Execution Dock Page 0,48
to go over everything again, but with more care. And part of the trouble is that the people who testified before are now going to be very afraid. Phillips isn't in prison any longer, and he'll be dangerous."
"Then we will have to be very careful, too," Claudine replied, staring at Hester and ignoring Squeaky. "We will have to question them so they do not realize the importance of what they are saying until they have said it, and cannot retreat. The man Phillips is very terrible, and he must be put away." At last she looked at Squeaky. "I am glad you are going to help. I respect you for it, Mr. Robinson." She turned abruptly and walked to the door, then she looked back at Hester, doubt in her eyes. "I shall be available to do anything I can to help. Please do not forget that." Before either of them could reply, she went out, shutting the latch firmly behind her.
"Yer in't goin' ter use 'er!" Squeaky protested, leaning forward across the desk, his eyes wide. "What can she do? She couldn't find 'er way from one end o' the street ter the other. An' she in't got no right ter respect me. I didn't tell 'er I was goin' ter do anything at all with wot 'e..." He stopped, suddenly uncomfortable.
"Are you saying you won't do anything, Squeaky?" Hester asked with a very faint smile.
"Well... well, I in't exactly... no, I in't. All the same..."
"All the same, she led you into saying it and then cut off your retreat," she explained for him.
"Yeah!" He was aggrieved. Then he gave a slow smile, wily and half-amused, perhaps even appreciative. "She did, din't she!" He sniffed. "But I still say she wouldn't be safe in the street."
"She doesn't want to be safe." Hester lost all trace of the smile. "She wants to help, to belong, and you can't belong if you don't take the rough with the smooth. She knows that, Squeaky. We aren't going to shut her out."
He shook his head. "Yer in't got no idea," he said sadly. "That Rathbone's got yer ter rights: all 'eart an' no brains, you are, Gawd 'elp us! Ow the 'ell am I goin' ter look after you an' 'er both-daft old thing she is, an' all?"
Hester considered telling him very thoroughly to speak with more respect, and decided against it. This was almost a form of affection, and that was beyond price. She poured the tea carefully, his first. "It will be hard," she agreed. "But you'll manage it. Now let us get started."
The choice of whom to see first was not difficult, nor was it hard to find him and know what to say. Hester was happy to do it alone. Squeaky would be more usefully employed in seeking out his dubious friends.
Sutton was a rat catcher by trade, and proud of being called upon for his services by some of the best households in London. He numbered duchesses among his clients. He was also not too proud to attend to the needs of more humble establishments, and had rid the Portpool Lane clinic of rats at one of the most desperate times in Hester's life. They had been friends in terrible adversity, and indeed Sutton and his terrier, Snoot, had almost perished in the sewers with Monk only a matter of months ago.
Hester always dressed very plainly to go to the clinic, so she did not have any difficulty passing almost unnoticed along the narrow streets to Sutton's house, where she learned from his housekeeper the address where he had gone for the day's business. She found him at his frequent lunchtime haunt, a public house by the name of "The Grinning Rat." It was much like any other, except for the sign that creaked slightly in the wind as it swung outside. The rat in the picture had a look of devilish glee on its painted face. It was dressed in green, and it stood upright on its hind legs, smiling with all its teeth bared.
Hester could not help smiling back before she went inside, trying to look as if she belonged there. She was immediately enveloped in sound. Men were laughing and chattering, there was a clink of glass and pewter, and the scuffle of feet on the sawdust-covered floor, and somewhere in the cellars, barrels being rolled. A dog barked excitedly. There was no point in asking for Sutton; she must simply look.
It took her several