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Margaret was late in to Coldbath, but that was of no importance at the moment. Tempers were short throughout the area so there were many quarrels and several people lashed out in frustration and fear, but it was more often men who were the victims, and the injuries were of the nature that heal with time and very little care—mostly bruises, shallow cuts, and sore heads. Pimps were getting more careful about scarring or bruising their women, their only asset in a shrinking market.
Of course everyone knew it would not go on indefinitely, but it had already been long enough to blow a chill of bitter reality into the lives of all manner of people. The end of it still lay in some unknown time in the future. They lived from day to day.
“How is Fanny?” Hester asked as she came in out of the fine rain, taking off her cloak and hat. “And Alice?”
“Fair enough,” Bessie answered, looking at her balefully from where she was sitting by the empty table, apart from her half-drunk cup of tea. “Quiet, it is. Like a bleedin’ graveyard. ’Ad two girls come in wi’ disease, that’s all. Can’t do much fer ’em, poor cows. Miss Ballinger in’t in yet. Out showin’ ’erself off ’round the swell ’ouses, I shouldn’t wonder. Never seen such a change in anyone in me life!” She said it with fierce satisfaction and not the shadow of a smile. “Wouldn’t say boo to yer w’en she first come ’ere. Now she’s as bold as brass. Ask anyone fer money, she would. Wager yer sixpence she’ll come waltzin’ in ’ere wi’ a grin all over ’er face an’ tell us she’s got a few pound more fer us.”
Hester did smile, in spite of the gloom of the morning. It was true, Margaret had found a confidence, even a happiness, in work. That in itself was an accomplishment, whoever else they were able to heal, and whether or not their patients would slip back to exactly the same debt and abuse afterwards.
Bessie was right; half an hour later Margaret did come in carrying satisfaction with her like a burst of sunlight.
“I have another twenty guineas!” she said proudly. “And promise of more!” She held it out for Hester, her eyes bright, her face glowing.
Hester forced herself to warm to the success, even though she felt all she could taste in her own mouth was failure. “That’s excellent,” she said appreciatively. “It will keep Jessop at bay for a while, and that gives us time. Thank you very much.”
Margaret looked pained. “You’re not going to give him more than our agreement, are you?”
Hester relaxed a little; she almost laughed. “No, I am most certainly not!”
Margaret smiled back and started to take off her jacket and hat. “What can we do today? How are Fanny and Alice?” She glanced towards the beds as she spoke.
“Asleep,” Bessie answered for Hester. “Nowt ter do fer ’em now, ’ceptin keep the roof over their ’eads, an’ feed ’em now an’ then.” She frowned at the rain spattering the window. “I s’pose I’d best be doin’ some marketin’.”
“Stay inside and keep dry for a while.” Hester made her decision. “Margaret and I have an errand in half an hour or so. It’s important.”
Bessie was suspicious. “Oh, yeh?” She did not trust Hester to look after herself, but she was not quite bold enough to say so in so many words. “Wot yer gonna do that I can’t do fer yer, then?”
Hester had not been going to confide in Bessie, simply as a precaution, and also at least in part because she was not sure if her plan had any chance of success. Now, suddenly, she thought better of secrecy and decided to be frank.
“If we are to solve this problem of police all over the place, and therefore no trade for the women,” she said briskly, before she should lose her nerve, “we have to find out what happened to Nolan Baltimore.” She ignored Margaret’s look of incredulity and Bessie’s sucking her breath in between the gap in her teeth. “I intend to start asking a few questions, at least.
People may speak to me who would not speak to the police,” she finished.
“ ’Ow yer gonna do that?” Bessie said with dismissal in her voice. “ ’Oo’s gonna tell yer anythin’ about it? Come ter think, ’oo’d yer even ask?”
“The people in Leather Lane, of course,” Hester replied, spreading out her cape so it would dry. “We need to know if Baltimore went there regularly or if it was his first visit. If he went there often, then someone will know something about him, who else he knew, what kind of a man he was away from his home and family. I would like to know whether he went there simply to use the women or if he could have had some other business. Maybe somebody from his life at home followed him there? His death might have nothing to do with the people who live in the Coldbath area.”
Bessie’s face brightened. “Cor! That’d be summink, eh?”
“But the people of Leather Lane might not know his name,” Margaret pointed out. “I don’t suppose he used it.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Hester agreed, realizing her point. “What we need is a picture to show people.”
Margaret’s eyes widened. “A picture! How on earth could we get a picture? Only the family would have one, and they’re hardly likely to give it to us.”
Hester took a deep breath and plunged in. “Actually . . . I have an idea for that. I am not very good at drawing, but you are.”
“Oh!” Margaret’s voice shot up in denial, and she started shaking her head, but her eyes did not leave Hester’s. “Oh, no!”
“Do you have an idea which would serve better?” Hester asked with an attempt at innocence.
Bessie understood with dawning horror. “You never are!” she said to Hester. “The morgue! Yer gonna draw a dead body?”
“Not I,” Hester corrected her. “Nobody would recognize their own mother from anything I drew, but Margaret is very good. She can really catch a likeness, even if she is too modest to say so herself.”
“It’s not that . . .” Margaret began, then tailed off, staring at Hester as disbelief slowly turned into understanding. “Really?” she whispered. “Do you think . . . I mean . . . would they allow us to . . .”
