Death of a Stranger

chapter TWO
Hester had foreseen that the area around Coldbath Square would suffer an added diligence from police harrying women who were either prostitutes or who could not prove their legitimate occupations, but when it happened she was still taken aback by the reality. The very next evening in the house she saw immediate evidence of it. Margaret was not in; she was mixing with her more natural society, endeavoring to elicit further donations of money toward the rent of the house and the cost of bandages and medicines necessary to treat those who came to it. There were also other expenses to be met, such as fuel for the stove, and carbolic and vinegar for cleaning, and, of course, food.

The first woman to come to the house was not injured but ill. She had an intermittent fever which Hester judged to be a symptom of venereal disease, but there was little she could do for her beyond offering comfort and an infusion of herbs to lower her temperature and give her some sense of relief.

"Are you hungry?" Hester asked, passing her the steaming mug. "I have bread and a little cheese, if you like."

The woman shook her head. "No, ta. I'll just 'ave the medicine."

Hester looked at her wan face and hunched shoulders. She was probably not more than twenty-five or twenty-six, but she was weary, and sleeplessness, poor food, and disease had robbed her of all energy.

"Would you like to stay here for the night?" Hester offered. It was not really what the house was for, but in the absence of those in greater need, why should this woman not use one of the beds?

A spark flared for a moment in the woman's eyes. "Wot'll it cost?" she said suspiciously.

"Nothing."

"Can I go in the morning, then?"

"You can go any time you wish, but morning would be good."

"Yeah, ta. That'd be fine." She still did not quite believe it. Her mouth pulled tight. "In't no point out there," she said grimly. "No trade. Rozzers all over the bleedin' place-like flies on a dead rat, they are. In't nothin' fer no one, even them wot's still clean." She meant free from disease, not like herself.

There was nothing for Hester to say. The truth would be a condescension this woman did not need. It would not give hope, only separate her from any sense of being understood.

"It's that bleedin' toff wot was snuffed last night," the woman went on miserably. "Stupid cow! W'y anyone'd want ter go an' do a thing like that fer, I dunno!" She took a sip of the herbs and twisted her mouth at the bitter taste.

"Sugar'll probably make it worse," Hester said. "But you can have some if you'd like."

"Nah, ta." She shook her head. "I'll get used ter it."

"Maybe they'll find out who it was, and things will get back to normal," Hester suggested. "What are you called?" It was not quite the same thing as asking her name. A name was a matter of identity; this was merely something to use in making her personal.

"Betty," was the reply, after a longer draft of the herbal infusion.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like a piece of bread and cheese? Or toast?"

"Yeah... toast'd be good. Ta."

Hester made two pieces and put them on a plate with cheese. Betty waited while Hester took one piece herself, then she took the other. Her hand closed around it with satisfaction, almost urgency.

"Reckon 'is family's real put out," she went on after a moment or two. " 'Em rozzers is buzzin' around like the devil's arter 'em. Poor bastards. They in't bad, most o' the time. Knows we gotter make a livin', an' the men wot comes 'ere does it 'cos they wanter. In't nobody else's business, really." She ate over half the toast before speaking again. "S'pose they come arter summink wot their wives don' give 'em. Never could work that out, but thank God fer it, I say."

Hester stood up and made more toast, skewering the bread on a fork and holding it to the open door of the stove till the heat of the coals scorched it crisp and brown. She returned with another good slice of cheese and gave it to Betty, who took it in wordless gratitude.

Hester was half curious. She had been involved in too many cases with Monk not to try reasoning as second nature, but she was also concerned for the disruption to the neighborhood. "Why would any woman kill a client?" she asked. "Surely she would realize it had to end like this?"

Betty shrugged. " 'Oo knows? Even soused out of 'er mind, yer'd think she'd 'ave'ad more sense, wouldn't yer?" She bit into the toast and cheese and spoke with her mouth full. "Bring the wrath o' God down on all of us, stupid bitch." But there was more resignation in her voice than anger, and she turned her full attention to the food and said no more.

Hester did not raise the subject again until close to morning. She had slept in one of the beds herself, and was roused by Constable Hart knocking on the door.

She got up and let him in. He looked mithered and unhappy. He glanced around the room and saw only the one bed occupied.

"Quiet?" he said without surprise. Perhaps involuntarily his eyes went to the stove and the kettle.

"I'm going to have a cup of tea," Hester remarked. "Would you like one?"

He smiled at her tact, and accepted.

When the tea and toast were made and they were sitting at either side of the table, he began to talk. It was light in the street outside but there was hardly any traffic yet. The huge mass of the Coldbath prison stood silent and forbidding to the north, the sun softening its walls only slightly, the cobbles of the road still damp in the crevices. Light glinted on a pile of refuse in the gutter.

"So I don't suppose you've 'eard anything?" he said hopefully.

"Only that there are police all over the streets, and none of the women are doing much trade," she replied, sipping her tea. "I imagine that'll go for a lot of other occupations as well."

He laughed without humor. "Oh, yeah! Burglaries are down-and robberies! It's so bleedin' safe to walk around now you could wear a gold Albert in your waistcoat an' go from Coldbath to Pentonville, an' still find it there! The reg'lars like us almost as much as a dose o' the pox."

"Then maybe they'll help," she suggested. "Get things back to normal. Do you know who he was yet?"

