and Hannah Green?”
“That’s right. It wasnit until after we’d found the bodies that anyone even noticed they’d up and disappeared.”
“Bodies?” said Sebastian.
Maggie kindled a spill and held the glowing end to her pipe, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked. Sebastian waited with mounting impatience until the tobacco caught and she drew on it several times, blowing out a stream of fragrant smoke. “Bodies,” she said. Only, the way she said it, it came out sounding like “booodies.”
“Men, or women?”
“One man, one woman.”
Sebastian sat forward, the rum punch clasped in both hands. He breathed in the fragrant fumes of allspice, cinnamon, and hot rum, and felt the pounding in his head begin to ease. “Do you know who they were?”
“Aa divint know nothing abooot the man, ’cept that he was a cooostomer. But the dead girl, she was Hessy Abrahams.”
“They were found together?”
“Ach. No. The man, he was in the Chinese room, while our Hessy was in the peep room near the back stairs.”
“The peep room?”
“For them that likes to watch,” said Maggie without a trace of embarrassment or coquetry.
Sebastian exchanged glances with Calhoun. They had started out investigating the death of one young woman shot down in an alley, but the number of dead just kept multiplying. He said, “The dead man in the Chinese room . . . whose customer was he?”
“Why, he was Rose’s.”
Sebastian took a long, thoughtful sip of his punch. “Can you tell me what he looked like?”
Maggie drew on her pipe, her eyes half closing in thought. “He was young.” She subjected Sebastian to a moment’s scrutiny, then said, “Abooot your age, Aa’d say. Maybe a mite older, maybe a mite younger. But fair, like the boy here.” She glanced at Calhoun. “Can’t remember anything remarkable abooot him, ’cept he had a scar across his belly. Like this.” She drew a diagonal line across her stomach.
“He was naked?”
Maggie nodded. “Some men just drop their breeches and get dooon to it, but this ’un, he’d paid for a whole hour.”
“How did he die? Do you know?”
Maggie shrugged. “Stabbed, Aa suppose. Leastways, he was sure bleeding all over the place. Took uz forever to clean it all oooop.” She hesitated. “Didint see a chir, though.”
“A what?”
“A knife,” supplied Calhoun.
“Ah.” Sebastian fortified himself with more punch. “What about the man who was with Hannah Green?” he asked. “Did you see him?”
“No. But Aa heard him, all right. He raised quite a ruckus on account of her going off and leaving him like that. Miss Lil had to give him his money back.”
“Ian Kane wasn’t there?”
“Not then, no. Miss Lil sent for him, after she found the bodies.”
“What did Kane do with them?” Sebastian asked, intrigued. “The bodies, I mean.”
Maggie McQueen narrowed her eyes against the smoke of her pipe. “You ask a powerful lot of questions for a lord.” She cast a sideways glance at Calhoun. “You sure he’s a real lord?”
“The bona fide article,” said Calhoun solemnly.
“The bodies,” prompted Sebastian. “What did Kane do with them?”
She shrugged. “Dumped ’em someplace. Aa divint knaa wair. What else was he gonna do with ’em? Call in the magistrates?” She gave a low, earthy chuckle.
Sebastian glanced at his valet. “ ‘Aa divint knaa wair’?”
Calhoun leaned forward to whisper, “I don’t know where.”
“Oh,” said Sebastian. Tipping back his head, he drained his glass. The movement made him vaguely dizzy so that it was a moment before he could say, “The man who was with Hessy Abrahams—her customer. Did you see him?”
“Nah. Aa s’pose he walked ooot the house alive. Aa only seen the dead man because Aa helped wrap him in a length of canvas so’s Thackery could carry him oooot the house,” she added by way of explanation.
“Thackery?”
“He used t’be a gentleman of the Fancy.”
“Ah, yes,” said Sebastian, remembering the pugilist with the broken nose and cauliflower ear. “I believe I met Mr. Thackery.”
Maggie McQueen squinted at him through a cloud of tobacco smoke. “You don’t look so good. Too many late nights’ll do that to you.”
