk, then at Hester. In spite of almost a year here he was still thin, small for his age, his shoulders narrow. But now his hair was thick and shiny, and there were no blemishes on his fair skin.
    “Are you hungry?” Hester inquired, as if it were a question.
    He grinned and sat down in what he now regarded as his chair.
    “Yeah. Please.”
    She smiled and served him the same as she had Monk. He would eat it all, then look hopefully around for more. It was a comfortable pattern, repeated every morning.
    “Wo’s wrong?” Scuff regarded Monk with a frown. “Can I ’elp?”
    “Not yet, thank you,” Monk assured him, looking up and meeting his eyes so Scuff would know he was serious. “Nasty case, but not mine, at least not yet.” He knew that since it was in the newspapers, Scuff would unquestionably hear about it, but for now they could still have a few hours’ peace. Since living here in Paradise Place, Scuff’s ability to read had increased dramatically. He was not fluent—there were some longer or more complex words he still had difficulty with—but the plain language of a newspaper was well within his ability.
    Scuff accepted his breakfast from Hester, but it did not distract his attention from Monk. “Why’s it not yours?” he asked. “You’re ’ead o’ the River Police. ’Oo’s would it be, then?”
    “Depends on who she was,” Monk replied. “We found her body on the pier, but she might have lived inland, so this case would belong to the local Limehouse police.” Even as he said it he made up his mind. Lately the papers had been rife with criticism of the police for the violence and prostitution going on in the area close to the river. There had been several knife fights, one of which had degenerated into a full-scale street battle leaving half a dozen people wounded and two dead.
    The newspapers had said the police were incompetent to handle it and had lost control. Uglier suggestions still were that they had deliberately allowed it to happen, in order to infiltrate it and get rid of a few troublemakers they could not handle legally, because the whole waterfront was slipping out of their control.
    The only thing that might stop further destructive speculation after this crime was a quick solution.
    “No, it don’t belong ter them,” Scuff argued. “They need yer ter ’elp ’em. If they killed ’er by the river, yer gotta do it.”
    Monk smiled, in spite of himself. “I’ll offer to,” he conceded. “It’s not something I really want.”
    “Why?” Scuff asked, his face puzzled, fair eyebrows drawn into a frown. “Don’t you care ’oo did it?”
    “Yes, of course I do,” Monk corrected himself quickly. “It’s just that we don’t know who she was yet, so we don’t know where she lived. If it’s inland, the regular police would know the people better.”
    “They in’t better’n you,” Scuff said with absolute certainty. “Yer gotta do it.” He was watching Monk’s face closely, trying to read what he felt, so he could figure out how to help. “It were a daft thing ter do,” he went on. “If yer don’t want something found, you ’ide it. Yer don’t leave it out in the open so’s any ferry or lighterman can see it. That’s daft!”
    Monk did not try to explain homicidal lunacy to Scuff over breakfast, or what kind of rage gets hold of a man that causes him to rip a woman’s body open, even after she’s dead.
    Scuff rolled his eyes, then set the matter aside and started to eat his breakfast with intense pleasure. It would be years before he lost his excitement at a whole plate of eggs and bacon that was solely for him.
    “Can you give it to Orme, or one of the other men?” Hester asked when Scuff had finished and left the kitchen.
    “No,” Monk said with a brief smile at her. “If she was on or near the river, it’s ours. And it’s