He looked up at her, his eyes solemn and troubled. "Yeah. 'Is son got worried 'cos 'e were supposed to be at a big business meeting, an' 'e never come 'ome that night. Seems 'e weren't the kind o' man to miss something like that, so everyone got upset. Asked the local station about accidents an' so on." He spread black currant jam liberally on his toast. "He lived up Royal Square, opposite St. Peter's Church, but the station put the word about, an' we was askin' around too, knowin' as 'e wasn't from our patch. Son came over and looked at'im in the morgue last evening." He bit into the toast. "Knew'im, right enough," he said with his mouth full. " 'Ell of a stink 'e kicked up. Streets not safe for decent men, what's the world coming to, and all that. 'E'll write to his Member of Parliament, 'e said." He shook his head wonderingly.

"I think for his family's sake he would be wiser to say as little as possible, at least for the moment," she replied. "If my father were found dead in Abel Smith's place, I would tell as few people as I could. Or found alive either, for that matter," she added.

He smiled at her for an instant, then was grave again. " 'E were called Nolan Baltimore," he told her. "Rich man, 'ead of a company in railways. It was 'is son Jarvis Baltimore who came to the morgue. 'E's 'ead o' the company now, an' going to make sure 'e raises Cain if we don't find who killed 'is father an' see 'em 'anged."

Hester could imagine the reaction of shock, pain, outrage, but she thought young Mr. Jarvis Baltimore would live to regret his actions today. Whatever his father had been doing in Leather Lane, it was extremely unlikely to be anything his family would wish their friends to know about. Because it was murder, the police would have to do all they could to establish the facts, and if possible bring someone to court, but it might have been better for the Baltimore family if it could simply have remained a mystery, a disappearance tragic and unexplained.

But that choice was no longer open to them. It was only a passing thought, a moment's pity for the disillusion and then the public humiliation, the laughter suddenly hushed when they entered a room, the whispered words, the invitations that stopped, the friends who were unaccountably too busy to receive, or to call. All the money in the world would not buy back what they might be about to lose.

"What if it were nothing to do with any of the women in Abel Smith's place?" she suggested. "Maybe someone followed him to Leather Lane and took a good opportunity when they saw it?"

He stared at her, hope and incredulity struggling in his face. "God 'elp us if that's true!" he said in a whisper. "Then we'll never find'im. Could be anyone!"

Hester could see that she had not necessarily been helpful. "Have you any witnesses at all?"

He shrugged very slightly. "Dunno who to believe. 'Is son says 'e was an upright, decent man in a big way o' business, respected in the community an' got a lot o' powerful friends who'll want to see justice done, an' the streets o' London cleaned up so 'onest folk can walk in 'em."

"Of course." She nodded. "He can hardly say anything else. He has to, to protect his mother."

"An' 'is sister," Hart added. "Who in't married yet, 'cos she's a Miss Baltimore. 'Ardly do 'er chances any good if 'er father was known to frequent places like Leather Lane for their usual trade." He frowned. "Curious that, in't it? I mean, a man that'll go to places like that 'isself, turning down a young woman 'cos 'er father does the same thing. I can't work folk out... not gentry, leastways."

"It won't be his father, Constable, it'll be his mother," she explained.

"Oh?" He put his empty mug down on the table. "Yeah, o' course. I see. Still, it don't help us. Don't really know where to begin, 'cept with Abel Smith, an' 'e swears blind Baltimore weren't killed in 'is place."

"What does the police surgeon say?"

"Dunno yet. Died o' broken bones an' bleedin' inside, but dunno whether 'e died at the bottom of Abel's stairs or somewhere else altogether. Could'a bin anyone as pushed'im, if it were the stairs."

"Or maybe he was drunk and just fell?" she said hopefully.

"Give me three wishes, an' right now all of 'em'd be that," he said with intense feeling. "The whole place is like a wasps' nest all the way from Coldbath up to Pentonville, an' down as far as Smithfield. An' it'll get worse! We just got the women an' the pimps on our backs now." He sighed. "Give it a day or two an' we'll have ever so discreet bellyachin' from the toffs whose pleasure it is to come 'ere an' have a bit o' fun, 'cos now they can't do it without falling over the police at every street corner. There's goin' to be a lot o' red faces around if they do! An' a lot o' short tempers if they don't. We can't win, whatever."

She sympathized with him silently, getting him more tea, and then fresh toast with black currant jam, which he ate with relish before thanking her and going disconsolately out into the ever-broadening daylight and resuming his thankless task.

The following day the newspapers carried headlines on the shocking death of well-respected railway owner Nolan Baltimore, found in extraordinary circumstances in Leather Lane, off the Farringdon Road. His family was desolated with grief, and all society was outraged that a decent man of spotless reputation should be attacked in the street and left to die in such circumstances. It was a national scandal, and his son, Jarvis Baltimore, had sworn that it would be his crusade to clear away the crime and prostitution that stained the capital city's honor and made such foul murders possible. The metropolitan police had failed in their duty to the citizens of the nation, and it was every caring man's responsibility to make sure that it was not allowed to remain so.

Of far more concern to Hester was the fact that the night after Constable Hart's second visit to her, a young woman was brought into the house by her friends so seriously beaten that she had to be carried. The three frightened and angry women waited huddled in the corner, staring.

The injured woman lay on the table curled over, holding her abdomen, her body shaking, blood oozing between her fingers.

White-faced, Margaret looked at Hester.

"Yes," Hester agreed quietly. "Send one of the women for Mr. Lockhart. Tell him to come as quickly as he may."

Margaret nodded and turned away. She gave directions to one of the waiting women where to start looking for the doctor, and not to stop until she had found him. Then she went over to the stove for water, vinegar, brandy, and clean cloths. She worked blindly, reaching for things because she was too shaken and too horrified to see clearly what she was doing.

Hester must staunch the bleeding and overcome her horror at such a wound, telling herself to remember the battlefields, the shattered men she had helped lift off the wagons after the charge of the Light Brigade at Sebastopol, or after the Battle of the Alma, blood-soaked, dead and dying, limbs torn, hacked by swords or splintered by shot.

