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“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 ha
d 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.
