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