She had been able to help them. Why was this woman any different? Hester was there to do a job, not indulge her own emotions, however deep or compassionate. The woman needed help, not pity.

"Let go of it," she said very gently. "I'll stop the bleeding." Please God she could. She took the woman's hands in hers, feeling the clenched muscles, the fear transmitting itself as if for a moment she were part of the same flesh. She was aware of the sweat breaking out on her skin and running cold over her body.

"Can you 'elp 'er?" one of the women asked from behind. She had come over silently, unable to keep away in spite of her fear.

"I think so," Hester replied. "What is her name?"

"Fanny," the woman said hoarsely.

Hester bent over the woman. "Fanny, let me look at it," she said firmly. "Let me see." With more strength she pulled the woman's hands away and saw the scarlet-soaked cloth of her dress. She prayed they would find Lockhart and he would come quickly. She needed help with this.

Margaret handed her scissors and she took them, cutting the fabric to expose the flesh. "Bandages," she said without looking up. "Rolled," she added. She lifted the dress away from the wound and saw raw flesh still running blood but not pumping. Relief washed over her, breaking out in prickling sweat again. It might be only a surface wound after all. It was not the gushing, arterial blood she had dreaded. But still she could not afford to wait and see if Lockhart turned up. Choking for a moment on her words, she asked for cloths, brandy and a needle threaded with gut.

Behind her, one of the women started to cry.

Hester talked all the time she worked. Most of it was probably nonsense; her mind was on the bloody flesh, trying to stitch it together evenly, without cobbling, without missing a vessel where the blood was still oozing, without causing more pain than was absolutely unavoidable.

Silently, Margaret handed her more and more cloths, and took away those that were soaked and useless.

Where was Lockhart? Why did he not come? Was he drunk again, lying in someone else's bed, under a table, or worse, in a gutter where no one would ever recognize him, much less find him and sober him up? She cursed him under her breath.

She lost track of how long it was since Margaret had sent the woman out. All that mattered was the wound and the pain. She did not even notice the street door opening and closing.

Then suddenly there was another pair of hands, delicate and strong, and above all clean. Her back was so locked in position that when she straightened up it hurt, and it took her a moment to refocus her eyes on the young man beside her. His shirtsleeves were rolled up above his elbows, his fair hair was damp around his brow as if he had splashed his face with water. He looked down at the wound.

"Good job," he said approvingly. "Looks as if you've got it."

"Where have you been?" she replied between her teeth, overwhelmed with relief that he was there, and furious that he had not come sooner.

He grinned ruefully and shrugged, then turned his attention back to the wound. He explored it with sensitive, expert touch, all the while looking every few moments at the patient's face to make sure she was no worse.

Hester considered apologizing to him for her implied criticism and decided it did not matter now. It would not help, and she did not pay him, so perhaps he owed her nothing. She caught Margaret looking at her, and saw the relief in her eyes also.

It seemed as if the bleeding was stopped. She handed Lockhart the final bandages soaked in balm and he bound them in place, then stood back.

"Not bad," he said gravely. "We'll need to watch her for infection." He did not bother to ask what had happened. He knew no one would tell him. "A little beef tea, or sherry if you have it. Not yet, but in a while. You know what else." He lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug and smiled. "Probably better than I do."

Hester nodded. Now that the immediate crisis was over she was overwhelmed with weariness. Her mouth was dry and she was trembling a little. Margaret had gone to the stove for hot water so they could wash the worst of the blood away, and to make tea for them.

Hester turned to the waiting women, and the question in all their faces. "Give it time," she said quietly. "We can't tell yet. It's too soon."

"Can she stay 'ere?" one of them asked. "Please, missus! 'E'll only do it again if she goes back."

"What's the matter with him?" Hester let her fury out at last. "He could have killed her. He's got to be a madman-you should get rid of him. Don't you have some kind of-"

"It weren't Bert!" another of the women said quickly. "I know that 'cos 'e were out cold drunk in the gutter w'en it 'appened. I know that fer sure, 'cos I seed'im meself. Great useless, bleedin' oaf!"

"A customer?" Hester said in surprise and increasing anger.

"Nah!" The woman shuddered.

"Yer dunno that," the third woman said grimly. "Fanny in't sayin' 'oo it were, missus. She's that scared she won't say nuffin', but we reckon as it's some bastard as she knows, but it in't 'er reg'lar pimp, 'cos like Jenny said, 'e were blind drunk an' not fit ter beat a rice puddin', never mind do that ter anyone." She grimaced. "Besides, wot sense does it make ter put yer own women out o' work? Gawd! There's little enough around now without cuttin' anyone open. Even a bleedin' eejut can see that!"

"Then who would do it?" Hester asked as Margaret poured hot water into a bowl on the other table, then added cold to it to make it bearable to wash in. The carbolic was already to hand.

Lockhart rolled his sleeves farther up, ignoring the blood on them, and began to wash. Hester followed straight after him and he handed her the towel.

Margaret made tea for all of them, including herself, and brought it over, hot and very strong. Hester was glad to sit down at last and made no demur when Lockhart carried the bowl away to empty it down the drain.

Fanny was lying on the main table, her head on a pillow, her face ashen white. It was too soon to think of moving her, even to a bed.

"Who would do it?" Hester repeated, looking at the woman.

