Constable Hart?”
He closed the door behind him and took off his helmet. In the light his face looked tired, not merely from a sleepless night on duty, but from an indefinable weariness within. Something had bruised him, disturbed him.
“You’ad any women in ’ere last night that were knocked about, cut mebbe, or beat bad?” he asked. He glanced at the teapot on the table, swallowed, and looked back at Hester.
“We do most nights,” she replied. “Stabs, broken bones, bruises, disease. In bad weather the women are sometimes just cold. You know that!”
He took a deep breath and sighed, pushing his hand through his receding hair. “Someone in a real fight, Mrs. Monk. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t ’ave to. Jus’ tell me, eh?”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” She evaded the answer for a moment. “Or toast?”
He hesitated. His exhaustion was plain in his face. “Yeah… ta,” he accepted, sitting down opposite her.
Hester reached for the teapot and poured a second mug. “Toast?”
He nodded.
“Jam?” she offered.
His eyes went to the table. His face relaxed in a rueful smile. “You got black currant!” he noticed, his voice soft.
“You’d like some?” It was a rhetorical question. The answer was obvious. Margaret was still asleep, and making the toast would give Hester a little more time to think, so she was happy to do it.
She came back to the table with two slices, and buttered one for herself and one for him, then pushed the jam over to him. He took a liberal spoonful, put it on the toast and ate it with evident appreciation.
“You’ad someone,” he said after several moments, looking at her almost with apology.
“I had three,” she replied. “At about a quarter to one, or about then. One later, three o’clock or so, and another an hour after that.”
“All in fights?”
“Looked like it. I didn’t ask. I never do. Why?”
Hester waited, watching him. There were hollows under his eyes as if he had lost too many nights’ sleep, and there was dust and what looked like blood on his sleeves. When she looked further, there was more on the legs of his trousers. His hand, holding the mug, was scratched, and one fingernail was torn. It should have been painful, but he seemed unaware of it. She was touched by both pity and a cold air of fear. “Why did you come?” she asked aloud.
He put down the mug. “There’s been a murder,” he replied. “In Abel Smith’s brothel over in Leather Lane.”
“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. Whoever it was, such a thing was sad, the waste of two lives, a grief to even more. But murders were not unheard of in an area like this, or dozens of others in London much the same. Narrow alleys and squares lay a few yards behind teeming streets, but it was a different world of pawnbrokers, brothels, sweatshops, and crowded tenements smelling of middens and rotting timber. Prostitution was a dangerous occupation, primarily because of the risk of disease and, if you lived long enough, starvation when you became too old to practice-at thirty-five or forty.
“Why did you come here?” Hester asked. “Was somebody else attacked as well?”
He looked at her, his eyes narrow, his lips pulled tight. It was an expression of understanding and misery, not contempt. “Dead person wasn’t a woman,” he explained. “Wouldn’t expect you to be able to ’elp me if it was. Although sometimes they fight each other, but not to kill, far as I know. Never seen it, anyway.”
“A man?” She was surprised. “You think a pimp killed him? What happened? Someone drunk, do you suppose?”
He sipped his tea again, letting the hot liquid ease his throat. “Don’t know. Abel swears it in’t anything to do with ’is girls…”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” She dismissed the idea without even weighing it.
Hart would not let it go so quickly. “Thing is, Mrs. Monk, the dead man was a toff… I mean a real toff. You should ’ave seen ’is clothes. I know quality. An’ clean. ’Is ’ands were clean too, nails an’ all. An’ smooth.”
“Do you know who he was?”
He shook his head. “No. Someone pinched ’is money an’ calling cards, if ’e’ad any. But someone’ll miss’im. We’ll find out.”
“Even men like that have been known to use prostitutes,” she said reasonably.
“Yeh, but not Abel Smith’s sort,” he replied. “Not that that’s what matters,” he added quickly. “Thing is, a man like that gets murdered an’ we’ll be expected to get whoever did it in double quick time, an’ there’ll still be a lot o’ shouting an’ wailing to clean up the area, get rid o’ prostitution and make the streets safe for decent people, like.” He said this with ineffable contempt-not a sneer of the lips or raising of his voice, just a soft, immeasurable disgust.
“Presumably if he’d stayed at home with his wife, he’d still be alive,” Hester responded sourly. “But I can’t help you. Why do you think a woman was hurt and could know something about it? Or that she’d dare tell you if she did?”
“You thinking ’er pimp did it?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Aren’t you?” she countered. “Why would a woman kill him? And how? Was he stabbed? I don’t know any women who carry knives or who attack their clients. Fingernails or teeth are about the worst I’ve heard of.”
“ ’Eard of?” he questioned.
She smiled with a slight downward curl of her lips. “Men don’t come here.”
“Just women, eh?”
“For medical reasons,” she explained. “Anyway, if a man’s been bitten or scratched by a prostitute, what are we going to do for him?”
“Beyond have a good laugh-nothing,” he agreed. Then his expression became grave again. “But this man’s dead, Mrs. Monk, an’ from the look of the body, ’e got’imself in a fight with a woman, an’ then somehow or other ’e came off worst. ’E’s got cuts an’ gashes in ’is back, an’ so many broken bones it’s hard to know where to begin.”
She was startled. She had imagined a fight between two men ending in tragedy, perhaps the larger or heavier one striking an unlucky blow, or possibly the smaller one resorting to a weapon, probably a knife.
“But you said he was robbed,” she pointed out, thinking now of an attack by several men. “Was he set on by a gang?”
“That don’t ’appen ’round these streets.” Hart dismissed it. “That’s what pimps are for. They make their money out of willing trade. It’s in their interest to keep the customers safe.”
“So why is this one dead?” she said quietly, beginning to understand now why Hart had come there. “Why would one of the women kill him? And how, if he was beaten the way you describe?”
Hart bit his lip. “Actually, more like ’e fell,” he answered.
“Fell?” She did not immediately understand.
“From an ’eight,” he explained. “Like down stairs, mebbe.”
Suddenly it was much clearer. If a man had been caught off balance, not expecting it, a woman could easily have pushed him.
“But what about the cuts and gashes you spoke of?” she asked. “You don’t get those falling down stairs.”
“There was a lot o’ broken glass around,” he replied. “An’ blood-lots of it. Could ’ave smashed a glass, dropped it an’ then fallen on it, I suppose.” He looked miserable as he said it, almost as if it were a personal tragedy. He pushed his hand back through his hair again, a gesture of infinite weariness. “But Abel swears ’e was never at ’is place, an’ knowing the state of it, I believe’im. But ’e went somewhere often enough.”
“Why would one of Abel Smith’s women kill him?” she asked, pouring more tea for both of them. “Could it have been an accident? Could he have tripped and fallen down the stairs?”
“ ’E wasn’t found at the bottom, an’ they deny it.” He shook his head and picked up his mug of fresh tea. “ ’E was on the floor in one o’ the back bedrooms.”
“Where was the broken glass?” she asked.
“On the floor in the passage an’ at the bottom o’ the stairs.”
“Maybe they moved him before they realized he was beyond help?” she suggested. “Then they denied it out of fear. Sometimes people tell the stupidest lies when they panic.”
He stared at the distance, the potbellied stove halfway along the wall, his eyes unseeing, his voice still too
