“Oh no,” Evan assured him, keeping pace. “It was definitely the right man.

Good family, but a bit of a rake. Apparently very handsome, or at least had a fine way with women.”

“What makes you say that?” Monk asked quickly. They had turned into the square and were walking across the grass towards Landsdowne Place and the Foundling Hospital, which lay ahead of them. They must skirt around it to Guildford Street.

“The evidence of his involvement was rather carefully concealed by two young ladies, both of them apparently in love with him,” Evan replied. “Or more accurately, one of them felt very deeply, the other, her sister, was merely flirting.”

“This doesn't explain anything!” Monk said desperately, brushing past a Hussar in uniform. “A romantic rivalry between sisters, a petty embezzlement for which a young rake got . . . what? A year? Five years?”

“Two years,” Evan answered, his face suddenly tight and his eyes full of pity. “But he died of gaol fever in Coldbath Fields. He wasn't a particularly pleasant young man, he robbed the charitable funds of the church, but he didn't deserve to die alone in prison for it.”

“Was that my fault?” Monk felt the same wrench of pity. He had seen the Coldbath Fields prison and would not have wished it on any living thing. He could remember the cold that ate into the bones, the damp of the walls as if they were forever weeping, the smell of mold and sour places that are never open to the air. One could taste the despair in it. He could close his eyes and see the men, shavenheaded, in the backbreaking exercises of passing the shot, endlessly, pointlessly moving cannon balls from one place to another, around in a ring, or the treadmill, the cages graphically known as the “cockchafers.” The enforced silence beat in his ears, where all human exchange was forbidden.

“Was that my fault?” he demanded again with sudden violence, stopping Evan by grasping his arm so he winced and was forced to swing around to face him.

“It was your doing,” Evan said without deviating his gaze at all. “But the man was guilty. The sentence was the judge's to give, not yours. What Drusilla Buckingham could not forgive you for, I should imagine, was that you used her to catch Sallis. You told her he was betraying her with her own sister, Julia. In rage and hurt she gave you what you wanted.” Monk felt the cold bite into the core of his body. He was no longer aware of his feet on the pavement or the carriages coming and going along Guildford Street, the clink of harness.

“And was he?”

“I don't know,” Evan answered him. “There's nothing to suggest it.” Monk let out his breath slowly. He hated the misery in Evan's eyes, the refusal to excuse him, but he had no argument. He felt the same revulsion for himself. The man might have been guilty, but why had he pushed the hurt so far? Was it worth using a woman's jealousy to betray her lover to the Coldbath Fields, for a few pounds from the church funds, albeit the poor box?