"Dunno," the first one replied. "Ta." She accepted a mug of tea from Margaret. "That's wot's got us frit. Fanny's a good girl. She don' take nothin' wot don' belong to 'er. She does wot she's told, poor little cow! P'rhaps she was once quite decent." She lowered her voice. "Parlor maid or summink like that. Got inter trouble, an' afore yer can say 'knife,' 'ere she is in the street. Don' talk much, but she'ad it rough, I'd say."

Lockhart came back with the empty bowl and accepted his tea.

"If I could get me 'ands on the sod wot did that to 'er," the middle woman said. "I'd slit 'is... sorry, miss, but so I would."

"You shut yer mouth, Ada!" her companion warned. "There's rozzers all over the place. Comin' outa the bleedin' woodwork, they are. Don' wanna be, but they're gettin' leant on every which way, poor sods. Someone's tellin' 'em ter clear us up. Others is tellin' 'em ter leave us alone, so they can 'ave their fun. Poor rozzers is runnin' around like blue-arsed flies, fallin' over each other."

"Yeh! An' poor little cows like Fanny is gettin' cut up by some bleedin' lunatic!" Ada retorted, her face pinched, her voice rising with barely controlled hysteria.

Hester did not argue. She sat quietly and thought about it, but she did not ask any more questions. The three women thanked them, and after saying good-bye to Fanny and promising to return, they went out into the night.

After an hour Lockhart looked closely at Fanny, who seemed to be quite a lot easier, at least in her fear. He helped Hester and Margaret carry her over to the nearest bed and laid her on it. Then, promising to come back the following day, he took his leave.

Hester suggested Margaret take a turn to sleep, and she would watch. Later they would change places. In the morning Bessie Wellington would come to take care of the house for the day and keep it clean. She had once been a prostitute herself, then kept a bawdy house until fiercer competition had driven her out of business. Now she was glad to find a warm room to spend the day, and was gentle enough with such patients as remained in the beds. She asked for no payment, and her knowledge of the area was worth almost as much as her labor.

When Hester returned the next evening, she was met by Bessie at the door, her face red, her black hair pulled back into a screwed knot and poking out at all angles. She was bursting with indignation.

"That slimy toad Jessop was 'ere arter money again!" she said in a whisper which carried halfway across Coldbath Square. "Offered'im a cup o' tea, an' 'e wouldn't take it! Suspicious sod!"

"What did you put in it, Bessie?" Hester asked, concealing a wry smile. She came in and closed the door behind her. The familiarity of the room engulfed her, the scrubbed boards still smelling of lye and carbolic, the faint echo of vinegar, the heat of the stove, and over near the tables the pungency of whiskey and the sharper clean tang of herbs. Automatically her eye went to the bed where she had left Fanny. She saw the dark tangle of her hair and the mound of her body under the blankets.

"She's all right, poor little bitch," Bessie said with anger rumbling in her voice. "Can't get a word out of 'er 'oo done that to 'er, mind. Don' understand that. If it were me, I'd be cursin''im up an' down ter everyone wot'd listen-an' them wot wouldn't!" She shook her head.

"Only a bit o' licorice," she said in answer to Hester's original question. "An' a spot o' whiskey ter 'ide the taste, like. Pity that. Waste o' good whiskey. Not that there's any other sort, mind!" She grinned, showing gap teeth.

"Did you throw it away?" Hester asked anxiously.

Bessie gave her a sideways look. " 'Course I did, bless yer! Wouldn't wanna give anyone cold tea, would I?" She stared back with mock innocence, and Hester could not help at least half wishing Jessop had drunk it. Surely, Bessie would not cause him anything worse than an acute discomfort and possibly embarrassment. Would she?

She went over and looked at Fanny, who was still frightened and in considerable pain. It took half an hour to take off the bandages and look at the wound to make sure it was not infected, rebandage it, then persuade her to take a little broth. She was barely finished when the street door opened with a gush of chilly, damp air, and she turned to see a woman of uncertain age standing only just inside. She was plainly dressed, like a good lady's maid, and her face was pinched hard with disapproval. Even her nose was wrinkled, though it was impossible to tell if it was the odor of lye and carbolic or fierce disgust that consumed her.

"Yes?" Hester said enquiringly. "Can I help you?"

"Is this a... a place where you take in injured women who are... are..." She stopped, apparently unable to say the word in her mind.

"Prostitutes," Hester said for her, with a touch of asperity. "Yes, it is. Are you injured?"

The woman blushed scarlet with mortification, then the blood drained out, leaving her face gray. She swiveled on her heel and went out of the still-open door.

Bessie stifled a laugh.

The next moment another young woman stood in the entrance, very different in appearance. Her complexion was extremely fair, her yellow hair thick. She had pale lashes and brows, but a healthy color in her face, which was too bland of feature to be pretty but had an openness and a balance about it which was immediately pleasing. She appeared nervous and was obviously controlling deep emotions, but there was no sign of injury or physical pain in her. The quality of her clothes, which, even though they were of unrelieved black, made it quite obvious she spent a considerable amount of money on them, and her bearing-head high, eyes direct-said that she was not a woman of the streets, however successful. It occurred to Hester with a jolt of embarrassment that probably the first woman had indeed been her maid, and there very much against her will. Perhaps she should not have made the remark she made.

She put down the dish and spoon with which she had been feeding Fanny, and went toward the visitor. "Good evening. Can I help you?"

"Are you in charge here?" the young woman asked. Her voice was low and a trifle hoarse, as if her feelings were held in so tightly the effort had half closed her throat, but her diction was perfect.

"Yes," Hester replied. "My name is Hester Monk. What can I do for you?"

"I am Livia Baltimore." She took a deep breath. "I understand this place..." Studiously, she avoided looking around her. "This is a refuge where women of the streets come if they are injured? I beg your pardon if I am mistaken. I do not mean to insult you, but my maid informed me that this is the correct place." Her fists were clenched by her sides, her body rigid.

"It is not an insult, Miss Baltimore," Hester replied steadily. "I do this because I wish to. Medicine deals with those who need, it does not make social judgments." She hesitated, uncertain whether to say anything about Nolan Baltimore's death or not, then instinct broke through regardless. "I am sorry for your bereavement, Miss Baltimore. Please come in."

"Thank you." She glanced once behind her, then closed the door. "Perhaps you can also help me..."

"If I knew anything about it, I would already have told the police," Hester replied, turning and moving back toward the table. She knew what Livia Baltimore had come seeking. It was natural enough, and showed a great deal of courage, even if little wisdom. She was touched with pity for the pain this young woman would experience as she realized more fully the reality of the places her father had frequented, whatever his purpose. She would have kept her emotions, her dreams, her grief, far safer had she stayed at home. But perhaps she would not only gain information but be able to give it as well. Even if vast areas of her father's life were unknown to her, she would still have some sense of his personality.

"Please sit down," Hester offered. "Would you like tea? It's a miserable night."

Livia accepted. Apparently the maid had been dismissed to wait for her in the carriage, or whatever other form of transport she had used. Either Livia wished this conversation to be private or the maid had declined to remain in such a place. Possibly it was both.

Breathing heavily, Bessie filled up the kettle again from a ewer on the floor and set it on the stove. "It'll be a few minutes," she warned grudgingly. She sensed condescension and resented it.

"Of course," Hester agreed, then turned to Livia. "I really have no idea what happened to Mr. Baltimore," she said gently. "I deal only with injury and illness here. I don't ask questions."

"But you must hear things!" Livia urged. "The police won't tell me anything. They speak to my brother, but they say there was a woman involved, and she may have been hurt."

Her black-gloved hands clenched and unclenched on her reticule. "Perhaps he saw a woman being attacked, and he tried to help her, and they set upon him?" Her eyes were eager, desperate. "If that were so, she might have come here, surely?"

"Yes," Hester agreed, knowing the word was true but the thought was not.

"Then you would have seen her, or your woman would?" Livia half nodded toward Bessie, standing with her arms folded beside the stove.

"I would have seen her," Hester conceded. "But several women come here every night, and they are all injured... or ill."

"But that night... the night he was... killed?" Livia leaned forward a little across the table, in her eagerness forgetting her distaste. "Who was here then? Who was hurt, and might have seen his... murder?" Her eyes filled with tears and she ignored them. "Don't you care about justice, Mrs. Monk? My father was a good and decent man, and generous. He worked so hard for what he had, and he loved his family! Doesn't it matter to you that someone killed him?"

"Yes, of course it matters," Hester responded, wondering how to answer the woman, little more than a girl, without overwhelming her with facts she could neither understand nor believe. "It matters when anyone is killed."

"Then help us!" Livia pleaded. "You know these women. Tell me something!"

"No, I don't know them," Hester cut across her. "I do what I can for their injuries... that's all."

Livia's eyes were wide, uncomprehending. "But..."

"They come in through that door." Hester nodded to the street entrance. "Sometimes I have seen them before, sometimes I haven't. They are either injured with cuts, bruises, or broken bones, or they are in a critical state of disease, most often syphilis or tuberculosis, but other things as well. I don't ask more than their first names, merely for something to call them. I do what I can, and often that is not much. When they are well enough, they go away again."

"But don't you know how they were injured?" Livia pressed, her voice rising. "You must know what happened!"

Hester looked down at the tabletop. "I don't need to ask. Either a customer lost his temper, or they kept a bit of the money for themselves and their pimps beat them," she replied. "And now and again they took a bit of trade in someone else's patch and got into a fight that way. The competition is pretty rough. Whatever it is, it really doesn't make any difference to what I need to do."

Livia obviously did not understand. It was a world, even a language, beyond her experience or imagination. "What is a... pimp?"

"The man who looks after them," Hester replied. "And takes most of what they earn."

"But why?" There was no comprehension in Livia's eyes.

"Because it's dangerous for a woman on her own," Hester explained. "Most of them have no choice. The pimps own the buildings, in a way they almost own the streets. They keep other people from hurting the women, but if they think they're lazy, or cheating them, then they beat the women themselves, usually not badly enough to scar their faces or make them unfit to work. Only a fool damages his own property."

Livia shook her head as if to get rid of the idea. "Then who hurts them when they come here to you?"

"Customers, perhaps, who are drunk and don't know their own strength, or just lose their tempers," Hester said. "Other women sometimes. Quite often they come because of disease."

"Lots of people get tuberculosis," Livia pointed out. "All sorts of people. I had a cousin who died of it. She was only twenty-eight. They call it the White Death, don't they." That was a statement. "And the other is..." She would not speak the words. Her own embarrassment at the subject was too deep to allow such candor. At last she let herself look around the room at the whitewashed walls and the cupboards, some of them locked.

Hester saw her glance. "Carbolic, lye, potash, vinegar," she said. "It's good for cleaning. And tobacco. We keep that locked."

Livia's eyes widened. "Tobacco? You let people use tobacco? Even women?"

"For burning," Hester explained. "It's a good fumigant, especially if we have lice or ticks, or things like that."

Livia's face twisted as if she could smell the reek of it already. "I just want to know what they saw," she begged. "What happened to my father?"

Hester studied her, the youth in the soft curves of her cheek and throat, the unlined skin, the earnest gaze. But already the shadow of grief had touched her; there was a hollowness, a papery quality around her eyes and a tightness to her mouth. The world was a different place from the one it had been three days before, and that innocence could not be found again.

Hester struggled for something to say that would stop this girl, for that is all she was in spite of her years, and send her back to her own life to believe whatever she wanted to. Unless there were a trial, she would never have to know what her father had been doing in Leather Lane. "Let the police find out, if they can," she said aloud.

"They're finding nothing!" Livia answered indignantly. "These women won't talk to them! Why should they? It's someone they know who killed him. They're probably afraid to tell."

"What was your father like?" Hester asked, then instantly regretted it. It was a stupid question. What does any woman say her dead father was like? Everything she wanted him to be, reality blurred by loss, loyalty, the sense of decency that says you speak no ill of the dead. "I mean, why might he have come to Leather Lane at night?" she amended.

Livia looked slightly embarrassed and defensive. "I don't know. It must have been business of some kind."

"What does your mother say?"

"We don't discuss it," Livia responded, as if it were the most usual thing to say. "Mama is an invalid. We try to keep anything troublesome or distressing from her. Jarvis... my brother... says he must have been going to meet someone, possibly to do with navvies, or something like that. My father owned a railway company. They have a new track which is almost completed. It will go all the way from the dockside here in London up to Derby. And we have a factory near Liverpool as well, for making railway wagons. Perhaps he was seeing someone about laborers, or steel, or that kind of thing?"

Hester could not meet her eyes and answer. That was not the sort of business people conducted in Leather Lane at night, but what use was there in pointing that out to Baltimore's daughter? "These women wouldn't know about that," she said instead. "They scrape the best living they can by selling their bodies, and they pay a heavy price for it..." She saw the incomprehension again. "You think they should be in factory labor? Sweatshops? Do you know what that pays?"

Livia hesitated. "No..."

"Or the hours?"

"No... but..."

"It's honest, right?" There was an edge of scorn in her voice she had not intended, and she saw the sting of it in Livia's face. "They can't afford to be honest at one and sixpence a day for fourteen or fifteen hours' work," she said more gently, but still with the underlying anger-not for Livia but for the facts. She saw Livia's eyes widen and her throat constrict. "Especially if they've got children to keep, or debts to pay," she added. "They can make a pound or two every night on the streets, even after giving their pimp his cut."

"But..." Livia started again, looking toward the curled-up outline of Fanny in the nearest bed.

"The risks? Injuries, disease, the unpleasantness of it?" Hester asked. "Go into a sweatshop sometime, see if you think it's any better. They're cramped, ill-lit, dirty, overcrowded. There's just as much disease there. A different kind, maybe, but I'm not sure it's any better. Dead is dead, whatever the cause."

"Can't you help me at all?" Livia said softly, shock and something like humility in her face. "At least ask them?"

"I can ask," Hester promised, overwhelmed with pity again. "But please, don't hope for much. I don't think anyone knows. And of course, if it was business of some sort, it would be well away from any of these women. The police say he was found in Abel Smith's... house... in Leather Lane, but Abel swears it wasn't any of his women who killed him. Perhaps they are telling the truth, and he was killed by whoever he went to see?" She hated telling what she thought was almost certainly a lie. But very possibly no one would ever know who had killed Baltimore, let alone why, so perhaps his daughter would be able to cling to her illusions.

"That would be it," Livia said, grasping hope as if it were a lifeline. "Thank you for your logic, your good sense, Mrs. Monk."

Hester pressed her advantage, and it was at least in part for Livia as well. "Perhaps your brother would stop asking the police so hard to drive the women off the streets?" she suggested. "It may have nothing to do with any of them, and harrying them will make them even less likely to tell you anything."

"But if they don't know anything..." Livia started.

"They may have seen nothing," Hester conceded. "But they will get to hear. Word passes quickly in places like this."

"I don't know. Jarvis doesn't listen to-"

Before she could finish the train of her thought the street door swung open wide and a young man shouted for help, panic harsh in his voice. His face was white, his hair streaked across his brow in the rain, and his thin clothes were sodden and sticking to his narrow chest.

Livia swung around, and Hester rose to her feet just as a far larger man came staggering in holding a woman in his arms. She was so pale her skin looked waxy in the gaslight, and her eyes were closed, her head lolling as if she were completely insensible.

"Put her there." Hester pointed to the larger, empty table.

" 'Aven't yer got a bed?" The large man stifled a sob. His face was twisted with emotion; anger was so much less painful than the terror which obviously engulfed him.

Hester was accustomed to all kinds of feelings pouring out beyond control, and she made no judgment of them, no response to those that were unfair.

"I need to see what is wrong," she explained. "I have to have a firm surface, and the light. Put her there."

He obeyed, his eyes imploring her to help, to find some answer beyond his imagining.

Hester looked at the girl lying in front of her. The man had put her down as gently as he could, but it was still clear that her bones were broken. Her arms and legs lay awkwardly; the flesh was swelling and the bruises were darkening even as Hester watched. The veins in the girl's neck and shoulders were blue, her skin gray-white. She was breathing but her eyelids did not flutter at all.

"Can yer 'elp 'er?" the man demanded, the youth now beside him.

"I'll try," Hester promised. "What happened? Do you know?"

"Someone beat the 'ell out of 'er!" he exploded. "Can't yer see that? Yer blind or summink?"

"Yes, I can see that," Hester said, looking at the woman, not at him. "I wanted to know how long ago, how you found her, if she's been stabbed or cut. If you can tell me that without my moving her, so much better. I can see how her arms and legs are. What about her body? Did you see where she was punched or kicked?"

"Gawd, lady! D'yer think I'd'a let it 'appen if I'ad? I'd'a killed the b-bastard if I'd b-bin there!" he stuttered in a futile effort to find a word bad enough for the rage that ate him. "If yer can't 'elp 'er, at least don' 'urt 'er any more, yer 'ear me?"

Hester put her hands very gently on the woman's arms, feeling for the grating edges of bone where the flesh was already misshapen and damaged. She found one break in the left arm, two in the right. The left knee was swollen and at least two small bones were broken in the right foot. The collarbone was broken on one side, but there was little she could do about that. Cutting the cloth of the girl's bodice, she exposed a purple bruise at least six inches wide across the ribs and stretching down below the waist. This was what she feared-it meant internal bleeding she could do nothing to help. She had a fair knowledge of anatomy, mostly learned in the battlefield while looking at the actuality of torn-open bodies, not the neater, more leisurely education of medical school, or dissections of the dead. Still, she knew where the major arteries were and what could happen to them when damaged.

"Do something! Damn yer!" the man said desperately, shifting his immense weight from one foot to the other and back again in his fever of anxiety.

Without answering, Hester continued to learn as much as she could without moving the broken body of the woman. She wished Margaret were there to help. Bessie was kind, but she had not the inner calm, the steady hands that Margaret had. She identified too much with the women, having lived all her life among them. She saw the pain and the fear from the inside, and it robbed her of the dispassion needed for practical help in such critical injuries as these.

"Go and find Mr. Lockhart," she ordered, and saw Bessie's face flood with relief that she could do something useful and at the same time escape the pain. She was out of the door without even grasping for her hat.

Hester turned to Livia, ignoring the man.

"Miss Baltimore!" she said firmly. "Would you be good enough to pass me that roll of bandage on the table? And then fetch a splint from the cupboard over there." She pointed with her other hand. "In fact, fetch three."

Very slowly, Livia stood up. She looked pale enough to faint.

"If you would do it quickly, please," Hester instructed, holding out her hand.

Livia obliged, still moving as if in a dream, fumbling with the bandage, rolling in the ends, then going to the cupboard. She returned after a moment with three splints and passed one across.

Hester took it from her. "Now, would you hold the girl's shoulders, please? Lean on them. I need them to remain still."

"What?"

"Just do it! Lean your weight on her shoulders. Be firm, but gentle." She looked up. "Go on! I'm going to set these bones so they heal as straight as possible. I need someone to hold her still. It's far kinder to do it while she is insensible anyway. Can you imagine how it will hurt if we leave it until she regains herself?"

Livia stood frozen to the spot.

"You don't catch diseases that way. Just do it!" Hester snapped. "I can't set it by myself. You came here to find out who killed your father. If you can't even bring yourself to look at this world, how are you going to learn anything about it? You want these people to help you? You'd better give a little help yourself."

Slowly, still looking as if she were going to pass out, Livia put her hands on the young woman's shoulders and leaned forward, resting her own body's weight on them.

"Thank you," Hester acknowledged. Then she carefully took the lower arm and, feeling the sickening grating of bone, pulled the limb straight. The youth handed her the splint and the bandages, his hands gentle as he laid them by the limb, and she bound them together as firmly as she dared. Fortunately there was no broken skin, so there was no possibility of infection from dirt, but she knew very well that there might be considerable internal bleeding which she could not reach or stop.

With Livia's shocked and reluctant help she set the other bones as well. The large man stoked the fire and fetched more water. Hester made poultices for the broken ribs and collarbone, and placed them gently on the injuries.

"Now all we can do is wait," she said at last.

"She gonna be all right?" the big man asked.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "We'll do all we can."

"I..." He swallowed. "I'm sorry if I were a bit short wif yer first off. I'm s'posed ter keep an eye after 'er, but she don' belong 'round 'ere. Dunno wot 'it 'er, 'alf the time." He passed a huge hand over his face, as if he could wipe away his emotions. "Strewth! Why'd the stupid little cow go moufin' off ter someone? Times I've told 'er ter keep 'er mouf shut! But they in't got the wits they was born wif, some o' them! Fink 'cos a man pays 'em money 'e's gonna treat 'em nice? Some o' them swine fink 'alf a crown buys yer soul. Bastards!" He made a low growl in his throat as if he were going to hawk and spit, then changed his mind.

"You can't do anything more for her now," Hester said gently. "You might as well go home." She turned to Livia Baltimore. "And you should go home, too. I suppose your carriage is still somewhere close by?"

"Yes," Livia agreed very quietly. Hester wondered what reception she would get from the maid. Probably icy with disapproval she dared not voice, but she might very well be handing in her notice in the morning-and shattering the invalid Mrs. Baltimore with outraged accounts of the whole episode. Livia would need all her courage and her patience to deal with that.

"Thank you for your help," Hester said with a very slight smile. "If I learn anything that might be of use to you, I shall tell the police."

Livia took a card out of her reticule and handed it across.

"Please do. Either write or call."

"I will," Hester promised, knowing Livia hesitated.

"I'll walk yer to yer carriage," the big man offered.

Livia looked startled, then relieved. A flash of light crossed her face which could even have been humor. "Thank you," she said, then went out of the door into Coldbath Square, followed by the man.

It was ten minutes later that Bessie returned with Lockhart, tired and disheveled as always, but perfectly willing to help.

"You don't eat proper!" Bessie chided him, as she had apparently been doing ever since she had found him. "Steak and kidney pudding, you need!" She went over to the stove. "I'll get you some 'ot tea. Best I can do. But it's yer own fault!" She did not explain what she meant by that, and Lockhart shot a wry look at Hester, but there was affection in it. He understood Bessie better than she understood herself.

Hester explained what they had done for the girl and took him over to her.

He looked at her carefully, for a long time, but he could not tell Hester the one thing she needed to know, whether there was internal bleeding or not.

"I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head and looking at the girl with pity. "I just don't know. But if she's still no worse by morning, she might survive it. I'll come back midday or so. Until then, you can do as much for her as I can. You've made a good job of the bones."

It was a little after seven, and full daylight, when Hester awoke to find Bessie standing over her, her eyes bright, her hair struggling out of its fierce knot, her dress even more rumpled than usual.

"She's come 'round!" she said in her penetrating whisper. "Don' look too good, poor creature. Yer'd better see to 'er. Kettle's on. Yer look like summit out o' the morgue yerself, an' all."

"Thank you," Hester said a trifle dryly, sitting up and wincing. Her head throbbed and she was so tired she felt worse than when she had lain down. She swung her legs to the floor and stood up, aware now of the girl on the other bed only yards away from her, eyes open, face so white it seemed hardly warmer than the pillow.

"Don't move," Hester said gently. "You're safe here."

"I'm all broken inside." The girl breathed the words rather than spoke them. "Heavens, I hurt!" Her voice was soft, her diction clear, not that of the streets.

"I know, but in time it will ease," Hester promised, hoping it was true.

"No, it won't," the girl said with resignation. "I'm dying. That's my punishment, I suppose." She did not look at Hester but stared up at the ceiling with blank eyes.

Hester put her hand over the girl's, touching it very lightly. "Your bones will heal," she told her. "I know it hurts now, but it will get better. What shall I call you?"

"Alice." Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, but she was too weak and too tired to sob. She was also too broken to be held in anyone's arms.

"Just rest," Hester said, aching to be able to do more for her. "You're safe here. We won't leave you alone. Is there anyone you would like me to tell?"

"No!" She turned to look at Hester, her eyes frightened. "Please!"

"I won't if you don't wish it," Hester promised. "Don't worry!"

"I don't want them to know," Alice went on. "Let me just die here and be buried... wherever they put people no one knows." She said it without self-pity. She was asking for an end, privacy, not help.

Hester had no idea whether the girl would recover or not. She was uncertain how to help, or if she could. Perhaps the best thing would be to leave her, but she could not do that. She was compelled by her own inner will for life not to allow someone else to give up. To be beaten was another thing, but she was not there yet.

"Who did this to you?" she asked. "Don't you want to stop them? Before they do it to someone else?"

Alice turned her head a little. "You can't stop him. No one can."

"Anyone can be stopped, if you know how, and if enough of us try," Hester said decisively. "If you help. Who is he?"

Alice looked away again. "You can't. It's legal. I owe him money. I borrowed too much, then I couldn't pay it back."

"Who? Your pimp?"

Alice stared up at the ceiling. "You might as well know. There's nothing more he can do to me now. But I don't know his name, not his real name. I was respectable then, a governess! Can you imagine that? I used to teach gentlemen's children. In Kensington. I fell in love." There was immeasurable bitterness in her voice and it was so little above a whisper that Hester had to strain to hear her. "We got married. We had six months of happiness... then I realized he gambled. Couldn't help it, he said. Maybe he was right. Anyway, he didn't stop... he began to lose." She took a deep breath and gasped with pain. It was a moment or two before she could continue.

Hester waited.

"I borrowed to get him out of debt... then he left me," Alice said. "Only I still had to pay back the money. It was then that the moneylender told me he could get me looked after on the streets... especially... if I went into this brothel. It caters to men who like clean girls... ones who speak nicely and carry themselves like quality. Pay a lot more for it. That way I could pay off my debt and be free."

"And you went..." Hester said slowly. It was so easy to understand-the fear, the promises, the escape from despair. The price might not seem any worse than the alternative.

"Not at first," Alice replied. "Not for another three months. By then the debt was twice as high. That was two years ago." She fell silent.

Bessie came over with a cup of beef tea, her eyes questioning.

Hester looked at Alice. "Try a little," she offered.

Alice did not bother to answer. Her thoughts were inward, remembering pain, defeat, perhaps humiliation more than she would ever forget.

Hester put her arm around Alice's shoulders and eased her up a few inches. The girl gasped with pain, but she did not resist. She lay as leaden weight against Hester, her splintered arms stiff, her body rigid.

Bessie held the cup to her lips, her own face crumpled with concern, her hands so gentle her touch could hardly be felt as more than a warmth.

It was a quarter of an hour before the tea was finished, and Hester had no idea whether it had helped or not, but she knew of nothing else to try.

Alice sank into a restless sleep, and when Margaret came in at nearly nine o'clock her optimism over raising more funds vanished the moment Hester told her of the night's happenings.

"That's monstrous!" she said furiously. "You mean someone out there is lending money to respectable women in financial trouble, and then demanding they pay it back by working in a brothel that caters to men who like to use women they think are decent... to... God knows what!"

"And now with police all over the place they can't get the trade to pay off, so they are getting beaten," Hester finished for her. "Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Fanny is probably another of them, only she's too frightened to tell us." She remembered Kitty, who had also spoken well and carried herself with pride. "Heaven knows how many more there are."

"What are we going to do?" Margaret demanded. There was no doubt in her that they would do something. She expected no less from Hester; it was written plainly in her face and in her brave, candid stare.

Hester did not want to let her down, or any of these women who trusted her to be able to do what they could not. But those reasons were trivial. Above them all was the evil Hester so easily imagined could have happened to hundreds of women she knew-or to herself, had chance been only a little different.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Not yet. But I will." She would ask Monk. He was clever, imaginative, and he never gave up. A very slight warmth opened up inside her at the certainty of his help. He would hate this with exactly the same passion as she did. "I will," she repeated.